EA gets "more **** than they deserve", says Split Fiction director Josef Fares

"Everybody's done something that's not good."

Hazelight's outspoken studio founder Josef Fares believes EA has been painted to be the villain much more than other companies, stating: "There's not a publisher in the world that hasn't fucked up now and then."

Fares through his studio Hazelight has partnered with EA for all three of its games: A Way Out, It Takes Two and Split Fiction. Now, the director has said if Hazelight didn't have a good relationship with EA, then it quite simply would not work with the publisher any more.

"There are a lot of great people at EA," Fares said in an interview with The Game Business. "They know how we work. They respect it and they leave us be." He added he feels "EA is getting more shit than they deserve", remarking that "everybody's done something that's not good", namechecking Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.

"But for some reason, EA has become this bad guy," the Hazelight head continued. "For us, it's a super good collaboration. I'm very open about [it]. If it was bad, I would've said that in this interview as well. But we have a great relationship."

Fares again reiterated this is not to say EA hasn't made its own share of mistakes, just like the rest of us. "All the people I am surrounded with at EA are gamers," Fares said. "They love games. It's not like I'm sitting with corporate people with suits. It's not like that."

Closing this train of thought, Fares stated in no uncertain terms: "And people should not worry, because Hazelight will do always what it wants."

But, why is it EA appears to be being 'villainised' at the moment? Well, at the end of last year, EA shareholders approved the proposed $55bn acquisition of the video game giant by Saudi Arabia and private equity firms. Should the acquisition go through, it would leave EA 93.4 percent owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, a government wealth fund used to build infrastructure, attract businesses to Saudi Arabia, and more.

This has left a bad taste in the mouth of many due to the country's notoriously poor human rights record, and has resulted in public outcry and petitions from video game unions and human rights groups. Over the weekend, EA said to its community that "the values of The Sims are unchanged", after multiple high profile The Sims content creators "removed themselves" from the company's Creator Network.

Image credit: Josef Fares/X

As for Hazelight, its most recent release Split Fiction was met with wide praise on its debut last year. "Fantastic from start to finish, Split Fiction is one of the most inventive and joyful co-op games to date, and a testament to the power of human imagination," reads our five star review.

In the first 48 hours of release, Split Fiction sold an impressive 1m units. By the end of its first week, the studio announced Split Fiction had sold another 1m units. Not simply content with these figures, the game subsequently broke three world records, becoming the most played local co-op video game on Steam, the most sold local co-op video game within 48 hours of release, and most sold local co-op video game within one week of release.

A Split Fiction film adaptation starring Sydney Sweeney was also announced to be in the works last year, with Jon M Chu of Wicked fame set to direct.