Two gamers have filed a lawsuit against Electronic Arts, alleging that the publisher's exclusivity agreements with the NFL, NCAA and Arena Football have led to anti-competitive practices. The focus of the suit, according to Gamespot, stems from EA's actions after sales of Take-Two's NFL 2K5 pushed the publisher to drop Madden 2005 from $50 to $30. Instead of competing with Take-Two, according to the suit, EA entered into multiple exclusivity agreements and was able to raise the price of Madden 2006 back to $50.
Additionally, the suit notes that should the EA-Take-Two acquisition come to fruition, it would "remove one of the few companies with the ability and expertise to compete in the market for interactive football software." The plaintiffs seek restitution for all those who purchased an EA football game after August 2005, "disgorgement of all profits made as a result of anticompetitive actions, and that the infringing agreements be declared null and void."













(Page 1) Reader Comments
This is one time when Sue happy = good!
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Honestly, take this quote for example: "the suit notes that should the EA-Take-Two acquisition come to fruition, it would "remove one of the few companies with the ability and expertise to compete in the market for interactive football software.""
Get real. So Take-Two and EA are the only two companies capable of making football games?
I've been waiting for this lawsuit for ages.
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*Proceeds to buy out EA, ruin life, wish that he had listened to "The Artist"*
give them a taste of their own medicine and they may stop... well, probably not since this won't work anyway
"Personal foul, lawsuit with no chance in hell of winning, he was givin' him the business down there, first down."
In all seriousness, I would LOVE for this to work but I suspect EA will give the original members of the class a bag of money and tell them to go away.
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Sorry guys but lawsuits aren't subject to the same trivial fanaticism that fanboys are, they're subject to the law and this sounds like a compelling case.
EA did in fact conspire with the NFL to fix their price for the Madden series in the wake of massive competitive sales by the 2K Series. This is a noble lawsuit and I hope EA can't buy their way out of it.
As much as I love the NFL and hate EA, this exclusive license stuff is the NFL's fault, not EA's. It was the NFL who had the idea, and put their exclusive license up for bid (much like Sunday Ticket on Directv), all EA did was bid on it just like everyone else, their bid was just higher.
Rest assured, if EA didn't have the exclusive license, someone else would.
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That's not what happened here. The NFL offered an exclusivity agreement for competitive bidding, and EA won the bid.
Complaining about the state of pro sports franchises under EA may be emotionally satisfying, but there is not legal basis for this suit. It is completely retarded.
The NFL is protected by anti-trust laws. They cannot, legally, be sued for this.
So these two gamers have chosen to go after EA instead.
No doubt the quality has gone downhill. I bought every Madden game from '95 through '05 and wasn't able to keep '06 through '08 for more than a week before selling them, but that's not really the point here.
They were essentially forced into the agreement. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they loved the idea, but their choices were either get the exclusive license or have no license at all and let someone else have the exclusive license. They did not go actively seeking it, they just submitted the highest bid that was requested by the NFL.
So what is these guy's case going to be? Even though the NFL were the ones that put the license up for bid we feel that these game's subjective quality has gone downhill in our opinion since securing the license that they were asked to bid on?
Yeah, that'll fly in court....
The NFL is protected by anti-trust laws. They cannot, legally, be sued for this.
So these two gamers have chosen to go after EA instead."
Good point about NFL anti-trust laws.
All that should mean though is that they have no case at all, not that they have a case against someone else.
The real crime here though is that while EA deserves a lot of the hate they get, they get a TON of hate they don't deserve by people that just assume that EA went to the NFL and said "oh hey NFL 2k5 was a good game so we want to buy the exclusive NFL license and put them out of business" (this is even referenced in the article) when that's not actually how it went down at all.
People can hate them for getting complacent with the series, and people can hate them for trying to take over Take Two now, but they get a lot of hate for this exclusive license which was actually not their fault while people act like the NFL is another victim in this when they're the true aggressor.
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No, MLB The Show 08 is the best baseball game ever. Seriously, if you haven't played it you need to. It plays similar to MVP but without all the glitches and bad announcing. This game is easily better than that crap MLB2K. I don't why everyone wants to hate on Madden when 2K has done the worst job with license. And even in 05, Madden was still better than 2K, but not by much.
Best Baseball game = Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball (the original, not winning run) for the SNES.
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schwing
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Competition = Good for Everyone
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A large chunk of EA's business is licensed sports gaming, so I don't blame them for going out and getting what is made available by the companies owning the licenses.
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You're wrong. They're fighting for a company who has done the same exact thing as EA but for baseball. 2K bought the exclusive rights to MLB, but any first party company (Sony) can make a baseball game. And lucky they did because MLB2K sucks big time. Madden has done a much better job with the exclusive license than the stuff 2K puts out every year with MLB sticker on it.
That said, no NFL icense definitely hurt bigtime. They took a shot at the made-up teams thing with retired players and it didn't work.
Ironically, a while back it was EA faced with this problem when Madden 64 released without the NFL license. They chose to go the route of "copy the NFL without actually using the license" by creating teams like the Foxboro Patriots and South Florida Dolphins and they did OK. Not great, but OK.
This is the route take two should go. With as stale as Madden has gotten I think a lot of people would overlook minor differences like "Miami" vs. "South Florida" if the game was far better, but they are less likely to overlook "Miami Dolphins" vs. "totally made-up team with no NFL equivalent".
it's nice to root for the "little guy" I suppose, but 2k puts out the only MLB game for 360 owners, and even by the most gracious reviews, the games are mediocre.
My point was that the leagues as license holders decided to go exclusive with EA. I'm sure both the NBA and MLB were courted by EA, but they chose to go different routes than what the NFL, NASCAR, and FIFA did. That's their right as license holders to their own unique property.
If you hate having to choose between an EA NFL game or a 2k generic game, then complain to the NFL. Suing EA is a waste of everyone's time, as there's nothing illegal with buying an exclusive license provided by another company.
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