Take Two (maker of GTA) rejects EA's 2 Billion Dollar Bid

[illram]

They still have that? Last time I bought one of their games was years ago and I hated that thing so much I would turn off the speakers before starting the game.

I don't know, I haven't played an EA game in a while. I just remember that from before the Bond games and it drove me insane.

Please EA, you ruined Sim City, seriously hindered a once great Command and Conquer franchise, never re-captured the fun of Goldeneye... don't go and ruin Civ and GTA... please.

Can you imagine how watered down GTA would be under EA? My god, the potential for ruining that is huge.

 

[Martacus]

I remember when Electronic Arts was a company I could get behind...I still enjoy playing Jungle Strike every once in a while.

 

[Swedishguy]

Those darn two-bit capitalists ruined the Populous franchise when they bought Bullfrog...! For that, I will never forgive them!

 

[Mr_Fusty]

I hope Take Two fight tooth and nail.

They killed Bullfrog!
They killed Maxis!
They killed Westwood!

Until they were taken over, they were the only brands I actully trusted.

EA has become the computer game version of a Dementor (ala Harry Potter) -sucking the life force from the industry. An old school friend was head-hunted by them a couple of years back from a small indie company, and after two months, wanted to get out. Some of the stories he told me were quite shocking - like their work-hours (14-hour days, anyone?) and their ethics. I can't repeat much more otherwise he or I will be suied for libel.

Yes, they do produce some good games, but I'm sure that was more due to the efforts of the unsung slaves (lower-level programmers) than the management. Most of their games are too easy, some are downright awful, they don't offer PC support without registering with them first, they abandon support for their games earlier than other companies. The amount of expansions they produced for the Sims alone stunk to high heaven of flogging a franchise to the max. Their habit of releasing expansions so quickly after the original's release just makes me mad.

There are a couple of little rays of light, however. From what I have read, Take Two's response was a firm 'you need a hell of a lot more cash, mate. We are ticking along nice on our own, you know.' which means that EA will have to either stuff their mouths with gold, attempt to slowly pull the carpet from under their feet by buying up the stock, or walk away. Even if EA go gunning for TT, it may drive them into the arms of the likes of Activision or Ubisoft. Secondly, the tendency of programmers to jump ship after takeovers - the most notorious was the decimation of the Bullfrog staff after the takeover by EA.

 

[DNK]

Well, if only a tenth of the Bullfrog staff left, I don't suppose that's so big a deal.

In all seriousness, though, EA is garbage. Look what they did to the Sim City franchise. That's beyond my ability to forgive. One of the greatest sim games carved up and turned into a 5-yr-olds happy city playtime game.

Their C&C release was god-awfully unstable, poorly patched, and had some of the worst AI I've ever seen. I could write AI better than that. I mean, there were the tools in the game to make the AI so much better, and the steps were obvious, but they just as obviously didn't take the time to properly test the game to develop appropriate AI strategies, and it's equally obvious that the AI had to be gamed because of how unstably slow the game ran as packaged (simply canning drones would have probably freed up 15% of the CPU in big games, and their usefulness was dubious at best).

The C&C stuff is forgivable, but not Maxis. A pox on them.

 

[BirraImperial]

They ruined Sim City! and now they wanna take over the Civ franchise?

 

[Alpine Trooper]

Of course we'll bundle our MorganNet software with the new network nodes; our customers expect no less of us. We have never sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that no one feels the need to compete with us.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

YES thank god!!!

Imagine Civ with EA!

new crappy versions every year, new crappier then Warlords expansions every 2 months, horrible gameplay etc.

The list of Civ 5 with EA:

Civ 5
Civ 5: Civics
Civ 5: More Civilizations
Civ 5: More Fancy Aeroplanes and Naval Units
Civ 5: Deluxe

et cetera.

 

[DNK]

More like
Civ5: Throne Room (no more civ simulation, just decorating a throne room)
Civ5: The Patch: someone a throne room sim still was too much for EA to handle, and it required massive patching to stop CTDing. This would be the first attempt at selling a half-completed such patch, with vain hopes of the second half to come. Of course, Civ6,7,and 8 need to be made within the next 2 years, so there will be no time for that.

 

[h4ppy]

YES thank god!!!

Imagine Civ with EA!

new crappy versions every year, new crappier then Warlords expansions every 2 months, horrible gameplay etc.

To be honest I'd imagine them letting Sid do whatever he wants just like the let whats'is'name the Sim City guy.


Anyways the real thing they wanted were the sports games, GTA, Sid Meier, etc. would just be the icing on the cake.

Even if EA go gunning for TT, it may drive them into the arms of the likes of Activision or Ubisoft.

Which is funny because EA has been salivating at the thought of acquiring Ubisoft for years now and own a bit of stock in them for their efforts.

 

[Mr_Fusty]

Ubisoft suffers from the issue that it's a French listed company - French commercial law is quite different to the Anglo-Saxon model, it makes hostile takovers much more difficult.

If EA was to go after the two 'big beasts' I listed before, it would proberly run into at least a couple of dozen anti-monopoly suits around the world. TT is about as big a bite they can go after.

Yes, I believe that Sid would be given as much freedom as Will (Wright, founder of Maxis) but we just can't rely on him to protect Civ for us. Sid these days is more a free-ranging ball of insparation - he has many fingers in many project's, he can't be expected to watch everything. EA really want his name though - sticking 'Sid Meier's x/I]' on any strategy game is what they like to do with Maxis and Westwood names today.

I am wary of the obligitary big-name bashing - some of the smaller guys are at least as bad. But, the general consencious is that EA is the ultimate quantity people.

I have saved my venom for the Sims. Yes, I like it. But how many CD's are actully required? And why does it give me the feeling that it is the computer equivilent of a prom dress made out of carpet reminents? I spent over a month ironing out the bugs, modding most of the objects, tweaking with the graphics, patching over some of the most crash-prone situations and finally ripping out the EA's lurkware they now bundle with all their games. Result - load speed up 20%, crashes reduced by 50%, larger plots, doubled the amount of objects, and managed to trim the file size by 1GB. If one person (with a fair bit of help from the Sim's equivilent of this site) can do this - why the hell did they not???