Maddens legal battle starts today 09/14/2009!

[rm217]

Today may mark the beginning of what may turn out to be a day of celebration for us sports fans who want competition back in the football arena! http://kotaku.com/5343720/madden-sui...gang+tackle-ea

[adembroski]

This is getting beyond stupid. I can't believe the idiocy of some people. Learn a thing or two about economy before you start tossing words like "monopoly" around, and stop bringing stupid lawsuits that are costing perfectly good people jobs.

And for the record, this is hardly the "start", people have tried this Lord knows how many times.

Exclusive access to a privately owned intellectual property is NOT a monopoly, as the owner of the I.P. may do with its private property whatever it damn well pleases. Beyond that, the industry in question is not "NFL Based Football Games", it's Video Games.

If some psychotic judge actually ruled in this lawsuits favor, the net effect would be that anything you come up with... a script, a song, a book, anything that can, under current law, be considered your intellectual property (or trademark) would no longer be yours. Anybody would be free to come along and jack your idea.

Allow me to spell it out a bit further; The National Football League (TM) owns trademarks and IPs for 32 NFL football teams. As such, they have the legal and ethical right to allow or disallow the usage of said properties at their discretion. To say that EA has a monopoly on NFL Football games is the same thing as saying Blizzard has a monopoly on Starcraft video games. Thus, a judge rules in their favor, you've got 17 different gaming companies putting out their own version of Starcraft... a property owned by Blizzard and thus rightfully theirs to profit from... just as the NFL license belongs to the NFL to profit from, and they chose to profit off of EA.

There is no illegality here. You don't have to like the way it works, but it is the way it works, and it's the right way.

[Segagendude]

Not holding my breath. With their $$$, EA can afford attorneys who'll make OJ's "Dream Team" look like pre-Law undergrads.

[LionsFanNJ]

Enjoy your false hope and failure.

[Shade71]

Quote: Originally Posted by adembroski

This is getting beyond stupid. I can't believe the idiocy of some people. Learn a thing or two about economy before you start tossing words like "monopoly" around, and stop bringing stupid lawsuits that are costing perfectly good people jobs. And for the record, this is hardly the "start", people have tried this Lord knows how many times. Exclusive access to a privately owned intellectual property is NOT a monopoly, as the owner of the I.P. may do with its private property whatever it damn well pleases. Beyond that, the industry in question is not "NFL Based Football Games", it's Video Games. If some psychotic judge actually ruled in this lawsuits favor, the net effect would be that anything you come up with... a script, a song, a book, anything that can, under current law, be considered your intellectual property (or trademark) would no longer be yours. Anybody would be free to come along and jack your idea. Allow me to spell it out a bit further; The National Football League (TM) owns trademarks and IPs for 32 NFL football teams. As such, they have the legal and ethical right to allow or disallow the usage of said properties at their discretion. To say that EA has a monopoly on NFL Football games is the same thing as saying Blizzard has a monopoly on Starcraft video games. Thus, a judge rules in their favor, you've got 17 different gaming companies putting out their own version of Starcraft... a property owned by Blizzard and thus rightfully theirs to profit from... just as the NFL license belongs to the NFL to profit from, and they chose to profit off of EA. There is no illegality here. You don't have to like the way it works, but it is the way it works, and it's the right way.

Well stated. The first video football games didnt have an nfl license and used generic teams, nobody is stopping anyone from doing that now. Even the early maddens didnt have player names until they got licensing from the nflpa. There is no monopoly here, just an exclusivity agreement. The same thing console makers get with certain games and downloadable content.

[rm217]

Quote: Originally Posted by LionsFanNJ

Enjoy your false hope and failure.

Regardless with sales of Madden dropping I wouldn't be surprised if when there exclusive license is up EA doesn't renew. It just will not make economic sense. They can still sell the same amount of copies even with competition. Good economic sense could prevail on EA's part in 2012. Imagine how much better Madden would be if all that exclusive license money all 500 million or so, went into making a new Madden engine. Only time will tell if Madden and EA will come to there senses and realize they overestimated how many more copies of Madden they could sell with no competition.

[budsticky]

I can't count the ways in which this just exudes fail, but I will try anyway.

A lot of people harp about EA having a monopoly on football games. They absolutely do not. Any other company is free to make football video games and many have done so. EA has exclusive rights to the NFL license. Of course this puts EA in a powerful position as far as competitive edge in the football gaming market, but they certainly do not have a monopoly on "football" games which is how a lot of people view it and talk about it.

Look at it this way. ESPN bought the rights to Monday Night Football. Does this mean another network cannot show football on a Monday night? Of course it doesn't. It just means that another network can't show NFL football on Monday night. It's a brand issue and has nothing to do with the big umbrella of football. Same thing with video games. EA has the license to make NFL football games. They are the only company that can make an NFL game with NFL licensed teams and players. They are not the only company that can make a football game. Is it hard to make a competing game without the NFL license? Of course it is. But the option is there. When people talk about EA having a monopoly it just makes me laugh.


People really need to study up on business and what a monopoly truly is before they start clogging up our judicial system with junk like this.

[budsticky]

Quote: Originally Posted by adembroski

This is getting beyond stupid. I can't believe the idiocy of some people. Learn a thing or two about economy before you start tossing words like "monopoly" around, and stop bringing stupid lawsuits that are costing perfectly good people jobs. And for the record, this is hardly the "start", people have tried this Lord knows how many times. Exclusive access to a privately owned intellectual property is NOT a monopoly, as the owner of the I.P. may do with its private property whatever it damn well pleases. Beyond that, the industry in question is not "NFL Based Football Games", it's Video Games. If some psychotic judge actually ruled in this lawsuits favor, the net effect would be that anything you come up with... a script, a song, a book, anything that can, under current law, be considered your intellectual property (or trademark) would no longer be yours. Anybody would be free to come along and jack your idea. Allow me to spell it out a bit further; The National Football League (TM) owns trademarks and IPs for 32 NFL football teams. As such, they have the legal and ethical right to allow or disallow the usage of said properties at their discretion. To say that EA has a monopoly on NFL Football games is the same thing as saying Blizzard has a monopoly on Starcraft video games. Thus, a judge rules in their favor, you've got 17 different gaming companies putting out their own version of Starcraft... a property owned by Blizzard and thus rightfully theirs to profit from... just as the NFL license belongs to the NFL to profit from, and they chose to profit off of EA. There is no illegality here. You don't have to like the way it works, but it is the way it works, and it's the right way.

Yeah. I said basically what you said, but I didn't read yours first. I got so mad at the stupidity of this that I just started typing a response.

[Pantherbeast]

Well if by some mircale that these people was to win the lawsuit agaist EA and the NFL. And the NFL finally opened the NFL rights to any company willing to make a NFL game. It would take those companies some years to bring out a game with the things that are in madden now. Plus there is not many companies out here today with any extra money to spare and bring out a sports game out yearly. Thats why back in the late 90s most of these companies trying to sale their version of NFL football game failed. Like 989 sports and so on. buy the time EA bought the NFL rights. The only company still making a football game was 2k sports. But they got bought out. Even if 2k company could get access to nfl rights. It would take a few years are so just to produce a football game with a good franchise mode and real good graphics and so on. Heck I would love to see more companies have a chance to push EA for their money. But it is never going to happen. EA will win this court battle like always.

[budsticky]

Quote: Originally Posted by Pantherbeast

EA will win this court battle like always.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying they will "win this court battle like always." Do you mean like every time somebody brings up a frivolous and pointless suit against them that has no basis in real world American law? Don't worry. This won't get near the point of even being a "court battle."

I also love this little snippet from this non-story:
"The exact grievance is spelled out in a 48-page transcript of a November 4, 2008 pre-trial hearing. Pecover's lawyer, Stuart Paynter, says gamers won't buy football games that don't carry the NFL brand and that EA has created an unfair market situation that drives up the cost of games. EA's lawyer, Daniel Wall, says the market is larger than Paynter paints it and that Percover's complaint isn't "even close" to a viable claim."

Can somebody please tell me exactly how EA's exclusivity deal with the NFL has driven up the cost of games? So I guess they are going to try and say that the 49.99 jump up to 59.99 when the next gen consoles came out was because of the EA/NFL deal? The more I read this the more the stupidity just jumps off the page. I can't let myself get worked up over this nonsense anymore. Time for bed. LOL.