Language based DISCRIMINATION

[RarAle2]

Attention all gamers.

I found out today the hard way that EA is a company that does race discrimination. Imagine this: I'm English non-native speaker living in ME region. I've purchased Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville game for my boys as they are (were?) big fans of the PvZ series (we have all the previous games and add-ons). Imagine what? If you buy the game online (it's the only option available) from the dedicated XBOX store for this region and in English (mind the gap please!) you will download it, install it and ... Ta-dam! Surprise, EA is gonna hit you with an Arabic EULA and and all the settings in Arabic. There is no option (mind you: zero, nada, nothing) to change the language settings. Further more, as soon as you start the game, everything is in Arabic, all the content, dialogues, so if you are an expat living and working in the region you are coerced to use the game in Arabic. Upon contacting EA, their very supportive script based support team has bluntly me informed me multiple times the game is region based. So in short:

1. store offering the game (Microsoft) is region based and language can be either Arabic or English

2. installing the game as a digital download it's a click away (no options about the language there)

3. opening the game you are hit by settings. EULA, menus, content, dialogues all in Arabic

Conclusion: EA is discriminating users and forcing them to use a certain language, based on a country they are in when downloading content. With more than 250 millions immigrants worldwide I guess why should a company like EA care about this, after all they are a company who believes in.. check the attachment if you need a reminder.

[Maetheos]

This is not discrimination and ESPECIALLY not RACE discrimination. Please read up on what those terms mean before throwing them around.

What it is is inconvenient and what should be done is either have a language option in the menu or at the very least have the game match the systems language (i.e. an Xbox set to english makes the game run in english). I usually play games in my native language, but there are some where the voice overs or text is just not done very well and I want to switch to the original (english mostly) and I also find it pretty annoying that many games make it really difficult to do so. 

[RarAle2]

You are in way right: it is language based discrimination. nationality based discrimination, or any other similar term you want to use. What you call an inconvenience (really?!) I find it to be like a fist in my mouth. I've seen this movie already some years ago in an European Union country. When Microsoft started to make Windows and Office suites in my nations' language first time, for a coupe of years at least you couldn't possibly buy a version in English - but at least back then you were warned in advance about this. I think Microsoft realized it was a mistake when they saw everyone buys the English version only.

Now imagine this scenario: you are an Arab native  speaker or a Chinese native speaker, or a Hindi native speaker or a French native speaker and you immigrate or maybe even only travel to USA, UK, Germany, etc. According to EA you have no option but to use their own dictatorial approach which says that if you want to play this game you MUST sign the EULA (!!), use content and menus, and all the dialogues in the language EA is telling you to (I don't see much logic in that...). And of course, to make it even better, none of this is explained to you when you buy the game or prior to it.

Maybe there is a valid reason why EA was so loved in the past as a company...Should I say more?

PS: I was contemplating learning Arabic for a few weeks anyways. Now, I have a good reason to start doing it

[Rosie2731]

I'm sure somewhere it would say that the game was going to be in Arabic, it states that my copies that it's in English when i download it, also many companies have regional restrictions, many games going back years have been sold in a countries native language and not been available in that format anywhere else in the world and I'm talking right back to the start of games, however i understand you're frustration that in this day and age where most countries have a very mixed bag of languages and nationalities there should be at least a couple basic, more common langue options available world wide and then more specified languages could be released regionally.

[EA_Ataashi]

Hey @RarAle2 

As far as I know, English version of the game on consoles should be available regardless of the region you're currently located in.

Could you please try to swap your Xbox's language to English (if it's already in English, choose another language then go back to ENG), uninstall the game, clear console's cache and then install the game again.

On this note, I'm locking this thread, because we're not here to try to define things such as discrimination and this conversation's got derailed already. If my suggested fix will not work, please create a new bug report and we'll look into it.

/Ataashi