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Did Daniel Ericson ever respond anywhere about lying about subs were not dropping?
Dahkot72
Member Posts: 261
Curious , as I know I saw on the official forums screaming about it , but no response there from any Bioware rep.
Has DE ever responded about EA saying they had lost approx 500k subs (min and with 30 free day padding that) , when approx a week earlier DE said that their subs were the same just playtime hours had dropped some.
He just get a 100% pass on that ?
Comments
didnt the game top 2 million in sales? They lost way more than 500k people...there is no way the game has 1.3 mil playing it.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
What kind of question is this?
How stupid to you think they are?
Oh, wait...I retract my 1st and 2nd question.
Not disputing you on that ,just was giving them the extreme benefit of the doubt on figures. So they definitely lost between 500k-1 million (and who knows after all the free 30 day subs are gone ), so wasnt dwelling on exact figures of losses ,just that it was obviously enough for EA to not be able to avoid releasing that figure in legal terms for the investors,
I'm just curious how DE isn't held to same standards as an EA employee/dev etc , i.e. how is it he can blatantly lie about subs and then get a complete pass on it ? Both in a PR/customer standpoint , and an investor/legal one.
The most damning thing is that they say they sold 2.4 million copies and now they say they have 1.3 million subs. That means that so far, 1.1 million people thought it sucked enough that they don't want to play it anymore. Total failure.
Didnt mean to come off as disputing your 500k number, was just pointing out that it should be much higher and thus make their lieing about it even worse.
The reason he can get away with saying what he wants is the same for everyone else running an MMO. The object is to keep as many current players in the dark to how bad things are and make potential new customers locked into the games hype to increase their chance of buying the game...who really wants to buy an MMO that is in a major downslide?
Few companies will ever admit things are either not going good, or are not as good as it could be.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
It brings up an interesting question , I wonder if the dev's are classified legally different from what the EA corp officers are as far as reporting goes.
Basically can the devs play the "everything is fine , we are 100 steady on subs" line for example with no investor/SEC problems while the EA corp officers responsible for releasing actual financials can spin it slightly but still have to stick closer to the truth about losing subs etc.
That's the legal question , completely different from just PR wise has he and every other Bioware rep just completely ducked an explanation of the two different statements.
What I don't understand is aren't they independently audited on those quarterly reports? Can the auditors not see the obvious and investors for that matter?
I honestly don't understand how EA is not being called out on anything. The gamers are screaming fraud but the ones that matter are not. Too many loopholes exploitable by carefully placed words and figures or what?
"These are the subs you are looking for"....
Say . . . why would a huge corporation that bankrolls legislators in Congress (which oversees the enforcement of SEC violations) via lobbying not face harsh scrutiny from the SEC for blatantly misrepresenting the health of their star product as well as the entirety of the company?
Next thing we know, you'll try to suggest that the banks and regulators had something to do with the foreclosure crisis in the United States!
Re: SWTOR
"Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"
Only company heads are responsible for telling investors what is what unless the person is speaking directly to investors about company monitary issues.
It would be like...say...someone working inside an Office Depot telling a customer that sales are up across the board...he cant be held responsible if sales are down, he is just an employe talking. In companies that deal with the media, anyone can say anything as long as they are not in a position on the board or stating they have "inside" information and are giving it out.
This is why companies have investor calls, so they can give "offical" information, everything else is deniable as it isnt from an offical source, the companies books.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
They are audited on quarterly reports but quarterly reports do not contains numbers of box sales and subscribers. They only contain generic revenue streams which are so massaged and tweaked and manipulated that they could be anything.
Why do you care? And why spend half your life on a game's forums reporting every little thing you find odd when you don't even play the game?
Seems kind of a waste of time to me. I unsubscribed from TOR in March, and haven't thought about it since. I also haven't once felt the need to check out their forums and report back to mmorpg.com about the goings-on there.
And yet here you are.
He probably gets a pass because he was told to lie. Could be Biowares egos won't let them see the numbers are not really there, who knows.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
nevermind
I was going to say something but Ill just let it go, meh...
I just dont get what you guys are trying to pull when you say "its dropping alot of subs, or a lot of people have since stopped playing which makes it a bad game", there are tons of fun cool mmos releasing, are we suppose to play the same game when there is brand new stuff out? Im not really understanding the logic behind this, besides who wants to tell someone they need to play the same game hours over for months, Im not...I really am against this way of thinking when it comes to mmos, I dont think it represents very well how the game is doing at all.
Yes. The game is supposed to last because you have monthly subscription.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
yah I think this game would have been better if there was little marketing done, and grew cause it was worth something, like eve did. This shit was a mess.
If the game was marketed for the kid crowd, something like lego star wars, and expanded out to something more instead of trying to cater to everyone and there dog. This crap just makes mmos look bad and prevent other prospects from buying other new mmos.
It should only last as long as you are enjoying it. It's the companies problem if you don't enjoy it long enough to pay consecutively. It would be a different story if the only option was 3month or 6month + subs and the content would only last 1 month.
id say community makes mmos look bad more then marketing or whatever you were saying.and the community of swtor is doing a great job in making themselves look bad in my opinion
Couldn't help myself..... 113 posts in 10 months vs. 316 posts in 1 month
Dahkot72
Hard Core Member
Joined: 7/16/11
Posts: 113
RebelScum99
Advanced Member
Joined: 4/26/12
Posts: 316
You are an example of what has been coined at "casual". Nothing wrong with that, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Some of the skeptics are playing off where EA boasted (somewhere) that TOR will have a 10 year run. Those guys are just vultures and throw kittens off bridges.
Others like myself want a game we can call home. We want to feel like our character is an extension of ourselves and forever evolving. We can't do that if we're game hopping. We can't do that when games offer no dept. Some of us are only game hopping because we are looking for a home.
In TOR's case, they promised us everything with the most famous IP in the world. Things like 200 hours of unique voice acting per profession, vast living worlds, Star Wars immersion, continuous monthly content updates, and so on. What we got was the most bug ridden, featureless, anti-social, stagnated worlds, linear play, hand holding, cookie cutter, (**breath**), over hyped, nonimmersive, noncomplex, repetitive, predictable, shallow ....and expensive game ever devised. We are pissed to put it simply. We feel extorted and betrayed.
If the game itself is not insult enough, we have to witness continuous blatant executive lies and we are calling them out on it.
One theory I have is there are many things people will put up with and many things they will not. One of those nots is fucking up a pop culture like Star Wars.
Well I must be a complete anomaly then.
As for the OP. One way or another this game is going to bite BEAware at some point. Either when the investors find out about how fmany people have already quit, or simply when they run out of revenue to sustain some of the ongoing marketing, and overhead costs.
I sort of agree with the "who cares" sentiment, but it has that train wreck/car crash pull that makes it hard not to look.
I heard they confirmed at 1.2 mil subs down from 1.7
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
Technically he probably wasnt lying since they keep bending meaning of "sub" to suit them what theay want to spin at any given moment.
If you are refering to 1,7m - no, it wasnt subs, just as 1,3m are not subs, well at least not "paying customer that is subscribed to the game beyond first month"
As you may guess, he might be actually referring to normal definition of "sub" when he said that, meaning that actual unknown number of sub paying customers has not dropped, but we never actually got any numbers on real subs.