Battlefield 4: second class-action law suit filed against EA over quality concerns
Another law firm has sought legal action against Battlefield 4 publisher EA on behalf of its investors. It essentially mirrors last week's claims that EA mis-led investors over the quality and projected performance of DICE's shooter, and the bugs that followed its launch.
You can read up on the first EA / Battlefield 4 lawsuit through the link. It saw law firm Holzer Holzer & Fistel investigating whether or not EA complied with the federal securities laws when issuing public Battlefield 4 statements between July 24 and December 4.
Now, another law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP has filed for legal action against EA for the same claims between July 24 and December 4, 2013.
The firm alleges that EA violated the Securities Exchange Act during the period and issued, "Materially false and misleading statements highlighting the purported strength of the Company’s rollout of version 4 of its all-important Battlefield video game series."
It claims that EA's stock rose based on the strength of its statements, reaching a high of $28.13 per share on August 23 which allowed, "certain of Electronic Arts’ senior executives to sell their Electronic Arts stock at artificially inflated prices."
The stability of EA titles on PS4 is also up for investigation, with the firm citing, "multiple glitches and significant crashes," as well as, "bugs, connectivity issues, server limitations, and various other problems plaguing Battlefield 4."
Geller Rudman & Dowd believes that EA's statements over Battlefield 4's quality were misleading because they failed to acknowledge the fatc that Battlefield 4 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."
The fact that DICE has now placed all future Battlefield 4 DLC and other projects like Star Wars: Battlefront on hold until the shooter is fixed is also under scrutiny.
Update: EA issued a statement to GameInformer in response to the suit.
"We believe these claims are meritless. We intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we’re confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course," a representative for the publisher said.
We'll have more on this one as it develops. What's your take?
Via GameInformer.