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ESA defection continues, LucasArts leaves and infighting over E3 awards breaks loose

by: Chuck -
More On: EIC Ramblings
Things are certainly not going well with the Entertainment Software Association, first Activision/Vivendi leaves and now Lucasarts bails out.  You have to wonder what's going on with the game industries to cause two of the larger publishers in the industry to move on and what they are doing to prevent future defections.  Most of the rest of the big publishers are still there (EA, Capcom, Sega, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, etc) but I get the feeling that the ship is taking on water and if something isn't done soon then we could either see the flagship group of the game industry fall apart with nothing to fill it's place.

If that wasn't bad enough the ESA is now trying to get cheap revenge on Activision/Vivendi by making their games ineligible for the E3 awards in July.  Of course the critics association (no affiliated with the ESA) is fighting back and making sure that any game shown (even if offsite) is available for the awards.  I have a feeling that this is something that's not going away any time soon and is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.