EA Claims Linear Games Aren't Popular Anymore

Let’s just get this over with.

One of EA’s uniformly awful executives decided to open their mouths the other day and stupid came out. This time, it was EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen, who you might remember as the guy who said that Star Wars canon was the whole reason they decided to have a pay-to-win system in Star Wars Battlefront 2. Well, he was speaking at Credit Suisse 21st Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, when he decided that he should tackle the question of Visceral's closing.

And his explanation for why they shut the game down will surprise literally no one:

“Over the last five or six years, [Visceral Games] had shrunk in size. It was down to about 80 people, which is sub-scale in our business. And the game they were making was actually being supported by a team in Vancouver and a team in Montreal because of that sub-scale nature. And we were trying to build a game that really pushed gameplay to the next level, and as we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a style of gaming, a much more linear game, that people don’t like as much today as they did five years ago or 10 years ago.”

To his credit, he did say that wasn’t the ONLY reason Visceral was shut down: we already knew that it was a whole mess of issues that finally put them under. But still, that’s quite the claim. Also, a wrong one. People don’t dislike linear games: YOU dislike linear games because you can’t squeeze them for every penny they’re worth. Greedy trash bag.

We’re fast reaching the point where EA being awful can barely count as news, and reporting on it is like reporting on the sunrise every morning. But as long as they find new and awful things to say, I suppose we’ll find new and awful ways to insult them.