Battlefield 4 stockholder case dismissed, “puffery” deemed a-ok

Now with working multiplayer, maybe. I don’t actually know.

The federal judge handling the Battlefield 4 investor class action lawsuit (launched last December) has dismissed the case. US District Judge Susan Illston ruled that EA’s statements about the quality of Battlefield 4 were “inactionable,” according to legal papers found by Ars Technica.

EA stockholders had brought the case against the company on the basis of allegedly misleading public statements about Battlefield 4. It was claimed that those who bought stock in EA between 24 July 2013 and December 2013 had effectively been duped regarding the state the game would launch in.

EA shares dropped 6% during a single day in December, as the publisher and developers DICE struggled to fix the game’s myriad of problems.

Judge Illston did not agree, stating “The Court agrees with defendants that all of the purported misstatements are inactionable statements of opinion, corporate optimism, or puffery.”

Verbal and written evidence presented by the investors were dismissed as “non-actionable vague expression[s] of corporate optimism and puffery upon which no reasonable investor would rely.”

While it’s a disappointing result for those investors hoping to hold EA responsible for Battlefield 4’s awful launch, the federal judge has perhaps reminded us all of a universal constant; don’t believe anything a corporation says about the stuff it’s trying to sell you.

Battlefield: Hardline will be released in 2015.