Eidos

Although most game companies are solely interested in teh money and don't give a fuck about the suckers that buy their over-priced games, Eidos towers above the rest with its attempts to control comments about its products. It interferes with gamer discussions forums, bribes site owners with advertising contracts and arranges for reviewers who don't like its games to be sacked. Somehow it manages to suck site administrators into its "family", treating them like beloved sons, inviting them to Eidos headquarters, flattering them with mentions in its game credits, giving them "exclusives" about the minutiae associated with the crappy games to brandish before moronic fanboys - all in exchange for a tightly controlled "public discussion" about why Eidos sucks ass. If any firm deserved the title of "Big Brother" then it is Eidos.

Hitman 2 - Eidos wants you to kill evil coloureds. Nudity free.

Kane and Lynch - Eidos games cater for girls too. No nudity in this game.

Stevie "Killcreek" Case, level designer for Eidos game Daikatana. She opposes Nude Raider.

Reservoir Dogs. For the kids. Guaranteed Nude Raider-free.

Tomb Raider. Travel to India and shoot statues of Hindu deities. Respect due.

Tomb Raider

Ad in PCGamer for Eidos game Hitman. Good job she didn't have her tits out or else it might have been tasteless.

Eidos' biggest (or biggest breasted) cash cow is Lara Croft, and the dramas involving the sacking of the original game developer Core and the threatened lawsuits about Nude Raider, etc, provide an excellent illustration of how Eidos works. It is safe to say that the fame of Lara Croft is not due to the excellence of the games (some are good and some are risible) or the efforts of the Eidos public relations department, but because the fans - especially in the UK - took her to their hearts. They liked all of the things that the original English developers Core put into the character - Lara's sexuality, amorality and antipathy to being a "team player". However Eidos, behaving like American pussies, and sensitive to political correctness and anything that might stop them wringing that last cent out of Lara, spend their lives trying to suppress and deny the aspects of the Croft character that disqualify her as induction into the august company of the Disney Princesses.

Typical Nude Tomb Raider model.

It's hard to find the original news items form the late 1990's about the shutting down of Nude Raider. (Who could have predicted that adolescent boys would draw naked pictures of a hardbody game character possessing a sexy voice, "attitude", a tendency to make sex noises when climbing onto things, blessed with big tits, long legs and a heavily featured "tight little behind" clad in short shorts?) But to get the flavour of it here's a quote from a discussion forum "A development in Lara's history is the so-called Nude Raider patch. A patch was created externally from Core and Eidos and was never housed on the Eidos or Core websites. This patch, when added to an existing Tomb Raider game, caused Lara to appear naked. Contrary to rumor, there is no method of creating a nude Lara in any console version of the game. In April 2004, it is falsely alleged that an insider from Eidos reported to a Tomb Raider electronic mailing list that Eidos had begun suing gamers using the Nude Raider patches. Eidos sent cease and desist letters to the owners of nuderaider.com who were hosting the Nude Raider patch, enforcing their intellectual property of Tomb Raider. Sites depicting nude images of Lara Croft have been sent cease and desist notices and shut down, and Eidos Interactive was awarded the rights to the domain name nuderaider.com ..." [1]. Part of Eidos' dilemma is that they have pretended that Lara Croft is "for kids" and want to try and protect the little tykes from stumbling across nude Laras while they are surfing for porn. Apparently, in true American "mass psychosis" style, bare breasts are bad while mass murder with guns is fine. (It is rumoured that the people who annoyed Angelina Jolie by airbrushing her nipples out of the Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life movie posters were not the numbnuts at Paramount Pictures but the legalistic dweebs who work for Eidos. Jolie was comfortable with the (bi)sexuality of the Croft character; the suits were not.)

Fun quote from Michelle Seebach Curran, Eidos North America "Senior PR Specialist" (for the moment)

	“	Oh my God. There will be no nipples shipping with this game.	„

Some nipples earlier

Breaking News As It Happens

03/12/07 Eidos lie about their reviews in their advertising [2], [3]

01/03/08 Eidos sacks everybody except Michelle Seebach Curran in order to be able to focus on its Underpants [4], [5]

15/07/08 More Eidos fun quoted in a Tomb Raider forum;

“	Eidos screws over another studio Pivotal Games (the people which made the Conflict series)announced that Eidos decided to close them down "despite reviewing a number of alternative options." This news comes soon after Eidos cleared 90 people out of its own HQ. How nice. Ion Storm, Core Design, Pseudo Interactive (heck they didn't even own this studio!) and now Pivotal. And get this - they would lay off 99 employees and keep a remaining "10-12" for special projects - or in other words they were only keeping these 10-12 employees because it meant they would only have to pay 1 month redundancy fees because if they let go of all 100+ employees at once they would have had to pay 3 months redundancy fees. And to thank the jobless professionals at Pivotal, Eidos has given them 30 days before the studio properly gets closed. Oh, how kind. Eidos's share price took a 30% dip after this news taking the share price to a whole new low of 27p. What I don't get is they raised £60 million in working capital - you cant tell me all of that money went to paying for 2 small DS projects, Age of Conan and future CD and IO Interactive projects. Surely Pivotal could've just started on a new Conflict game. Its rare for an in-house developer to get closed. Seriously, if I was working at Eidos I'd be looking for a new job ASAP. Eidos is now like the Titanic, its going to sink very soon.	„

22/07/08

“	Eidos says "We're in good shape" forgets to mention £100m losses... Its funny how thing work out at Eidos. Did I mention it was a sinking ship? Oh yeah, I did. Well after screwing over another studio Eidos released a press statement on how its doing: " In a trading update released ahead of its fiscal 2008 financial results release on September 15th, SCi chief executive Phil Rogers has stated that the UK publisher is in good shape following a number of recent structural changes." Right, "good shape". I think Mr. Rogers forgot the actual losses they will make this year: "Eidos parent SCi expects to post a £100 million loss for the 2007/2008 financial year – which it calls a period of ‘restructuring and transition’." The actual earnings will be less as well this year. It also then mentioned that *more* layoffs would be coming. This time to its Spanish distribution company called 'Proein' which helped distribute Capcom's Devil May Cry 4 and Lost Planet in Spain. Gosh what a nightmare it must be to work at Eidos. Jobs being lost left, right and center. I'd be surprised if TRU sells over a million units. The pushed many of their games to the final quarter of this year. Are they dumb? Do they know how much games are coming out the last few months of this year, their games wont be able to survive the competition. Absolutely ridiculous. I hope the people who worked at the Spanish company can find new jobs. Eidos share's rose a measly 0.25% coming in at just 35p. That puts the company's overall value at around £91.3 million. It used to be worth around £2 billion. Serves them right.	„

07/10/08 Eidos fucks PS3-owning Tomb Raider fan boys up the ass for cash [6]

09/01/09 Down down deeper and down - Eidos fires everybody except Toby Gard (archive), [7]

Eidos is part of a series on Gaming Visit the Gaming Portal for complete coverage.