A lot of people don’t like Electronic Arts—two time winner of The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America award—for various reasons. But Josef Fares, the director behind the new co-op hit Split Fiction, says he’s had a great experience working with the publisher, even if nobody believes he’s telling the truth.
EA is not a fan-favorite video game publisher. Many players have complained about the company’s use of microtransactions and online passes, and how poorly it has handled its ownership of beloved studios like BioWare and Origin, to name just a few problems. Despite all that, Fares says he doesn’t understand all the hate.
While talking to PC Gamer in a recent interview, Fares said that he has a good relationship with EA and likes working with the publisher. And yet, whenever he says that, he told PC Gamer that “nobody believes me.”
“For some reason, people like to hate EA, I don’t know why,” said Fares, who became famous online after shouting “Fuck the Oscars!” at the 2017 Game Awards. “My relationship with them is very good. They’re super supportive of us. So I have nothing bad to say about them.”
Fares further elaborated that in his view, the real problem isn’t with any one publisher, like EA or Ubisoft, but with capitalism itself and how it forces people to be greedy and always looking to make more and more.
“The problem with the whole capitalist idea is that you need to make more and more and more and more money,” explained Fares. “That doesn’t make sense, because at the end of the day, you will make stupid decisions. But I just hope, in the best of worlds, that you take less of these stupid decisions and focus on what you truly, truly want. And those are the games.”
“Because when you have a great game—we’re seeing it with [Split Fiction], a game done only from passion, a game where you literally don’t have to buy two copies, a game that doesn’t have any microtransactions. And you see the success it does. I mean, it’s even a financial success, obviously, because people want to pay for something that feels great. So I just hope it inspires other publishers to do that.”
Fares also told the outlet that EA doesn’t interfere with Hazelight as the studio develops its games, letting it experiment and create whatever it wants. And while he admits EA isn’t perfect, saying that every publisher “fucks up now and then,” it seems at least EA is learning from its mistakes and supporting the creation of games like Split Fiction. And that’s something.
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