A Hole in the Wallet

In a surprising karmic upset, EA won the dubious honor of "Worst Company In America" from a former Mark's favorite links site The Consumerist. Americans must be suffering from outrage fatigue in other sectors of the economy: I guess we are already inured to Ticketmaster's "Convenience Fees" and AT&T charging $20 a month for the luxury of sending 37 byte texts across their immaculate SMM network.

Digital Rights Management has always been a way of life for PC gaming but the rise of $10 "online passes" and on-disc "downloadable content" in the name of combating piracy and used game sales is a new phenomenon for console gaming. The disillusionment of the gamerati must have reached a fever pitch right before the Consumerist vote when a "press leak" revealed that next generation consoles will lock out used game sales by locking content to a single account. I can only assume this was a strategic release of information to gauge customer dissatisfaction. EA, the corporate juggernaut whose own terrible DRM network Origin was recently heckled at a games expo, bore the brunt of this when it looked like its anti-consumer nickel-and-diming was going to be institutionalized by Sony and Microsoft. [Don't even get me started on what EA is doing in the iOS ecosystem.]

Or maybe I am just reading a little too deeply into the tea leaves. Maybe nerds are just upset that EA botched the ending to their precious Mass Effect franchise.