In this thread I'll try to explain Crysis 2's failure from a business standpoint. What you think of it is up to you. I'm not trying to convince anyone to support Crysis 2, or to hate it either. Your time, your read, your thoughts.
http://investor.ea.com/releases.cfm?ReleasesType=Earnings
Crysis 2 was released in light of poor revenue streaming and a bad Retained Earnings account in EA's T-Accounts. Look at their Q4 Shareholder's Report for 2010 and Q1 Shareholders' Report for 2011. They lost over ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY million dollars in Retained Earnings, which Sales did NOT make up for with Crysis 2. Considering the leak (build 5260) they lost an additional undisclosed amount of sales (2000 gamers and higher continue to play the Crysis 2 leak on Tunngle and other virtual LAN networks, and that's only on the unofficial, quite buggy Server Browser within Tunngle, I'm sure there's even more playing on private vLan servers, which is hard to account for).
Also, EA's Net Cash Flow from Investing Activities for Q1 2011 and Q4 2010 were drastically lower in YTD comparison with the previous year, almost by 200 million dollars of a LOSS.
In Q4 2010, after taking Sales, subtracting COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), and other operating expenses, EA was NOT making a net income. In fact, they had a net loss of over 100 million dollars. It didn't matter how many copies of whatever EA-contracted game was sold. EA was losing money anyway and their net losses were obvious to any discerning shareholder.
I'll say it again: EA was and continues to lose money, despite whatever-number-million-copies of whatever EA-game is being sold to consumers.
If that doesn't tell you something, I'll spell it out for you in English from a business standpoint. EA needed money fast, they figured this out way before Q4 of 2010, so they asked CryTek GmbH to release Crysis 2 sooner. CryTek GmbH was probably like "No way! We would need more people! Our single player is mostly complete, but our multiplayer needs more time!"
What does EA do? They started up CryTek UK. Hired a bunch of amateurs to slap together a separate multiplayer component away from the rest of Crysis 2. Remember when CryTek said the leveling up system would be "persistent across single- and multi-player"? That never happened.
GmbH would focus primarily on single player, UK would focus on multi-. Those were the new ground rules by EA.
Only, the code disparities were obvious enough to show that EA didn't have the amount of funds to hire ACTUAL professional game designers for CryTek UK. So they hired on-the-cheap, and it was pretty obvious to the customer/gamer when they finally got their hands on Crysis 2 on launch day: There was no serial key protection (literally, anyone could punch in a RANDOM serial and the game would let them play on any official multiplayer server).
If this isn't obvious enough to you, I'll dumb it down even more: Consumers got a broken game, and it's because of EA's bad financing practices, stemming from poor Net Cash Flow from Operating and Investing Activities.
Will Crysis 2 ever be fixed? Maybe, and it depends on how fast/effective the employees are. Given the results CryTek UK has shown us so far, I doubt we'll get any results any time soon. It took CryTek UK practically TWO PATCHES before they corrected the CD-key problem and banned off any pirates trying to play on official servers. It took a total of FOUR patches until CryTek UK could identify viral codes allowing cheaters to play online undetected. For weeks, gamers like you and I witnessed the community complaining about cheaters, intersparsed by incessant flaming across multiple threads by both ends of the spectrum.
While CryTek UK was struggling to fix Crysis 2, game companies like EPIC Games Inc, which almost always has a positive Net Cash Flow, has updated its game nearly on a weekly basis if you subscribe to their ListServ on UDN for beta patches. When a gamer spots a bug, and points it out on ListServ, it gets FIXED WITHIN THREE DAYS. Why? Because Epic HAS the manpower. They HAVE the money. (Are their games perfect or at the very least bug-less? That's a different story, but at least they have ACTIVE and RESPONSIVE manpower dedicated to supporting its customers needs in nearly real-time)
Point being? EA is going broke. I know it, EA shareholders know it, no one wants EA stock anymore because it's not only worthless now, it's actually HARMFUL to its owners.
Ultimate point? This one is up to you. Do you want to support Crysis 2? I think the game has (had?) a lot of potential, but bad financing screwed it up. Will it ever get better? Maybe, but by the time it gets better, many players will have left.
Or maybe you'll choose to leave Crysis 2, in favor of supporting other game companies.
My personal opinion? I think EA should shut down CryTek UK, screen its laid-off staff for competency, and move any (if at all) qualified staff over and merge them with GmbH in Germany. Reduce employee salaries, but promise a higher end-year bonus in an attempt to increase productivity rates among CryTek's unified staff force.
Long run? EA should evaluate its companies and terminate any contracts with less successful titles. GAAP guidelines dictate EA's "goodwill" value, and their goodwill has fallen from 2010 to 2011. This in turn means shareholders are not inclined to invest in EA, which means less money for any of EA's contracted companies like CryTek. So, EA needs to build trust again in the financial market, somehow, or EA's companies will not see any investing streams. Remember, investing comes before sales. Poor investing = poor game = poor sales = poor net income. I've already shown you that this model proved to be the demise for EA in Q1 2011/ Q4 2010, hence the failure of Crysis 2.