Boycott Poll

This.

IMHO, this is a much more effective boycott than targeting entire companies. It is what I will do, personally... because it was their job to oversee the writing, and make sure it was up to the series' standards. They failed horribly, and to add insult to injury, lied to us.

I've wrote before that I am willing to be part of a group effort even when I don't fully agree with it. I donated money to the Child's play campaign and will donate again if a good cause arises. But that said, many of the campaigns or proposals have felt too paragonish in my eyes.

After the way Bioware a) hurt my feelings with the ending, after how they b) dismissed my disappointment with their "it's your fault" PR-talk and after c) announcing a "clarification to crap" - DLC I am done. I'm done giving Bioware more chances.

So yes. Out of all the possible actions Boycott would be the one most desirable to me. I would gladly donate money if someone found a way to enforce the boycott with some costs (marketing/publicity/whatever).Out of the options I chose boycott Bioware. EA might be behind all this, but I've never liked EA anyways. I'd never trust a product with just a EA - label on it like I have trusted the products with Bioware-label on them. In my eyes this is about Bioware, not EA.

EDIT: To me it is unimportant wether the boycott will have any impact on Bioware or EA. To me this is ultimately about Holding the line with dignity. One YouTube - user gave a good presentation about how Bioware might be shifting it's focus into a different target audience (casual gamers), and to me that seemed realistic. I can imagine Bioware staying in business and producing games I in the future have no interest in. And if that is to be, there's nothing I can do to change that. I don't even want to change that. All I want, is to state that this is enough, no more. And to me boycott does that well.

I'm against boycott. It just lowers sales for the types of games we like. Mass boycott from RPG fans would just encourage them to put more focus into EA Sports where they release the same games each year with new rosters and a changed year on the title.

I do however urge everyone to look cautiously towards any new game you get from them. If you buy another game with a bad ending you only have yourself to blame.

*points* Only you can prevent the purchase of shoddy games.

I'm perfectly happy with EA turning into the 'shoddy games company' if it means respectable studios will move to a better publisher or go indie.

It's got some teeth and that I like. We need to do something to rattle the chains and get their attention.
I voted, but there's nothing that I can say that's not already been said so far on the matter.
Whatever this community decides, I'll back it.

i would like to point out that if EA falls, Bioware falls (if they havn't already). food for thought, also. it will be hard making waves when the "huge fanbase" of games like battlefeild, are now paying through the nose to rent servers and buy crappy map and skin packs...and what of KOA? it has about 6 add ons already...

that being said, i fully back the destru....i mean boycott of EA

When new game comes out - until its release date - we can only judge it by previous games in the series (here we go - Mass Effect, Dragon Age, HoMM) or - if it is completely new title or prequel was too long ago (Diablo, StarCraft) - solely by developers' name and reputation, maybe other projects. Majority of pre-release articles in gaming magazines consist of promises, talking about previous dev's projects, a little bit of plot and few screenshots - not much to judge the upcoming game, yeah?

Off-topic begins.

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That way, believing promises and all, I pre-ordered Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (also EA project). There were quite a lot of things that were different from what was written in magazines and articles on Internet, but the thing that irked me the most was complete lack of localization - the game was entirely in English. English sound, English subtitles. I know English enough to understand the game with some help from subtitles, but what about others? In my opinion, if you want to sell a game in non English-speaking country, at least make subtitles in the country's language or give warning about lack of localization (which wasn't there. As the store workers said, there was no information about it).

Off-topic ends.

I have a friend who worked for Nival Interactive (russian company that worked on Heroes of Might and Magic 5 and is now owned by Ubisoft). Whilst I'm just a gamer, she worked for the industry so it was interesting to listen to her - not only about her actual job, but opinion as hardcore Mass Effect and Dragon Age fan as well. When her nerd-rage quieted a little bit, she told me while cancelling SW:TOR account:

- If they do it right in the end, a lot of people will return. But distrust will stay - it's hard to return the name when the line is crossed. Numbers of sales may rise. And probably will, with time. Numbers of pre-orders? Not so much. I feel sorry for the guys who are working on DA3. It'll be tough after all this...

My opinion on Boycott? Doing it already.

As my little off-topic in the same post said, I had enough dissapointment with EA (before Amalur and ME3 too, but it was last drop).

I love Bioware. Truly. But every time I read Hudson's posts and promises - I feel like someone shot my Shepard cat.

And if someone shoots my cat, that guy is a dead man...

A little Off topic:

I didn't have much of a problem with Amalur, I didn't expected much from the game and I had fun with it, but I can understand what's wrong with it. Clearly looked to me as a botched attempt at MMORPG, turned single player game at the last minute.

I haven't got troubles with the game itself - excluding that it bored me to death and I never finished it - it's the fact that fully English game was sold in russian stores with no warning from EA about lack of localization - a lot of people found out about "fully English" part only when the game was already installed. Like I did =)

Cat lovers, unite against Hudson!

Yay!

As for Kingdoms of Amalur I know for a fact that it was localized in Italian... it's weird they didn't for the Russian market. As always with EA you cannot expect any kind of support.

Players are already boycotting. Current ME3 prices are about 50% off after just one month. About half of ME3 shipments are still unsold.
Also I noticed that EA stock prices dropped immediately after ME3 and it's ending was known outside BW in november 2011.

And what about the fact, that Collector Edition of Mass Effect 3 got stuck in Russian customs house and people who pre-ordered it got e-mails that CE can be late for 2-3 weeks while usual edition will be available on time? When I spoke with some guy from EA Russia, he not-so-subtly recommended me to buy usual version as well as CE so I wouldn't have to wait.

E-mails, actually, were sent by the store in which I made pre-order. EA Russia gave no warning about lateness. Only when uproar happened, some guy from EA said: "We will tell you in Monday (March, 6th) if you can have your boxes on release date (March, 7th)". And disappeared. Never heard of him since then.

The store where I pre-ordered ME3 is located in Moscow - and I live 3 hours of bus bumpy ride away from there. So, I guess, you can imagine what I felt when I understood that I'll have to bolt to Moscow to get the game because it got too late to customs house. Or was transported there by EA Russia too late, who knows. I know some people who bought tickets from other countries\cities on March, 7th to fly\go by train to Moscow for the box. It was... Not pretty. Even now you can find CE in russian stores - a lot cancelled pre-order and got instead normal edition.

*Got my box in March, 12th. Made pre-order all the way in November. Was angry like hell *

One more reason for me to boycott EA. Holding the Line *while running to University. I'm epically late *

I suppose this depends on what message we want to send.

Are we sending a message to BioWare about ME3's ending?

Or, are we sending a message to EA that we will not tolerate their erosion of gaming as a meaningful storytelling medium in exchange for a quick buck?

I worry that a boycott of BioWare itself will have little to no impact if EA are the ones pulling the strings. On the other hand, if BioWare has autonomy then a boycott of them alone is justified.

A boycott of EA could have a devastating impact on developers under the EA umbrella which we shouldn't shy away from. If EA believes we'll back down at the first story of someone losing their job, that's the way they'll spin it. I believe this boycott is the natural progression of the movement however; we could be over reaching before we've accomplished our first goal - getting ME3 an appropriate ending.

For clarification the point of a boycott is to say: "We love you but hate this business practice and will withhold custom until the practice is corrected." An analogy is giving up chocolate that uses palm oil until the manufacturer changes ingredients or goes out of business (and isn't that a bull headed thing to do).

It doesn't mean that you have to give up gaming altogether, instead spend your money on games that have ethical owners/practices. Hopefully that means we can throw our support behind deserving developers during any boycott.

I'm already boycotting both EA and BioWare but will add my voice to a consolidated boycott. As yet I haven't cast a vote because I'm not sure which option will benefit the movement more.

I'm boycotting Bioware and EA because I am tired of them seeing me as a bag of money, and I am tired of them lying to me again and again. For me it is more about them spitting on me as a person than them making a worthless ending.

I am boycotting EA, until we get some new endings. Don't expect everyone to follow, but I know EA lost a bout 1k per year from me.

well take a look at the "receipt pull" thread, it may help turn that 1k into 100k eventualy

By saying you are never going to buy something from them anymore (before the DLC comes out) tells them what exactly? We don't haven't seen what you are producing yet, but we're boycotting you anyway.
Personally I have not bought anything from EA since this occurred but I would not call it a boycott. Holding a potential boycott over their heads until the DLC comes out is IMO more effective than preemptively declaring a mass boycott now. I think it makes us look unreasonable.

No, it makes us look dissatisfied. If we all organize and declare a boycott until the DLC comes out, and then depending on the quality of the DLC we continue the boycott or lift it. So, it gives them incentive (however pressured) to do a damned good job on this DLC.

but will they see it as an issue given that the DLC is free? like i said before (elsewhere) they wont see the long term effects UNTIL the long term, they see and act on immediate issues and sharp downturns.there not looking at what our boycott COULD do, their looking at what it IS doing, and given that we all own the game already and the DLC is free...not much happens to their bottom line. but im still all for the boycott...why? because i hate EA and always have, that's why.