In recent events Electronic Arts, otherwise known as EA was voted the consumerist’s worst company in America Poll. Many questions are raised to why their marketing plans are like this, why they try to suck as much money from the consumer’s wallet as possible as well as many other terrible decisions, such as releasing the same game every year just with a different title, only selling games for the current software, trying to sell a new game on the title alone.

EA has a very tight nit marketing campaign that is trying to acquire as much money out of a single product as possible, they cut corners with main games and falsely advertises the game or product they are selling. An example of this is with the recently released Battlefield Hardline, they advertised this game to be a cop versus robber’s game, that would have dynamic storytelling, a full cast of loveable characters, and a game where someone can replay it a thousand different ways. With a ten hour campaign that is dull, and a few likeable characters consumers feel the game is cliché and a run of the mill old cop drama and no replay value. They marketed the game to appease Battlefield fans but also widen their demographic to cater fans of other first person shooters games like Battlefield. They strip down this game to satisfy the fans but then try to sell the game at a full sixty dollars, the deluxe edition that has no real benefits for eighty dollars and the premium edition that comes with the season pass, a pass that the player buys that is about twenty bucks and they get every DLC that comes after. They take the premium edition and sell it for a whopping one hundred-twenty dollars.

Another game they’ve taken and smashed into the dust is The Sims. In The Sims 3 they gave the player everything that was in The Sims 2 and added more items, furniture, cars, etc. Yet they noticed that The Sims 3 sold very well so they tried to sell The Sims 4 on the title alone. They ripped out the cars, swimming pools, flat screen TV, and everything that made the game fun then tried to sell the game at the full price of sixty dollars. They disregarded the fans of the series, they also destroyed the hype for any player coming in, and crushed the hope for every other person who bought the game. Now to get to the core of EA’s awful marketing: downloadable content or DLC. EA is almost famous for using a business tactic known as micro transactions, where they sell items and content that was rather a part of the game that was stripped out or a lazy form of skipping parts of the game so that the player who bought the DLC could be overpowered, micro transactions are in a lot of EA’s games some in subtle ways or some in very obvious ways. Most of these DLC’s are $2.99 or $3.99, but that stacks up. They also do what most IOS games do where they have a special in game currency that could be bought with real world money, though that makes sense with IOS games, for most of them are free to play games they need some way to make money, it shouldn’t be used in an EA game or any other. The player already paid the sixty dollars to buy the game now EA wants them to pay an extra ten or twenty dollars to earn gear that can be earned from just straight up playing the game, it’s a lazy way to earn more money from the player and needs to stop being used in games.

Now EA isn’t all bad, they did publish the amazing Battlefield 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, both revives of their older franchises. They aren’t all about stealing money from the players they have published some amazing games, like Mass Effect, Dead Space, and Titanfall. Micro transactions are becoming a trend that other big name companies are following and it is corrupting other smaller companies thanks to EA.

EA did say they didn’t want to earn this award again and that they will be a “Player First” company but then they turn around and try to sell the player ripped out content for twenty bucks. EA needs to stop destroying the fan base they created then they won’t be voted worst company in America.