Class action suit launched against EA

[Achilleslastand]

http://www.strategyinformer.com/news...dled-with-bugs


Law firm Robbins Geller in the United States has launched a class action suit against EA for, essentially, bungling the high profile launch of Battlefield 4 leading to investors losing value on their shares.

Specifically it represents those who bought shares between July 24th and December 4th, and charges EA with "violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934." Free game, quick!

EA bigwigs are accused of giving "materially false and misleading statements" between these two dates, whereby they boasted of Battlefield 4's technical prowess.

As many Battlefield 4 gamers know the launch of the latest instalment from DICE has been nothing short of disaster lurching to catastrophe. Today significant bugs and glitches remain with PS4's launch crippled and Xbox One gamers denied their week exclusive release of China Uprising due to mishaps.

"Based on the purported strength of the Battlefield 4 rollout then underway, defendants issued strong fiscal 2014 financial guidance for the Company and actually increased that guidance on October 29, 2013. The price of Electronic Arts' stock steadily climbed on these statements, reaching a Class Period high of $28.13 per share by August 23, 2013 and allowing certain of Electronic Arts' senior executives to sell their Electronic Arts stock at artificially inflated prices."

The foundation of the case is that Battlefield 4's bug-riddled premiere crippled confidence in the series and sent share prices tumbling, costing investors some serious cheese.

"...On November 15, 2013, the day Sony released its new Play Station 4 ('PS4') console, it was disclosed that players of Electronic Arts’ games were being subjected to multiple glitches and significant crashes when attempting to play Electronic Arts' titles on PS4," reads the suit claim.

"The price of Electronic Arts stock fell on these disclosures, declining more than 7% from a close of $25.96 per share on November 14, 2013 to close at $24.06 per share on November 15, 2013. Then, on December 4, 2013, it was disclosed through discussions defendants had with video game bloggers that due to bugs, connectivity issues, server limitations, and various other problems plaguing Battlefield 4, Electronic Arts had been forced to indefinitely halt the Battlefield 4 rollout and other projects until the problems with Battlefield 4 could be fixed."

"The price of Electronic Arts shares declined on this news from a close of $22.34 on December 4, 2013 to close at $21.01 on December 5, 2013, sending the share price down more than 28% from its Class Period high."

EA has halted work on DLC and even Star Wars: Battlefront 3 at DICE until Battlefield 4 is in good shape.

The class action accuses EA, between July 24 and December 4, of providing statements "materially false and misleading because they failed to disclose and misrepresented the following adverse facts which were known to or recklessly disregarded by defendants:"

"(a) Battlefield 4 was riddled with bugs and multiple other problems, including downloadable content that allowed players access to more levels of the game, a myriad of connectivity issues, server limitations, lost data and repeated sudden crashes, among other things;

"(b) as a result, Electronic Arts would not achieve a successful holiday season 2013 rollout of Battlefield 4;

"(c) the performance of the Electronic Arts unit publishing Battlefield 4 was so deficient that all other projects that unit was involved in had to be put on hold to permit it to focus its efforts on fixing Battlefield 4;

"and (d) as a result, Electronic Arts was not on track to achieve the financial results it had told the market it was on track to achieve during the Class Period."

[DarthShizNit]

Doubtful anything will come of it, but if we're really lucky EA and DICE will lose a -ton of money and maybe be convinced that they should actually have people test their games before releasing them.

[Inhuman One]

Seems to be a trend against big game releases in recent years to be one big buggy disappointing mess.

How the great have fallen.

[The Useless Member]

I hope some people learn their lesson from this and I hope these lawsuits (I hate to be dick, but you know) become more commonplace for video game developers who chronically release "buggy" games.

[Kanaric]

at least they are patching it, you should talk to madden fans and their outrage.

EA did good for like a year and a half to 2 years there but then they reverted to something ever worse than what they were before.



People act like this is something new, game companies not patching their games, it was worse in the 90s but at least they had the excuse of little internet availability back then. I thought Blizzard with it's patching Starcraft for like 10 years would of put a stop to this but sheeple keep buying these games. So long as CoD sells in millions this will keep happening. Me? I just play 3rd party games now.

[Inhuman One]

So how come Obsidian hasnt been sued yet?

[The Despondent Mind]

I always wondered why are gaming industry consumers so passive and acceptant to every release . I mean if Mercedes releases a car series with broken parts that would be an outrage , the company would losses horrible amounts of money and dammit the would fix the cars before CA fixed RTW2 . Same goes for any kind of electronic,food,textile,fashion basically any industry would get burned if it released a product which failed to "function" properly or partially .

Another thing that bugs me and brings me again to the Mercedes example . A hell of lot more people plays video games then it drives Mercedes or any car , but where is there voice , where does the dissatisfaction go ?

Maybe just the unfortunate minority experiences the numerous bugs and glitches in these AAA titles . But then ,why would the companies release all those patches ?

I honestly don't get people who are perfectly willing to accept this "I just paid this thing 60$ and I have to wait weeks or months so that I can properly enjoy it without technical setbacks . "

[Ciciro]

So how come Obsidian hasnt been sued yet?

Because Fallout NV wasn't that buggy.

[Sir Adrian]

Obsidian didn't do the bug-testing for NV, Bethesda did, and it was buggy as hell on release. It still is buggier than fallout 3, which is saying something.


Back on topic: this lawsuit doesn't have anything to do directly with Battlefield 4. The game itself is involved only by circumstance. The lawsuit is on charges of fiscal fraud and fraudulent stock market manipulation by EA's CEOs.

Basically EA's CEOs atificially inflated EA's share value by releasing false statements about the game and, once the value reahced a maximum, they quickly sold most of their stock. After the game was released it got a poor reception from the audience because of its poor state and missing features, which caused the stock to collapse, thereby allowing EA's CEOs to (illegally) make a huge profit at the expense of the other investors. The company is being sued because of this not because the game is buggy. But you can leave it to EA's in the gaming press to spin the story and make the lawsuit look frivolous.


Someone please fix the thread's title.

[Inhuman One]

New Vegas is still their only game that they finished.

NWN2 is still the buggiest game I ever played when unpatched. Not even Rome 2 can top that, lord knows they tried. For many people it wouldnt even launch.
At least they patched this one somewhat, which can't be said for alpha protocol and KOTOR2. they abandoned those games right away, no patches, nothing. KOTOR 2 was not even finished!

And they also made dungeon siege 3.. simply for it having nothing at all to do with the original 2 they could be sued for false use of the franchise name..

Worst part is they released all those games under different publishers, them being the only constant factor in their broken games. They have good writers, a shame the rest of their team doesnt know how to make games.

[MathiasOfAthens]

Doubtful anything will come of it, but if we're really lucky EA and DICE will lose a -ton of money and maybe be convinced that they should actually have people test their games before releasing them.

Its quite possible that EA rushes these games because their operating budget has become larger and they need to release games sooner to get that cash flow. But games have also become more advanced and they take a bit more time to develop. EA seems to be stuck in shorter development spans. That stuff works for CoD. They do not release anything new to each new title. But BF4 sought to deliver too many new things in too short development window.

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

People this has nothing to do with BF4 being buggy, please read the actual article.

[Sir Adrian]

What the Emprah said


The amount of people (99.99% being on Consolespot, Eurogamer and IGN) jubilating that companies are finally being sued for bugs and exclaiming that this lawsuit will bring about a golden age of bug-free games is just saddening.

[Inhuman One]

To be fair, the gaming industry has been getting away with a lot of stuff that would never be tolerated in any other branche.

It's about time they got a good slap to get back into reality.

[Sir Adrian]

True, very true, but the only way to slap them is to refuse to buy their games. If enough people stopped buying EA games do you think they would continue to lie about their products or charge you twice on Origin and then delete your account if you asked for a refund (even though the EULA claims you are entitled to one).

You can complain as long as you want, as long you still give them your money they won't care and nothing will change.

[Inhuman One]

It's hard to stop their sales. Personly I do buy some EA games, if it interests me. Didnt buy Dragon Age 2 though, not planning to buy 3 either. They killed that franchise.

Also bought sims 3 and quite a few expansions, but nothing from their store that I didnt buy with free points. Doesnt stop many people to throw money at them by purchasing lots of things in that overpriced sims store. EA, like many other companies, knows how to persuade people to buy their stuff. They prey on the gullible. Sometimes they fool me as well, I wont say I'm above that.

The average consumer is unaware of all the stuff a publisher does. They just see the game they want to buy and might not even be able to name the developer or publisher. Or they might just know about a single franchise they have and be unaware of what terrible things they do with their other franchises.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

Personally, this was the last time I pre-ordered a Battlefield title. The game is a damn mess. Today I managed to get it running by wasting hours, searching forums and youtube to find solutions. Firstly, I had to go to the BIOS and unpark my cores to get rid of low fps, then I had to open up a port so that I would stop getting the error "can't connect to server" and then I had to turn from Fullscreen to borderless because I was getting a DirectX error. Finally, FINALLY, it's running with fewer issues right now, but it's quite striking that I needed to do all this tweaking. And to think that I've been continuously supporting this brand since Battlefield 1942. They just lost a costumer, but I guess there are still millions of people who'll keep buying this ...

[Aanker]

I always wondered why are gaming industry consumers so passive and acceptant to every release . I mean if Mercedes releases a car series with broken parts that would be an outrage , the company would losses horrible amounts of money and dammit the would fix the cars before CA fixed RTW2 . Same goes for any kind of electronic,food,textile,fashion basically any industry would get burned if it released a product which failed to "function" properly or partially .

Another thing that bugs me and brings me again to the Mercedes example . A hell of lot more people plays video games then it drives Mercedes or any car , but where is there voice , where does the dissatisfaction go ?

Maybe just the unfortunate minority experiences the numerous bugs and glitches in these AAA titles . But then ,why would the companies release all those patches ?

I honestly don't get people who are perfectly willing to accept this "I just paid this thing 60$ and I have to wait weeks or months so that I can properly enjoy it without technical setbacks . "

I marked the two key circumstances. I mean, I agree in principle, gamers should perhaps take more action instead of just merely voicing their opinion on internet forums where everyone will agree anyway (oh the hypocrisy of my posting!), but a Mercedes... yeah, a Mercedes doesn't cost the rather negligible sum of $60. A car represents a major financial investment for the consumer, which actually raises the stakes for everyone - the manufacturer (who has to produce a convincing product), the retailer (who has to do the convincing) and the customer (who has to buy and use the item). A game can basically be discarded at a whim and forgotten.

[Kanaric]

have any of these suits against EA gone anywhere? Because they have only made 1 patch for madden 25 and it fixed nothing and have done nothing since and there was a lawsuit for that as well.

So how come Obsidian hasnt been sued yet?

they are not the publisher so there needs to be proof it's their fault not Ataris or whoevers for rushing the game.

I knew people who worked at EA Chicago and all EA cared about was the deadline whether the game was finished or not and THATS why the games are buggy. People act like this is new though because in the 90s games were no different really even big titles like Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall was horribly buggy and it was in ways you would rarely see now and people would be in revolt over. I remember HOMM, Deadlock, and Frontier: First Encounters being fairly buggy, AOE2 being extremely buggy, etc.

I remember Outpost from Sierra being so ed up that it didn't even have all of it's features that were listen in the manual lol

Lots of games in the 90s were bug free though or not noticibly buggy like Master of Orion 2, something that almost never happens now lol.


What's funny is now people PAY to get into Alphas and Betas in games.

Wish there was a suit against Egosoft for X Rebirth.

[Inhuman One]

It's true that a car is an expensive investment, but people are also outraged about food thats somehow not what it should be, toys that are missing parts and a waterproof watch thats not waterproof at all.
But the supermarket will usually give you a fresh product in return if you kept the receipt, the more respecteable toy companies will send you the missing parts if you give proof of purchase, and theres a chance you might get compensation for that watch as well if they inspect it and notice it never was water proof to begin with.

Game publishers need to know that the comsumers can reach them, and will not put up with it. But as it is, they just tend to bend over and take it.