Wednesday, December 18, 2013

BF4's broken and EA's shareholders want blood

If this isn't poetic justice I don't know what is...

It seems EA has finally ticked off someone other than their customers.  In a filing Tuesday (Dec 17, 2013) A class action suit was brought against EA by shareholders of the company who purchased its stock between July 24th and December 4th of this year.

The suit is being brought because....

"The complaint charges Electronic Arts and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. ...

...The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, defendants issued materially false and misleading statements highlighting the purported strength of the Company’s rollout of version 4 of its all-important Battlefield video game series..."

In other words the plaintiffs believe that EA knew they had huge problems with Battlefield 4 but covered it up to boost their stock price.  Worse, when EA had to redirect all its resources to fixing their flagship game it caused other releases to be delayed which hurt sales.  The plaintiffs contend that all of this ultimately caused as  much as a 28% devaluation of their stock. 

It's unlikely the suit will get far unless there's concrete proof of a deception and not just inept management.  We're talking about shares of stock here after all  which are volatile instruments to begin with.

This also does nothing for the millions of EA customers who've suffered through the past 2 months with an overpriced and flawed purchase. 

I can't say I'm surprised that someone wanted to sue EA over BF4, what I am surprised by is that it was their shareholders and not their customers.
If I've said it once I've said it 1000 times.  Never buy anything based on hype.  That includes games, movies and especially securities. 

If you're a shareholder you need to visit the following site by February 15th, 2014 to join the class action.



Good luck!

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