No one likes EA's joke about singleplayer games, even EA

Brands are now social media influencers who say things like “vibe check” and “I was today years old when,” behavior which backfired for EA this week. The publisher's careless meme format Mad Libs led to a tweet that was taken as an attack on fans of singleplayer games and the developers who make them. Current and ex-employees of the company, including Respawn head Vince Zampella, responded publicly.

The tweet in question had such an incendiary effect that I almost dare not repeat it, but here we go:

“They're a 10 but they only like playing single-player games.”

The marketing person who wrote that tweet is saying—if you can believe it—that the most attractive person they can imagine would be rendered unattractive if they didn't have an