EA May Face Legal Action Over Battlefield 4 - Tomshardware

[XiandreX]

I know a lot of us knew it to be true but now legal issues are coming to the front.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ea-battlefield-4-lawsuit-buggy-playstation,25391.html

 

[blastingcap]

As much as I detest EA, I detest these frivolous lawsuits even more. This means EA has to divert money away from game development to paying off lawyers even if they win, and paying more if they lose.

 

[mizzou]

ea is having am awesome track record lately

 

[ImpulsE69]

Not sure this is exactly frivolous. It's about investors, not gamers. EA will listen to them long before they'll listen to gamers.

 

[Chiropteran]

As much as I detest EA, I detest these frivolous lawsuits even more. This means EA has to divert money away from game development to paying off lawyers even if they win, and paying more if they lose.

Did you read the article? The lawsuit claims that EA released a rushed buggy version of BF4 to the Playstation 4, which resulted in crashes and lots of bad press, in turn resulting in the stock price dropping.

These types of lawsuits push companies to be a little more serious about releasing a working product instead of a buggy unfinished mess they can just patch later. Seems like a win for us, not a loss.

 

[TerryMathews]

As much as I detest EA, I detest these frivolous lawsuits even more. This means EA has to divert money away from game development to paying off lawyers even if they win, and paying more if they lose.

Wouldn't have to divert one penny if they were committed to shipping a working product instead of "mostly working, and we'll patch it on day 1".

 

[CPA]

As much as I detest EA, I detest these frivolous lawsuits even more. This means EA has to divert money away from game development to paying off lawyers even if they win, and paying more if they lose.

Do you take this stance with every company that provides a faulty product? I don't understand why society takes a hard stance on companies that make tangible products using product liability laws, but don't take the same approach with intangible products.

edit: oops, just realized the article was about investors. However my point as a response to blastingcap still stands.

 

[darkewaffle]

There's no such thing as a bugfree "big" game really. There's just too many variables to account for. Even today, more than a decade after release games like WoW, FFXI, CSS have a list of 'known issues' that slowly gets pared down and then replenished as patches roll out and old bugs are squashed and new ones are found/created. It's a neverending cycle. In the last two years D3, GW2, FFXIV, Civ V, SWTOR have all dealt with serious bugs, particularly post-launch. The common denominator? Big online multiplayer. It really just comes with the territory imo.

And ultimately I'm still having a blast playing BF4. It crashes and doesn't work perfectly, but to me a fun game with bugs is much better than a boring game with no bugs. It'll get better and I think they have their priorities straight personally.

Plus I don't think you can sue a company for their stock price going down. You could maybe make a case for their product not meeting expectations which caused a price decrease, but ultimately I don't think being unhappy with your investments is going to hold up in court.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

EA pretending the beta test isn't anything but a sales pitch to get more pre orders on board, if they really cared about beta testing they'd release the beta early on, they'd take continual feedback, they'd iterate through fixes during the beta phase and to get the best coverage possible they'd just open it to the public.

The beta phase for BFBC2 was especially good, Dice opened up the demo to the entire world comprising of most of the in game assets and mechanics played over a few maps, most of the issues were fixed for launch which gave gamers a decent jump off point for what turned out to be an amazing multiplayer experience.

I'm glad I didn't touch BF3 despite being a long term fan of the series and I knew even before the BF4 launch not to go anywhere near it, EA destroy literally everything they touch, anyone who hasn't learned this yet is either an insufferable fanboy or is plain demented.

 

[videogames101]

There's no such thing as a bugfree "big" game really. There's just too many variables to account for. Even today, more than a decade after release games like WoW, FFXI, CSS have a list of 'known issues' that slowly gets pared down and then replenished as patches roll out and old bugs are squashed and new ones are found/created. It's a neverending cycle. In the last two years D3, GW2, FFXIV, Civ V, SWTOR have all dealt with serious bugs, particularly post-launch. The common denominator? Big online multiplayer. It really just comes with the territory imo.

And ultimately I'm still having a blast playing BF4. It crashes and doesn't work perfectly, but to me a fun game with bugs is much better than a boring game with no bugs. It'll get better and I think they have their priorities straight personally.

Plus I don't think you can sue a company for their stock price going down. You could maybe make a case for their product not meeting expectations which caused a price decrease, but ultimately I don't think being unhappy with your investments is going to hold up in court.

The fact is the game was released before it should have been. To argue differently would imply that somehow the MAJOR bugs that were apparent before the release of the game are somehow acceptable for the product to be sold. Instead what we payed for is a beta version, and they've been working towards a stable version since release. It's not right.

 

[sigurros81]

as much as i detest ea, i detest these frivolous lawsuits even more. This means ea has to divert money away from game development to paying off lawyers even if they win, and paying more if they lose.

ea sympathizer! Burn him!

 

[Fallen Kell]

The fact is the game was released before it should have been. To argue differently would imply that somehow the MAJOR bugs that were apparent before the release of the game are somehow acceptable for the product to be sold. Instead what we payed for is a beta version, and they've been working towards a stable version since release. It's not right.

But they got it out in time for the holiday sales.....

 

[vshah]

MSFT/SONY should have a ban on updates within 1 month of release.

 

[Bateluer]

Just recently EA put a hold on all future DLC until the bugs have been ironed out, a move that didn’t sit well with investors, causing a 7.3 percent dip.

Christ help me, I'm going to defend EA and Dice. Putting a hold on DLC and expansions for BF4 until the game's bugs are ironed out is probably the smartest move that company has done in the past decade. These investors are idiots, companies have to support their products. When a product is released to market in a broken state, they are obligated to fix it. Not doing so will cause them more later. Isn't investing supposed to entail a little long term planning?

 

[BSim500]

These investors are idiots, companies have to support their products. When a product is released to market in a broken state, they are obligated to fix it. Not doing so will cause them more later. Isn't investing supposed to entail a little long term planning?

Genuine intelligent investing is. The stock market however, often acts like a spoilt 5 year old with ADHD when their "expectations" aren't met by even 1%.

Not that that's a bad thing in this case as falling stock values might be the only thing to kick EA up the backside hard enough to stop releasing games before they're finished. I doubt it though. This time next year, they'll be doing exactly the same thing all over again in the annual pre-Xmas release date p*ssing contest between Battlefield 9 vs Call of Duty 17...

 

[dpodblood]

Do you take this stance with every company that provides a faulty product? I don't understand why society takes a hard stance on companies that make tangible products using product liability laws, but don't take the same approach with intangible products.

This exactly. Everyone know's that new games have bugs. That's long been accepted especially in online focused games. But the state this game was released in was just plain untested and unfinished. Yes BF3's launch was rocky, but absolutely nothing compared to what we've gotten with BF4.

Bottom line they've released a defective product to the market just to make it in time for the holiday season. In the end it's bad for us and it's bad for shareholders.

 

[Dankk]

MSFT/SONY should have a ban on updates within 1 month of release.

:hmm:

 

[darkewaffle]

EA pretending the beta test isn't anything but a sales pitch to get more pre orders on board, if they really cared about beta testing they'd release the beta early on, they'd take continual feedback, they'd iterate through fixes during the beta phase and to get the best coverage possible they'd just open it to the public.

The vast majority of players see a beta as nothing more than a free trial. "Good" feedback is hard to come by. Players that are content with the state of the game are silent, players that are unhappy will complain to no end that BF2 was better and that BF4 is too much like CoD and so on and so forth but rarely provide any sort of reasonable perspective or suggestions. And bug reports are even worse - I can speak from experience with my job that most people don't have any idea how to make a bug report. Most of the requests or reports I get are "x isnt working please help" or "i cant y" - this tells the person trying to fix it almost nothing at all.

Simply stating a bug's/problem's existence really is not that helpful. Diagnosis and circumstance can make it exponentially easier to both recreate the problem and find a solution. But very little feedback bothers to communicate any of that information whatsoever and those that do are difficult to find or corroborate because of the pathetic signal to noise ratio from other players/posters.

The fact is the game was released before it should have been. To argue differently would imply that somehow the MAJOR bugs that were apparent before the release of the game are somehow acceptable for the product to be sold. Instead what we payed for is a beta version, and they've been working towards a stable version since release. It's not right.

I have a tolerance for bugs but even as far as "bugs" go I don't think BF4's launch has been bad. Aside from crashing on the loading screen occasionally I've had a really good experience. I would say BF4's launch is actually superior to a number of other recent major ones like GW2 & D3 (auction house instability and unavailable for extended periods) and FFXIV (massively overloaded servers and queue times measured in hours) which affected legitimately major features of the game or were arguably gamebreaking. And despite that, each of those had their respective problems solved in just a few weeks and are doing fine.

BF4 has been actively patching which is about all you can ask of them - I'm definitely crashing less now than I did a few weeks ago and my friends who seemed to have map specific problems (Dawnbreaker for one and Shanghai for another) have both seen their game stability improve.

They probably could be further along had they pushed back China Rising, but god only knows the unholy nerdwrath that would have been unleashed if people had their pre-order bonus delayed.

 

[dpodblood]

I have a tolerance for bugs but even as far as "bugs" go I don't think BF4's launch has been bad. Aside from crashing on the loading screen occasionally I've had a really good experience.

If true you should consider yourself very lucky. I the most I have been able to play without the game locking up or crashing is 3 rounds. Usually I cannot make it through one single round without the game crashing. All their patching has done nothing to fix the issues. In fact some of the patches made things even worse. I have tried every troubleshooting step recommended by DICE and by the community but the game is still so unstable I've all but given up at this point.

And this is just basic stability. There are myriads of net code and player synchronization issues that they are just now starting to address.

 

[GullyFoyle]

This exactly. Everyone know's that new games have bugs. That's long been accepted especially in online focused games. But the state this game was released in was just plain untested and unfinished. Yes BF3's launch was rocky, but absolutely nothing compared to what we've gotten with BF4.

Bottom line they've released a defective product to the market just to make it in time for the holiday season. In the end it's bad for us and it's bad for shareholders.

Isn't it good for investors/shareholders to get it out before the holiday, so that they can make profits?

 

[dpodblood]

Isn't it good for investors/shareholders to get it out before the holiday, so that they can make profits?

Not if their stock prices drop through the floor due to pushing a defective product out the door. I believe that's the whole point of the lawsuit?

And let's face it most of the people who are interested in BF4 would have bought it regardless of whether it was released before christmas or sometime in the new year.

 

[WiseUp216]

I ended up getting a refund for BF4 from Origin. Never, ever thought I would be so frustrated with trying to get a PC game to run properly that I would want my money back.

Funny thing is, I had zero problems in beta.

 

[mmntech]

Company released a faulty product and mislead investors. Pretty cut and dry case.

 

[ImpulsE69]

MSFT/SONY should have a ban on updates within 1 month of release.

Wouldn't fix anything. They'd just refuse refunds then. You'd just end up with a broken game until that 1month was up...if you were lucky.

 

[dpodblood]

I ended up getting a refund for BF4 from Origin. Never, ever thought I would be so frustrated with trying to get a PC game to run properly that I would want my money back.

Funny thing is, I had zero problems in beta.

Same thing here. No issues in the beta at all. The funny thing is the map that crashes the most, siege of Shanghai, worked perfectly in the beta.