Electronic Arts has settled with the plaintiffs of the Keller suit for $40 million in damages, paying money it owed college athletes for illegally using their likenesses in its college football and basketball video games. However, O'Bannon lawsuit plaintiffs claim in a recent court filing that they will present at trial evidence that
EA wanted to pay the players, even though the NCAA wouldn't allow it, due to its amateurism rules.
The (plaintiffs) will present documentary evidence and testimony from Joel Linzner of EA at trial that while EA abided by the prohibition on paying college athletes for the use of their (likeness) in NCAA-lisenced videogames, it nonetheless wanted to obtain the rights for more precise likenesses and the names of every college athlete on each roster, for which EA was willing to pay more to the NCAA and the college athletes themselves.
http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/6/4/5779102/ea-sports-ncaa-lawsuit-pay-players
This was all said after they killed the game series and EA has absolutely no credibility here. It's a PR spin to make themselves look good in the consumer's eye. It all could have been avoided with a randomly generated roster and they knew that. EA is to blame for the game being killed off. They used player likenesses without permission (Likeness != name). All there is to it.
And before people defend EA, let's take a look at they've done to these companies: Maxis, Mythic, Origin, Westwood, Dreamworks Interactive, Phenomic, Black Box Games, Pandemic, Playfish, and NuFX. EA is not a company that gets to claim moral high ground on anything.
Also let's remember what they did with the NCAA football series:
- Inaccurate gameplay
- Jersey microtransactions
- Pulled features out of previous gen games to introduce as new features in next gen platforms. Essentially never really updating the game.
- Terrible patching service.
- Yearly release schedule led to incomplete/glitchy games.
- Horrible physics engine.