
EA Employee Chastises Company Over SimCity in Public Letter - uladzislau
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/03/08/ea-employee-chastizes-company-over-simcity-in-public-letter/
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niggler
Why do people continually upvote forbes.com articles? A full-page ad for a
fluff piece that adds zero content to the original reddit post (which happened
a few days ago)

EDIT: the original post was
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/19xb2m/a_letter_from...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/19xb2m/a_letter_from_an_ea_employee_to_executives/)
but that was deleted. Another author reproduced the original post in
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/19xb2m/a_letter_from...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/19xb2m/a_letter_from_an_ea_employee_to_executives/c8sbzg3)

The original HN post was <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5346752>

~~~
archon
If you're going to complain about it, why don't you at least link the original
for those of us who haven't seen it?

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niggler
Your criticism is fair. I edited my response to include the link

~~~
archon
Thanks, I was having difficulty finding it for some reason.

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kabdib
I predict this employee will have a short and sweet talk with his manager on
Monday, followed by a quick exit interview with HR. Optional escort out of the
building by security.

"Don't say goodbye, he's just leaving early" -- Tom Waits

Which is all a shame, but nowhere near the true tragedy of SimCity. EA has /no
problem/ turning out the lights on old games; they're often not even that old.
If you want to play in 2018, you'll likely be doing that on a cracked version
because EA will have a slightly newer version of SimCity they want to push,
and if you're playing the old one they think you're taking their money. Rinse,
repeat.

I'd love to see EA let people run their own servers at some point. Chances of
this happening are essentially zero.

~~~
pandaman
It's an anonymous letter. And does not look genuine to me either - to somebody
who worked at EA it's hard to imagine there is anybody there who seriously
believes in the external PR stuff. Could be a contractor though.

Nevertheless, a lot of people at EARS will be laid off. A portion of EA's
bonus depends on the Metacritic score so a lot of management types right now
are missing a significant part of money they already had plans to spend. The
only remedy for this is a massive layoff that boosts stock prices and
increases other portions of the bonus. For recent example see what happened to
MOH and EALA last quarter.

~~~
lusr
Why a contractor?

I'm a contractor for two reasons: (1) money and (2) because I don't buy into
the corporate PR. People who work in these places _have_ to buy into the
corporate values system.

I look at corporate values with great skepticism; perhaps I'm just cynical but
in big companies it always seems to end up (in performance reviews) as being a
way for the company to come back and justify why your bonus, increase, etc.
will fall short of expectations this year.

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praptak
> People who work in these places have to buy into the corporate values
> system.

Nope, it doesn't really go beyond some lip service. For most guys who do the
actual work it's not even that - not shouting that the emperor has no clothes
is absolutely enough to get by.

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nonamegiven
That's so cute. As if anyone at the C level believes in a company's mission
statement and values. They're just there so the coffee cups aren't plain
white.

~~~
philwelch
At EA, this is almost certainly true. At some companies it's better. Values in
particular often form a concrete axis for things like performance reviews, and
offer a more useful version of the elusive "culture fit" than the usual
startup bullshit of "let's hire a bunch of 20-something single white guys who
have nothing better to do than hang out in the office playing ping pong after
work, followed by more work".

~~~
nonamegiven
I have no doubt that mission statements are real at some companies, and that
they influence results in a positive way.

After making my comment, I made a short search, and posted this: Sex, Lies and
Mission Statements. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352298>

It's from 1997. Things may have improved, I don't follow HR research. But it's
at least a description of how things can go wrong, and probably still do.

Summary: Most managers report that their company's mission statement is
ineffective, and many report that it's counter productive. Employee
involvement in creating the mission statement is correlated with positive
influence on behavior, yet that involvement is rare. Free coffee cups for
everyone!

~~~
philwelch
Mission statements are usually too pithy and vague to be useful. I've seen
places where more verbose expressions of values or tenets work better.

Edit: Thinking back, some mission statements worked well. "A computer on every
desk and in every home, running Microsoft software" comes to mind.

~~~
eropple
_> Edit: Thinking back, some mission statements worked well. "A computer on
every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software" comes to mind._

AFAIK, in management parlance, that would be a "vision statement". Mission
statements seem to be a little more nuts-and-bolts. But I only remember this
because the Microsoft one was held up as a vision statement in my business
classes. =)

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lighthazard
Update: EA is giving a free gift for their troubles.

"Hey guys, thanks for buying our singleplayer game. Sorry that 100% of our
multiplayer portion is unplayable. While we work on fixing these issues by
removing game features so only some of you can play at a time, you can play
the singleplayer portion we talked about earlier. It's where you sit there and
watch a 30 minute timer go by and if you win, you get to play the multiplayer
portion of the game. But since we made this issue and won't give you a refund
for a broken game, we'll give you one free game that'd cost us barely
anything. Thanks again for your understanding."

~~~
eropple
_> we'll give you one free game that'd cost us barely anything_

...because we really hope that you buy the DLC.

That's what makes that gesture really pernicious to me.

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ChuckMcM
Pretty cutting criticism. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Unlike noname I think some of the C level types may in fact wish those values
were the values they embodied. Now, the reality of making that happen? A lot
harder.

However, given the history of the company and the choices it has made. And the
fact that they seem to make the same bad choices in the same situation,
suggests that those values have never been internalized.

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peterkelly
"It’s a bold move for this nameless employee to write something like this, but
so bold he might not be nameless for long"

It doesn't really matter in the end. I'm sure this is how everyone who worked
on Simcity probably feels right now.

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mratzloff
I await the unfortunate but inevitable news that this employee was terminated.
If EA bans customers for speaking out, there is no hope for employees...

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RougeFemme
I think the original post states that he's not actually an employee, but that
he has a very reliable source who _is_ an employee.

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jader201
This is interesting, but the article was posted two days ago. Why is it just
now making its way to the top of HN?

I was thinking it just happened, until I get to the update at the bottom
stating EA now gifting a free game to SimCity customers, which also happened
two days ago.

Therefore, I'm less hopeful about the impact this will have, as it seems to
have gone mostly unnoticed until now.

Or am I missing something?

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Aardwolf
Why is it only now that people start complaining about always-online DRM?

Whether there is some trouble due to a server being down or not, for me there
is no difference. DRM that requires you to be always online for a single
player game is already broken without the server being down imho.

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pixl97
Why is it now? If you haven't read any online news lately, as in the past few
years, people have had fits about this since it was introduced. Diablo 3 for
example.

More people are complaining about it now since with SimCity they didn't expect
it to occur. Additionally how bad EA at keeping the game online too.

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Evenjos
I have a friend who works as a QA tester on this Sim City EA game. He's
demoralized about his job. I can see other employees getting pissed off enough
to post on Reddit.

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pla3rhat3r
Next headline: Former EA Employee looking for a job.

