UFC, EA and THQ: Legal Showdown - Wiggy's Blog

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UFC, EA and THQ: Legal Showdown Stuck

Posted on October 12, 2013 at 09:02 AM.

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All things considered, I thought THQ did a decent job stewarding the UFC brand for all of the years it held the license. The improvement in the franchise was notable with each iteration, even though the sales were on a slight decline at the same time. I remember hearing Dana White say how he wanted to keep supporting THQ because both them and the UFC had struck a deal when both companies were much younger, and that they had essentially built something cool together from the ground up. White wasn't as kind about his feelings for EA at time, characterizing them this way.

Quote:


	"I went to EA Sports. Know what EA Sports said? �It�s not a sport. This isn�t a sport. We would never get involved in something like this.� We come out with a video game and now they want to come out with a video game? (Expletive) you. All these people that want to cry and bitch, EA Sports didn�t give a (expletive) about you and wouldn�t even touch this thing with a 10-foot pole. We went out and made this whole thing happen. THQ basically put their entire business on the line. If this game didn�t work, they were in big trouble. The great thing about this business is, the UFC brand, plus stars, equals success for everybody. So when we do a video game, you�re a guy in the video game for (expletive) ever...and you get paid off of that forever. You think Leon Spinks is getting royalty checks somewhere? I just saw a thing on him; he�s a janitor. That�s what we�re trying to not let happen to these guys."

Clearly, White was not a fan of what EA was trying to do at the time -- weasel in on the MMA market in the safest way possible and not commit to the type of money that the UFC would be expecting for its brand. How things change. Fast forward to E3 2012, where EA officially courted the UFC and secured the lucrative MMA license. It was really weird seeing Dana White up there with EA execs, and he even said something to that effect. He was essentially having to eat crow and get in bed with the very company he had been demonizing just a year or two earlier.

Then again, this sort of behaviour from the UFC, and specifically Dana White, is not unheard of. His about-face on fighters like Tito Ortiz, Rampage Jackson, Randy Couture and Anderson Silva have been legendary. At one moment, he's talking them down as if they're the biggest pieces of trash on the planet, and then a month or two later, after they KO someone in dramatic fashion, he's talking about what "good dudes" they are. When you're playing by the UFC's rules and making them money, a lot can be forgiven. When you fight a boring style or create a problem with the national media or do something that's deemed "abnormal," you're going to feel the wrath of White.

In the case of THQ, it certainly looks like this heel-turn theme was apparent, since the allegation is that EA coerced the UFC to vacate the THQ contract with inside information, stats and financial incentives. Since the sales of the THQ-made UFC product were flagging -- and the company was in jeopardy -- the UFC saw a business opportunity, as they have many times, to cast aside the dead wood and get on the gravy train of EA's successful marketing machine. EA had gained the inside information in previous years when THQ was considering a sale of the entire company and had disclosed specific sales and franchise data regarding the UFC games.

It certainly seems plausible that EA was frustrated by the inability to purchase THQ and used this new-found information against them to "convince" the UFC that they should get out of the sinking ship. No one knows, at this point, what information was allegedly used by EA, and who knows what the UFC was even thinking at the time. Again, as I said before, Dana White and the UFC have shown an itchy trigger finger, as they seem all too eager to cast aside problematic fighters, expensive contracts or even lackluster TV deals. They may have seen the writing on the wall, specifically from the THQ UFC games' weak sales numbers. It might not have required EA to say very much in order to sway them over.

Truth be told, this could just be a bit of spilt-milk case for THQ, as their creditors are going to want any monies they can get their hands on in order to satiate some pissed-off investors and debt collectors. They've seen what EA is doing with the UFC franchise -- good things, by the looks of it -- and they want to get "a piece of the pie," as Dana White once said.

Since there was no ill will about the license transfer back in June of last year, I suspect Zuffa (UFC's parent company) and White will likely plead the fifth here, allowing the courts to decide what's right and wrong. White, as I've said, has stepped on people when they're down before, but I think here they'll just settle and move on. There's nothing to be gained from disparaging a now-disgraced company, and EA is likely going to be a great fit for the UFC franchise, building off of the THQ dev team and EA MMA learning experience.

I don't really see this episode having much of an impact on any of the players involved, as White and Zuffa are known commodities for their bravado and brashness, and THQ is just trying to scrape together a few bucks to pay off debts. EA may just quietly settle if there's any truth to what happened, and likely the issue will disappear at that point. To be sure, this type of contract manoeuvring and jockeying between developers, publishers and licensees exists in the game space, and anyone who doesn't think it does is kidding themselves. How much of that was fair or illegal in this instance will be something for the law to unravel.

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