Classy Action: Lawsuit Alleges EA Misled Over BF4 Bugs

It seems you're not the only ones who don't love EA. Law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP are pursuing action against the company for claims that Electronic Arts withheld information about the state of Battlefield 4 in order to artificially increase their share price. Now that the game is out, buggy and struggling commercially, Electronic Arts' share price has dipped. That makes investors not so happy also lawyers quite happy.

As reported by Games Informer, 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, which had provided approximately 11% of its revenues in fiscal 2012."

They get more specific in their complaints, including that "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." Which makes it sound as if they're listing the mere presence of downloadable content as a problem in itself.

Currently the law firm are looking for a lead plaintiff, to represent the group who purchased stock between July 24, 2013 and December 4, 2013.

An EA representative has told Game Informer that the company "believe these claims are meritless" and that they "intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we’re confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course."

I have no idea whether the claims have merit or not, but players of Battlefield 4 are certainly having a tough time since the game's launch. As did John, when he tried to play it. DICE have reportedly dropped everything to focus on just fixing its many glitches and server issues. That's all a separate issue from whether EA misled shareholders however, as gratifying as it might be for disgruntled players to see lawyers take EA to task for Battlefield 4 being "riddled with bugs."

This might be the start of a larger spell of trouble for EA, as another class action lawsuit firm Holzer Holzer & Fistel was reported last week to be investigating a similar suit against the company. Although the whole thing looks a little like sharks have tasted a little blood in the water, and are circling in the interest of more meat, rather than any sense of correcting injustice.

Lawyers are either snipers or sharks, is what I'm saying. Sniper sharks.