STAR WARS: Squadrons - Launch Failures & Crashing After Sale/Appeal for Change

@EA_Blueberry,

First, I want to say I am disappointed in the lack of reply to my message I sent you. I can see that you read it the very next day after it was sent on 4/25. I've posted its contents, in full (with some grammar corrections and privacy-related omissions denoted inside '[ ]' brackets) at the bottom of this message. I do have screenshots of the original message and read receipt to prove this or to provide the un-edited original. I had told you there was no reason to discuss this issue on the forums. Your lack of reply proved me entirely wrong in my assessment.

Second, it is abhorrent how advertised this game has been through new sales without the expected support a buyer would believe existed when they made their purchase. I even addressed this in my message to you in hopes that it would be passed along to other Community Managers and even the decision makers at EA to make them aware of the colossal issue that looms before you. I had hoped that the initiative taken with Battlefield: 2042 to revamp EA's stance on feedback from its consumers to be more community-oriented would have been company-wide. I find my trust sorely misplaced.

A plethora of new threads here, on the Steam Discussions forum for the game, and on the STAR WARS: Squadrons subreddit have been created to reinforce that something needs to be done. Customers do not expect nor want to buy a broken game, and when they do (because those things do sometimes happen), they expect somebody to care enough to fix it, especially with a problem as widespread as this one.

I can count at least three active games with huge problems because of slow support or complete lack-thereof:

STAR WARS: Squadrons
STAR WARS: Battlefront II
Battlefield: 2042

In each and every instance, those games have suffered immensely because of similar problems. It doesn't make the company look great. I don't really see any incentive for customers to keep trusting EA.

In a hilarious side-note, we just had somebody post a possible fix to "pinballing" (one of the bugs that a vocal portion of the community has complained about pretty much since launch) yesterday because they just casually opened the client code up in Frosty and literally just adjusted the "AfterburnerDriftBoostAccelerationForce" values for all of the starfighters:

Original Values:
X-Wing - 10,000
Y-Wing - 8,000
A-Wing - 13,000
U-Wing - 8,000
B-Wing - 2,000 (this is why the community can't pinball easily in the B-Wing. It's the lowest).
TIE Fighter - 10,000
TIE Bomber - 8,000
TIE Interceptor - 13,000
TIE Reaper - 8,000
TIE Defender - 13,000

It was one person, who wasn't trained by anyone at your company on your tools, who just poked around until they found the one value that needed to be changed.

Please change our minds about your company.

Addendum: It was always only a matter of time before something happened that would need somebody to fix it. These launch failures and crashing problems could have been prevented or at least readily serviced if a support team had been kept intact after May 6th, 2021.

• Hey Blueberry,

  
  I’m sending you this message because there’s no reason to call anything else out about how this game has been treated on the forums. It’s blatantly written everywhere in the unwritten replies to players who are still buying the game, hoping to enjoy a great flight sim experience, only to be ignored.

   

  I’m choosing to advocate for the community of Star Wars: Squadrons not only because I care about it, but because the community that does exist so strongly cares for this game. There have been numerous tournaments with cash prizes and attempts to turn this game into a thriving e-sport, because it’s likely the best e-sports title the sim community has seen in years, and it took that world by storm. Thousands of dollars in sponsorships, operating costs, and cash prizes have been spent to keep this community alive, and over the past year we’ve seen nothing but apparent abandonment from EA.

   

  People bought (and are still buying) this game fully knowing there was no live-service model, but they still expected a fully supported title. There’s a strong and clear difference between live-service and full support, and while a live-service model is dependent on full-support, you can have a fully-supported game without a live-service model.

  I’ve seen so many players leave due to the silence from Community Managers who we keep pointing out the still-very-much-a-problem-to-this-day bugs that were left untouched when EA moved Motive onto the Dead Space remake. It’s been so frustrating to see this community shrink with few words spoken by those who are supposed to be our advocates. It’s been impossible to get any Community Manager to even acknowledge that there’s a breakdown in communications.

   

  Now I’m taking our advocation into my own hands.
  
  We just want to see this game thrive again. We have pointed out, since launch, every single issue we could to try and make this game a success for EA, but, like Battlefield: 2042 and Star Wars: Battlefront 2 before it, there has been no acknowledgement or action on the things that mattered.

   

  This is a tired, sad, and exhaustively repeated story of a company failing its customers. We’re absolutely tired of it. [CM1 Name Here]? Our only member of the Community Team on the official Discord server after [CM2 Name Here] was moved? Won’t even let us know if anything is happening for Star Wars Day. Hasn’t even bothered responding in over three days. He’s all we have in terms of direct communication, and that’s become a failed line of communication, too.

   

  We have just started the Kyber Cup, Squadrons Championship League is still going on, Cadet Cup still exists, Squadrons Premier League still exists, and multiple streamers cast for these tournament games. Twin Suns Tournament, which happened just under a year ago, had a $20,000 prize pool for the participants. Operation Ace? Dead, because nobody from EA ever supported any efforts to help turn this game into a thriving e-sport and subsequent success for the company. EA still doesn’t help, at all. [SEF Representative Name Here], who helps run the Squadrons E-Sports Federation, has been keeping the community alive by organizing these tournaments [and streams], and not a soul at EA has lent a finger to help him out.

   

  It is despicable how the company has treated this game and its community, and I’m hoping you have some desire to help us turn that around. Bugs need fixing, gameplay needs balancing, and EA’s reputation is in dire need of mending.