Gamers sue EA over [american] football exclusivity

[your_adress_here 11]

Gamers sue EA over football exclusivity Pair of Madden purchasers going to court over "blatantly anticompetitive conduct" by locking down NFL, NCAA, and Arena Football licenses.

By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpot

Posted Jun 11, 2008 12:35 pm PT

Electronic Arts already has antitrust issues on its plate, given that the company is currently seeking federal approval to acquire Take-Two Interactive. Last week that plate got a little more crowded when a pair of gamers in Washington, DC and California filed suit against the publisher in the US District Court of Northern California, alleging "blatantly anticompetitive conduct" in the way that it has cornered the football-gaming genre.

The class-action complaint focuses on Electronic Arts' actions since 2004, when Take-Two Interactive's NFL 2K5 was released at a $19.99 price point and sold more than 2.9 million copies in the US, according to NPD figures. Take-Two's previous football game, ESPN NFL Football, sold fewer than 450,000 copies in the US. Meanwhile, EA dropped the price of its Madden 2005 from $49.95 to $29.95 in response.

"This vigorous competition benefited consumers," according to the suit. "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."

With no Take-Two competitor the following year, the suit notes that Electronic Arts raised the price of Madden 2006 back to $49.95, an increase of nearly 70 percent. The suit also brings up Electronic Arts' attempted acquisition of Take-Two, saying that it "would remove one of the few companies with the ability and expertise to compete in the market for interactive football software" if EA somehow lost its exclusive deals.

The suit does not address Take-Two's bid to reenter the football market with former player licenses but no professional league attached. That game, All-Pro Football 2K8, sold a little more than 275,000 copies at US retailers, according to the NPD Group.

The plaintiffs are asking for 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.

A representatives with Electronic Arts said the publisher could not comment on pending legal matters. The plaintiffs had not responded to GameSpot's requests for comment as of press time.quote>

Well this will be interesting to see how it turns out. It's nice to see people taking a stand against EA.

Edit: Well, after lots of messing around, I can't seem to get the quote to work properly.

[Explodingsims 3]

I don't see the point of Sports Video Games...Remeber Kids, you can stay inside and pretend to play Football, instead of going ouside and acctually playing it!

But still, It is good to see this happening.

[tahill79 13]

i dont agree with this. no other games even compared to the EA footballs games so whats the point? their sales made others look stupid.

[packersfan 666]

yeah, but without the competition, EA gets complacent, raises prices, and stops making games for PC...look what's happened with SimCity...and luckily EA has competition on the front now with Monte Cristo...

[ilikehotdogsalot 311]

It's about time someone does something about this horrible monopoly EA is setting up.

Hopefully this will stop EA from taking Take-Two and ruining another set of games (GTA series), etc.

[tahill79 13]

hey but dosent Sega Sports own MLB? i know someone does. i think its them

[Wrightguy0 40]

EA in a nutshell: You pay your hard earned cash for our substandard product, you pay $50 for something worth $30 because we pulled a cheap shot on our competitors and bought licensing rights to make football games so we can make crap and you have no alternative to a POS game, not to mention we'll treat our employees like crap. So dear consumer, how can we (EA) loose?

They're still trying to buy Take Two!? Dude the Board of Directors said no, the Share Holders said no the CEO flat out said no and now they want the government to help them get their way? How many nos do they freakin' need.

The only scenario similar to this is:

A playground somewhere in the midwest, two boys are playing with dumptrucks one boy has a shiny new one, the other has a rusted hand-me-down.

and the one with the rusted pos fights the other kid for the new one.

to make a long story short EA is acting like a stupid spoiled kid, either that or like Hitler and Poland

[IDS2 3,429]

Oh, I get it. They're taking advantage of their lack of competition.

I'd think this would be enough competition, but I guess I'm wrong.

EA does tend to monopolize the market and then make cheaper games.

[The_Dalai_Llama 15]

Originally posted by: tahill79 hey but dosent Sega Sports own MLB? i know someone does. i think its themquote>

 

Take-Two has the exclusive deal with MLB.

I don't like the idea of exclusives when it comes to sports... competition is always healthy and Madden is in danger of becoming stale.  Oh well, doesn't affect me since I haven't bought a real sports game in about 6 years.

[Duke87 1,070]

On February 24th, 2008, at 9:04 PM, in this thread, I said:

I'm just wondering if EA is going to end up on the receiving end of an Antitrust lawsuit at some point in the future. Somehow it seems like only a matter of time to me.

and it looks like I was right. Now, let's hope I'm wrong about the second part:

Though, if Microsoft has taught us anything, they won't lose.