EA's Business Model Finally Revealed

teo47 wrote:
If EA is making a lot of money off of this game, good for them! Most of us want to make as much money as we can in life. If your employer offered you a raise, would you decline? No way! Corporations are no different, they'll take your money if you're willing to give it to them. If you give out everything for free, you go out of business. There have been mistakes made in the implementation of this event in my opinion, but the fact that you need to spend donuts to get all of the prizes (unless you're incredibly lucky) is not one of those mistakes.

I have to disagree. Yes, making money is great. As a libertarian, I believe strongly in the free market. However, there is a limit to how much a company should take advantage of its customers. TSTO was never advertised as a gambling game. Yes, the product description says "SIMULATED gambling", which is not the same as actual gambling with real money. To get to my point, I think it's bad for business in the long run to implement gambling into the game. Most TSTO players are not looking to gamble with their money, nor are they used to it being a feature of this game. This will pay off in the immediate future for EA, but in my opinion, the increase in profits will be short-lived. People are wising up to the horrible odds in this event and it's made a lot of us premium players, who used to gladly throw tons of cash at EA, rethink our spending. That's not good for business. If companies followed your logic to its natural end, there would be massive price gouging. Good business is about balancing profit with customer satisfaction. If your only concern is making the biggest profit possible, but your customers are dissatisfied, you'll soon find yourself without customers and without profit. EA is playing a dangerous game with these gambling events. That's just my take on it. I don't think that this is a good long-term business strategy.

edit: typos