The Consumerist's Chris Morran has responded to Electronic Arts' COO Peter Moore's letter stating the company can "do better," calling it a wasted opportunity to speak to his audience respectfully and an attempt to shift blame for current issues surrounding EA onto consumers.
Last week Moore took to EA's official blog to discuss The Consumerist's poll, writing that EA is "committed to fixing [its] mistakes" and that consumer complaints were "100 percent legitimate" but went on to discuss others that he felt were unjustified, saying they "just don't hold water."
"We can do better," he wrote. "We will do better. But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them."
Morran said that EA's winning Worst Company of the Year last year was not, as Moore wrote, because of Mass Effect 3's ending and accusations of company support of SOPA. Rather it was EA's tendency to buy smaller developers, "milking — and arguably ruining" their IPs and its many exclusive deals on sports franchises that made them number one, said Morran. He also noted that microtransactions' placement at the center of EA's business model has also earned them marks, despite Moore writing that "tens of millions" of gamers play the company's free-to-play titles with these transactions in place.
"We'd counter that just because people are allowing you to nickel-and-dime them it doesn't mean you should be doing it," wrote Morran.
Current complaints against EA include the rocky launch and persisting issues with SimCity, as well as displeasure at the choice of cover athlete for the next Madden NFL game. Morran wrote that Moore's letter attempts to "shift blame" for this dissatisfaction onto consumers. Morran also wrote that inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered characters in some of EA's games have not resulted in an organized campaign by those opposing LGBT issues to push EA to the top, as Moore said.
"If there is such a campaign, the people involved in it have not reached out to us, nor have we seen evidence of this traffic to our pages," Morran wrote. "EA received hundreds of nominations from Consumerist readers this year, by far the most of any contender in the bracket, but not a single one mentioned anything about sexual orientation."
Morran concluded by saying Moore's letter could have been an opportunity for EA to "show the gaming community the respect it deserves," but instead asked its audience to "accept that its quite obvious faults are really just minor problems and that the actual source of trouble are faceless, homophobic hatemongers."