To the executives at EA, from one of your employees
I am deeply embarrassed by the troubled launch of Sim City and I hope you are too. When I walk around our campus and look at the kind of talent weve collected, the amenities we have access to and the opportunities working at such a big company affords us, I cant imagine how for release after release, EA continues to make the same embarrassing, anti-consumer mistakes. We should be better than this. You should not be failing us so badly.
Another thing I see when I walk around our campus are massive banners that display what are said to be our company values. They are on posters on every floor, included in company-wide emails and hanging above the cafeteria in bright colors. You even print them on our coffee mugs so we see them every day. But somehow when planning the launch of Sim City, you threw them all out the window.
Most important of the values you are ignoring is Think Consumers First. What part of the Sim City DRM scheme, which has rendered the game unplayable for hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe, demonstrates that you are thinking about consumers before you are thinking about yourselves? Does first mean something different in boardrooms than it does to the rest of us? Does the meaning of that word change when you get the word executive in front of your title?
You cant even pretend that you didnt know consumers would be angry about this. Common sense aside, consumers complained about this during your public betas. In fact, when one of them posted his criticisms on the forums, he was banned! You tried to silence your critics. The same thing is happening now as users write in to demand refunds. What part of this behavior aligns with our company value to Be Accountable?
What youve demonstrated with this launch is that our corporate management does not believe in our core values. They are for the unwashed masses, not for the important people who forced this anti-consumer DRM onto the Sim City team. This DRM scheme is not about the consumers or even about piracy. Its about covering your own asses. It allows you to hand-wave weak sales or bad reviews and blame outside factors like pirates or server failures in the event the game struggles. You are protecting your own jobs at the expense of consumers. I think this violates the Act With Integrity value Im looking at on my own coffee mug right now.
On behalf of your other employees, Id like to ask you to fix this. Allow the Sim City team to patch the game to run offline. If Create Quality and Innovation is still a core value that you believe in, then this shouldnt be a hard decision. Games that gamers cant play because of server overload or ISP issues are NOT quality. Be Bold by giving the consumers what they want and take accountability for the mistake.
Finally Id like to ask you to follow the last company value on the list in the future: Learn and Grow. When you made this mistake with Spore, the company and all your employees suffered for it. You didnt learn from that mistake and you are making it again with Sim City.
So please, learn from this debacle. Dont do this again. Grow into better leaders and actually apply our company values when you make decisions. Dont just use them as tools to motivate your staff. With the money, talent and intellectual property available to EA, we should be leading the industry into a golden age of consumer-focused game publishing. Instead were the most reviled game publisher in the world. Thats your fault. Things can only change if you actually start following the company values and apply them to every title we launch.
Sincerely,
A Disappointed But Hopeful Artist at EARS
EDIT: with regards to proof, I am an employee, so I do not want to jeopardize my standing, but today, all regular EA employees got an e-mail with a note from Gabrielle Toledano in celebration of International Women's Day. Another EA employee would have to confirm, but its the most proof I'm willing to risk providing.
