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One might think this would be a time for EA to make nice with the customers who feel like they are being mistreated.”
So begins a response from Consumerist to the reaction of Peter Moore to the fact that EA is odds on to be named as the Worst Company in America for the second year running.
The site goes on to systematically respond to many of the accusations made by Peter Moore directly, making for uncomfortable reading for the publisher.
On Moore’s claim that Mass Effect 3 and SOPA unfairly affected the poll results in 2012:
Our analysis of the reasons for EA’s inclusion in last year’s finale makes no mention of Mass Effect 3 or SOPA. Instead, it looks at EA’s history of buying up smaller, successful developers with the intention of milking — and arguably ruining — the intellectual properties that made these acquired companies so attractive.”
On Moore’s claim that customers love microtransactions:
Many customers believe that EA’s view of microtransactions isn’t to simply charge customers a little bit of money for something that is additional, but not integral, to the core game, but rather to put out broken or deliberately incomplete games with the ultimate goal of selling add-on content that should have been included in the $60 price tag to begin with.
We’d counter that just because people are allowing you to nickel-and-dime them it doesn’t mean you should be doing it.”
On Moore’s claim that SimCity’s online mode was not designed as a form of DRM:
Moore tries to shrug off the always-online requirement for SimCity 5 that not only made the game unplayable (because EA didn’t have the foresight to think people might want to play the game after they bought it), but also pissed off a lot of people who felt that it was an invasive form of digital rights management (DRM) that assumes users are trying to play pirated versions of the game.
"‘Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme,’ writes Moore. ‘It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.’
Actually, you could be clearer. Make it optional and maybe people will believe you.”
On Moore’s claim that people vote for EA simply because they dislike Madden’s latest cover star:
Really? Show us. Because while readers certainly complained about the declining quality of Madden, not a single person griped to us about the player(s) on the box cover.”
On Moore’s claim that homophobic pressure groups lobby against EA because of its pro-gay stances:
If there is such a campaign, the people involved in it have not reached out to us, nor have we seen evidence of this traffic to our pages. While any number of tech and video game sites and forums have been writing about and linking to the WCIA polls, our analytics show absolutely no incoming traffic from anything we’d label as political, let alone conservative.
EA received hundreds of nominations from Consumerist readers this year, by far the most of any contender in the bracket, but not a single one mentioned anything about sexual orientation. Consumerist does not condone homophobia or hate speech of any kind, and our readers understand the Worst Company contest and nominate businesses based on their merits.”
Consumerist finished by launching a scathing counter-attack on EA.
In coming out and responding to its previous win — and possible repeat victory — EA had the opportunity to show the gaming community the respect it deserves, but instead has insulted its intelligence by asking it to accept that its quite obvious faults are really just minor problems and that the actual source of trouble are faceless, homophobic hatemongers,” it wrote.
Companies like EA are happy to foster the misinformed perception of your average ‘gamer’ as a whiny, nitpicky loner who will complain about anything, as that image only helps to discredit those who have a valid complaint about a relatively pricey consumer product.”
