About a week ago news broke that EA was being investigated by a law firm in the United States over "Battlefield 4's" disastrous problems with its multiplayer launch. Now it seems the publisher is staring down the barrel of even more legal trouble.
According to IGN the team behind the infamous Enron lawsuit has commenced a second class-action lawsuit against EA. The suit makes similar claims that the game publisher made "materially false and misleading statements" regarding "Battlefield 4."
On Dec. 17, 2013, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP filed a complaint alleging EA violated federal securities laws, ,specifically laws introduced by the Securities Exchange Act of 1943, by making false public statements about the first person shooter between the period of July 24 and December 4.
The complaint alleges that EA's stock rose based on the purported strength of the Battlefield 4 rollout during this period, reading a high of $28.13 per share by August 23, 2013, allowing "certain of Electronic Arts' senior executive to sell their Electronic Arts stock at artificially inflated prices.
Since that time, the game has been crippled by bugs and other glitches on the PlayStation 4. The firm alleges the disclosure of the game's problems lead to a fall in EA's share value, which fell further still once EA placed a hold on all future projects so that it could devote all of its time and resources into fixing the issues.
The complaint alleges that EA "recklessly disregarded" the fact that the game was "riddled with bugs and multiple other problems, including downloadable content that allowed players access to more levels of the game, a myriad of connectivity issues, server limitations, lost data and repeated sudden crashes, among other things." As a result, EA "was not on track to achieve the financial results it had told the market it was on track to achieve during the Class Period."
It's worth noting that this is still a complaint and the class action itself has not been filed. According to IGN the firm still needs a plaintiff who bought common stock in EA between July and December by the motion deadline on Feb. 15.
"We believe these claims are meritless," says the official statement being made to media from EA. "we intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we're confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course."
