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Are you strong enough to stop supporting a company that acts AGAINST customers?

P

Pureauthor

Member
I'm willing to endure a certain amount of dicking from companies because, at the end of the day, it's a business. I pay them if I think what they're offering is worth the money. Beyond a certain point of course, I feel it stops being worth the money (or at least the amount they're asking for) and I don't buy their stuff.
 
Nealand Liquor

Nealand Liquor

Member
Sadly I simply dont care enough. IF a company truely wronged me I suppose I would; but as it stands, that line has yet to be crossed.

EA forum bannings: I just do not post on that site, thereby taking away EAS opportunity to market/hype me.
Selling shitty broken game (THQ UFC10): I do not buy that game.
On disk DLC: I refuse to buy any & all of that games DLC.
And so on.
 
A

AzaK

Member
To the OP, if you include shoddy hardware then yes. My PS3 died, was repaired by Sony's repair centre and died again shortly after. I made a decision to never buy their hardware again. Being a Wii/PS3 owner I have missed out on a lot of games because of it, but fuck em. I will now be a Nintendo and/or MS console owner from now on.
 
O

outunderthestars

Banned
AzaK said:
To the OP, if you include shoddy hardware then yes. My PS3 died, was repaired by Sony's repair centre and died again shortly after. I made a decision to never buy their hardware again. Being a Wii/PS3 owner I have missed out on a lot of games because of it, but fuck em. I will now be a Nintendo and/or MS console owner from now on.
Click to expand...

Seriously?
 
D

Dash Kappei

Not actually that important
Yes. I haven't bought anything from EA Italia (and I never will again) after how they've treated me when after buying a brand new copy I ended up with a scratched non-functional Bad Company 2 X360, which they refused to exchange or even substitute with a fee (something that EA UK offers even for out of warranty discs).

At first they used the ridiculous "ah, it's the 360 version? Tough luck, can't help you 'cause the 360 scratches disc, just contact Microsoft" then mocked me and told mein a very rude way I was wasting their precious time to actually help more deserving customers.
Then I've told them to fuck off and suck me.
 
S

Salsa

Member
AzaK said:
To the OP, if you include shoddy hardware then yes. My PS3 died, was repaired by Sony's repair centre and died again shortly after. I made a decision to never buy their hardware again. Being a Wii/PS3 owner I have missed out on a lot of games because of it, but fuck em. I will now be a Nintendo and/or MS console owner from now on.
Click to expand...

didnt thought about that. Never got a 360 cause of RROD at first and Xbox Live gold then.

I know its cheap and whatnot, but the idea of having to pay for something that should be mandatory by now instead of a privilege ive had for free on my PC (and many other systems) for years really bothers me.

Mostly a case of me knowing i wouldnt pay for online having a good gaming PC and that there's not that much on the 360 that interests me + inflated prices, but point still stands.
 
M

michaelius

Banned
Hmm I'm buying Diablo III so I guess not really :)

Then again I'm patiently waiting for EA games to return to steam before buying anything from them again ;) but if they made real KOTOR3 or Jade Empire 2 which wouldn't be shit like DA2 I'd be very tempted.
 
L

Longshot

Member
Yep.

I hate day 1 DLC, DRM, online passes and shoddy console ports but I'll make exceptions for Steam in regards to DRM and proper DLC in the form of expansion packs, not aesthetic costumes and weapons - waste of money.

After EA's influence on BF3 and Origin I'm never buying from them again, it's a shame really because they were doing so well but you really do get the impression they're cartoonishly evil and will stop at nothing to make a quick buck without regard to killing their franchises.

Without EA I think as a gamer I would be much happier, give the IPs to a company like Take-Two, they seem to care about their consumers.
 
F

famousmortimer

Banned
Here's what I don't get...


Apple just in the last year has been accused of tax 'sidestepping' and treating their chinese employees like dogshit.


EA has put out some shitty games with some shitty endings, turned off some servers and are seemingly turning off an iphone game.



Yet the majority of the internet rage seems to be at EA. Now... don't get me wrong, i buy from both companies. My wife and I both have iphones and ipads and I bought her a macbook pro for xmas. And I like EA games... I'm a sports game nut, I also like Battlefield, dead space and others. I'm not necessarily saying that people should be outraged at either company. But if you're gonna be outraged, it seems clear to me where you should start.
 
S

Salsa

Member
famousmortimer said:
Here's what I don't get...


Apple just in the last year has been accused of tax 'sidestepping' and treating their chinese employees like dogshit.


EA has put out some shitty games with some shitty endings, turned off some servers and are seemingly turning off an iphone game.



Yet the majority of the internet rage seems to be at EA. Now... don't get me wrong, i buy from both companies. My wife and I both have iphones and ipads and I bought her a macbook pro for xmas. And I like EA games... I'm a sports game nut, I also like Battlefield, dead space and others. I'm not necessarily saying that people should be outraged at either company. But if you're gonna be outraged, it seems clear to me where you should start.
Click to expand...

At this point EA is pretty much cartoon evil and it gets a lot of press. Not to mention the impact is directly on the customer, being the one who's getting fucked.

Of course those Apple news were terrible, but its not that hard to see why people rage more against one company than the other. Not saying it should be as you imply.
 
F

famousmortimer

Banned
SalsaShark said:
At this point EA is pretty much cartoon evil and it gets a lot of press. Not to mention the impact is directly on the customer, being the one who's getting fucked.

Of course those Apple news were terrible, but its not that hard to see why people rage more against one company than the other. Not saying it should be as you imply.
Click to expand...


Both good points. EA is cartoon evil, i agree. And the apple stuff makes the products cheaper for us so if we stick our head in the sand whenever this stuff is brought up we don't have to feel bad about it.

It's a weird thing, consumerism. I wish i had more of a backbone but I don't. Hell, an oil spill didn't even stop me from buying gas at BP.
 
O

outunderthestars

Banned
famousmortimer said:
Both good points. EA is cartoon evil, i agree. And the apple stuff makes the products cheaper for us so if we stick our head in the sand whenever this stuff is brought up we don't have to feel bad about it.

It's a weird thing, consumerism. I wish i had more of a backbone but I don't. Hell, an oil spill didn't even stop me from buying gas at BP.
Click to expand...

Go open your closet. Look at the tags on your clothes. Then go google the working conditions in those factories. I know Apple is the easy wipping boy out there at the moment, but you have many, many other products in your home made in much worse conditions.
 
M

Majanew

Banned
specialguy said:
I wonder if people dedicated as much time, or even 10% as much time, to real problems in the world as this stuff, where we'd be...

People complain 10,000 times as much against, their cell phone company or, DLC, as they do govt corruption or people starving in africa.
Click to expand...
For starters, this is about the video game industry. There may be something about terrible governments in OT.

Secondly, nothing can be done about the government without a revolt. And I live in the US, why would I give a shit about someone starving in Africa?

To the OP: I don't care. If there is a game I want to play, I don't care much about who made it.
 
S

SparkTR

Member
It's a big reason why I returned to PC gaming, to support indies and companies like Valve and CDP. A much friendlier consumer environment, especially since my region gets screwed with pricing by the console manufacturers. As a testament to this I'm getting an unlimited amount of Portal 2 content for free next week :)
 
D

danmaku

Member
outunderthestars said:
Go open your closet. Look at the tags on your clothes. Then go google the working conditions in those factories. I know Apple is the easy wipping boy out there at the moment, but you have many, many other products in your home made in much worse conditions.
Click to expand...

This hardly justifies what Apple (or any other company) is doing. It's too easy to say "oh well, everyone does it so I'm not going to bother".
 
V

Veezy

que?
famousmortimer said:
It's a weird thing, consumerism. I wish i had more of a backbone but I don't. Hell, an oil spill didn't even stop me from buying gas at BP.
Click to expand...

Gamers and how they act in regards to company treatment never ceases to amaze me.

Take Microsoft:

1. Live for the original X-Box comes out. People are unhappy with the five dollar charge, but accept it because they enjoy playing online despite lack of dedicated servers.
2. 360 comes out. Microsoft sates 1st party games are 50 and everything else would be 60. Also, you need Live to get demos and some other stuff that are technically advertisements.
3. Gears of War, and other first party titles, come out at 60. In addition, a revamp of the 360 dashboard causes more adds to be displayed on the screen. Plus, a new micro transaction service for clothing. 50 dollar first party titles at launch wouldn't be seen again.
4. Subscription services, for streaming media, begin to come to the 360. However, despite having to pay for these services, you must also pay for Live to use them.
5. Live increases it's price. Nothing is added to justify the price increase. As a matter of fact, Live for the original xbox is shut down.
6. Recently, Microsoft has stated that TV like advertisements would be added to their subscription services. So, for certain services, you must go behind two pay walls (XBL and the service itself), the first pay wall having advertisements, in order to watch programming that has more advertisements.


I'll admit, some of my facts may be slightly off, but you get the generall gist. Any outrage over the trend? Any widespread efforts to get people to cancel their Live service till Microsoft reacts with explanation? Any Twitter movements or Facebook pages with tens of thousands of members? Not that I can remember. As a matter of fact, fans of MS defend the practice with phrases such as "you don't have to look at the ads" or "it's just another dollar per month" or "who cares, I'll just buy yearly cards."

But fuck up the ending of a fifty dollar game and all hell breaks loose. Seriously, I don't get it.
 
D

Dead Man

Member
Yeah, I've managed pretty well so far with my EA/Acti hate. I have bought a couple games secondhand when I broke down, but it's not really that hard at the moment.
 
T

toastyToast

Member
If Sega all of a sudden turned into assholes and Platinum released a new game, I wouldn't give a flying fuck
for example

Having attitudes towards entire companies when they are comprised of a bunch of teams who operate differently and produce games of varying quality is pretty dumb. Good teams sometimes have deals with shit companies
 
B

boiled goose

good with gravy
Easily

Haven't bought anything with DRM on PC (except SC2 I guess...)
Haven't bought any games from EA on origin
Havent bought any steam games with DRM like crysis or ubisofts games
Haven't bought any Wiiware or VC in quite a while from Nintendo due to lack of account, and transfer uncertainty.
Will not buy games at full price on launch day if there is Day 1 DLC
I avoid buying from Gamestop when possible
 
M

Mael

Member
QMontague said:
The last EA game I bought was Henry Hatsworth. And that was a while ago.
I want to play Mirrors' Edge but I don't want to sign up for Origin, now or ever

jSUa0hnIcTkIG.jpg
Click to expand...

I think that's the last EA game I bought too!
....Or was it Mirror's Edge?
I can't exactly complain about a company I have no business with, I mean I would boycott EA, Capcom, THQ and the likes but for that to have any effect I'd need to give a shit about what they make :/

As a rule of thumb, if the company to a thing to a game that is totally anti-consumer the game drop into the "don't care list".
I saved plenty of money on games that way and that's good because I hardly have time anyway.
 
H

HP_Wuvcraft

Banned
EA owns me until I do two things:

1) kick the speed addiction that they engineered for me and my fellow GAFplants. This includes surgically removing the implant without activating the self-destruct.

2) find out where they are storing my soul.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
EA is one that I'm really torn on. They games they publish are really great. Several of my favorite franchises are from them. Boycotting EA would just make me miss out on a lot of games that I'm really looking forward to and have no impact on them. There's no doubt they deserve a boycott but it would just screw me over.
 
J

Joe White

Member
SalsaShark said:
Do you think you're capable of doing something like this? have you? why?
Click to expand...

I know that I'm capable on lessening my support on companies, because I'm currently doing this; taking year out on PSN purchases, buying games with onlinepasses only from discount bin, not buying iHW etc. But I hope that I don't need fully stop supporting any company because of their anti-consumer actions.
 
Z

Zaptruder

Banned
Those kind of factors enter into my calculus of whether or not a game is worthwhile buying for sure.

But I don't outright walk away from games because of the company that makes them.

For example - Blizzard... have in recent times instituted the kinds of anti-user policies that would be difficult to support with other lesser quality games (and indeed, I don't), but because they continue to make games of such high quality, I can indeed overlook their transgressions.

If you don't have a killer game, then fuck you. Your game is too shit for me to overlook the fact that I can't play single player games when YOUR server is down - or that after a while, I'll probably won't be able to use the copy I BOUGHT to play the game because your server no longer works, because you've deemed the player population too low, or some other such rubbish.

Generally, I find one way or another to experience the games I want to play, even if it is laden with bullshit.
 
ajim

ajim

Member
End of the day I care about my money and where it's going. Customer service is great, but if there is software I really want to buy and play (especially a series I already have loyalty too) it would take a lot of bad customer service to really throw me.
 
G

Gustav

Banned
Will not buy any more Bethesda games. Because they released a broken product on PS3 and never owned up to it. This is truly anti-consumer.
 
N

NullPointer

Member
The only thing that doesn't adhere to my principles is Xbox Live, and they have me by the balls only because some of my gaming friends don't have even halfway decent PCs.

The slate is wiped clean with the start of a new hardware cycle though.

Wellscha said:
You wont have games to play.
Click to expand...
Haha. Wrong.
 
Robot Pants

Robot Pants

Member
Veezy said:
But fuck up the ending of a fifty dollar game and all hell breaks loose. Seriously, I don't get it.
Click to expand...

I think it's because people tend to get more attached to characters and a story they've spent hundreds of hours with and not a sterile dashboard. But I get what you are saying and MS is definitely getting evil with its Live practices. Theres still opposition towards them and what they're doing, but its easy for them to get away with a lot of stuff when they have no competition in this area. But that's a whole nother issue.
 
B

boingball

Member
Yeah, I have never actively giving Microsoft any money (a company which has been multiple times been dragged to court and lost for its monopolistic actions (which is the most anti-consumer as you can get)). Unfortunately I have to work with M$ products in the office.

Funny enough the new Microsofts are Apple and Google, both of which I am not boycotting yet (I am not strong enough for that). Technology is a funny thing, monopolistic companies tend to be opposite of innovative (and Microsoft is one of the least innovative companies) and hence the Internet and the mobile space where Microsofts monopoly did not help them to push out the competition even with all the money in the world they threw at it made them come in second or worse.
 
V

Vaporak

Member
Yes I am. I typically evaluate it on per purchase/agreement basis though. Unfortunately most companies make these sorts of decisions uniformly across their products so it amounts to about the same thing. For example, I don't buy any games with always online DRM and so I won't be purchasing Diablo 3.
 
C

CecilRousso

Member
Yep, it´s very simple. Being valued as a customer is a very important aspect of gaming for me, and when I am, a game is being moved up on the priority list, and when I´m not, they get moved down. I don´t have to boycott* anything, the games more or less choose themselves for me.

*Except if they contain any kind of DRM that´s not Steam DRM, then I do boycott it. I refuse to accept limitations about how many times I can install a game.
 
T

trinest

Member
To be fair out of the big publishers I probably buy one or two games from them each gen anyway. Ubisoft the exception.
 
E

Endo Punk

Member
Absolutely, I haven't bought a Capcpom game since SuperSF4. Gamers need to develop a back bone, I love gaming as much as the next guy but when devs start abusing their position or popularity its about time to put up the middle finger. It's not like if we don't purchase certain games we will be starved for titles. Last gen I couldn't go a year without a Capcom game but now Ive learnt to open up a bit and have discovered so many amazing experiences, the more devs like Capcpom drive consumers away the harder it will be for them to come back.
 
J

JosephManderley

Member
Not bought an EA game for 4-5 years. (I can't remember the last EA game I bought, Probably SSX Blur.) I don't see that changing.

I'm not boycotting them as such, I'm just not interested in their products these days.
 
M

Micerider

Member
I do not think a straight boycot of anything related to a company is a good solution. It does not give them the chance to identify what is ok, and what is not.

I'd rather target the specific aspect that I do not support.

As an example : If you don't like day-one DLC, don't buy it, but still buy the full game to enjoy it (provided that the game is still interesting without the DLC of course).

If you don't like the DD policy of a company, don't buy anything online.

Now, I know that there are boycott that you cannot target precisely (because the whole game depends on the "ONE THING" that you do not want to support) but I think that purchasing what you still deem as "ok" is a good way to let the company change and grow in the right direction. The rest is up to good ol' ranting on the Internet (which might not have a direct impact, but certainly build a bad publicity that they cannot help but notice at a certain stage).

What EA has done to Rock Band iOS version is tricky, I don't know how to boycott THAT.
 
M

Mxrz

Member
I don't think I bought any Activision games new this gen. Does that count? EA is much, much harder to avoid with Madden, and I always get suckered into the new Bioshit.
 
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