Letter to EA: Battlefield 1942 on Recycled Computers to Prevent Youth Suicide

[hobbit_miester]

Hey guys, (I've been asked to cross-post this from Reddit as it was gaining significant traction there. I was also asked to tag: @Carbonic )

For the past 2 years I've unsuccessfully been trying to contact someone at Origin/EA/Dice to get some more information regarding my issue, with no luck or any closure, and I'm unsure where else to turn, so I thought I'd give it one more shot on some reddit communities, you never know, my luck might change.

I live in New Zealand, and I run a multiplayer video gaming business, where we intercept desktop computers from going into the landfill and being thrown out at the dump, and repurpose them to host large multiplayer video gaming events for kids and teenagers in the local community, in an effort to alleviate Youth Suicide, School Bullying and Child Poverty, of which New Zealand has one of the worst rates of statistically in the developed world.

Our organisation has won many awards for our work, and have even had many video game developers contribute multiple copies of their games, even from places like California and Europe, and even big names like Riot have been in touch with me directly.

As you can imagine, the computers we find aren't the best, but some of the best multiplayer games to have up to 64 people in the same game are often older games anyway, particularly Battlefield 1942, which won't need much horsepower.

However, no matter how hard I've tried, I'm unable to find 64+ copies of Battlefield 1942. I've tried contacting EA multiple times over the last 2 years, but they just tell me to buy multiple copies on Ebay, which would be an absolute nightmare.

EA Customer Support keeps saying that they will 'escalate' the case as an important case to get some definitive results on from higher up the chain, but it's been over 8 months since the last case was elevated, and I've had multiple attempts at this over 2 years with no results and nobody ever getting back to me.

Ultimately, the same story I get told is that I've been told by customer support that Battlefield 1942 is a 'Sunset Game' that has been discontinued, and I'm unable to buy copies from them.

I see that there are MANY places online that are distributing the full Battlefield 1942 client, claiming that it is completely legal to do so, as apparently Battlefield 1942 was released for 'Free' temporarily on Origin many years ago, but has been since removed. I am just not sure it is a good idea for me to take this approach without legitimately purchasing multiple copies, as I have not found any definitive legal information regarding the state the game currently exists in and which domain, publicly or not.

I would really appreciate any support or advice regarding this, or if anyone had any contacts I might be able to try.

I would also like to try find the same results for Battlefield 2, Battlefield Vietnam and 2142, as these would also be great to play.

My only other hope is this get's upvoted enough for someone at the head office to spot it and give me some sort of confirmation.

I appreciate it guys, it would be great to get something positive here for Battlefield 1942, as for such a masterpiece to fade into obscurity like it has is such a tragedy.

[Carbonic]

Hi again @hobbit_miester 

Message received. I've poked but might take some time with the weekend and Corona and all.

[Whiterabbit-uk]

I read your post with interest and think you are doing an amazing job. I agree that the older games would be perfect for repurposed older computers; for example older dual cores with  older graphic cards  with say 250MB of gRAM, which these days are  15+ years old and easily run  those games from the early to mid 2000's.    I was interested in  getting  some friends to play an old game called Men of Valor several years ago. To this day  it is still an excellent multiplayer game with single player missions.  The graphics were outstanding at the time of release back in 2004. (and still look great today) 

Anyway, I was looking on eBay and happened across an item that included 15 copies of the game  for £1 each. All the games were in their original wrappers  so were brand new.   What I'm suggesting is that you keep checking eBay for such bargains.  They crop up reasonably frequently and cost very little. Which leads me onto the following:    

With the  project you are undertaking, it would seem an ideal  project to get crowd funding  so that you could get sponsorship from the general public.  It's amazing   how much people are willing to contribute to good projects; especially when they  involve helping  children, and more so disadvantaged  ones. 

I hope your project flourishes and that you are able to find enough copies of the game to run your  sessions.  I'm still playing all of the early Battlefield games up to BF2042 and Men of Valor as well as other games from that period such as the early Men of Honor and the Vietcong games. all of which had some amazing multiplayer community's.

Good luck for the future.

p.s. I was lucky enough to grab a copy of Battlefield 1942 when it was   a giveaway  via Origin, the only issue with it is that you can't add the expansion packs, which is a great pity qs some of my favourite maps are on the tho expansions.

[hobbit_miesters]

Hey guys. OP here. It's been 5 months since posting this, and despite numerous attempts to contact EA and following all the suggestions you have all made to reach them, there has been absolutely no response from EA. Tragic.

[BrokenAtari]

Look for their Corporate Communications contact page and try from there.

[EA_Darko]

Hey @hobbit_miester for initiatives such as this I would recommend taking a look at the following page: https://www.ea.com/commitments/community-outreach 

Darko

[hobbit_miester1]

For the past 2 years I've unsuccessfully been trying to contact someone at EA to get some more information regarding my issue, with no luck or any closure, as every recommendation made by EA community managers and customer support regarding who to contact has consistently resulted in no replies after endless agonizing months of waiting.

With nowhere else to turn and out of options, I've resorted to extending my reach by posting in various other communities. You never know, my luck might change. Hopefully someone who can help out might spot this.

Before I continue, I have already attempted the following recommendations, that are constantly suggested by various representatives, all have which have failed to result in any form of response;
-EA's Outreach Program
-Numerous Forum Posts
-Numerous EA customer support queries
-Numerous Corporate Communications Contact attempts

All responses and conclusions to all of my attempts just result in someone telling me to email someone else, who never bothers to reply.

I live in New Zealand, and I run a multiplayer video gaming business, where we intercept desktop computers from going into the landfill and being thrown out at the dump, and repurpose them to host large multiplayer video gaming events for kids and teenagers in the local community, in an effort to alleviate Youth Suicide, School Bullying and Child Poverty, of which New Zealand has one of the worst rates of statistically in the developed world.

Our organisation has won many awards for our work, and have even had many video game developers contribute multiple copies of their games, even from places like California and Europe, and even big names like Riot have been in touch with me directly.

As you can imagine, the computers we find aren't the best, but some of the best multiplayer games to have up to 64 people in the same game are often older games anyway, particularly Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 2142, which won't need much horsepower.

However, no matter how hard I've tried, I'm unable to find 64+ copies of each of these Battlefield experiences to purchase online.

I've tried contacting EA multiple times over the last 2 years, but the few that have replied, they just tell me to buy multiple copies on Ebay, which would be an absolute nightmare, shipping alone for a single copy to New Zealand is 10 times the price of a copy. Numerous copies would constitute thousands of dollars of shipping, and hundreds of hours to arrange purchasing from individual listings.

EA Customer Support keeps saying that they will 'escalate' the case as an important case to get some definitive results on from higher up the chain, but it's been over 8 months since the last case was elevated, and I've had multiple attempts at this over 2 years with no results and nobody ever getting back to me.

Ultimately, the same story I get told is that I've been told by customer support that these Battlefield games are 'Sunset Games' that have been discontinued (In other words, completely and utterly abandoned), and I'm unable to buy copies from them. They refuse to accept the concept of digging up any keys or activating copies for us on Origin (which you are able to do if you have an original key lying around).

However I have a statement on hand from one EA customer rep that said I can purchase a single copy, and use that on as many machines as I wish, but I'm not confident about the legality of that suggestion, and would really like EA to provide something more formal for the purposes of our initiative.

I'm told that there are MANY places online that are distributing the full, old Battlefield clients, claiming that it is completely legal to do so, as they have been abandoned. I'm unfortunately reluctant and hesitant to pursue this option, as I am just not sure it is a good idea for me to pursue this option without legitimately purchasing multiple copies, as I have not found any definitive legal information regarding the state the game currently exists in and which domain, publicly or not.

I would really appreciate any support or advice regarding this, or if anyone had any contacts I might be able to try.

Please respond to this message with some contact details if you are able to help.

[Rotblut]

Hey @hobbit_miester1

Please check your DM