El April Fools en Gamespot

An Open Letter from John Riccitiello

I would like to start off with an apology to anyone who has been hurt by Electronic Arts. Over the years, the managerial team, myself included, has diminished an once legendary name with terrible products and terrible decisions into the most infamous two words in the software industry. I apologize to the veteran gamers who have withstood entry after entry of any of our sports franchises, such as Madden NFL, with changes that were superficial at best and for the release of over thirty Sims products in an eight year span. I apologize to the anyone in this industry who have been subjected to the dehumanizing effects of constant crunch and horrible management rampant throughout the offices of Electronic Arts or any of its subsidiaries.

But I am going to make sure that this is the Electronic Arts of yore. Starting on this first day of the our fiscal 2009, I am going to take the first steps to make sure that Electronic Arts is a company that deserves to be revered. There will be many more steps on this path to reconciliation.

Effective immediately, all iterations of franchises that are being published by EA during this fiscal year will be pushed back to fiscal 2010 to ensure that they are innovative, quality titles. All our fiscal 2009 releases will be new intellectual property. Also effective immediately, no EA employee will have a work week longer than forty hours. Crunch is a cancer that does good for no one, it is detrimental to the psychical and psychological health of workers and results in terrible products. Just as there is a correlation between Metacritic scores and sales, there is correlation between employee satisfaction and sales.

Starting with next week's releases of Portal, the Half-Life episodes and Team Fortress 2, all physical products published by EA will see two editions, one that is free of advertisements and one that features advertisements, which will have $10 below the advertisement free edition.

These are just the initial steps we are taking, there will be many more on this long journey. I hope that you will join us on this journey.

Sincerely,
John Riccitiello
Chief Executive Officer
Electronic Arts