Class action suit filed against Electronic Arts for Battlefield 4

Stockholders claim they were misled by the publisher, game not performing to expectations

Posted on Dec 19, 2013 - 10:26am EST

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP have announced that a class action has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of purchasers of Electronic Arts common stock during the period between July 24, 2013 and December 4, 2013.

The complaint charges Electronic Arts and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The complaint alleges that defendants issued materially false and misleading statements highlighting the purported strength of the Company’s rollout of Battlefield 4.

According to the complaint, defendants’ Class Period statements were materially false and misleading because they failed to disclose and misrepresented the following adverse facts which were known to or recklessly disregarded by defendants: (a) 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; (b) as a result, Electronic Arts would not achieve a successful holiday season 2013 rollout of Battlefield 4; (c) the performance of the Electronic Arts unit publishing Battlefield 4 was so deficient that all other projects that unit was involved in had to be put on hold to permit it to focus its efforts on fixing Battlefield 4; and (d) as a result, Electronic Arts was not on track to achieve the financial results it had told the market it was on track to achieve during the Class Period.

The lawsuit seeks to recover damages on behalf of all purchasers of Electronic Arts common stock during the Class Period.

Battlefield 4 was released on PS4 alongside the console launch, and has been widely reported to be an unstable release.