EA

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

Ah, Electronic Arts (often shortened to EA)... yeah, fuck them.

The only art this company does right is the art of fucking up, big time.

A tale of woe

Basically, here is a quick history to the monstrous conglomerate we know as EA.

Long, Long ago... in a time now forgotten... EA gave a shit what their customers wanted, in fact they were hailed as one of the greatest groups in the gaming industry, seeing an EA logo meant you would be in for an enjoyable time. Not any more

No one really knows why EA became shit but it is suspected that (like all large companies) they forgot what it was that made them great (I.E. CARING ABOUT THE CUSTOMER). When a company once run by men and women who loved making games and knew how to make them great were bought out by corporate suits who knew how to make pastries and toasters rather than art.

Either way that is the past... what? you wanted more? Too bad, I'm here to rant, not give you a history lesson.

Anyway, EA decided at one point "hey, why should we work hard when we could buy out other successful game producers and slowly drive them into the ground?" and so they did they have, in fact, been doing this for years, as such fans of games that now bear the EA logo have begun to think of it as a slow acting Rock of Doom. The Ultima series, a major pioneer in the RPG genre, is a pretty infamous example where they bought out the developers and killed the series after rushing two games into production.

This has become even more apparent after their acquisition of Bioware, where they have completely fucked it over.

Oh, and no exaggeration, EA has been voted the worst company in America by the Consumerist blog, and managed to win it two years in a row, even such abominations like Bank of America and Walmart haven't done that, showing that even non-gamers hate them. As they should because these shits used to make employees work brutal shifts that went over a hundred hours a weak before their employees filed a lawsuit over it.

In sum, EA is the GW of /v/ while Command and Conquer is basically 40k of /v/. Except C&C has sadly sunk even lower.

The greater evil?

The main debate these days is whether EA or Activision is worse; while EA atleast TRIES to diversify itself and can still make relatively good games, just cutting them to pieces and charging you extra for it in the manner of DLC (I.E: You paid for a $50 game? Expect to pay about $50 more to get the full experience), Activision has done nothing but recycle their Call of Duty franchise so repetitively that their Modern Warfare 3 game, for example, was nothing but a complete re-skin of it's prequel; Modern Warfare 2, with very little in the way of new features, but, EA has done the same thing with their Madden sports series, even ones on XBOX One and PS4 are basically just slight retools of the older versions on the XBOX 360 and PS3. And now they are doing the same shit with the once highly acclaimed Battlefield series. Although Activision is fairly open about only caring about the money, while EA does things like support LGBT groups in order to act like anyone who attacks them is just a homophobe.

TL;DR EA is like The Imperium of Man, they have an horrible customer and employee management, commit awful acts which result in a lot of people fired or screwed, yet, they survive through sheer size and cash (up to the point they spend studios like the Imperial Guard spends regiments) and by having some state-of-the-art stuff which allow them to go toe-to-toe with other companies, some of their games are awesome or at least passable. By and large, the whole structure is rotten, and its continued existence comes at the expense of many other gaming studios.