EA recently released a lot of good games on GOG. I'm surprised they didn't pull all our games from here, considering they have their own client.

So I don't want to hear they are evil.

I'm gonna say that their recent GOG releases here are a sign of kindness on their part. But then again, their latest games using Denuvo is a sign of evil on their part.

The name hasn't bothered me beside the part where I am told "EA Origin" in order to play anything. But then a few of their advertising schemes or games certainly were avoided. Thanks for telling me the new Need for Speed supports 4K on PC, but do you lack any substance that you have to fallback onto advertising a resolution increase?

So as of the moment, you can say that I'm mixed on that.

yeah i mean how dare people have different opinions about games and companies its almost liek everybody is different

and so far all i see from you is white knighting and fallacies and strawmen
more or less the gaming equivalent of leave EA alone

but so far other then drm free games on here ( and that white washes the drm origin store right ? )
you havent given any reason that EA doesnt suck
other then a single game is high rated ( game quality doesnt mean EA cant suck )

im not here to bash EA but so far all you are doing is white knighting and finding excuses
so why exactly is EA not all that bad
and a poor victim of internet trolling

i really want to know

Two years ago a big german game magazine wrote an article about EA.
I'm in no mood to read it again and put relevant stuff* in here :P So I'll just post the link and perhaps someone else wants to:
http://www.gamestar.de/specials/reports/3059248/wie_schlimm_ist_electronic_arts_wirklich.html

*if there's any

EA employs nearly 10k people and constantly hits the top of the list for best companies to work for in the Video Game industry, as voted on by people who work in the industry ... plus that vote for "worst company in America" was driven by lobbyist group against same sex marriage who were attacking EA for the gay relationships in Bioware's games, and on top of that EA is also one of the highest rated companies in the world for equal opportunity employment & lack of workplace discrimination.

(Conversely, Valve only has got something like 300 employees, even though it makes about the same amount of money that EA does.)

I am not saying that EA hasn't pulled a lot of dick moves in the past (lord knows I was on the front lines of the "Fuck EA" brigade when they shut down Westwood), and I am sure they will pull dick moves again in the future, but the EA today is not the same EA that it was in 2000.

Besides, now that I have grown up a bit I can actually process that a big reason why EA could buy up all the companies like Westwood & Origin is because those companies were sinking & EA generally tried to give all of them a shot to pull themselves back together after buying them out ... and when all is said and done, you just have to look at the shit shows that are Shroud Of The Avatar & Star Citizen"s never ending development + feature bloat to see why EA finally shut down Origin Systems: those two used to pull the same shit back when they ran Origin, and EA actually put up with getting dicked around by Garriott & Roberts' endless development cycles for a decade before they finally pulled the plug.

P.S. "Origin" is actually a pretty good launcher / client and one of the least intrusive DRM systems out there, on top of which EA's customer support is by far the best I have ever dealt with.

P.P.S. Battlelog on the other hand is complete dog shit, but that is DICE's pile of crap & they are the ones who will not let it go even though EA has tried to tank it.

Oh; I assumed Rockstar did their own thing; kind of like Blizzard lite. Then again my "intel" above is more or less 6 or so years old when I just stopped bothering with the physical game world because of online requirements and (ironically) went to gog land exile.

Nontheless all the more reason why they are faaaar from being as demonized as EA like the others.

nah rockstar is owned lock stock and barrel by take 2
they are a subsidary and are doing their own thing but still a part of take 2

and considering gta 5 shifted 65 million units and stil sells for full price take 2 is golden

The decline started when the Romans pierced Jesus with the spear. All the leftover silver coins fell out of his pocket while up there on the cross. EA and the rest of mankind just swooped in and grabbed what they could. I mean, that Jesus dude was gonna die anyway. He wasn't going to need those coins where he was going. Who cares, right? It's Darwin economics 101. More meat for the mean eaters.

For a money-making company, EA is quite good.

For a game company, EA is damn evil that every old gamer knew it.

EA kept destroying good studios and good IPs, and publish new games with A LOT of bugs with GB-sized day-one patch (which fix very few bugs).

EA do publish some good games, but they destroyed much much more.

It started even earlier. When Ultima 7 - The Black Gate was released, EA was already trying to take over Origin. The shape of the Generators is an allusion to that evil empire trying to take over. (Sphere, Pyramid and Cube were the EA symbols at the time)
By the time of The Serpent Isle's release, EA had succeeded in taking over and forced Origin to release Serpent Isle prematurely with lots of bugs still present. Then they forced changes on Ultima 8 to appeal to a broader market (#sarcasm: yea, that totally worked...) and then proceeded to kill the Ultima series with Ultima 9. After that they converted Origin to an online only company, since Ultima Online was successful for it's time.

So yes, I would say EA started to show that it is evil in 1992. Maybe even earlier. But unfortunately in our market society the evil corporations are the ones that will be successful since there aren't enough customers who vote with their wallet against the corporations they complain about.

"Oooohhh! Valve (Or EA or Ubisoft) is sooo evil! They don't care at all about their customers. So I'm going to give them my money to support them! That will teach them!"

It always has been from the start. :^P

To be honest I can see why EA is so hated as I miss the days of especially Wing Commander and when Need For Speed didn't suck.
But I don't fully agree with the notion it swallows other companies and then kills them, sure it happens but most of these companies would probably have gone under long before one way or another.
That they don't produce anything I want anylonger, well that's too bad for them because I simply don't buy their stuff, but it's hardly something I'm crying over.

Brace yourself :

http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/list.php?list_publisher=Electronic%20Arts

And I would say that isn't very far off the mark. It wasn't very long after Trip Hawkins founded the company with his lofty goals enshrined in the "Can a computer make you cry?" ad, that the suits and marketing basically took over. But if you want to actually mark the turning point, I'd say it was when Larry Probst (from Activision) entered the pictured and shifted the company's focus away from being game/developer-focused to sales-focused.

Some interesting related links:

http://www.polygon.com/a/how-ea-lost-its-soul/chapter-1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh3FN3YCwYk

I would say it's more like:

EA: *uses shoddy marketing practices, false advertising, or releases a game in a buggy, unfinished and disappointing state*

Gamers: "BOOO! WE HATE YOU! WE WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM YOU EVER AGAIN!"

EA: *announces new Battlefront/Battlefield/Mass Effect/Dragon Age/etc. game*

Gamers: "YAY! I'VE ALREADY PRE-ORDERED THE ULTIMATE DIGITAL DELUXE EDITION AND THE DLC SEASON PASS!"

Other Gamers: "What? But don't you remember what they did before? And don't you realize the Digital Deluxe Editions and Season Passes are of dubious or unknown value? I mean, you're paying $119.98 for vanity items and "instant access" to items you could have just earned in the game?

Gamers: "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? STOP BRINGING IT UP! WE DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THAT ANYMORE. NO ONE CARES."

EA: *uses shoddy marketing practices, false advertising, or releases the game in a buggy, unfinished and disappointing state*

Gamers: "BOOO! WE HATE YOU! WE WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM YOU EVER AGAIN!"

EA: *announces new Battlefront/Battlefield/Mass Effect/Dragon Age/etc. game*

Gamers: "YAY! I'VE ALREADY PRE-ORDERED THE ULTIMATE DIGITAL DELUXE EDITION AND THE DLC SEASON PASS!"

Other Gamers: ...