Ea makes statement March 2 making paysites ok?

[Witchboy]

From what ive read the head of the sims division is Nancy Smith. She is the Sims Label President. Rod Humble just heads the studio that creates the sims.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/meet-the-ea-label-presidents-nancy-smith/71267/?biz=1

[SoggyFox]

Ah, okay.

[neriana]

Who's the head lawyer at EA? Or even the PR director? Head of sales and marketing? The board of directors would be good, and it's a publicly traded company, so getting to the stockholders is a must. I'd advise sending copies to every head honcho there you can find, including the CEO, along with one copy to the head of the Sims division. It will disappear down the rabbit hole if it's only sent to her; her division is fucking up bigtime, she isn't going to advertise that, and she's obviously a complete incompetent, so she's not going to change it either. Here's a link to some possible contacts: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/board.asp?symbol=ERTS.O. However, EA is run by assholes, and John Riccitiello is at least as bad in his way as Thomas.

I'd seriously consider contacting various independent gaming community types. Penny Arcade comes to mind.

[paperbeth]

I'm thinking that if World of Warcraft players found out that they were getting screwed by Blizzard, that would be a newsworthy story. So why not this?
I agree with neriana. We all need to do whatever we can to get this out in the open. Make it common knowledge. Write to every mass media outlet you can think of, as well as the people at EA. Take out full page ads, rent billboards, call the freaking national guard for fuck's sake! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh!

Sorry about that last part there. Sometimes I can't control my outrage. I'm ok now.

[SoggyFox]

I'd suggested a little while ago contacting G4 - a show like X-Play might run a story like this, since they are all about the game and the players - Morgan even did a rant once on advertising in games and how such games should be free.

Penny Arcade might be a good one as well, and various gaming magazines - have to find the ones that aren't getting paid off by gaming companies.

And while JR is a rat, its possible that, while the shareholders probably aren't much better, they are smart enough to realize that insulting your playerbase and ignoring illegal activites affecting that playerbase, and so might do something.

[justso]

If people are going to write letters I would suggest putting a recipient's name on the envelope.  If it is a general letter addressed to no one in particular it gets opened at a very low level within the company and they take a guess as to who reads it.  If it is marked for instance Nancy Smith at least it gets as far as her secretary.  Writing to every member of the board can be expensive if posting outside of the USA so pick a name off the list if money is a concern.  I totally agree with neriana that we take this outside the sims community as long as this subject is confined to beng discussed in the sims community forums it remains our dirty little secret.

[BlueSoup]

Yes, I am from Canada and definitely can't afford sending it to everyone!  But I was planning on putting her name on the envelope, as I know how it usually works within companies for mail

[justso]

This is the sort of mentality we are up against

Maybe it's because the president of EA Casual said she doesn't care about her games being reviewed as crap because people buy them anyway.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-Seals-Pandemic-BioWare-Acquisition-8151.html

[BlueSoup]

Well, far be it for me to defend EA because I hate them just as much as the next guy, but that's a distortion of what she actually said.

“I get less concerned about game reviews because the casual gamers don’t read any of those things,” EA Casual president Kathy Vrabeck tells Next-Gen.

It's like movie-making people not getting too upset about movie critics because most of the critics are pretentious douches anyway.  The movie can do just fine without awesome reviews.

[justso]

Thanks for the point out blue soup.  The guy at cinema blend isn't exactly a fan of EA lol.


ETA It reminded me of Gerald Ratner.  He single handedly wiped £500 million off the value of Ratner's Jewellery here in the UK by making a similar remark in the 1990's.

[picklechick]

I went over to TSR to oggle the forums and see if anyone was cackling maniacally about the petition, and my browser blew up. Way to fail TSR.

[Kaitlyn]

Penny Arcade would be a good one to contact, I think.  They get a lot of readers and have wide reach potential, rally for a lot of different games, and they have no problem at all mocking big name companies for screw ups.  I personally would love to see a comic with EA's Sim's Team screwing themselves on the Twirl, Fuck n' Wobble while the company headquarters burns down behind them. 

[LadyDea]

Who's the head lawyer at EA?

Satan?

[Paden]

That would make an extreme amount of sense, yes. How would you go about addressing the letter, though?

"Dear Mr. Satan, blah blah blah, TSR sucks, blah blah blah, they rip us off, blah blah blah, they go against the EULA that you people put on the game, blah blah blah, illegalities committed left and right by said website(s), blah blah blah, quit yanking the users around, blah blah blah, Sincerely, A Now Disgusted Non-Customer?"

Just a rough idea.

[kenmtl]