Hopefully this will teach EA that they can't just release unfinished products to the public.

I find myself playing consoles and older pc games more than new release titles more than ever this year gone.

You're not alone, I intend to do something about my backlog in 2014 :P Having only South Park and COD 11 to look forward to helps too lol. I think gamers did something here for once and that's why this is a problem. The word that the game was not ready for release spread quickly. Look at how quickly the game dropped in price for PC and PS3 - $20-30 on black friday. Ghosts on the other hand with all its issues on the PC stayed at $40 and is doing fine on the consoles. Microsoft has been issuing refunds to those who have requested it and even I got one from Amazon (wow much thanks).

I wonder why?

The case is still not about quality control or justice dealing on behalf of consumers. The quality control issue is tangent to the main issue, which is about falling of stock price. The supposed damaged party here aren't the consumers. It's the shareholders. What this means that as skyosiz stated, it would either result in dismissal or in worst case, law firm wins and it'll drive EA towards even more (as if that was possible) profit oriented money mongering publisher because that's what they are getting punished for; not making enough profit for the shareholders.

Again, this would never have happened in the first place if they weren't so intent on beating CoD Ghosts to the market. Consumers suffered. Shareholders suffered even more.

IMHO this is a step in the right direction for gaming as a whole.

Don't these lawyers or shareholders have anything better to do? Capitalism and bureaucracy.. lol.

Any chance that the share holders of the "rubble" known as call of duty ghosts will follow this example and file a similar lawsuit on activision?

IMHO this is a step in the right direction for gaming as a whole.

^ true story

Don't these lawyers or shareholders have anything better to do? Capitalism and bureaucracy.. lol.

Let's assume: 1. You have some reasonable money to invest, and gaming appears to be a good investment target. 2. You contact EA, they tell you that they're going to beat the sales records with a set of awesome games, including the best shooter ever. 3. You give them your money. 4. The shares value goes up slowly. 5. BF4 is released, turns out to be buggy as hell and the sales while good, are nowhere near what they promised. 6. You learn that they couldn't make it on time, so they put all other projects on halt and directed the resources towards BF4, effectively making other projects inferior and decreasing sales. 7. As a result of these actions, the share value plummets after the info has been spread. 8. You lost your money and you're annoyed. 9. You learn that EA have lied to you, moreover some key players knew what's going on and sold the shares before BF4 release date. 10. You want your money back, so you have to ask lawyers for help. Lawyers do what they're asked to do. It's as simple as that. And the key shareholders have lots of money that they want to invest in profitable business. They don't really have better things to do than earning mountains of $$$ and investing/spending it.

BF4 is by far the worse title that EA has made in the series. The formula is simple Overall rating: BF1 = 8/10 BF2 = 7/10 BF3 = 6/10 BF4 = 5/10 These rating have little to do with the glitches, its all about the game and how you play it. As all know BF 3 and 4 look more like CoD, less interesting vehicle fights (even dough they look nice) and more focus on "squad"-"teamwork" or run-and-gun action. Not only that has changed also the pace of the hole game shifted from a tactical shooter to a run and gun disaster. Dough most 14 year olds know no better and will play anything laying on the shelf and will never learn tactics this way. So the drop in support (and eventually share value) of the players is not due to any glitch but actually due to a lack of sensation while playing the game itself. Most horrible bugs in BF4 have to my knowledge been fixed and EA has the knowledge and the resources to fix anything in reasonable time. The problem being that a company together with the share holders will determine the release date of a game or any product for that mather prior to the product actually being finished (speculation). The result of this is that a company will release a game even when its not finished yet like BF4. Hoping 1.1vers. patches will fix everything that's wrong. These pre-set dates will ruïne the creative input of a game developer and eventually the final product. And sinds game developers are no legal workers they will always honor this even dough they know a good product takes time to develop (2 years is a joke). So i short its the financial directors and shareholders that have created this problem. The share should probably not have risen that much sinds titles that come of the production line are not creative at all and as this lawsuit proves its all about the Benjamin's.. Let this be a learning experience that creativeness and share holder input have nothing to do with each other. EA would be just as happy with a little less revenue then was now promised so someone did screw up but it wasn't the game designers (unless they never learned to say no to an impossible request). Some numbers: BF2 3.75 million titles sold = 45€ x 3.75m = 170 million euro This is without any addon packs, official server license income etc. so the total amount would be like 500.000.000 / 700.000.000 euro. If this is not enough I don't know what is being that BF2 was a popular and good developed game. As the gaming industry is one of the most profitable in the world. Even dough these are nice numbers with investment always comes a risk and in this case the game is just so bad that i wouldn't touch it for the world and will stick to more serious games in the future, all in all EA is an overrated company with expensive titles for kids up to 16 while on the box it sais they cant even play it at that age due to the violent nature it has 🙂 Signed Hollands 1th Lt.General for BF2 && Mery X-Mass

Well, for me BF2 was superior to BF1, and ... BFBC2 was really fun to play too. It was by no means a tactical shooter, but a cool team-based action shooter. I bought BF3, but ... didn't really like it. It didn't feel like a successor to BF2 nor BFBC2, falling somewhere in between. I bought BF4 and like it. Yes, it has glitches, crashes, etc, but I still enjoy playing it. BF2 was a masterpiece. Yeah, it had the famous hitbox issues, rubberbanding, and aim-behind-to-hit glitch, but still, it was one of the best tactical shooters made. And larsiano mentioned an important thing - server license fees. If you make a game and charge for servers and people play it for years, it's a huge win. But many companies prefer to sell the same stuff over and over again every each year. BF2 start wasn't very smooth either, but it wasn't so bad as with BF3 or BF4, or even crashing BFBC2, which they fixed soon after. Perhaps it was because there was much less effort spent on licensing, marketing, branding, audio recording, graphics, and making engine for powering every single EA game in the future. They focused on making a good tactical shooter and they succeeded. One of the reasons was that they were a group of enthusiast capable of deciding, what to do. EA is a corporation. In corporation, you don't decide unless you're a CEO. Being a software developer myself, I can understand this disaster. When you work for a big company, you have product sold by greedy people to greedy people, designed by people, who don't ever talk to the end users and are not end users themselves. Then developers do what they're asked to do and are not allowed to do anything else, introduce extra improvements etc. Plus many developers are terrible, as they're not enthusiasts, but they're hired as they were cheap. There are also issues with communication, as low-level employees can't exchange info directly, but have to ask their supervisors. With community-driven fundraising (eg Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or WMD) some companies can still make good games. It's not a perfect solution either, but it gives a chance for games to be designed and made by people who will actually play them and want them to be the best. Perhaps one of such companies will evolve and will not need Kickstarter anymore, won't be bought by EA, and will continue making good games?

Any chance that the share holders of the "rubble" known as call of duty ghosts will follow this example and file a similar lawsuit on activision?

Doubt it. btw. LOL at the combination of your username and avatar ! :funny::funny::funny:

You people are idiots...

They have ruined so many games that I really looked forward to. Warhammer online: released at least 6months too early Mass effect 3: BF4: SWToR: Cant complain too much here since its now F2P

Let's assume: 1. You have some reasonable money to invest, and gaming appears to be a good investment target. 2. You contact EA, they tell you that they're going to beat the sales records with a set of awesome games, including the best shooter ever. 3. You give them your money. 4. The shares value goes up slowly. 5. BF4 is released, turns out to be buggy as hell and the sales while good, are nowhere near what they promised. 6. You learn that they couldn't make it on time, so they put all other projects on halt and directed the resources towards BF4, effectively making other projects inferior and decreasing sales. 7. As a result of these actions, the share value plummets after the info has been spread. 8. You lost your money and you're annoyed. 9. You learn that EA have lied to you, moreover some key players knew what's going on and sold the shares before BF4 release date. 10. You want your money back, so you have to ask lawyers for help. Lawyers do what they're asked to do. It's as simple as that. And the key shareholders have lots of money that they want to invest in profitable business. They don't really have better things to do than earning mountains of $$$ and investing/spending it.

that's all sweet and cute but: 1. BF4 sold a shed load of copies 2. It was released on time These clowns have no chance and those who think this will change anything are very naive. It's pretty much a publicity stunt, that is all.

I just don't understand their "patches" they know what the main complaints are and release patches that don't address them... They know that there is client side hit issues, and lag server side and they release a patch to nerf guns? In doing so they destroy the graphics making you either play a game that looks worse than a free to play shooter from 2004 or disable SLI which means you have a nice GPU in your tower just crying for work to do. I understand the issues with stock holders but the game has actually sold fairly well. Hell I bought it and hate it now. I even bought the premium because I know there is nothing else coming out I am interested in at this point. I am mad because it is broke but even more mad they won't undo what they made FUBAR like they did in BF3. I am sure they will say they are sorry and give everyone a free week of double XP because for some reason they think that makes it ok! LOL!!

Fact is the investors took a risk and lost ! The other fact is only well won't say kind of people buy a game before at least reading some reviews. And the third fact is people should know by now that EA put's out crap.

Good! ;D

Serves them right.. Next time EA won't make the same mistake of hyping the game so much as they did were before release..

I love how we are the ones that got ripped off but the shareholders somehow think they deserve more money or have the right to sue.