You can only pick one to survive. Who do you choose? EA, Act/Bliz, Ubisoft (Poll added)

Which of the 3 publishers are you going to save ?

  • EA

    Votes: 7 63.6%
  • Ubisoft

    Votes: 4 36.4%
  • Activision Blizzard

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    11
  • Poll closed .
Meteors are headed straight for Electronic Arts, Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft, but due to the ongoing materials and logistics crisis, NASA can only send one rocket up. Naturally, you were selected to head the mission, so it's your call. Who do you save, space cowboy?

You can use whatever logic you want, consider anything you choose to consider. For me I'm just going to play it simple and look at the games. Right away I can get rid of Activision/Blizzard because the only games of theirs that I ever played were a couple of CoD games long ago. Moving on, with Bioware being crap these days, my first thought was to get rid of EA. But then I considered the direction each company is probably headed. Every step Ubisoft is making these days is a disaster. They are even making the next Assassin's Creed a live service game. And, of course, they are all in on NFT's. But on top of those things, they just make a lot of bad to average games packed full of filler. The Division 2 was a slog, and I don't even know what they were thinking when they made Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

As far as EA goes, I can get a little use out of Madden and Fifa on occasion and Titanfall 2 was my favorite shooter campaign ever (but now they are just going to work on Apex Legends forever probably). Battlefield 2's campaign was great as well (so they didn't bother to include a campaign at all in the last one). But the real question is Bioware. With a thriving and successful Bioware, that changes everything for me. If you told me that Bioware was back to form and new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games were on the way, then I wouldn't hesitate to save EA.

So for me, it's a risk/reward deal. I could make the safe choice and enjoy some mostly average Far Cry and Assassin's Creed games, or I could take a chance on Bioware coming back from the dead. That seems a bit unlikely, but you never know. Perhaps EA's management finally learned the lesson Microsoft learned on managing your various studios, that you just let them do what they do best instead of trying to get them to conform to what you were doing before.

In the end, I'm going to take the chance. I want great games, not okay ones. I'll save EA.
 
Haha. Wow. EA would be the first to go, in my opinion. I'd probably save Ubisoft. I'm just glad Bethesda and Nintendo are safe, and I can still have TES VI and BotW 2 when I'm in between Bingo games in the nursing home someday!

Well, I definitely wouldn't save Bethesda unless they promised to add more staff and create a whole new team or two. I'm not saving anyone who only puts out a major game every 7 years.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
Oh ouch! Both ActiVision and Electronic Arts are seriously historic companies. Now at least one is doomed! I expect a very in-depth article from PC Gamer on this.

I haven't played an Activision game in eons. The only Blizzard game I even got through was Diablo, and I didn't enjoy it all that much. The sky is falling on them for sure.

Ubisoft does still make good games. I enjoyed Watch Dogs 2 and 3. EA is starting to show good signs again, so they've got potential. However, there's another important factor: geology. Activision is near Los Angeles. EA is up near San Francisco. Dropping a big rock on either isn't going to be a safe thing. Hitting both? Sorry Ubisoft. I don't want to risk triggering The Big One to save you.
 
Well, I definitely wouldn't save Bethesda unless they promised to add more staff and create a whole new team or two. I'm not saving anyone who only puts out a major game every 7 years.
Man, if I didn't want TES VI more than anything in the world, I'd agree with you. I was hoping Microsoft would get them in line when they bought them out, but it doesn't seem like that's happening.

Oh ouch! Both ActiVision and Electronic Arts are seriously historic companies. Now at least one is doomed! I expect a very in-depth article from PC Gamer on this.
I used to love EA games back in the Commodore 64 days. I think around the mid 90s is when they started going way downhill. After that, I don't care a lot for them. I'm not really into Madden, FIFA, or Call of Duty games, so I chose Ubisoft. I've always liked their games the most. For me, Bethesda, Ubisoft, and Square Enix are my favorites.
 
Well one is easy—Activision stopped Blizzard remastering the old RTSs, so they're gone.

Two is easy too. EA put out very little of interest. They killed C&C, and unless they're continuing with remastering the series, they've got almost nothing for me.

Ubisoft clear winner. Not just the superb main games, but also plenty of others I probably will play sometime.

Sorry Ubisoft. I don't want to risk triggering The Big One to save you
Uh, bad news man. ESA are standing by in case NASA make the wrong decision.

Who do you save
Did you consider adding a poll? Seems tailor-made…
 
Poll added :)

Its a great question and I thought I knew the answer straight away. Then I remembered they announced a new Settlers, so better take a closer look. All three places no doubt have issues with their company cultures, but at the same time its impossible to judge if any is better than the other from the outside. Better to focus on games released and upcoming.

Settlers aside no surprise I'm not going to save Ubisoft anyway. I can always play Settlers 2 rather than wait and see how theyre going to add NFTs into the mining mechanics somehow in new Settlers. Mario Vs Rabbids was fun, but Nintendo arent going to pull that from sale and I can deal with not having another one. Other companies make way better open world games.

Activision Blizzard. I loved Warcraft 2/3 and Starcraft when they came out but I'll always have those memories. Never got into WOW. Haven't played a COD game since MW2 and not felt the urge to. Destiny might have interested me once but not much. They did publish Sekiro which is maybe an all timer for me, but From will exist independently and I own it through Steam so pretty sure I'll still have access.

However EA have Respawn. Titanfall 2 and Jedi Fallen Order were both very good. Dead Space is another of my old favourites, even if they killed Visceral they own the IP and more is coming. While I don't rate Dragon Age and Mass Effect as highly as a lot of people, I've still enjoyed the series and spent a fair few hours there. Bioware might be struggling but it will be at least interesting to see if they can pull things back.

EA have by far the best games. Even if they have had a tendency to kill things they touch in the past.
 
"Oh no, I lost the keys to the rocket, how sad."

I wouldn't mind all three companies to disappear, at least if we're ignoring the collateral damage of a meteor impact. I don't think any one of them made a game that wouldn't have been better without the influence of stock holders and top level managers who only care about how much money they can squeeze from the game.
 
I would not save any of them.

One of them sent me back a cracked game disc with a note saying it was not faulty but if i sent £££ they would replace it anyway.

One of them wont let me use about 5 games on my latest pc because id code/email/account name is already in use BY ME ! if i find the 5 year old receipt and email them they will issue me replacement codes.

One of them is well know for buying up smaller companies who are making similar games to theirs and they then say your product now belongs to us ... and at that point they mothball what would have been a rival game.
 
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If I had to choose, Electronic Arts, quite simply by the virtue that they don't harrass/assault or threaten to kill their employees, which is even more gross when companies think themselves as "families." There is however the obvious and shameful caveat of 'that we know of.'

The extremist stances taken against that publisher only make me more defensive of them in the name of nuanced discussion. I agree with spokesperson John Rosenburg regarding them being the worst company in America, quote, "We're sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco and weapons companies are all relieved they weren't on the list this year. " And while it might just be a silly little 'award,' it sure was taken seriously by people who take themselves more seriously than they should, that their reputation grew into what is essentially "EA bad." I've had to quit one forum because I can't get any meaningful discussion, I hope I never have to do so again.

I hate their acquisition model, the encouragement of crunch culture (see the EA Spouse expose), and some choices that ultimately make their games worse. But their overwhelmingly negative reception is not helped by false accusations and misreadings of articles (implying people even read them and don't go straight to the comments for their news) thrown at them.

Anything that's going on at EA is going on elsewhere, and more. They introduce a lot of bad ideas, but there's always someonewho picks it up and runs with it. No game makes up for the things Ubisoft and Activision-Blizzard have done and refuse to attone for, even if I prefer more of their games than I do EA's.
 
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none of the above.

you didn't give me that choice so i made it up.
When was their last great games? 5 years ago? they all living off what they once were, not what they are now. Wearing their old game franchise as skin suits. remaking games worse than they were before. But with all new NFT, DLC and You bet the stores work on day one.

Need them to die so indies might rise and not be eaten by any of these vultures.
 
There is a reason that Consumerist gave EA the Golden Poo Award more than once as the worst company in America. I really can't believe EA is winning this poll!

That was 10 years ago. I'm a simple man, I just want to play the vidya games I like more. EA has had more that I like or want to play nowadays than the other guys.

Anyway UBIsoft is French they'd have won it if they were eligible :p
 
It is quite sad to say* this given that I started playing WoW in Burning Crusade and it is one of my favorite games of all time. So it is sort of a special game even though I haven't played in a fair amount of time. Nonetheless, Activision-Blizzard is a very clear last place here for me. Really very little of redeeming value coming out of Act-Blizz at this point.

Immediately ruling one out leaves us with a reasonable difficult choice and I could see compelling arguments for Ubisoft or EA. For me, Ubisoft is a frustrating company because I think they have a ton of great fundamentals and they are frustratingly close to having great games. I think with some choice tweaks and fat trimming that Assassin's Creed games could genuinely be 9/10 or 10/10 experiences. Still, I think in their current state I don't love what Ubisoft is doing even though I believe the negativity surrounding their games is overstated (I think it is hard to argue against the fact that they make rather competent video games).

Overall, I think I would choose EA because they have a fair amount of diversity and they have more interesting IP imo. For example, they published one of my favorite games last year, It Takes Two, from Hazelight. I think there are just more interesting things going on under EAs umbrella relative to Ubisoft.
 
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All of them are surviving based on previous games reputations. Or the achievements of people that are no longer around. Or at the companies. Many were replaced by people who say the right things but can't make good games.

Its okay to say you liked their old games as that is how they keep getting people to look at their new ones.

this was a comment on the latest Madden 2022 which was just a reskinned Madden 2021:
Imagine you're a huge fan of chocolate. You've had one box of chocolates shipped to your house per year, for almost 20 years. In the past five years, you noticed they started sending you dog crap instead of chocolate, but you've kept eating it anyway because it still says "chocolate" on the box. And every year, you keep biting into the new dog crap, thinking "well maybe this time it'll actually be chocolate."

you can apply that to a ton of games, people buying them hoping they be as good as previous games but you have to realize eventually, the good games are in the past. All you have now is hope.

I did the same with bands, buy albums and hope they be as good as before but most bands never are.

Just play the old games, they can't take them off you unless they were online.
 
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All of them are surviving based on previous games reputations. Or the achievements of people that are no longer around. Or at the companies. Many were replaced by people who say the right things but can't make good games.

Its okay to say you liked their old games as that is how they keep getting people to look at their new ones.

this was a comment on the latest Madden 2022 which was just a reskinned Madden 2021:


you can apply that to a ton of games, people buying them hoping they be as good as previous games but you have to realize eventually, the good games are in the past. All you have now is hope.

I did the same with bands, buy albums and hope they be as good as before but most bands never are.

Just play the old games, they can't take them off you unless they were online.
Great analogy! Lol
 
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Christ, its like who do you hate least vote. Honestly let them all get wiped out like the dinosaurs. The companies are a shadow of their former selves, checkered with a dubious past and present . Sure they gave us good games but as other people have said, I'll remember their games, not the publisher themselves. Combined these AAA companies some of the biggest culprits to things that are wrong in the industry and the worst parts of it.

Its not like their beloved franchises are going anywhere. Someone will eventually sift through their ashes to take ownership of their ips. Their games will survive (only the companies are going) and the dedicated fanbase will preserve their legacy with their existence. survivors will rise and become the next big AAA monster and the circle of life is complete. Hell, 2K with their GTA Shark Card money will become that monster if we don't add it to the die list. assuming Bethesda, CD project red, steam et al get there first.

*takes a deep breath* but lets stop ranting and play the game. Who do i save? Who am i biased towards. I guess its ubisoft, as its the only publisher games i play frequently. Blizzard/Activision and EA games i don't play all. The latter with their yearly franchises can disappear.
 
EA hands down has to go. The are more likely to kill a studio and any other company
full
 
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