Yesterday Twitch streamer SpotTheOzzie had the CEO behind the Project Cars series on his stream and things got very candid. Talks about DLC, how yearly rehashes kills the lifespan of a game, the competition, his experience in business. He even talks about how they're not using Denuvo in Project Cars 2 because it's too restrictive and annoying to actual customers (hope more publishers take their approach on that issue, including their publisher Bandai Namco).
We made a game called Need for Speed: Shift, we made a game called Shift 2 and EA came to me and said "We’ll give you 1.5 million if you agree not to talk to any other publisher, to agree any other games or work on any other arrangement with any other publisher. And we’ll give you 1.5 million and we’ll sign Shift 3". So I said OK. That sounds like a good deal. I took the 1.5 million, I paid the guys, lots of bonuses, and two weeks before we were due to start Shift 3 it was cancelled. With no warning. They said "We are not doing that anymore.”
“We were in trouble, we had nothing left. We were done. They literally destroyed our company. They tried to kill us, they tried to steal our technology as well. They tried to f*ck us over, there is no other way to put it. That’s what they tried to do. And we have no love for EA and this company. They're a$$holes and corporate monsters.”
Time code to the EA fukkery.
Later on in the stream, he talks about how he negotiated the contract to exclude EA's ownership from third party technology, Before he signed the deal, he transferred ownership of the game engine to a separate company named "Middleware Ltd" so EA wouldn't own their engine.
Glad they weren't successful and were able to use their tech to get back on track with Test Drive and later create the Project Cars series.
The CEO in the video mentioned Robert "Patrick" Söderlund (EA VP) by name as the main devil behind it all. The 'I love Nintendo. My kid's naned Luigi' dude.
Copied from neofakkit
And in case you forgot EA named 'Worst Company in America' by Consumerist
We made a game called Need for Speed: Shift, we made a game called Shift 2 and EA came to me and said "We’ll give you 1.5 million if you agree not to talk to any other publisher, to agree any other games or work on any other arrangement with any other publisher. And we’ll give you 1.5 million and we’ll sign Shift 3". So I said OK. That sounds like a good deal. I took the 1.5 million, I paid the guys, lots of bonuses, and two weeks before we were due to start Shift 3 it was cancelled. With no warning. They said "We are not doing that anymore.”
“We were in trouble, we had nothing left. We were done. They literally destroyed our company. They tried to kill us, they tried to steal our technology as well. They tried to f*ck us over, there is no other way to put it. That’s what they tried to do. And we have no love for EA and this company. They're a$$holes and corporate monsters.”
Time code to the EA fukkery.
Later on in the stream, he talks about how he negotiated the contract to exclude EA's ownership from third party technology, Before he signed the deal, he transferred ownership of the game engine to a separate company named "Middleware Ltd" so EA wouldn't own their engine.
Glad they weren't successful and were able to use their tech to get back on track with Test Drive and later create the Project Cars series.
The CEO in the video mentioned Robert "Patrick" Söderlund (EA VP) by name as the main devil behind it all. The 'I love Nintendo. My kid's naned Luigi' dude.
Copied from neofakkit
And in case you forgot EA named 'Worst Company in America' by Consumerist