The rumor mill churned out a doozy today, kids. A person claiming to work at Bioware Mythic started a blog, EA Louse, and has decided to air out some dirty laundry, the kind that I’m sure the masters at EA would rather the world not know. Granted, all of this is unconfirmed, but it’s too juicy to just ignore. Some of the tidbits include details about upcoming EA layoffs in November, keeping with the current trend in the industry of letting people go just before the holidays.
In addition, he or she claims that the budget for the upcoming Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, is a whopping $300 million and that EA is panicking because they realize now that they have a failure on their hands. He goes on to claim that it will be the biggest MMO failure in EA’s history. There is plenty more on there, including some gossip about Warhammer, so head on over if you want to read more about that.
Assuming (dangerous, I know) that this is true, it would spell disaster for EA, as that is a lot of money to throw out the window. Do you see any truth to these claims? Do you think it’s ethical for an employee to reveal company dirt like this? Let’s hear it!
Source: EA Louse
If they did spend 300 million I am not really impressed with the results. The dialogue seemed very crappy and took me out of the experience, and don’t even mention what I have seen of the combat. But… I am biased against the whole idea of a kotor MMO. How the hell are you supposed to have an epic and engrossing story if everyone is the hero. That is my main problem with this, I just cannot see how this could be done.
Extremely unprofessional. David Jaffe responded to this and the trend of disgruntled game devs getting mad at their publishers and had a rather interesting view. I don’t know if I would believe what this guy says at all, seems like he is a little pissed.
As far the info goes, I didn’t need this persons “inside” info to know SWTOR will be a total failure. Just look at the trailers, or specifically the LACK of real trailers. CGI trailers that cost a million bucks a minute = NO REAL GAME TO SHOW = Fail.
As far as the morality of this goes, it is defiantly a gray area.
Getting fired before the holidays? It’s such BS, but unfortunately extremely typical in the modern business world where corporations seem to have both zero loyalty and zero accountability to it’s employees, stockholders, and clients. Which would make anyone angry. Including me. Don’t get me wrong I have a lot of love for the private sector but in the old days CEO’s owned their own companies and had huge stakes in their success. Now days CEO’s seem to have huge salaries and own only a tiny percent of the company, then hire a consultancy firm to make the decisions for them so they don’t have to take responsibility for anything. Then when things go bad they take their money, sell the stock, and blame the consultants. Like I said, it would make anyone mad. Loyalty is a 2 way street.
But that doesn’t excuse sinking to their level and betraying company confidence. If he/she gets found out they will never be able to get hired again. As SK Beans said “Extremely unprofessional”.
This is a little tough. As someone that’s seen what it’s like when management is all over the place, I can sympathize. As someone that’s been jerked over by a company I can say the same thing. As someone who thinks you shouldn’t massively burn bridges like this, I think it’s uncool. You don’t air out your ex’s dirty laundry for the world to see. You do some sit-ups, get your hair did and come back even hotter, so she knows what she’s missing.
It goes kind of both ways. It sounds like he was getting treated poorly in his situation, but he’s not responding very well to it, either.
This is David Jaffe’s response, if you’re interested (SNSFW, like all things Jaffe): http://criminalcrackdown.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-response-to-ea-louse.html
Anyways, my opinion on this is kind of siding with EA. I’m sorry that Louse doesn’t like his job, and that adding a dance command to Warhammer Online was VERBOTEN, but come on. If you have issues, take it up with HR, that’s what they’re their for. After the whole EA Spouse debacle, I’d find it hard to believe that EA wouldn’t do something for this guy, even if they just moved him to The Sims team.
As for SW:ToR being a failure…well, I’ll wait until the game comes out, but I’m extremely hesitant.
Jaffe’s response was pretty good, but this guy pretty much assassinates Louse:
http://ordohereticus.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/anonymous/
This Louse guy just sounds bitter. It’s interesting that this is drawing attention for his off-handed, totally unsubstantiated (as far as I can tell; wasn’t this guy on the Warhammer team?) claims about Old Republic rather than the failure of Warhammer Online, which is what he’s really talking about.
I don’t think that airing your grievances like this is a good idea. It has nothing to do with what’s right and what’s wrong; it’s about what’s smart and what’s stupid. If any company finds out who this guy is, he can forget about getting a job in the industry again. Nobody wants to hire someone who obviously had a difficult time working within the development team and took the first opportunity to throw everyone under the bus when he left. Man up, take your severance package, retool your resume, and be glad you’re out of the environment you so obviously disliked. People these days just can’t take the high road.
As for Old Republic, it’s been shaping up to be a disastrous casualty of hubris for a while now. Given the success/failure rate of MMOs to begin with, I think we were all a little skeptical about it’s prospects anyway.
That was a great read, zayven, thanks for posting.