Disgruntled Electronic Arts Artist Spills Behind Scenes Dirt on Warhammer Online and Star Wars The Old Republic

Don’t expect a lot of exposition here.  Bottom line: an artist over at Electronic Arts who apparently caught wind that they were being “downsized” went onto the blogs at IGN to let loose on his soon-to-be ex-employer.

I happened upon a thread over at the VN boards for Warhammer Online and happened to see a post titled “Why Warhammer Failed”.  I clicked on it, thinking I was going to be walking into a random trollbait article about how the endgame raiding for Warhammer didn’t exist or content past level 25 at launch; common complaints for the game.  However, I quickly realized within a few quick paragraphs that this wasn’t your average troll posting; this blog “names names” and digs into several high ranking individuals across Electronic Arts, Bioware, and Mythic, blaming these individuals for the failure of Warhammer Online, as well as torpedoing EA’s future game changer, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Hi everyone,

I would think myself to be part of some noble cause, like the original EA Spouse trying to save her husband from a hellish work environment at EA. That had a happy ending, however, with tons of publicity and a total change of overtime wages and salaries and how they are handled within the company. I do not expect a happy ending, so I’ll be personal and selfish, and this is just for me.

So just call me EA Louse.

I found out recently that I will be dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA coming this November. I’m sick of seeing EA outsource their art and find every excuse to get rid of us and still not achieve anything. Mythic is dying, and its not us who killed him but we’re taking the fall.

But if you want to know what really went down with Warhammer, I’ll tell you right now.

First, the project leaders did not know what they were doing. Jeff Hickman was the saddest excuse for a producer I’ve seen. All he did was drink the Koolaid and suck up to the right people. He was the perfect yes-man, and this reached down to almost all managers.

My boss who will not be named, again and again would tell us that Rob Denton, one of the original owners, said we should “do this” and “do that” and we would say “omg it makes NO sense, please explain A, B, and C to him. “And then he’d come back and tell us, after we thought he had gone to talk with him,” No, Rob wants in this way. Jeff agrees, this is what we’re going to do. Understood? ” They never actually talked back to Rob. We didn’t talk back to them.

Rob said jump, our leaders said, “How high?! And on who?”

So we shut up and did what we were told, by people too afraid to tackle real problems. It is a culture of fear, especially since Mark Jacobs was fired.

Oh, he left voluntarily you say? No, he was fired, and everything placed on his shoulders by those closest to him so they could divide his salary and annual bonus. I bet Rob is enjoying that sweet new Maserati he bought after leaving the knife in his partner of 15 years.

Want to know more? Keep reading. I can keep ranting.

The rant continues on the next page!