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The Battlefield 4 class-action lawsuit went nowhere
The class-action lawsuit against Electronic Arts concerning Battlefield 4 has amounted to nothing at all. Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP--the legal team behind the high-profile Enron lawsuit--commenced the legal action in the middle of December, but the case required a lead plaintiff (someone materially harmed by the company's sales performance) to come forward within 60 days for the case to become an actual class-action lawsuit.
That never happened. And now all mention of the case has been scrubbed from Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd's website. We have reached out to Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd a half-dozen times over the past two weeks and in every case could not reach the lawyers behind the proceedings. Messages through voicemail and email were not returned.
The original complaint alleged that during the July 24-December 3 Class Period, defendants issued "materially false and misleading statements" regarding Battlefield 4. As a result of these statements, EA's share value rose and reached a high for the period of $28.13--allowing certain EA senior executives to sell their shares at the inflated price, the suit claimed. Various EA senior executives--including CEO Andrew Wilson--indeed sold thousands of shares ahead of Battlefield 4's release in November, but it appears this was not out of the ordinary.
The lawsuit also featured charges related to the bug-ridden PlayStation 4 version of Battlefield 4. EA's share value fell after the company disclosed the game's various issues, and then even further after EA said it had halted all future projects until the issues could be fixed. EA has since clarified that its work on fixing the Battlefield 4 issues has not impacted the release schedule of any of its future games, which led to the company's stock bouncing back significantly.
From day one, EA maintained that the lawsuit was "meritless," telling GameSpot in December that, "We intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we're confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course." We have reached out to EA corporate communication for a comment on the lawsuit's dissolution and are awaiting a response.
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