August 16, 2007
It would be impossible to tell the story of game publishing giant Electronic Arts without including its founder Trip Hawkins. Or, for that matter, the famed EA Spouse, whose anonymous postings helped change the way the video game industry treats its creative talent.But that was apparently the intention of an unnamed EA staffer who doctored the company's Wikipedia entry to remove traces of both Hawkins and EA Spouse. As reported by ShackNews:
Someone at EA doesn't want you to know about Trip Hawkins, the publishing giant's original founder. On multiple occasions, a user with an IP address of 159.153.4.50--within a range registered to Electronic Arts' Redwood City headquarters--has tried to remove several references to Hawkins' legacy from the Electronic Arts Wikipedia page...
A user at the same Redwood City IP address attempted to further purge Hawkins' name... while adding a paragraph emphasizing the achievements of Larry Probst, former EA CEO and current chairman, when he became sales VP in 1984...
In addition to removing several paragraphs from the "Criticism" section, the user deleted references to the notorious ea_spouse debacle and spun the class action lawsuit brought on by overworked, undercompensated employees to portray the company in a good light.
GP: There's not much to say about this other than it is despicable corporate behavior on EA's part, a not-so-subtle attempt to massage the company's history.
Kudos to Shacknews, which used a tool called Wikipedia Scanner to examine the EA Wikipedia entry.
UPDATE: GP reader Lazy informs us that EA is far from the only offender uncovered by Wikipedia Scanner. See - and vote - on the list of questionable edits.
UPDATE 2: Joystiq reports that EA isn't apologizing.
Comments
Re: EA Creates Revisionist History on Wikipedia
Some of the early employees of the company disliked the Amazin' Software name that Hawkins had originally chosen when he incorporated the company
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/vote-on-the-top.html
Archon was great. They didn't make it. They only published it. The developers were Freefall Associates. Nontheless, their behavior and vision has changed dramatically since the Trip Hawkins days, about that, you're totally correct.
Here's hoping that not only is the Wikipedia article fully restored, but that this shameful event is added to the criticisms section they wanted gone.
I know, originally they didn't make any games, that was what was so great about them, they just found programmers and developers that were pissed off with Atari and said "hey, we know how much Atari sucks and tries to play down the role of you guys, we recognize your work as art and we'll provide the financial backing you need to make the game you want and give you the credit you deserve." That was an amazing business model, M.U.L.E. is one of my favorite games of all time which ain't bad for coming out in '83. Somewhere along the line they've sold their souls and got an exclusive deal with the NFL in return.
Seriously though, this isn't the first time some company (or organization in general) has attempted to revise Wikipedia. Heck, anyone with a burr up their a** can sit there and try to revise things. I loved the fight over the inclusion of the "Play games, not Warcraft" episode of South Park that happened a couple months back... someone decided he or she didn't like World of Warcraft, and therefore wanted that *one* episode's content to be edited to remove all WoW references, claiming the game wasn't important enough to get such a spotlight.
Wikipedia has an anti-corporate whoring rule that is suppose to result in IP bans. I guess the important question is are these IP's acting independently of the company or are they actually paid to cover up the company's blood stained history?
I really like it when someone tries to claim they are not a corporate shill. Then it gets entertaining.
Seriously, while Wikipedia has no articles about Tourette's Guy,Demented Cartoon Movie and Angry Video Game Nerd etc, I knew something's wrong and CORPORATE is happening at wikipedia........
I allways knew Wikipedia somewhat sucked balls.....
Ah, somewhat?
History is not necessarily factual with Wikipedia, it's just what every interested party agrees on. Great in concept, flawed in an encyclopedia.
Oh wait. Its that EVIL EA, isnt it? So it must be on order *sigh*
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm Sources Cited.
Wikipedia will always be this way. That's why it's not a hard source - more of a starting point or useful collection links.
EA is not the only game company that has edited a wikipedia page in there own favor. Nintendo has pulled something much worse.They edited the pages refering to the gamecube and the ds lite hardware flaws.
Nintendo has edited out "Features a much strudier hinge than the previous model,witch was somewhat fragile"on the DS lite page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=69067595
They also edited out a paragraph that talked about the disk read errors the early model gamecubes had.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=124383171
true, but Nintendo would never revise its own history so that it erased one of its own, like if Nintendo started saying they'd never heard of Gunpei Yokoi, now THAT would be awful behavior.
EA has tried to marginalize EAs founder and early history many times before including during the making of G4s "ICONS" [which they then changed the name to Game Makers].
I just came across this article, EA responds to the wiki incident:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=27751
My god...what a load that was.
"An EA spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz that "EA sometimes updates websites with info about the company, games and employees. For example, EA has sent a correction to Yahoo Finance when they had misspelled the name of an EA executive.""
Comparing a _typo_ of an exec's name to expunging most traces of Trip Hawkins and trying to erase records of the EA Spouse incident? That's like not only digger yourself deeper, that's digging faster than before.
"Many companies routinely post updates on websites like Wikipedia to ensure accuracy of their own corporate information."
Except that this wasn't "ensuring accuracy". This was omitting or altering facts to such a degree as to intentionally obfuscate the truth in an attempt to cover up politically damaging aspects of the company's history.
I'm sure the folks who work in the trenches over at EA are great people, but it's like the higher up you climb their ladder, the more of an asshat you become.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pope_Benedict_XVI&diff=next&ol...
I'm thinking this is creeping up in a big way, and come Monday the world will have achieved the PR equivalent of a brick shithouse. You knew the wiki-prick-waving was going to reach critical mass at some point, right?
HEYYYYY!!!!
can one genuflect with one's thumbs extended?
Regarding EA, they can't fool us hardcore gamers that'll never forgive them for the dissolution of Bullfrog, Origin and their other magnificent studios, and we're smart enough to know what comes from them that's bullshit and what isn't.
But to twist facts - and whomever defended Nintendo, they're guilty of it, too - especially of your founding roots, that's absoltuely dispicable. I mean, how is Trip Hawkins being the founder politically damaging? Trying to hide it, THAT'S politically damaging.
and I want to get the most bang for my buck.
Enter the Secret Amazon Web Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/38sojf
This is where you’re going to find the "latest sales, rebates, and limited-time offers" from
Amazon, and you can score some pretty deep discounts if you’re a savvy shopper.
Next, there’s the special Sale link. This is open every Friday, and ONLY on Fridays.
You can find the same good discounts here as you would in hidden Deals, although some
Fridays you can really get lucky and make off like an Amazon bandit - I’ve seen discounts
there as low as 75% off sticker price.
http://tinyurl.com/2r7ldr
This is open every Friday and ONLY on Fridays!
You can find very good discounts here, although some Fridays you can really get
lucky and make off like an Amazon bandit - I´ve seen discounts there as low as 75%
off sticker Price.