Tag: Electronic Arts

EA Stock Capsizes After Early Year Recovery


Electronic Arts closed on February 6, 2019 at the price of $80.21 USD following news that the publisher’s third quarter fiscal results did not perform to its expectations. The continued price drop threatens to wipe out the progress that EA had made in the first month of the year to begin recovery after its stock dropped to a low of $74.72 on December 24, 2018 following ten years of sustained growth that saw its stock peak at nearly $150 in July 2017 before steadily shedding much of that value over the following six months.

Since last December the stock price has been slowly inching its way back up, breaking $90 by January 10 and holding steadily for the past month. With the announcement that EA would miss its estimated revenue by approximately $140 million, at $1.61 billion for the quarter versus $1.75 billion, shares immediately dropped from $92.52 on February 5 to $79.26 on February 6.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated acknowledged that EA did not perform as he hoped, owing partially to the underperformance of Battlefield V.

“Q3 was a difficult quarter for Electronic Arts and we did not perform to our expectations. We are now applying the strengths of our company to sharpen our execution and focus on delivering great new games and long-term live services for our players. We’re very excited about Apex Legends, the upcoming launch of Anthem, and a deep line-up of new experiences that we’ll bring to our global communities next fiscal year.”

 

[NM] EA Fought the Law and the Law Won, Removing Loot Boxes


EA fought the law and the law won, at least that’s the lesson the company learned this week after going head to head with Belgian authorities regarding loot box sales for FIFA games.

Those of you keeping score will recall that last April, the Belgian government criminalized certain loot box systems in video games, and sent notices to Valve, Activision Blizzard, and Electronic Arts warning that several of their titles were found to be in violation of the law. The Gaming Commission warned that the loot boxes would need to be removed, otherwise the companies could face fines and even jail sentences.

Valve and Activision Blizzard took near-immediate steps to disable loot box accessibility to Belgian players, while a number of other developers have opted to either alter their titles or outright shut them down within the country. EA meanwhile decided to take a gamble of its own and face a criminal investigation in order to keep selling those sweet ultimate team bucks. Unfortunately for EA, this gamble didn’t pay off, and the developer has posted a warning that FIFA Points will no longer be for sale in Belgium by the end of the month.

In case you were worried, EA notes that this change will have no material impact to their quarterly revenues.

After further discussions with the Belgian authorities, we have decided to stop offering FIFA Points for sale in Belgium.  We’re working to make these changes effective in our FIFA console and PC games by January 31, 2019.  This means that players in Belgium will not be able to purchase points to obtain FIFA Ultimate Team packs.  Players still can access Ultimate Team and play with their existing players.  All content in the game can be earned through gameplay, as has always been the case, and players can continue to use coins and the in-game transfer market.  Any players in Belgium that have existing FIFA Points in their accounts can continue to use them, but they will not be able to purchase more.  We apologize to our players in Belgium for any inconvenience caused by this change.

We seek to bring choice, fairness, value and fun to our players in all our games.  In addition to providing players options in how they play, we include pack probabilities in our games for the transparency players want to make informed content choices.  While we are taking this action, we do not agree with Belgian authorities’ interpretation of the law, and we will continue to seek more clarity on the matter as we go forward. The impact of this change to FIFA Ultimate Team in Belgium is not material to our financial performance.

Source: EA Games

[NM] Battlefield V Hit By Disappointment Bug, 50% Off One Week After Launch


How much does Electronic Arts value $30? One week of play time.

Hopefully those of you out in the netosphere didn’t put too much investment into your $60 Battlefield V purchase. In addition to having to wait over a week compared to the Origin Premier subscribers to get into the game, early adopters will need to come to peace with the knowledge that other people are getting a much better deal just seven days later. Target must be seeing the effects of EA’s “don’t like it, don’t buy it” campaign, because they are already discounting Battlefield V on Xbox and Playstation down to $30 just one week after the official launch date. Best Buy meanwhile has dropped its price down to $39.99 with Wal Mart undercutting them by 11 cents at $39.88. Incidentally the only major US store showing enough faith to keep the game at full price is Gamestop.

Is Battlefield V floundering? Sources say…possibly. Eurogamer posted a story this week that Battlefield V physical sales are down more than half over Battlefield 1. It seems unlikely that Target would be effectively putting the game on clearance price a week after launch if sales were as good as they normally are for Battlefield titles.

[Not Massive] EA (Possibly) Caught Shilling Battlefield V On Eurogamer Review


Battlefield V is out, at least for EA Access subscribers and deluxe edition buyers, and reviews are already piling in. Eurogamer’s review stays in the middle, also noting that the game is launching in the glitchiest and most technically troubled state that DICE has been in since Battlefield 4.

“Battlefield 5 is a spotty experience, beset by bugs and glitches that continually pull you out of it all. The new animations don’t seem fully baked, with legs prodding out at inhuman angles and players warping through the floor, while elsewhere quirks and server lag rear their heads. I had one particular game of Frontlines the other night that, thanks to a bug that prevented the round timer working properly, went on for well over 90 minutes, ending up in a strange armistice as players got tired of shooting each other and camped peacefully under a bridge together instead.”

Eurogamer’s review received a comment by user TimidExplorer, who posted that Eurogamer’s review is “something that our industry can do without”:

A game developer being angry at the perception of another developer’s work being criticized is understandable, but TimidExplorer’s comment wouldn’t have been newsworthy if Eurogamer staff didn’t point out shortly thereafter that he was posting from an Electronic Arts computer.

“There’s no mockery intended at all – I’m writing about the game, and its war stories, and they’re simply not very good. It’s also a bit weird that you’re posting this from an EA provided ISP.”

TimidExplorer rather quickly deleted his account afterward.

(Source: Eurogamer)

EA’s Stock Is Crashing, Down Over 40% Since July


Electronic Arts just can’t catch a break.

It’s been a rough year for Electronic Arts and it appears that the company’s investors are taking notice. In the last year that brought us the PR nightmare, consumer backlash, and subsequently underwhelming sales of Battlefront 2, the PR nightmare, consumer backlash, and subsequently underwhelming pre orders of Battlefield V, a criminal investigation in Belgium over refusal to comply with gambling laws, among other incidences, it looked like the backlash online was pretty much irrelevant as EA’s stock continued to climb.

All of this came to a head in July when EA announced that Battlefield V would be delayed, and EA’s stock began to tumble. From a peak of around $148, the stock now sits at $85.84 just five months later and continues to gradually fall. EA’s stock stood at $112 on November 14, 2017.

So what’s the deal? Oddly enough, EA isn’t facing much in the way of a financial shortfall. While the total revenue for the fiscal year 2019 is supposed to be lower, we’re talking $5.2 billion instead of $5.5 billion projected. The second quarter brought in $1.286 billion in revenue, $16 million above forecast, with a net income of $255 million, far above the prediction of $150 million.

It seems to stand that the downturn in market price has its hands in the negative sentiment surrounding EA that is finally turning into poor market performance. Their titles may still bring in millions of dollars, but EA burned Star Wars fans twice with Battlefront and the sequel subsequently underperformed. Similarly with Battlefield V, the company’s outward statement that players who didn’t like the art style of Battlefield 5 can “accept it, or don’t buy it” has simply led to players not buying it, despite EA’s recent backpedaling on the game’s cosmetic designs.

There is also the fact that more governments are beginning to take a closer look at microtransactions, a large source of income for Electronic Arts thanks to Fifa Ultimate Team.

Electronic Arts Gambles On Loot Boxes, Now Under Criminal Investigation


Loot boxes in 2018 are a multi-million dollar business, and Electronic Arts loves loot boxes so much that it is willing to potentially perform criminal acts in order to keep that sweet cash flowing. Such is the case in Belgium, where the Brussel’s public prosecutor’s office has officially opened a criminal investigation into Electronic Arts over allegations that the company is violating the law against gambling.

Earlier this year, Belgium’s Gaming Commission found several games to be in violation of its anti-gambling laws. EA doesn’t agree, and has simply refused to comply with orders to remove the offending purchases.

“We don’t believe that FIFA Ultimate Team or loot boxes are gambling firstly because players always receive a specified number of items in each pack, and secondly we don’t provide or authorize any way to cash out or sell items or virtual currency for real money,” said CEO Andrew Wilson.

(Source: PC Gamer)

[NM] Electronic Arts Gives Wrong Numbers On Battlefront II Sales, A Lot of Websites Haven’t Corrected It


Electronic Arts released their third quarter results for the 2018 fiscal year this week, noting increased revenues to $1.16 billion compared to $1.14 billion last year with higher operating expenses. Sales were driven primarily by live games including the various Ultimate Team systems and The Sims 4, with little doubt to the notion that last November’s Star Wars: Battlefront II under performed according to EA’s expectations.

What is in dispute, surprisingly, is how much the game under performed and just how many units the game sold, and the reason behind this confusion appears to be EA’s own error. According to Wall Street Journal’s tech reporter Sarah Needleman, EA confirmed in a statement under an embargo that Battlefront II had shipped over nine million units, about a million shorter than they had anticipated.

In actuality, and according to EA’s own released prepared remarks, the game was expected to sell about eight million and fell short of that by less than one million. So EA’s own reports were upwards of two million less than what they had incorrectly stated.

For Q3, we had expected to sell in about 8 million units, but we fell short of that by less than 1 million units. However, this shortfall was significantly offset by an excellent performance from our live services. The impact of FX was immaterial on the quarter.

Needleman has acknowledged on Twitter that the numbers she was given were incorrect with the earnings call not releasing until hours after the embargo lifted. Evidently nobody informed the rest of the reporters that this information was incorrect, since as of midnight on January 31, MMO Fallout had perused at least a dozen major gaming/tech websites that had covered the story, and not a single one had followed up with a correction.

Understandable, since virtually all of the articles seem to merely copy and paste either information from Polygon.com’s coverage or directly from Needleman’s initial tweet. In fact, the only major news website that reported on this and managed to get it right appears to be VG247 who actually read the prepared remarks and highlighted the discrepancy with the WSJ’s numbers. At least one of the outlets we read actually linked to the prepared statement and even claimed that the report stated the 9 million figure, which suggests the author did not even read the document that they quoted.

Calling malice seems to be a long shot, it looks like the Wall Street Journal was sent incorrect information and while the While Street Journal corrected their story, none of the outlets that sourced the Tweet did any fact checking of their own or took the time to read EA’s following prepared statement.

[Video] Medal of Honor Retrospective Part 1: Medal of Honor


I present to my audience the first part in the Medal of Honor retrospective. With Call of Duty finally returning to World War 2, I figured now was as good of a time as any to take a look at the series that started it all and is partially responsible for how we game today.

EA Is Working To Restore Access To Myanmar


Homefront®: The Revolution_20160522155530

Electronic Arts has responded to complaints that the Origin service is unavailable in Myanmar, with Community Manager EA_Tom announcing that the company is working on restoring access to affected customers.

The whole ordeal started with players in Myanmar finding out that their access to legitimately purchased Origin games had been blocked. According to ‘Champions,’ EA’s volunteer moderators, the block was due to complying with economic sanctions not allowing Electronic Arts to do business in specific countries. Players have no ability to access their games and, as it appears, EA had no intention of offering any sort of compensation for those who were locked out of their games or had bought newer titles (Battlefield 1, Titanfall 2, etc) only to find that their purchases are useless.

For those who pay attention to political games, the ban makes no sense. According to users on the forums, the bans only went into place last month despite Myanmar being under economic sanctions by the US for years now with EA doing nothing to prevent purchases from the country. Furthermore, the economic sanctions were lifted by President Obama on October 7th, meaning that Electronic Arts is continuing to enforce economic sanctions that haven’t existed in close to a month.

Many are also doubting EA’s handling of the situation as other digital services in Burma/Myanmar (Steam, Good Old Games, etc) have been functioning in the country just fine. MMO Fallout will update as soon as we have more information.

tom

PSA: Battlefield Beta Phishing


battlefield-1-beta-fake

Battlefield 1 is making big headlines and with E3 just days away, it only makes sense that some unscrupulous individuals are piggybacking on the hype to defraud users. According to reports popping up, the URL http://www.battlefieldbeta.com has popped up, among others, with fake signup links that steal your EA username and password.

MMO Fallout traced the domain back to Whoisguard, a service in Panama that allows for anonymous domain registration and, unsurprisingly, is used to hide the identity of people engaged in fraudulent and criminal activity. As always, users should remain vigilant when browsing the net and pay attention to the domain when deciding where to enter your credentials.