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Online communities are great – unless you piss them off!

Online communities are a powerful resource for brands of all industries, but none more so than gaming. Titles can gain huge followings, complete with user generated content and insane brand advocates. But what happens when the community is not brand controlled? And what happens when this community turns against you? Just ask EA Games.

When EA rebranded their online store to “Origin” the concept seemed sound. The idea was to take on entrenched competitor Steam for control of the online game store market. Their launch day blog post talked about a unified gaming experience,

Great in theory, but the platform had bugs, most of which were exposed when mega-title Battlefield 3 launched.
Not only was there bugs with the final platform deployment, but when users turned to the online support, they found it almost useless.

In the past, this might have been the end of the story. Sales might have dipped slightly due to word of mouth reviews or possibly a negative article in a niche gaming magazine, but this was before the rise of  the online community Reddit.

Horror stories emerged about web chats being cut-off mid session when things got too tough for the Origin representatives. The games section (subreddit) of Reddit has taken over with posts containing screenshots of the terrible customer support.

So what’s the moral of this little story? Online communities can turn an average product into a superstar, but they can also turn something full of potential into a PR nightmare. Oh, and don’t piss off Reddit.