EA Class Action Suit Is Absurd

Electronic Arts Inc.

isn't having a good year. Between the battles with Activision

, the lackluster sales of Rock Band 3, and the numerous product delays, the famed Madden maker is struggling to retain its place in game publishing. Now EA is faced with yet another battle: angry gamers who

for the company's leading sports games. Never mind that those games – which include titles bearing the NFL, NCAA, and Arena Football League licenses – retailed for no more than $60, the average price of new games. Let's forget that these licenses (which are currently exclusive to EA) are merely a marketing tool designed to make the games more appealing to consumers. Other publishers and developers are free to develop as many non-NFL branded football games as they like. We should ignore the reality that the NFL license never been a guarantee of quality. Consumers may perceive it as such, but no promise has ever been made. However, “Madden NFL” sounds a lot better than “Generic Football Game,” so here we are. Let's disregard the fact that it was the consumer – the very game-buying public seeking damages – that gave the Madden NFL name (and the NFL license in general) the power that it wields within the game industry. Thus, NFL-branded games tend to sell a lot better than generic football games like Blitz: The League. If consumers were more accepting of generic football games, developers wouldn't be so afraid to make them. Finally, we must overlook the quality of the many different NFL-branded games that were released before EA took control of the license. NFL GameDay and NFL Xtreme (from Sony

), NFL Fever (from Microsoft

), and NFL Quarterback Club (from the ill-fated Acclaim) struggled to compete with Madden. This had nothing to do with the license, which they all possessed. Gamers merely chose to stick with EA because they enjoyed playing Madden more than the other offerings. NFL 2K (from Take-Two

) has been the only series that could compete with Madden, and if you look at the review scores on

, you'll understand why. When 2K Sports lost the NFL license, the Take-Two-owned studio tried to make a non-NFL branded football game. It wasn't much fun, and it didn't sell very well. But let's forget

of this! Or maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should pay close attention to the lawsuit's most astonishing claim: that the NFL license may have allowed EA to inflate game prices by as much as 70%. If that's true, then we should be paying less than $20 for new games from every publisher. But we don't. We pay $60. That price only rises when you include the “special edition” versions of new games, which include bonus materials (art books, making-of DVDs, etc.) and can retail for as much as $150. But if EA is guilty of price-gouging in that regard, most other game publishers are as well. Even so, no one forced consumers to buy new Madden games. No one forced them to make it the premiere football series, which provided EA with the funds necessary to secure an exclusive deal with the NFL. Though some players might be giddy at the thought of receiving a refund for a game they did not enjoy, this lawsuit should not be allowed to remedy consumers' lousy purchasing decisions. We've all dropped money for games, movies, music, and countless other entertainment items that we wish we could take back. But most of us have the sense to realize that it was our own mistake, and that we must become smarter consumers going forward. Very few of us use it as an excuse to sue.