Given how many complaints have been circulating lately about the EA/DICE front-runner Battlefield 4, this news doesn’t really come as a surprise. Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, a law-firm in San Diego has commenced a law-suit against EA, regarding overestimated sales figures for Battlefield 4.
The law first allegedly claims that multiple high-ranking officials at EA had been selling shares at a high price during the summer (mainly the months of July and August), as a consequence of rising stock values. The law-suit points out that these officials were aware of the problematic launch that would accompany Battlefield 4, and used misleading sales estimations in order to sell stocks at an overestimated value. Below is an excerpt of the law-suit itself:
“(a) Battlefield 4 was riddled with bugs and multiple other problems, including downloadable content that allowed players access to more levels of the game, a myriad of connectivity issues, server limitations, lost data and repeated sudden crashes, among other things; (b) as a result, Electronic Arts would not achieve a successful holiday season 2013 rollout of Battlefield 4; (c) the performance of the Electronic Arts unit publishing Battlefield 4 was so deficient that all other projects that unit was involved in had to be put on hold to permit it to focus its efforts on fixing Battlefield 4; and (d) as a result, Electronic Arts was not on track to achieve the financial results it had told the market it was on track to achieve during the Class Period.”
Now, I have several issues with this law-suit. First of all, bugs always accompany a game-launch of this magnitude. Millions of players bought Battlefield 4 and some service problems simply cannot be avoided when launching at this scale. In addition, it’s really hard to be aware of all the bugs 5-6 months prior to release. I sincerely doubt EA could have anticipated every possible problem with the game that early, especially given that they were working on a platform that in itself was still unreleased (I’m referring to the next-gen consoles here). Lastly, even if EA could have anticipated problems with the launch of Battlefield 4, the overall stock value of the company isn’t dictated by one single title, especially when we’re talking about a publisher of this size. Not to mention the fact that it’s perfectly normal for share-holders to sell their shares when their value is increased – I mean, this is how the stock-market works, the entire point is to buy cheap and sell steep.
As for the (c) point of the lawsuit, EA has already stated that their major projects will not see delays or changes in scheduling. The only affected product seems to be Battlefield 4 itself, which will see delays in upcoming DLC’s. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s best to stabilize your initial product and services before charging extra and releasing more content onto an unstable platform.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to entirely defend EA here – they probably could have managed the entire Battlefield 4 launch better. I do feel they did release the game slightly ahead of time, to the detriment of gamers. Adding the China Rising DLC to an already unstable environment didn’t help either. And yes, they probably over-estimated their chances slightly, because you can’t really know how well you’re going to sell your game when it’s aimed at the new generation of consoles. After all, you have no way of knowing how well these consoles will be selling 5 months prior to their release, and factors like low-stock on these new consoles did and will continue to affect game sales as well.
“We believe these claims are meritless. We intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we’re confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course.” stated EA officials. Inevitably, a legal battle will develop, and only a court will be able to shed light on the matter. It will also be interesting to see if the actions of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd will spawn a series of similar law-suits.