EA Employee Chastises Company Over SimCity in Public Letter

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertco...public-letter/

Quote:

---

What you?ve 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. It?s 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 I?m looking at on my own coffee mug right now.

---

I pre-ordered the game for my GF through Amazon. On launch day the reviews started coming in, and in addition to the "Always online" I was none too please that the game was yet another DLC money vacuum. I had her refuse the package and got a refund. I am done with EA for good.

Oh, and this Amazon review depicts perfectly the issue with both the game and EA
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3HI7AM...ore=videogames

Have to be a bit honest here, after seeing people playing the game on various streams and Total Biscuit commenting on it on his youtube-channel. I actually bought it (Got a 50% voucher from another distributer than Origin), despite all the knowledge I had about server issues and significant game mechanic nerfs which actually worries me more in hindsight.
Fact is that it's still a fun game (unless you really like SimCity 4), and if you bought it late like me, you likely will not have any issues with servers nor tremendous game-bugs.

I think it's great that we see internal debacle at EA about this, hopefully this finally! will lead to change within this corporation.

Now that is said, I am not especially proud of having sponsored this spectacle given the amount of issues and the extreme DRM. But hey, at least I was not stupid enough to buy Colonial Marines ;)

sim city lost me with 59.99 euro price at the beginning.

Nothing more ridiculous that a Single Player game that requieres a permanent online connection. This is the sort of game I used to play for hours when my ISP has connectivity issues. Not anymore.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kallenator

I think it's great that we see internal debacle at EA about this, hopefully this finally! will lead to change within this corporation.

---

Why would there be any change when you are supporting their actual business model?
Perhaps if you didn't buy the game...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by El Maño

Why would there be any change when you are supporting their actual business model?
Perhaps if you didn't buy the game...

---

Because I am single person and a small Origin customer, but I think you meant "you and other people".

What you say is of course true, we as a market force need to set standards and completely refuse any such unreasonable attempt.

On the other hand I got:
1. What I paid for, at half the price.
2. No server issues nor game crippling bugs.
3. Seriously quick download time.
4. Multi-Player feature that I will use while playing with friends.

So a part of me would have to be a bit unreasonable to not acknowledge it's success for me personally in terms of both distribution and game-play.

the concept of the "region" and the ability to play with friends and use the servers to share a world is pretty cool

not going above and beyond on servers at launch time was a total mistake
and not offering an offline single player mode is also one. as much as i like uploading to the cloud to play on any machine, not being able to play at all is no excuse.

great game, great concept, horrible implementation.
however we are getting a free game next week for our troubles.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by El Maño

Why would there be any change when you are supporting their actual business model?
Perhaps if you didn't buy the game...

---

unfortunately the whole "vote with your wallet" thing; is lost on most ppl.

this nerfing of game mechanics to appeal to casual gamers is :banana::banana::banana::banana:ty (civ 5 vs civ 4). new engines are welcome but if you dont take advantage of it; then why bother.


tl/dr: no simcity 5 for me, rocking sm 2000 / sm 4

I was kind of bored so I made this.

Its nonsensical in units, but meh.

http://imgur.com/7eb0WV1

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by god_43

this nerfing of game mechanics to appeal to casual gamers is :banana::banana::banana::banana:ty (civ 5 vs civ 4). new engines are welcome but if you dont take advantage of it

---

OT
Civ 5 has definitely NOT been nerfed for appealing to casual gamers, it has introduced a lot of new features while cutting back some other aspects. Comparing vanilla civ 5 to civ 4 + expansions leads to the idea that Civ 5 is very limited, the expansion GnK adds more game mechanics and possibly another expansion will bring it over Civ 4 . That and the fact that it's a visual spectacle (which is where the new game engine shines)
/OT

Perhaps this was EA's idea from the beginning: to sell you two games for the price of one. Probably you were not going to buy that second game anyway, and they managed to lure you into Origin with it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by El Maño

Perhaps this was EA's idea from the beginning: to sell you two games for the price of one. Probably you were not going to buy that second game anyway, and they managed to lure you into Origin with it.

---

i am not sure if they thought this from the beginning but i absolutely agree with the other part.

Good God. What a bunch of whiners and babies.

I have had no real problems with the game. Some connection issues, some queues.... and what? Being a DLC money soak has been the business model for decades... hello Civilizations?

Anyways, this whole societal problem of everyone wanting everything to be how they want in every single way is getting old.

Its a great game. No your are not a special snow flake.

yea the game doesn't seem that fun, i love SimCity4, i think ill stick with that. Too bad EA, the new one looked cool, but from what i hear not only about DRm and online, i don't care about that much, i care about the game play. There are like very little amount of reviews out there on the game, and i watched some videos EA made and it looked really cool(not that cool. i don't like being at street level so much), and then i heard you have only small city plots? I mean WTF is up with that, i hate small city plots b/c you can never make a good profit to fund projects like highways and high-tech industry.

So guy above me, you enjoy having small plots? I hear you have to share resources with other cities just to do anything decent? I like playing SimCity because I don't have to play with other people, doesn't EA get that? This isn't THE SIMs, its SimCity, you build a city and run it, i don't want a sim city where i have to play with other people just to do things.

Here is my view on how to get a game to be less pirated. Require a key and then activation, just like windows. Sure some people will hack it, but then a lot of people will just give up, or heck they will pirate it and then play it for 30 days until they have to activate, if they like it enough then they will buy it, if not then they will give up. I am not taking a crappy activation system like Photoshops(that one is a joke) but like windows.

Guy above you likes his pay-for-replayability model

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aberration

Good God. What a bunch of whiners and babies.

I have had no real problems with the game. Some connection issues, some queues.... and what? Being a DLC money soak has been the business model for decades... hello Civilizations?

Anyways, this whole societal problem of everyone wanting everything to be how they want in every single way is getting old.

Its a great game. No your are not a special snow flake.

---

1. Having a queue for what is supposed to be a single player game is a joke.
2. "Always online" DRM is a completely broken model for this type of game. Not everyone has a reliable connection (I've had a borked Fios connection for over a month before) or always has access when they want to play a game like this. Playing on a train/plane, or at the office killing some time on your own laptop between tickets; now no longer an option.
3. Steam somehow manages to have both an offline mode AND curb the "scourge of piracy."

Their model is trying to make their customer conform their lifestyle in order to play their game, rather than putting the customer first. But thanks for your condescending tone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aberration

Good God. What a bunch of whiners and babies.

I have had no real problems with the game. Some connection issues, some queues.... and what? Being a DLC money soak has been the business model for decades... hello Civilizations?

Anyways, this whole societal problem of everyone wanting everything to be how they want in every single way is getting old.

Its a great game. No your are not a special snow flake.

---

You've had no problems yet for some reason EA have removed working features for a single player game so it's online DRM can cope. As paying customers we have the right to complain if the issues are real and as annoying as these are, the fact it's a good game makes it worse as piracy isn't an issue when you obviously can't cope with demand. EA have not learnt from Valve on this front.

imo this always online thing makes pirated copies more popular.

True, Origin is not even nearly as developed nor distributed as the Steam monolith. Steam has had quite a lot of time on its back and driven by developers not mudded down by corporate dinosaurs. And yet, when it came out we hated it even more than Origin at it's launch.

OT-Flavour:
Do not be mistaken by my feeble attempts to neutralize myself in discussions where Valve is included, I am a Valve fanboy. And on this note I feel that Valve with the Steam distribution tool have not been kind to it's customers either regarding "Aliens: Colonial Marines", to a worse or equal extent compared to EA with the failed SimCity launch. Customers where not inhibited from playing the game, but they where outright lied to by grossly fabricated market material.
This of course is again something we as customers have the full power to control by not buying, but it becomes a bit more entangled when products even fail to reach minimum amount of customer appreciation.
Other people might disagree with this, but I feel people who bought SimCity of Origin got a better deal than people who bought Aliens: Colonial Marines of Steam. Yet Valve seems to get of the hook quicker, yes they did not publish the game, but that does not relieve them of responsibility given their market domination in digital releases.

How is Aliens somehow Valves fault? It wasn't pushed any harder than any big budget title, and as far as I know Sim City isn't a direct Origin issue. Valve don't push pre-orders as hard as retailers as they don't hold stock. Steam pre-order bonus for this game was a silly gun, compared to tomb raider and bioshock that bonus wasn't strong enough to make that game Valves problem.

Nowhere do I imply that this is Valves fault, what I am trying to say is that they have responsibility for the games they distribute, attributed by their market dominance and general sales ethics. This relates to their refund policy which is granted globally in special scenarios or else is done on a case to case basis which makes it hard to refund a game on "byers remorse".
If you bought Aliens: Colonial Marines on launch or as a preorder, then you got completely screwed over. This does make Valve an "accomplice" given that they sold it to you under the false pretense they where served by the game's developer/publisher which could easily be informed to the potential buyers by simple quality control.

even starcraft 2 offered an offline option for a very similar online only model. its a shame that if EA did this there would have been almost no complaints from the launch, AND they would have not needed to offer us a free game to apologize. funny how DRM cost them money.

adding to the fire that EA is trying its best to put out
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...not-necessary/
as many people suspect and many people want, the always online stuff we're being fed appears to be crap.
even the devs are saying it's a bit BS

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Manicdan

even starcraft 2 offered an offline option for a very similar online only model. its a shame that if EA did this there would have been almost no complaints from the launch, AND they would have not needed to offer us a free game to apologize. funny how DRM cost them money.

---

It's even funnier/sader when you consider the amount of issues Blizzard has had with high profile tournaments (Even on Blizzcon) where the Battlenet servers have lagged out causing matches to be replayed. Not having some kind of LAN support has really shown some bad light on the SC2 franchise.

Still looking forward to continuing on the HOTS-Campaign and ladder though ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by himaro

adding to the fire that EA is trying its best to put out
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...not-necessary/
as many people suspect and many people want, the always online stuff we're being fed appears to be crap.
even the devs are saying it's a bit BS

---

I really don't think anyone truly fell for that without some hint of skepticism. (Oops, redundant comment from me.)

Let me add something to the fire about bad shortcuts in the game mechanics that damages the integrity of the game on a whole and a link to the Reddit Maxis AMA:
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneo...en/td-p/737060 this topic as an easy to understand video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=WH-CdkSqDSs

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...om_maxis_amaa/

I still can't beliece there's no Subways (until DLC probably).

-PB

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by paulbagz

I still can't beliece there's no Subways (until DLC probably).

-PB

---

or hydro-electric
or (and seriously on this one) water provided by a river/bay/ocean.
i have a town with near 200k people and it was covered completely with water, and now is well over 70% dried up. water seems to also be the only resource that you cannot just keep buying or providing, and will cause a region to inevitably become a wasteland. i guess they want people to keep making new cities only. no joke that a water pump on a beach can dry up.

i have been playing sim city from the first ever game. And with what i read i think i am passing this game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Manicdan

or hydro-electric
or (and seriously on this one) water provided by a river/bay/ocean.
i have a town with near 200k people and it was covered completely with water, and now is well over 70% dried up. water seems to also be the only resource that you cannot just keep buying or providing, and will cause a region to inevitably become a wasteland. i guess they want people to keep making new cities only. no joke that a water pump on a beach can dry up.

---

Put the water pumping station next to the sewage treatment plant. ~Infinite water, the only risk being sewage leaks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kallenator

Put the water pumping station next to the sewage treatment plant. ~Infinite water, the only risk being sewage leaks.

---

tried that and it didnt work.

Got more oil for your fire:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...not-necessary/

the problem with city 4 is when your city gets really big, then it starts crashing. simcity 5....is it even customizable with mods like simcity 4?

IDk about that, it doesn't crash here, but it does crash at random points when the city is small and growing, so i started to save the game every like 20 minutes and then it never crashes again, its very wierd. Maybe when you save in Sim City 4, it stores a lot of stuff to the drive and frees up some memory.

Now playin' - SimCity :D

http://img.techpowerup.org/130311/simcitysnes.png

I can't loose the feeling EA sees every gamer just as a dollar note...
Now you pay 60? to get completely bound to the EA servers and if there is new content the will sell it as DLC and you spent even more money.
Subway AddOn - 5$, Purple Grass and 2 new RedLight areas 5$...and so on...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by WangChung

1. Having a queue for what is supposed to be a single player game is a joke.
2. "Always online" DRM is a completely broken model for this type of game. Not everyone has a reliable connection (I've had a borked Fios connection for over a month before) or always has access when they want to play a game like this. Playing on a train/plane, or at the office killing some time on your own laptop between tickets; now no longer an option.
3. Steam somehow manages to have both an offline mode AND curb the "scourge of piracy."

Their model is trying to make their customer conform their lifestyle in order to play their game, rather than putting the customer first. But thanks for your condescending tone.

---

I would rather be condescending than a perpetual victim.

Everything you mention was known before the game was released. Don't like it? Don't buy it. I just don't understand the need for all the drama and hysteria. FFS, this is EA. If you are surprised by ANY of this, than you are being willfully ignorant. Be a big boy and move on.

You are welcome.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kallenator

Nowhere do I imply that this is Valves fault, what I am trying to say is that they have responsibility for the games they distribute, attributed by their market dominance and general sales ethics. This relates to their refund policy which is granted globally in special scenarios or else is done on a case to case basis which makes it hard to refund a game on "byers remorse".
If you bought Aliens: Colonial Marines on launch or as a preorder, then you got completely screwed over. This does make Valve an "accomplice" given that they sold it to you under the false pretense they where served by the game's developer/publisher which could easily be informed to the potential buyers by simple quality control.

---

At what point are they an accomplice, do you blame the mail room for letter bombs too? The game has been on pre-order from various sources for years, distributors don't insure any level of enjoyment. As long as it reaches a level of quality it gets sold. This game is multi platform, I know for certain both Microsoft and Sony saw at least as much if not more (they have tighter rules for releases than Valve) and yet you single them out. What logical course of action could they take? It's an open market and no rules were broken.

Apart from the server issues, I am enjoying the game.

Truth be told, theres no other recent games other than Anno 2070 that come close to the gameplay of this. Sim City 4 is too outdated now, and all the current clones (Cities XL, Cities in Motion) are no where near as good.

I've already supported the Civitas kickstarter as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Manicdan

tried that and it didnt work.

---

Did it yesterday while playing with a friend, worked well for both of us. Weird.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Iconyu

At what point are they an accomplice, do you blame the mail room for letter bombs too? The game has been on pre-order from various sources for years, distributors don't insure any level of enjoyment. As long as it reaches a level of quality it gets sold. This game is multi platform, I know for certain both Microsoft and Sony saw at least as much if not more (they have tighter rules for releases than Valve) and yet you single them out. What logical course of action could they take? It's an open market and no rules were broken.

---

"Accomplice", which means I do not mean it literally. However you are right, the level of fun granted from any game is entirely up to the person who plays it and is not something a distributor guarantees.
I single them out as I have mentioned because they are the biggest distributor of digital games (50-70%), and they have a history of releasing high quality video games on their own part. Like you mention they aren't tightly bound by dates(not at all really) giving them a super position in terms of being able to polish a product, lastly they have "infinite money", no pressure form stocks (Valve is private) and no bosses in the usual corporate hierarchy except for the owners Gabe and Mike.
Valve know how to make a good game and they do take customers freedom a bit more seriously than Origin by for example not giving in to DRM and under special scenarios will refund players, like what happened with WarZ because of what essentially was false advertisement.
This to me is very similar to A:CM, and given that Valve earns money through every game sold then they are responsible, not to full account, but I find it undeniable.
So what this boils down to is that I would like to see more defined lines concerning refunds in this industry, like:
-Refund space within 3 days of being available to play
-Max game time of whatever is given adequate for getting an impression (Typical Demo territory)
-You get refunded 90% of original payment equal to the cost of downloading from servers and covering transaction fees etc

TL,DR; Valve's QA on Steam needs to be improved and guide lines for refunds must be more clearly defined to protect the customer, giving them equal rights to what hard copy over the counter stores has had for years. Amazon's return policy with SimCity is great example of proper customer care.

A:CM - Aliens: Colonial Marines , getting tired of writing it ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kallenator

Did it yesterday while playing with a friend, worked well for both of us. Weird.

---

at the time i tried it i might have had a massive difference between water and sewage. after hours of letting it run i could see water growing around my sewage with no water pump nearby. so i set it up again and will keep an eye on it.

i also just read an article that said the people in the game don't actually do anything, they don't remember where they work, they find only the closest job, they don't take public transportation to find other jobs, so you have to basically make the town one big road.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sin0822

i also just read an article that said the people in the game don't actually do anything, they don't remember where they work, they find only the closest job, they don't take public transportation to find other jobs, so you have to basically make the town one big road.

---

This is true, I linked and example of it on the first page in the thread. Steadily since launch the server issues have disappeared, but the game's mechanics have been under heavy attacks.

Recently a modder found out that he could put the game in "Developer mode" and set the server timeout timer to infinity. Avoiding the DRM and getting extra road construction capability.
Source:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...e-indefinitely

The game is so broken that you can build a 100% residential city... because apparently Sims can spend money in parks...
http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comm...pulation_2481/

You can just plop loads of parks and residential zones and instantly get a high wealth city, no education, jobs or shops required.

I suppose that money does grow on trees in this game.

Quote:

---

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ms-and-traffic

---

Quote:

---

SimCity is built on GlassBox, which is an agent-based simulation engine. At the surface level, GlassBox is designed around the premise that "Agents" are created to carry data to various "Sinks" around the city. In SimCity, you can think of the "Agents" as Sims and vehicles. The "Sinks" are the buildings that receive money, happiness and other resources from these Agents.

---

So, basically a giant Lemmings game. What a effing mess...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bhavv

You can just plop loads of parks and residential zones and instantly get a high wealth city, no education, jobs or shops required.

I suppose that money does grow on trees in this game.

---

i think they built a retirement community, lol. the idea of parks and libraries are for when shopping isnt around or when they cannot afford the shopping, however i think it was too easy to use in replacement of shopping.

i was having a really tough time getting high wealth goods. it kept making hotels so i blew them away until something popped up that had goods.

shame though that traffic is king for this game. a slight drop in traffic mobility means everything falls apart, schools, jobs, shopping, trash, freight, medical, police, and fire.

its also a shame that you get stop signs for medium density roads because maybe someone wants stop lights and lower density to keep traffic clean. and the road upgrade tool sucks until they get a quick way to show which roads are at which density.

i predict alot of balance changes coming up soon.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Manicdan

i think they built a retirement community, lol. the idea of parks and libraries are for when shopping isnt around or when they cannot afford the shopping, however i think it was too easy to use in replacement of shopping.

i was having a really tough time getting high wealth goods. it kept making hotels so i blew them away until something popped up that had goods.

shame though that traffic is king for this game. a slight drop in traffic mobility means everything falls apart, schools, jobs, shopping, trash, freight, medical, police, and fire.

its also a shame that you get stop signs for medium density roads because maybe someone wants stop lights and lower density to keep traffic clean. and the road upgrade tool sucks until they get a quick way to show which roads are at which density.

i predict alot of balance changes coming up soon.

---

Well imo the biggest problem with traffic there is no third left turn lane, on large intersections the ones with two lanes on each side. Traffic behind that inter lane turning left, has to wait for the car to make the left turn before they get moving along. This will just keep traffic bottle-necking.

An official statement has just been made from Maxis:

'No one on our current team ever studied Geography, nor know anything about how cities and roads actually work. We just took Sim City 4 and copied most of it while streamlining more of the tedious aspects of the game like far too large cities, too many transportation options, power lines and water pipes.

Our roads work how we imagined roads should work. Our vision was beautiful and executed faultlessly'.

I don't know what is worse. The way EA reacted to the criticism (bull:banana::banana::banana::banana:ting their customers), that the shortcomings where not noticed during beta testing, or if they were noticed that the game was released anyway.

I know what's worse. Now that people are (sort of) managing to actually play the game, almost everybody is realizing that it's poorly designed, over-simplistic and the current state of gameplay is broken to the core.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Manicdan

i predict alot of balance changes coming up soon.

---

haha good joke.. for that they would have to rewrite the whole AI system of the sims and how it works.

The only thing you will get is things like that:
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/8328/1363534058008.jpg

they will nickel and dime the crap out of this game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hornet331

haha good joke.. for that they would have to rewrite the whole AI system of the sims and how it works.

The only thing you will get is things like that:
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/8328/1363534058008.jpg

they will nickel and dime the crap out of this game.

---

Damn thats an outrageous price in any language.

There are ton of deficiencies. No matter how much I try I can only pick up about 20% of my trash maxing out the trash pick up trucks(100k+ cities), therefore everyone is germy/gets sick. The recycling center only holds a max of 20tons but the processors are super slow so recycling is always halted/slow. One person getting sick in the entire city = protest for more hospitals, etc. Building anything outside your regular RCI takes masssssive amounts of space. In all as much as I want to like the game I hate it dearly just as much. EA went to take a crap in my childhood memories.

So is that for real ?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aberration

I would rather be condescending than a perpetual victim.

Everything you mention was known before the game was released. Don't like it? Don't buy it. I just don't understand the need for all the drama and hysteria. FFS, this is EA. If you are surprised by ANY of this, than you are being willfully ignorant. Be a big boy and move on.

You are welcome.

---

Actually most of the issues WEREN'T known before release. That's the whole point of everyone across the board up in arms! I don't know what your problem is but generally people don't talk to one another like you here. Go back to EOCF if you want to be rude.

Anyway, one of the top comments on Reddit sums up this horsepile perfectly:

Quote:

---

Seriously. Your game sucks so bad I don't want to even pirate it.

---

And there's the state of the gaming industry.

Actually many of the issues (not all) were known prior to release.

As to aberration, he doesnt mind being nickel and dimed to death and supports EA and the game, even though he claims to be condescending.. can you really take someone seriously who says this stuff?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...=1#post5176786

haven't purchased many computer games online and recently purchased the new simcity game since I used to play an "old" version many years ago....Anyways, go to play it yesterday and it has been removed from my games list!!!!

Have a chat with a person and they say the game was refunded and removed from my games!!! This was 1st purchase of a digital copy game and not really liking this experience at all.

SO, I now have an account credit back to the credit card... I'm wondering if it's worth purchasing the game AGAIN and possibly having it magically disappear at a random time from my account and the tech person can't tell me why it's gone other than I got my credit card credited the money.

In my 2 weeks of dealing with origin, I'm kinda thinking I'm gonna cut my loses and move on from this B.S.

I stopped playing all together, haven't touched it in a week. Waste of $ if it wasnt for the free DS3 game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OmegaMerc

I stopped playing all together, haven't touched it in a week. Waste of $ if it wasnt for the free DS3 game.

---

If DS3 means Dead Space 3 then it's a complete waste of $ :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by El Maño

If DS3 means Dead Space 3 then it's a complete waste of $ :D

---

Yeah I've got a NAT issue with that game, so I contacted customer support asking them to help or refund my money (I bought the game purely to play with a friend). They didn't help one bit. After hours of dealing with them, they told me to remove and re-add my friend to my friend's list. Obviously that didn't work. I asked for a refund in cash or game credit. They said they can't do that, but they offered me a Case Number and told me to tell the customer support on phone that this was an "escalated case". After half an hour of hold time on the phone on three separate occasions, I gave up. I'll try again later

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ScottALot

Yeah I've got a NAT issue with that game, so I contacted customer support asking them to help or refund my money (I bought the game purely to play with a friend). They didn't help one bit. After hours of dealing with them, they told me to remove and re-add my friend to my friend's list. Obviously that didn't work. I asked for a refund in cash or game credit. They said they can't do that, but they offered me a Case Number and told me to tell the customer support on phone that this was an "escalated case". After half an hour of hold time on the phone on three separate occasions, I gave up. I'll try again later

---

Origins is notoriously broken even when it comes to simple things like being able to see friends/friends see you. I added my bud and it took me 3 days to get to "see him" even though we were always both online.

EA- Winning the hearts of millions one customer at a time

EA banning accounts of those who purchased accounts from Amazon:
http://blog.gamingdragons.com/2013/0...ty-via-amazon/

EA viral marketeers banned:
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-...Gaf-53658.html