EA gets sacked by gamers

Certainly hasn't been a good period for EA lately - on top of those conflicts with the Federal Trade Commission, gamers stuck it to the man last week, telling Electronic Arts they have, essentially, a monopoly over football titles in the video game world.

As the story goes, a class-action complaint was filed against the company by two gamers in Washington, D.C. and California, citing "blatantly anticompetitive conduct" regarding its cornering of the genre. Wow. I guess they're also sticking it to anyone who says gamers are fat, lazy slobs; always good to see people taking action. My concern here though is whether or not two random gamers with a presumably limited supply of cash can stand up against the big tall ELECTRONIC ARTS.

The suit focuses on the company's titles since 2004, when Take-Two (TT) was more or less forced to release their NFL 2K5 title (a mighty fine series, too) at $19.99 to compete with Madden 2005 (2K5's predecessor sold 450,000 copies in the US). The game sold more than 2.9 million copies in the US that year, which would be quite a feat, if it wasn't $19.99. Madden dropped its $49.95 pricetag by 20 dollars in response and took the number 3 spot that year according to NDP Group, just above its rival. For Madden 2006, the price went right back up.

The suit reads as follows:

"This vigorous competition benefited consumers. Electronic Arts could have continued to compete by offering a lower price and/or a higher quality product. Instead, Electronic Arts quickly entered into a series of exclusive agreements with the only viable sports football associations in the United States: the National Football League, the Arena Football League, and NCAA Football."

It also brings up the attempted Take-Two acquisition, stating if it succeeded, it "would remove one of the few companies with the ability and expertise to compete in the market for interactive football software," that is, if EA somehow lost its exclusivity deals. It doesn't touch on TT's All-Pro Football 2K8, however, the company's shot at getting back into the football market without licenses attached; 2K8 sold even less than 2K5's predecessor, ESPN NFL Football, just 275,000 (maybe they didn't hear about it?).

The demands of the suit include "restitution and damages for those who purchased an Electronic Arts football game since August of 2005, disgorgement of all profits made as a result of anticompetitive actions, and that the infringing agreements be declared null and void."

I'm not really into the whole suing people thing, but if it means seeing EA go down (if only somewhat), I'm all for it. Someone seriously needs to deflate that balloon a bit - who better than gamers?