After one of the shakiest starts a AAA product has ever seen, Battlefield 4 has forced publisher EA to face a class-action lawsuit. US law firm Robbins Geller filed it on behalf of the many stockholders affected by the broken game and falling EA share prices.
The report on Business Ware indicates that EA "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, which had provided approximately 11 percent of its revenues in fiscal 2012.”
The following “advertised facts” weren’t delivered on, according to the lawsuit.
"(a) Battlefield 4 was riddled with bugs and multiple other problems, including downloadable content that allowed players access to more levels of the game, a myriad of connectivity issues, server limitations, lost data and repeated sudden crashes, among other things;
"(b) as a result, Electronic Arts would not achieve a successful holiday season 2013 rollout of Battlefield 4;
"(c) the performance of the Electronic Arts unit publishing Battlefield 4 was so deficient that all other projects that unit was involved in had to be put on hold to permit it to focus its efforts on fixing Battlefield 4; and
"(d) as a result, Electronic Arts was not on track to achieve the financial results it had told the market it was on track to achieve during the Class Period."
Things just aren’t looking good for EA and DICE. Does the game deserve this type of treatment? Probably not, but it’s likely that a portion of the player base will feel that this is some sort of justice after spending $60 to beta test a game.