Why people Hate EA so much?

1. Yes they did. Then they were sued and have since their core studios have become some of the most stable places for developers to work.

2. No. Sony still makes MLB The Show. Blame the NFL for giving EA exclusive rights.

3. This is no longer an issue.

4. It is a scumbag move. The NFL gets equal blame for selling EA the exclusive rights.

5. EA didn't "send" Don Mattrick over to Microsoft. If anything Microsoft gave him a better offer and he took it.

I don't care if people hate on EA but reading this post and a few others makes me realize how far people stretch to hate on EA. Half this stuff is blatantly not true or is no longer an issue. No company is without its mistakes. The most important part of making a mistake is how the company reacts to it. You can't hate on them for something they did over a decade ago, especially when they solved that problem.

Hate EA because they milk game series too much, play it too safe, and constantly annoy us with bullshit DLC and microtransactions. Whatever. I just don't like seeing hate that's basically unfounded.

You can justify your hate of a company by just saying "I don't like their business practices". You don't need to go any further.

yeah , ... It's like blaming the snake for having fangs , lying to people and milking them are the part of business

EA wants to regain the trust of PC gamers

@sailor232: "they make stupid decisions like making BF launch from a browser,"

lol, what?

Because you need to pay extra money to play and see the real ending of Dead Space 3.

Let's get something straight. I personally don't hate EA. I was merely answering TC's question as to why some people might hate EA.

1) Doesn't change the fact that corporate suits at EA thought it was ok to work people without compensation.

2) Sony makes MLB the Show because if you haven't noticed EA doesn't have a baseball game anymore. Where are Sony's and MS's football and Soccer games?? The fact EA forced MS to get out of the Sports game business is undisputable fact. It was well documented at the time.

3) It's no longer an issue because MS caved in and allowed EA to use their own (crappy) servers.

4) We agree on this one.

5) Obviously this one was in Jest. :-P

Edit:

6) EA bought exclusive rights for using Porsche cars in racing games at a time Forza was already using Porsches. Porsche makes some of the finest sports cars and doing this was definitely anticompetitive.

I do laugh at that. It could be the same as Microsoft's yearly announcement that they are going to put some more emphasis on gaming on Windows this year.

However, EA's PC games usually are decent ports and Origin has some good sales. Battlefield 4 and Sim City kind of ruined PC gamer's perspiration of EA, but both of those were products of that really shitty CEO they had for a few years. Same with Battlefield Hardline. The guy's business plan basically involved a developer pitching the game to EA and if it was approved, it would have a set budget for a set release date with basically no flexibility. This made maximizing profits a lot easier, but it ended up with a bunch of bad and/or broken game releases.

That's no longer the case with EA. Hardline even got a 6 month delay to attempt to fix it. It didn't work, but EA delaying a flagship shooter is insanity.

1. Yeah years ago. Every company makes mistakes. You can't hold them to that 10+ years later.

2. The PES series is a thing. Sony and Microsoft never bothered to enter the soccer market as there was always a lot of games out there by many different publishers and developers. Now it's boiled down to the PES and FIFA series, but that competition has been great. Any more games out there and the saturation would be too much. Licensing isn't cheap so you have to be damn certain your game is going to sell. If the market already has established series, it would be a dumb business decision to get in on it.

This one isn't EA's fault at all. Which Microsoft sports series did EA force out?

1) I don't think that was a simple mistake. Anyone with sense knows that was wrong. EA just believed it was ok to screw people out of money they earned. This is a Mega Corporation we are talking about not your local Mom and Pops shop.

2) NFL Fever was arguably the best football game back in 2001. EA leveraged their market position and told MS if they wanted EA games to play on line they would have to stop producing the NFL Fever games.

We can both agree that EA today is a far better corporation than EA was 10-20 years ago.

Those things were in the past but some of that sentiment is obviously still lingering because they are still people that feel strongly about not supporting EA and I can agree that it's ridiculous to feel this way Today.

Yup, I mean Dead Space 3 was competent but far from removed from what Dead Space was actually about. The overpowered weapons you could craft made it probably the least threatening game ever. The crafting system was cool at it's core though. Also what killed it was the co-op. I know it was optional and it made no real difference on a playthrough, it's just that it made literally no sense. Add onto that fighting random human guys instead of necropmorphs(which also saw no new designs or anything) and you basically got yourself some padded TPS cover shooter.

Sad part is it was one of the last remaining survival horror franchises, which apart from the Evil Within is now a dwindling genre. I'm hoping Visceral get a chance to make a back to roots Dead Space. Possibly without Isaac, though I did love the guy as a character, and his voice actor was on point.

I hate EA because I have a good memory.

Come on man are you so in love with EA that you think it was okay for them to screw over employees for years and only stopped because they were forced to do so. Had that not happened shit would still be going on. And business knows the legality of what they are doing.

For me, it's mostly because a beloved series like Madden has remained totally stagnant for a decade now ever since those lazy fuckheads bought the NFL license thus eliminating all the competition.

Had that not happened they would have had problems keeping employees when other big publishers and developers under those other publishers would have offered better employment packages. EA was only getting away with it back when the industry was much smaller and it was even more difficult for somebody to make a career off of games. As it's blossomed, good employment opportunities have opened up all over the place.

Recent example of this kind of bad employer behavior is Crytek. Crytek started having problems paying their people. The result was a lot of employees simply left. Many went to CIG. Red5 is having the same problems with Firefall right now. Unpaid wages causing people to get better jobs other places.

What happened in the past stays in the past. The entire upper management of EA is completely different than it was back then. EA has become one of the better companies in the industry to work for now.

It was very scummy of EA back in the day to try to overwork and underpay their employees, but EA isn't the only one to ever do that and they don't do it anymore. I don't hold companies responsible for what happened 15 years ago unless it's still a problem or having effects today. It's just petty justification for the unending hate on EA that the situation gets brought up today.

EA has been at least trying to improve over the years in my opinion. If anything Warner Brothers has become the worse publisher to date.. The amount of shit they have done with things like MKX and Arkham Knight, pretty much are some of the worse examples I have seen in the industry imo.

So what? Had they been a good place to work they wouldn't lose anyone. People switch jobs when they are unhappy. EA has done a lot of shady business practices over they years. They aren't one to admire. As far as devs go their games are not the most interesting. Most just house dressing. They killed the NFL games with the monopoly and yes I know the NFL was a partner to it.....I don't admire the NFL either. Not for profit my ass.

Much like the recent MS bad press...first impressions are lasting impressions. At least MS is trying to dig out. EA not so much.

That's what I'm saying. Disliking a company or specific products is the norm. But hating a company? Lol What did EA kill your family or something? Sometimes gamers can be so entitled. It really chuckled me when EA was nominated as the worst company of America. Getting worked up so much about games and game companies is quite childish. There are much more grave problems to deal with.

The massive amount of misinformation by some people in forum is shocking. The internet does not hate EA. The Internet does not hate EA because they release huge amount of content

It's business practices that companies do that affect consumers who will lash out. To say Who isn't greedy is to justify EAs action is also incorrect. Not only are there different levels of greed, it is also how you use it. Greed is a great motivator but it's also a something that can corrupt.

I have never understood the hate for EA.

However the hate for Activision, that I can understand.

I first started hating EA in the early 2000's when they were buying out all my favourite game companies. More recently I hate them just because of the way they give us so little now and expect selling a partly finished game and the rest of it later is alright.

Despite the large amount of games they release i've bought barely any over the last few years so i'm proud of that fact. I also hate them because everyone else hates them, and it brings us all together as a society for this reason and thats a good thing.

Yeah on pc, also you need to download a plugin to your computer otherwise you cant play. Worst way of doing things ever. So you have to press play inside Origin, that then takes you to your default browser, at which point you download the plugin, pick what game mode, server you want to play on, press play again and the game will start. Horrible.

I've never hated EA... I certainly rate them higher than Activision.

@sailor232:

That is horrible.

That is an argument contingent upon the assumption that those people were set on leaving their studios before EA acquired them. Perhaps there's a reason why they decided to abandon ship when they suddenly found themselves the environment that EA produced after they were working under them? I'll grant Roberts leaving due to his reasoning to let the medium evolve to suit his vision and his desire to explore film, but many studios were broken up under EA's wing and it is hard for me to believe they would've done the same had they not been bought out. You can believe that these were studios in bad shape when EA acquired them and that's why they were dissolved, but why then would any company see a prudent investment there? I for one believe they were bought out, then found themselves in a situation that was far worse than they'd anticipated, and they left. I can't prove this, but I do have some evidence to support it. Do you have any to support the opposite?

EA does want to make money, but there are different philosophies on how to accomplish that in business. As EA was taken into that courtroom, that philosophy of employee treatment was indicative of one of their chosen methods towards that end, and God knows how many others we were not privy to seeing. So sorry, I don't give the benefit of the doubt to them when not only they stand atop a hill of deceased beloved developers and properties that have been dissolved and forgotten, but we've been shown EA's manner of management that probably played a heavy role in it that brought them to litigation, not to mention their monopolistic licensing practices and exploitative design choices in their software up until the present.

I think a company deserve to be hated that much only, if most of their games are buggy or if they did like Konami.

I don't hate them as much as Activision or Ubi. In fact, i don't even hate them that much because they release good games every year while the other two do nothing else but release failures.

How is EA any worse than the likes of Activision, Sony or Microsoft?

It's was all about public perception, and the fact that many developers were closed under their watch and with that brought forth a lot of animosity. Couple that with buying out the competition with a lack of innovation (look at the EA Sports crap, especially Madden); also online passes while shutting down servers early... Bad mix.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Chris worked for Origin and was one of several superstars (i.e. Richard Garriott, John Romero, and Warren Spector,) but he did NOT own nor found Origin.

That credit belongs to Richard Garriott / Lord British (of Ultima fame) and his brother Robert Garriott.

In September 1992, Electronic Arts acquired the company[5] for $35 million in stock, despite a dispute between the two companies over EA's 1987 game Deathlord. Origin, with about $13 million in annual revenue, stated that it had considered an Initial Public Offering before agreeing to the deal.[6] In 1997, Origin released one of the earliest graphical MMORPGs, Ultima Online.After this title, Electronic Arts decided that Origin would become an online-only company after the completion of Ultima IX in 1999. However, within a year's time, in part due to Ultima IX's poor reception,[7] EA canceled all of Origin's new development projects, including Ultima Online 2, Privateer Online, and Harry Potter Online. Richard Garriott left Origin shortly after and founded Destination Games in 2000.

In later years, Origin mainly existed to support and expand Ultima Online and to develop further online games based on the Ultima franchise such as Ultima X: Odyssey, originally to be released in 2004 but later canceled. In February 2004, the studio was disbanded by Electronic Arts. The Longbow series of simulation games was developed at Origin and published under the "Jane's Combat Simulations" brand of Electronic Arts. A follow-on project, Jane's A-10, was under development when the project was canceled in late 1998 and the team moved to other projects.

EA gobbled Origin up and put them out to pasture to basically support UO after the disappointing sales of Ultima IX; a decision that, unsurprisingly, led to the diaspora of much of their creative talent.

This was a case of EA cannibalizing yet another of the most successful and innovative PC studios of the 80s / early 90s because by the time that they bought out Origin, they'd largely ceased to develop their own PC IPs; as they used to in the eighties.

The success of their console sports titles taught them that they could count on most consolites continually re-purchasing the same annually rehashed garbage.

Most consolites might not know it, but EA didn't even develop for consoles until the creation of their sports franchises in the early nineties.

Due to the wider distribution of console gaming at the time, this resulted in them being one of the first former studios to acquire the capital to become a large-scale "publisher" and simply devour other successful PC studios.

The, "EA sports. It's in the game," television ad campaign only increased their popularity and visibility with their newly targeted consolite demographic further consolidating their financial dominance.

Once they shifted from studio to publisher, they lost their passion for creating innovative games and were more about bean counting and listening to suits; which meant that new acquisitions were quickly destroyed or broken up the moment that they stumbled in sales . Sequels to already successful franchises / licensed content also began to be prioritized over new IPs.

There's also the matter of all of the IPs that they continue to squat upon to this day while refusing to expand upon them, or release the rights to their former creators.

EA have been a bane to the industry for years now and it's an insult that they trot out Origin's name as their online store.

F them and the consolites that empowered them.

I believe that they've earned every bit of the hatred many people direct at them.

People still hate EA? I didn't know that.

Read the above posts, people still do :P

That's crazy lol. I thought they gained a lot of fans back over the years but I guess not. I thought Ubi took that crown from them lol.

What have they done to get any fans back?

They've released good games that people want to play, they released EA Access, they are releasing games that people want sequels for like Mirror's Edge. Gamers want the games they want and EA has turned things around in that regards.

To which are you referring to?

True, but they havent released yet, so there is still time to chop it up into dlc

They are making games that they know they can cash in on though...

Exactly.

Star Wars, and the now half-assed Battlefield series that never even belonged on consoles, but was later redirected post DICE acquisition.

Where were Battlefield 1942 / Vietnam / Battlefield 2 on consoles?

Oh yeah, that was pre-EA deflowering.

DICE originated from the 90s demo scene, which most millenial consolites have no familiarity with, but they became PC developers first and foremost.

Unfortunately, EA consumed them and since then we've had the on-release bug riddled consolized travesties of Battlefield 3/4.

I actually can't speak to the latest Battlefront installment because I don't like licensed garbage, but they know it'll sell on name alone.

I also abandoned them after the consolization of BF3.

Consoles are an absolute lead weight to the gaming industry, but thankfully the industry has changed and consoles are no longer the platform of widest distribution.

While I really dislike some of their decisions in the last while - turning Medal of Honor into a trashy modern military shooter, abandoning the Dead Space series and having the devs make a second rate BF game - I don't think they are any worse than any other major publisher, even better than some. Granted, I'm not a big Star Wars/Battlefront fan so the failure of that game doesn't really affect me much.

They've done a great job supporting Battlefield 4 which is currently in a really good state. Even though the game had a fairly short shelf life, I was pretty happy with their support of Titanfall as well, releasing new game modes for free and other significant improvements to the game. Origin is totally fine and generally painless to use.

Next year they are shipping a new core Battlefield, Mirrors Edge 2 and optimistically a new Mass Effect, all of which I'm interested in.

Compare that to Valve who people still generally seem to like, and what are they doing on the games front? More updates to TF2, CS:GO and Dota 2? Yea I'll go with the company that still makes games.

I mostly get pissed at EA for their pricing schemes. That said, it seems really unfair to spew hate at them OVER the other big publishers.

Keep an eye on Visceral. I'm betting they're going to be the next ones to get slashed.

I've had some issues with EA in the past, but I can't think I've ever particularly disliked them above any other big publisher (Actually, the games of theirs that annoy me the most tend to be console games that constantly harass me to go online).

I mean, I wasn't a fan of how Simcity 4 seemed to be released with an instruction manual designed to generate sales for the strategy guide (which, presumably, actually explained the games mechanics), or how the Sims 3 was left in such a buggy state, or how Simcity (2013) was utter crap. But I've never thought "I'm not buying another game from EA ever again!"

Mostly it's just a memory of them doing bad or stupid things, giving dishonest or stupid excuses, and then giving dishonest apologies later on. Pretty standard for game publishers.

I don't hate them but I don't like any of their games.

I find it funny when people talk about greed or in politics the "takers". But some of these same people see nothing wrong with torrenting movies and the like.

Speaking for myself, I have never "torrented" anything. And I do think it is wrong. And I'm the last person to talk about "takers". When people say that they are usually referring to poor people receiving a pittance from welfare. I'm much more concerned by corporate welfare.

Then you and I are on the same page dude. I used to argue with the republican soldiers I served with about the whole "takers" thing especially because torrenting was such a major thing amongst soldiers in the barracks. Doing that is taking without paying for something. I have film collection, many on DVD, a few Blu ray/HD DVD but most I buy from Xbox movie store or PSN if I wish to own.

lol, yeah and NONE OF US, saw those savings returned. All we got was less packaging, and less content for the same cost, if they saved so much money they should have lessened the prices of the games thus passing those savings onto us.

I loved having manuals and paperwork, hate the fact its gone away and have nothing to show for all the "savings" that were made.

EA is also scum for countless shady dlc practices, starting the modern cancer of gaming that is the "season pass", shutting down beloved studios that made great games because EA's shitty decisions forced the developer to make a game that failed financially and for ruining franchises like Battlefront.

Hate is a strong word, and when they publish a good video game I'll gladly pony up. Recently however they haven't made a good game or said good game launched in a competent state.

Battlefield 4 - we now have it as one of the premiere triple A fps on the market, an excellent multiplayer game. It launched a broken piece of shit, and Dice got their share of the blame, and frankly so should EA.

After that?

Titanfall was good, Battlefront is far too simplistic in the beta and just came off unimpressive as a mp only game, I hate the first dragon age, so forget the notion of trying the sequels, and after that? The last Dead Space game was lousy, The Sims 4 has been a step down from The Sims 3 and has needed expansions to be a better game, Hardline looked lousy didn't even buy. I mean their games offering this gen has just been really weak, and the gem of their lineup: Battlefield 4 always has that stench of EA released that thing a broken mess.