How EA's Viral Tweet Backlash Heated Up Behind The Scenes

EA recently got into some trouble, all thanks to an alleged joke tweet that ended up ruffling quite a few feathers. In a June 30 tweet, EA took a stab at the popular "she's a 10 but" meme format that can be used for just about any topic, but not without consequences. As EA wrote, "They're a 10 but they only like playing single-player games."

For anyone who knows a thing or two about EA, this seemingly lighthearted joke cuts a little too deep, considering the company's controversial history of focusing on money over quality. This has led to lackluster single-player titles being short-changed. Many fans were upset by the joke, as well as some game developers.

It may come as a surprise that the tweet is still up, but now, EA has added more drama to the story. In addition to the disastrous original tweet, the company has decided to double down on the attention ploy. And, as messy as things are on the surface, they have been even more chaotic behind the scenes.

According to intel from For The Win provided by two EA employees, the backlash immediately caught the eyes of the EA team who took to Slack to discuss next steps. Though the negative replies to the tweet were a concern right out of the gate, EA reconsidered the situation given the popularity of the tweet, which has since garnered over 33,000 likes.

As an anonymous source told For The Win, "As the negative reactions grew, and more of us began being more assertive, a plan was put together – very haphazardly! – to have other internal studios reply to that tweet. They were desperately trying to turn things into a positive. Even people working on multiplayer games didn't like it."

Manufacturing tweets for EA studios to roast EA was soon the task at hand for the company's social media employees. The goal? Get more eyes on the post and make lemonade out of lemons. No surprise, a lot of the social media team at EA saw some holes in the plan and decided to opt out, preventing what would've more than likely been an even messier situation. As it turns out, not everyone behind the EA account is in the know about the company's convoluted history.

The way things turned out, EA retweeted the original meme with an additional message: "Roast well deserved. We'll take this L cause playing single player games actually makes them an 11." It's not exactly a traditional apology tweet, but it serves as a conclusion to one of EA's weirdest marketing mishaps to date.