UPDATED: EA May Have Fired Plants Vs Zombies Creator For Objecting to Pay-to-Win Model

Lordy be, I was hoping we could get away from more EA news, but when something this juicy falls into your lap you just cant turn it away. So lets go ahead and talk about the time when Plants vs Zombies creator George Fan was allegedly fired for protesting adding pay-to-win elements into his game.

I underscore allegedly because not only is this an unverified claim, its an unverified claim coming from a second-hand source, in this case, The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy creator Edmund McMillen, who is a friend of the aforementioned developer. He brought it up during Alex Larrabee's Roundtable Podcast, where he was a guest host. Ive linked the video below. What we're discussing begins at around 41 minutes.



As you might know, Popcap was created in 2009 by George Fan and a small group of friends, and at the time, it was far from the casual game behemoth it would later become: it was more like a standard indie developer. That changed in 2011, where their success prompted EA to buy the company and propose a sequel to their bestselling game, Plants vs. Zombies 2: Its About Time. But thats where the facts end and the allegations begin: because McMillen claims that when EA proposed the pay-to-win model for the game, George Fan pushed back.

Which then lead to him getting fired by EA, an event we know happened back in August of 2012. At the time, though, they didnt call it firing: they just so happened to be laying off 50 other employees for budget purposes, and George Fan was among them. Popcap claimed, at the time, that EA had nothing to do with the decision, but people were still curious why the genius who put Popcap on the map was among those let go.

It was a confusing move. But in this context it makes more sense.

We dont know for sure if its true. IGN, who broke the story, reports that George Fan will address these rumors tomorrow. But in the meantime, were left to wonder just how deep this EA rabbit hole goes

UPDATE: The Rabbit Hole doesn't actually go that far.

In his publicly released statement, George Fan confirmed that he was laid off from EA, and he did oppose adding microtransactions to Plants vs Zombies 2. And while he didn't elaborate further, two former PopCap employees, speaking with Kotaku, added some more context to the story by sharing something that McMillen had neglected to mention: at the time, George Fan wasn't even working on Plants vs Zombies 2. He was working on other projects in a studio that was destined to be shut down, and what's more, he didn't seem to be very happy working under EA anyway. So it seems like the old story was actually closer to the truth: he may have just been let go because he was unhappy and they were making cuts.

George Fan himself hasn't elaborated on the truth himself, and he probably won't in future. But still, good to see that EA isn't in full-blown supervillain mode.