I admit it — I’m a bit of a socialist punk. I listen to Black Flag, I’ve got a Che Guevara t-shirt, and I chant “down with the man” while pr🔴otesting outside of Parliament every Sunday (I'm not sure why, but I do it). I also tend to avoid the big AAA games as they have too much of that corporate stench about them, instead opting for smaller indie titles.
So when my editor asked𓃲 me to take a shot at the biggest corporate ✅jerk of them all, I jumped at the chance.
There’s no denying Electronic Arts is a big fish in the gaming pond, with millions of players and billions in sales, but they didn’t get there by playing nice. EA is one bad apple. How bad? I’ve got a whole list of reasons to show you, but I’ll start you off with a quick example: EA’s CEO, Andrew Wilson, is portrayed as the main villain in Mirror’s Edge 2.
It takes a special kind of malevolence (and cajones) to liter൲ally be the evil corporation in one of your own games.
But if you’re not already ꦗconvinced, here’s a bunch of other reasons why EA is the worst gaming company in the world.
15 Maxis Purchase And The SimCity Reboot
If we’re going t♑o talk about ꦿthe 2013 reboot of the SimCity franch🍸ise, it’s necessary for us 🎉to have a little history lesson about Maxis Software.
Founded by le🦩gendary game designer Will Wright in 1987, Maxis created one of the biggest franchises ✱in early gaming history: SimCity. SimCity 2000, 🦋in particular, was such a huge success that it catapulted Maxis to th🦩e very pinnacle of game development, and eventually, there was a SimCity game not ju🌳st on PC but for every console and handheld system made.
Then Maxis had a few commercial flops, and in an effort to save themselves from bankruptcy accepted an acquisition offer from EA. At this point EA hasn't really done anything wrong - they were even a little altruistic by saving a much-beloved studio. Will Wright went toཧ work on The Sims, another franchise that would make EA billions of dollars, and🥂 left the SimCity franchise to be managed by EA.
Flash forward to 2013. It's been nearly a decad♔e since the lasꦜt real SimCity game, a꧅nd EA has just announced they’re rebooting the 𒐪series with SimCity. At the time EA was very concerned with game piracy. In an effort to prevent their sure-to-be-popular remake from getting pinch♈ed, they made it a requirement for the player’s computer to always have an internet connection available to verify with EA’s servers.
This was bad enough to piss off any die-hard SimCity fan. The series was a single-player staple for decades, and requiring it to always be online meant nobody could casually game while waiting at the airport, or camping, or doing any number of things casual players do that takes them away from an internet connection. But EA doubled-dow🔯n on that error in judgment by vastly underestimating the number of players clamoring to get their hands on SimCity. The servers used to verify player accounts were constantly down at launch, preventing any user from playing even with an internet c൲onnection.
The situatio💎n got so bad that EA had to offer purchasers of SimCity a whole free game from their catalog just to stem the tide of bad press. It didn’t work, a🐷nd eventually, the original Maxis Emeryville studio was closed as a result. Maxis still exists within EA, but i🐎n name only.
14 ℱ Spurring The Always Online Trend
EA is a big name🐟 in the industry෴, and as such a lot of companies were looking at SimCity tꦺo gauge how effective this always online business would be in preventing piracy. While most saw SimCity as one of the large꧑st game launch failures of all time, other companies saw that nobody was piratin✱g the game and that meant the requirement of an internet connection was an effective way to deter piracy.
Nevermind the fact that SimCity was a pale shadow of♏ its former glory and people just weren’t bothering to steal it.
Thus began a sad era of Always Online DRM where multiple companies came out🦋 with games requiring the user to always be 🐈online. Blizzard had it on Diablo 3, Ubisoft had it for Assassin’s Creed 2 and Driver: San Francisco, and EA had it for other franchises like Need for Speed.
Thankfully, the backlash was strong enough that most new single-player game🌜s wil🐭l allow their users to play without being online (with a few exceptions), but we have big uncle EA to thank for making it a standard practice.
13 Mythic Studios - How EA Buys And Kills Stu💮dios
Maxis sort of gives you a hint at how EA oper🤪ates, but I’m going to just come out and hand you a big spoiler for the rest of this article: EA has a habit of buying out smaller studios and then promptly putting them 6 feet under.
Take Mythic ಞStudios. Formed in 1995 they created then popular titles such as Dark Age Of Camelot and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. EA bought Mythic in 2006, and right from the get-go Myth꧒ic started bucking under its corporate overlords.
First EA tried to change their name to EA Mythic, which didn’t sit well with them, so they changed it back to just Mythic in 2008. In 2009, EA had the bright idea of merging their two best RPG developers —BioWare and Mythic— into a single division called BioWare Mythic. This caused a lot of internal strife as the two developer ♋cultures collided like two trucks on a dimly lit highway. Then EA announced a general reduction in workforce and just laid-off a bunch of former Mythic employees.
What was left of Mythic renamed themselves Mythic Entertaiꦡnment in 2012 before EA finally shut them down —for good— in 2014.
12 The Dungeoജn Keeper Fiasco
You sort of see how EA operates now, so I’ll make the꧑ history lesson sup🅠er short. Dungeon Keeper was a very popular (if quirky) game made by Bullfrog Production꧒s. Bullfrog Productions was bought out by EA in 1995, and closed their doors in 2001. So far, no big departure from EA’s modus operandi.
In 2013, EA had the bright idea of bringing Dungeon Keeper🔯 back, by remaking it for𓃲 Android and iOS. If this gives you SimCity flashbacks, you’re on the right track. But it gets worse. Not only is the🦩 game terrible in compa♐rison with its predecessor and riddled with microtransactions, EA also tries to trick users into giving it a 5-star rating on their respective app stores.
As is often the case with freemium mobile games, the player will occasionally be confronted with a “rate my game” screen to leave a review. Except in Dungeon Keeper’s case (at launc🦹h), this screen only allows you to leave a 5-star review. If you select anything less than 5 stars, an email will pop up direct to EA, but you won’t be dire🦩cted to the app store to publicly voice your displeasure.
If this looks like EA is u𝕴nscrupulously stacking the deck to seem like their game is more popular, congratulation — you're right! You have the perception of a regular human being when confronted with this scenario. EA took a ton of bad press for this screw-up, and it’ll be some time before they live it down.
11 ⛄ Origin Of Terrible Customer Service
Many of you already know from our previous article that Steam dominates the world of direct download༒ PC gaming. EA has there own online store which has had many names over the years, but most recently it goes by the name Origin. We’ll get to how EA came by the trademarked name “Origin” a little later, but for now, we’ll just go over how Origin has had its fair share of controversies.
To start off, when Origin was announced back in 2011 it had an 🌃EULA a mile long that nobody ever read. Buried in the legalese was a clause that said if you don’t touch your Origin client for 2 years, your account is deleted along with all of your games. So, get abd♊ucted by aliens or rob a bank and go to prison, and you can kisꦚs your copy of Crysis goodbye.
EA also had some… we’ll say “overzealous” forum moderators that had the power to ban accounts for using naughty words on the EA forums. That would’ve been fine if the ban also didn’t lock a user access to Origin as well. Making things worse was Origin customer service, who decided to make those bans permanent when angry gamers started to flood them with calls com🔜plaining that the couldn’t play their games.
I could go on about how Orig꧋in also requires you to give your system information to EA with no option to refuse, or having an unencrypted chat program, but I think we can summarize O📖rigin in just 3 words: it’s no Steam.
10 💧 🔴 The Death Of Ultima
We’re going WAY back with this one boys and girls. Origin Systems was founded in 1983 by Richard “Lord British” Garriott, and subsequently gave birth to one of the biggest names in gaming historyꦍ: Ultima.
As a gross oversimplification, Ultima was a series of high fantasy RPGs that spanned every system from Atari to PC. EA spotted the small, successful developer and purchased 🔜the company in 1992. The corporate overlords began to demand tighter and tighter deadlines, and by Ultima VIII: Pagan they were shipping games out before they were fully complete🐠d.
When EA management again forced an unfinished 🅺pr🦹oduct in Ultima IX: Ascension out the door, it was ๊one time too many. Betray꧑ed by EA, Ultima fans abandoned the franchise in droves. EA would close Orig🍌in down for good in 2004, making it the first of their many victims.
9 𒊎 ꦕ Mass Effect Andromeda About Face
Fast forward to 2017 and we have another game that was rushed out the door too early, this time BioWare’s Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Founded in 1995, BioWare made a name for itself with Baldur's Gate, a single 🐼player RPG that would rock the world and set a standard for all games to follow. Much like Maxis, BioWare would then go on to have a few financial flops, and smelling blood in t🌃he water EA gobbled up BioWare in 2007.
After that, BioWare would go on to create the Mass Effect series, one of the greatest space operas the world has ever seen. We got a hint that things were starting to get ro♔ugh when Mass Effect 3 was rushed out the door wಞithout a real ending, but BioWare quickly released a free update that gave players a helpful retcon, which appeased belligerent fans.
Mass Effect: Andromeda, the fourth of the s༺eries, seems to be in a bit more trouble. Graphical iss🌃ues, bizarre facial animations, poor writing, and a re-hashed plot, are all giving Andromeda mixed rev♍iews, and one can’t help but feel that Bi♑oWare may soon become the latest casualty of EA.
8 🌠 🐻 Tiberian Sun And The Death Of Westwood
Yet another 🤪franchise that ends in the blood-spattered abattoir of EA is Command & Conquer. Developed by Westwood Studios since 1995, Command & Conquer was a real-time strategy series that spawned many of toda🔴y’s RTS conventions as well as having some of the best music of the era. That all changed when EA took the reins in 1999.
Like Andromeda and Ultima, the finale of the Tiberian War saga was rushed out the door well before the game was actually finished. As a result, many gameplay features that had been planned were simply ꧒omitted, and even components of the game’s engine were never com🍃pleted. The development would continue, however, and eventually, those features would be available in the Firestorm expansion - but only after you gave EA another 𒅌40 bu🐼cks.
Many Westwood employees left after Tiberian Sun, disgusted by EA’s corporate greed. What was left would be assimilated by EA in 🎃2003.
7 ꦛ Game De🌳veloper Slave Masters
In case our♒ last three entries on this list haven’t made this abundantly clear, EA sets unmovable deadlines for games to be completed, and if they’re not done, they get shipped anyways. The developer is then left in an awful dilemma — either they work overtime regularly to try and meꦺet deadlines, or they release a half-finished game that nobody will buy, which causes EA to shut them down.
This 🏅eventually lead to three separate class action lawsuits between 200♋4 and 2006 against EA for unpaid overtime. EA would eventually settle out of court in 2007 for $14.9 million, and institute sweeping reforms as to how it went about developing games. Just kidding! They're still awful.
6 ♈ Star Wars Battlefront (2015)
Cutting content from a game in order to charge more wit𝕴h paid add-ons is something that EA has been a📖ccused of on multiple occasions. The latest and perhaps most blatant example is the reboot to Star Wars: Battlefront.
Developed by EA DICE (the same people who make Battlefield), Star Wars: Battlefront is essentially the same as most modern first-person shooters, but takes place in the Star Wars universe. Players can choose between rebel or imperial forces and then wage war over a specific objective, like the shield generators on Hoth or the power station on Endor. The 😼game had an open beta, allowing ꦛplayers to have a free test drive before the game’s release later in 2015. It was pretty light on content, but it was described as a limited beta and everyone expected it to have more actual gameplay on release.
Then the game did release, and players were left a little befuddled when there were very few maps to play, and no single player campaign in sight. Instead, EA metered out the content in p🍬aid DLC, leaving many to question the full game price tag at launch.