The recent debacle regarding EA and BioWare's Mass Effect 3"From Ashes" DLC package is a sham, and their words are, given the current evidence, to be believed.
EA is laying off an unknown number of individuals from across its Battlefield teams, including workers at Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect, and Motive Studios, IGN understands.
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When logic meets EA it generates anti-matter ..... so try not to apply it in any meaningful way. Entropy is what matters in there !!
cue the apologist saying that these are mostly just contractors hired for this specific project bla bla bla
The free-to-play reboot topped 15 million players in under three weeks, but EA now claims it needs to reshape the development team.
The community warned them this would happen but nope they knew better they continued with the live service push the made the art style cartoonish and this is the result
It's always so bizarre when studios announce something super early in development under the suggestion of forming the game to player feedback, and then they push against all feedback heading straight for the cliff while everyone is warning them along the way
The Congressional Labor Caucus sent a letter to the FTC warning the debt-financed, largely PIF-owned deal could be bad news for workers
lol ya think? they're sending all that work to the cheaper labor market as soon as possible. and FYI, that labor market has exploded in the last 5-10 years. They have enough people to replace every single job. But honestly, EA is over filled with useless upper management as it is. You could probably trim 25% of their staff with no real loss in production. They aren't gamers, they're business execs. Just look at how many AI related jobs they're already starting to post. Its also hilarious that PIF owns Battle field 6
Wait,
The same congress that attacked Lina Khan when she fought the Microsoft Activision purchase.
The same congress that allowed Disney to buy 90% of Fox
The same congress that allowed Liv Golf to buy the PGA
The same congress that sits back while Paramount tries a hostile takeover despite losing the bid for Warner Bros.
NOW, the suddenly cares about doing what's "right" for works? Yeah, right.
EA now owned by The Saudis and Ubisoft to inevitably be owned by China. In hindsight, once EA and Ubisoft started having their financial woes, they should have pulled a Koei Tecmo/Bandai Namco by merging their operations into one.
Lets completely ignore the fact that PC users are able to unlock the full content with a simple patch and no additional downloads after installing from the retail disc. Not to mention this is the 5th different explanation that EA/BioWare have trotted out on this issue. I hope EA's dick in your ass feels good.
badjournalism is exactly right. While I can't offer proof as the method is questionable in legality, I can offer that I have patched it, and it does unlock the character, the dialogues, the weapon, and the mission, which was already on the disk, which I already paid for. I guess charging for on disk content I already paid for is no big deal when cracked .exes are so readily available
At the end of the article, replace
"The author of the 'Requiem for EA/BioWare' video should be regarded with the same level of disapproval"
with
"The author of 'this article' should be regarded with the same level of disapproval".
With the "other features" listed, "new dialogue options... new cinematics, and new appearances for all squad members" is somewhat vague. They don't list what they are specifically, so how do you know exactly what will be different or if would be worth $10 extra, seeing as the character itself is already on the disc in the first place.
Also, "While the ethics of day one DLC are still up in the air, BioWare's behavior here is no worse than that of anyone else in the industry." Its not up in the air. The only ones thinking that are the ones that think its fine for a company to lock content to the disc and have you pay for it after you purchase the game. Just because Capcom and company are doing it too, doesn't mean its ok for everyone in the industry to do it.
With that mentality, all developers will start to think its OK to lock content to the disc well before the game launches and charge customers for it day one, because people will say "its OK cause others are doing it too".