EA and Originality
EA put out a company-wide email yesterday to announce a 5% reduction in staff. EA also shared this email with the public, knowing it would get leaked anyway.In addition to the staff cuts, there was this jewel:
We are also sunsetting games and moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry. This greater focus allows us to drive creativity, accelerate innovation, and double down on our biggest opportunities — including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities — to deliver the entertainment players want today and tomorrow.
In other words, they won't continue developing new IP. Or, if they do, only rarely.
What surprised me is I thought I was reading a press release from a decade ago. EA still developed original IP? Every "new" series is a retread from an old series, with the exception of Hogwarts Legacy. Outside of a handful of games they flog every year, they've been completely irrelevant to driving gaming forward for a long, long time.
The enshittification of the gaming industry started when games began getting new versions as annual releases. Sports games started it, as always. Call of Duty feels like the prime mover, though. Then Bobby Kotick announced that they would just milk their main franchises. Now almost every large gaming company, particularly the publicly-held ones, operate this way. It's all annual franchises and games as a service (boy, what a misnomer).
End stage capitalism: deliver as little as possible for as much as possible. Big companies in gaming are a perfect example of this now.
Ironically, it's this calcification at the top end that's allowed indie gaming to be better than ever. Even with sports games, where exclusive licenses have ruined the major players, there are games like Football Coach: College Dynasty, which is a deep, rich experience (it's in Early Access, but is far deeper than anything else out there).
EA abandoned us a long time ago, but we don't need them.
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