EA buys 1/5 of Ubisoft

[MJCfromCT]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20313

:mad:

GAMES MAKER Electronics Arts will buy a fifth of the shares in Ubisoft.

The Wall Street Journal estimates EA has paid up to $100,000 for the shares, which it acquired from Dutch investment firm Talpa Beheer.

The move is a sign of increasing consolidation in the games market, with smaller companies like Ubisoft facing pressure in the lucrative field.

[CrazyCrusher]

Ouch, where did that come from? wearnt they trying to get some of Dice to? looks like EA is on the buying war path.

[germanNiklas]

so true and i dont like that about EA
i have the feeling they wanna become "microsoft" in the gaming industry

[bob05]

EA better not touch Rainbow Six or I'm boycotting. :mad:

[ShadeZeRO]

John madden commentating on Rainbow Six...

"you know what they should have done pat, they should have sent two guys down the yard and had 2 backups and shoot them in the head....I mean, its just like football isnt it!?"
-John Madden (J.M.)

[germanNiklas]

they better not touch brothers in arms........

[Dennis Bacon]

you guys are weird, EA puts out some awesome product... they're one of the hottest gaming companies out there whats so wrong with them? If anything at all they'll help UBIsoft release some less buggy software, Raven Shield is great BUT man oh man was it ever buggy when it first came out

[bob05]

Originally posted by Dennis Bacon
you guys are weird, EA puts out some awesome product... they're one of the hottest gaming companies out there whats so wrong with them? If anything at all they'll help UBIsoft release some less buggy software, Raven Shield is great BUT man oh man was it ever buggy when it first came out

Some of the games they put are good, but eventually they just start trying to milk the cash cow and churn out expansion pack upon expansion pack hoping that the moniker of the license will be enough to sell.

[Someone Stupid]

I guess Ubisoft is moving to sweatshop labor now that EA has bought a chunk of them. :( Looks like I'll have to start expecting garbage from Ubi now.

[PacNW CE]

EA is becoming a little too big for my liking.

And I thougth I had issues with VU....:rolleyes:

[MadPistol]

I hate EA. Most of their stuff sucks, and they are being jerks about it. I really hope they get sued over something really soon.

[PacNW CE]

Reasons to hate EA:

1. the sims
2. the sims2
3. MOHPA (has a game that runs so choppy ever looked so bland?)
4. NBA Street
5. Exclusive NFL/NFLPA contract (lack of competition will lead to bad things)
6. NFL Street
7. Buying up 20% of UBISOFT (if you can't beat the comp, buy them out)
8. the sims2 university
9. any future sims2 expansions
10. Slave labor (allegedly)

[PacNW CE]

Reasons to hate EA:

1. the sims
2. the sims2
3. MOHPA (has a game that runs so choppy ever looked so bland?)
4. NBA Street
5. Exclusive NFL/NFLPA contract (lack of competition will lead to bad things)
6. NFL Street
7. Buying up 20% of UBISOFT (if you can't beat the comp, buy them out)
8. the sims2 university
9. any future sims2 expansions
10. Slave labor (allegedly)

[bob05]

Originally posted by PacNW CE
7. Buying up 20% of UBISOFT (if you can't beat the comp, buy them out)

See Horizontal Intagration (http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/horizontal-integration/) (e.g. Standard Oil). :D ;)

[BuildItYourself]

I hate EA. Their games stink, but this (http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.html) bugs me more. I did not write it, I found it on another forum.

EA: The Human Story
My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I'm what you might call a disgruntled spouse.

EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?

I am retaining some anonymity here because I have no illusions about what the consequences would be for my family if I was explicit. However, I also feel no impetus to shy away from sharing our story, because I know that it is too common to stick out among those of the thousands of engineers, artists, and designers that EA employs.

Our adventures with Electronic Arts began less than a year ago. The small game studio that my partner worked for collapsed as a result of foul play on the part of a big publisher -- another common story. Electronic Arts offered a job, the salary was right and the benefits were good, so my SO took it. I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: "how do you feel about working long hours?" It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what "working long hours" meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why.

Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point any other need for a crunch seemed unlikely, as the project was dead on schedule. I don't know how many of the developers bought EA's explanation for the extended hours; we were new and naive so we did. The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.

Weeks passed. Again the producers had given a termination date on this crunch that again they failed. Throughout this period the project remained on schedule. The long hours started to take its toll on the team; people grew irritable and some started to get ill. People dropped out in droves for a couple of days at a time, but then the team seemed to reach equilibrium again and they plowed ahead. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal.

Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.

The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.

And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! ('comp' time is the equalization of time off for overtime -- any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off after the product has shipped); c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away. Additionally, EA recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn't expect it. Further, since the production of various games is scattered, there was a concern on the part of the employees that developers would leave one crunch only to join another. EA's response was that they would attempt to minimize this, but would make no guarantees. This is unthinkable; they are pushing the team to individual physical health limits, and literally giving them nothing for it. Comp time is a staple in this industry, but EA as a corporation wishes to "minimize" this reprieve. One would think that the proper way to minimize comp time is to avoid crunch, but this brutal crunch has been on for months, and nary a whisper about any compensation leave, nor indeed of any end of this treatment.

This crunch also differs from crunch time in a smaller studio in that it was not an emergency effort to save a project from failure. Every step of the way, the project remained on schedule. Crunching neither accelerated this nor slowed it down; its effect on the actual product was not measurable. The extended hours were deliberate and planned; the management knew what they were doing as they did it. The love of my life comes home late at night complaining of a headache that will not go away and a chronically upset stomach, and my happy supportive smile is running out.

No one works in the game industry unless they love what they do. No one on that team is interested in producing an inferior product. My heart bleeds for this team precisely BECAUSE they are brilliant, talented individuals out to create something great. They are and were more than willing to work hard for the success of the title. But that good will has only been met with abuse. Amazingly, Electronic Arts was listed #91 on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2003.

EA's attitude toward this -- which is actually a part of company policy, it now appears -- has been (in an anonymous quotation that I've heard repeated by multiple managers), "If they don't like it, they can work someplace else." Put up or shut up and leave: this is the core of EA's Human Resources policy. The concept of ethics or compassion or even intelligence with regard to getting the most out of one's workforce never enters the equation: if they don't want to sacrifice their lives and their health and their talent so that a multibillion dollar corporation can continue its Godzilla-stomp through the game industry, they can work someplace else.

But can they?

The EA Mambo, paired with other giants such as Vivendi, Sony, and Microsoft, is rapidly either crushing or absorbing the vast majority of the business in game development. A few standalone studios that made their fortunes in previous eras -- Blizzard, Bioware, and Id come to mind -- manage to still survive, but 2004 saw the collapse of dozens of small game studios, no longer able to acquire contracts in the face of rapid and massive consolidation of game publishing companies. This is an epidemic hardly unfamiliar to anyone working in the industry. Though, of course, it is always the option of talent to go outside the industry, perhaps venturing into the booming commercial software development arena. (Read my tired attempt at sarcasm.)

To put some of this in perspective, I myself consider some figures. If EA truly believes that it needs to push its employees this hard -- I actually believe that they don't, and that it is a skewed operations perspective alone that results in the severity of their crunching, coupled with a certain expected amount of the inefficiency involved in running an enterprise as large as theirs -- the solution therefore should be to hire more engineers, or artists, or designers, as the case may be. Never should it be an option to punish one's workforce with ninety hour weeks; in any other industry the company in question would find itself sued out of business so fast its stock wouldn't even have time to tank. In its first weekend, Madden 2005 grossed $65 million. EA's annual revenue is approximately $2.5 billion. This company is not strapped for cash; their labor practices are inexcusable.


Continued on Page 2 (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=174537&perpage=15&pagenumber=2)

[BuildItYourself]

The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.

[Someone Stupid]

Looks like Ubisoft is considering EA's actions as a hostile takeover and is looking to the government to protect them from any further actions just incase they can't get their stockholders on their side incase EA decides to swallow them whole.

Ubisoft's response:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/12/29/news_6115594.html

Article about government backing:
http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/041230/323/f9e6u.html

Both links taken from www.hardocp.com

[Rabbitrunner51]

Goes to show...

I have said all along just how much thew gaming industry is a tough business...,and of course us..being nothing more than gamers who want a quality product...,we may not be able to objectively see the whole picture...

After read some of the gamespot article,I get the distinct impression the founder and CEO of Ubisoft is neither pro nor against this.. its just business.

For the gamers who love or buy Ubisofts games... it may signal a cause for concern..as naturally when any Big time company like a EA games takes them over or has a heavy hand ( hence market shares), the product might be compromised in some way or basicly.EA putting their satamp or two cents worth in... what and where or how is anybody's guess.

On a personal note I am torn here as I have a pretty good business mind and can understand the basic real world dealings in most of its extent...but on the other i am like some of you have allegances to some fine products, and an old friend that seems like it is being put out to pasture.

One Company that seemingly shows its hand a bit in wanting to survive and may be in some trouble is the company Codemasters... I get emails from them all the time asking for game ideas ( more of a general populace survery),and also what they liked or did not like or even how they can make their product better. This is commendable.
Of course, you never ever see this kind of thing from a giant such as EA Games or EA Sports..now do you?

To me the real tangible things that would be missing if and when acompany is taken over are inhernt changes in structure ( or infrastructure ) and the good ole feeling you get with each company,as each has their own special stamp or signature that makes them ungiue. This is sad...but areal true real life state of affair and way of the current business world.

One reason Ea games is so big and popular is the vast array of games and differnt style games they put out and in that ,it is very hard to compete in a very compeititive field.;)