EA Attempts To Meme, Ticks Off Its Employees Instead

Electronic Arts learned a valuable lesson in why corporate social media accounts shouldn't meme willy-nilly, as its recent foray into attempting to be hip with the teens ended up roasting itself and angering its staff.

Last week, the video game publishing company attempted to hop in on the hot new She's a 10 meme, tweeting "They’re a 10 but they only like playing single-player games" on the official EA Twitter account.

They’re a 10 but they only like playing single-player games

— Electronic Arts (@EA) June 30, 2022

Arguably, EA is best known for competitive games like Madden, FIFA, Battlefield and Anthem, so one can almost see how the person behind the account thought taking a gentle dig at single-player gamers would be brand safe and foster goodwill among the memeing and gaming crowd.

That was not the case, however, as dunks on the ill-received tweet came swiftly, with some of the roasters even including actual EA senior staffers. After all, EA has published single-player games in the past, and some of them – Dragon Age, Unravel and Titanfall, to name a few — are well-beloved among many gamers.

🤦🏼‍♂️

— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) July 1, 2022

Understandable you are unfamiliar with the concept of 10s

— Paul Tassi (@PaulTassi) June 30, 2022

Of course you don't want someone that likes singleplayer games. To little monetisation 🥲

— Jorden Bakker (@Jorden1506) June 30, 2022

The account backpedaled and tried to apologize with what some have called an even weirder attempt at memeing by saying people who play single-player games are "actually 11s."

Roast well deserved. We’ll take this L cause playing single player games actually makes them an 11. https://t.co/PNg4FKOgfB

— Electronic Arts (@EA) July 1, 2022

What could have been a story about dumb corporate memeing could have ended there, but USA Today investigated the debacle and found that the tweet actually caused a great deal of strife at EA.

Evidently, the company is still holding meetings with disgruntled employees who felt the "They're a 10" tweet was an insult to staffers working on single-player games. They further discovered the initial fallout plan was to have other EA studios roast the tweet, but ditched the plan out of fear that it would reinforce the narrative that EA studios hate working with Electronic Arts.

It further turns out that the team running EA's Twitter account is not really familiar with the history of the company. One staffer said, "I’m 99 percent sure the person who posted the tweet and their manager don’t even know about the single-player games comment from a decade ago," referencing EA Games label President Frank Gibeau’s infamous 2010 comment in which he said single-player games are "finished."

"They’re all new and most of them, to my knowledge, aren’t really game industry people. The person who posted that tweet didn’t know and wasn’t supported properly to ensure something like this didn’t happen," USA Today's source said.

One hopes that the team running EA's social media account will know their meme – or at least the history of EA – in the future.