you mean like what ms pulled with the xbox one on E3 2013 ?

I don't think EA is worse than the rest of the big ones: Activision Blizzard, Sega, Take-Two Interactive and so on.
They are all big corporations, so they are driven by the exact same factors, mainly financial ones.
As a GOG user I certainly appreciate EA more than these other ones.

was more talking about their percieved image though
EA seems to be more villified then the others bar acti blizz
so there has to be a reason for that beyond "hurr EA is da bigz so eets easy target"
cause acti blizz nintendo sega take 2 and so on arent exactly small either

something about EA has pissed off people for years

I think in my book Blizzard takes the crown for shittiest gaming company. EA is okish, but I hate it that they still haven't released a Mass Effect collection with all DLCs included, nor a Dragon Age 2 release with the same.

I would place the time of the downswing to when this logo was swapped out for this logo, which was quite some time ago. What I consider Electronic Arts' golden age died decades ago, supplanted by IP-licensed cash-grabbing.

never cared for blizzard
a one trick pony with bland boring grindy games

How dare you say that Diablo 2 is exactly what you say it is?!

Always installed, never played...

Well, Nintendo is a evil company. They nearly destroyed the video game market in the 80's by forcing developers to sign less than legal contracts. It nearly destroyed the competition (Sega, Atari, NEC) until the companies were freed from those shackles and it only led to a better gaming world (Konami released some good games on the Mega Drive for example)
Nintendo was the company that brought regional lock into gaming.
Nintendo had massive censorship to the point where some games where changed so much from their japanese original they barely resembled those.
Nintendo damn near made modding illegal, if they'd won the lawsuit against Galoob over the Game Genie, we wouldn't have modding as we know it.
Nintendo thinks selling your used game is the same as pirating games and fights the used-market for over 20 years.
Nintendo also think imports are legal, hence why they paid shops to not sell import consoles, which cost them a couple hundred millions when the EU made a lawsuit against them about a decade ago.
And their consoles are a piece of shit. Everybody laughs about the Red Ring of Death or the Yellow Light of Death but what about Nintendo and it's crap consoles? The NES was so badly designed that over 60% of the units sold broke down at some point and what did Nintendo do? Instead of fixing the problem, they sell "repair and cleaning kits" at an insane price.

Nintendo is worse than EA, Activision, Bethesda and Microsoft combined and have been that way for decades now. All the while, isn't it also funny that companies get attacked for creating countless uninspired sequels to their franchises, when Nintendo has been doing that since the 80's? By now you have the impression the only games they actually have are Super Mario, Mario Kart, Smash Bros. and Zelda with a billion sequels each.

And Take 2 isn't exactly a nice company either. Just look at their crap servers and them releasing unfinished buggy games. NBA 2K15 came out with a ton of bugs, then NBA 2K16 comes out and it has the same exact bugs at launch again. Then they release some patches and suddenly, 2K16 doesn't work on Windows 10 anymore and it took them nearly 2 weeks to fix it. Did people get an apology or anything? No, of course not.

EA started good, became evil after Trip Hawkins left and people took over who weren't gamers, had no clue about gaming and saw EA as just another company to make money. Yes, i mean that useless asshole John Riccitiello. Ever since he became involved, EA turned into utter crap and the destruction of companies started.
I think though that they changed a little for the better ever since Andrew Wilson took over.

But what people need to realize is: We live in a capitalistic world and all companies just exist to make as much money as possible.
Nobody here could say, that if they were the CEO or President of EA, that they would change anything about that after they saw their bank accounts rising and rising.
That could be used on nearly every Publisher. It's the same with Crapthesda. They puke out a pseudo-rpg full of bland world design, boring uninteresting characters, uninspired gameplay and badly written, plot-hole filled story with a ton of bugs to boot and people go nuts.
Then they patch a few things, people realize the game is crap but what happens? The announce another game and "Yay! Jump on the Hype train! Choo Choo!" the customers say.
Then Crapthesda does something absolutely stupid like wanting to charge money for mods, of which only 25% go to the creator but only after the mod made 100 dollars and people riot. Then the paid mods turn out to be non-quality bullshit and the riot erupts even more. They drop the idea but not before saying "We will try it again in the future". People riot...then Failout 4 is announced and all is forgotten "Pre-order this! It's awesome!IGN even says so! I gonna buy all the over-priced DLCs too! I love Bethesda!"
And people think their "games" are actually even good because "Modders fix all the problems, so it's awesome".

The majority of gamers are simply retarded, they like to get ripped-off and milked off all their money. They like to get fucked over with buggy games and overpriced DLC. Hence why gaming is in this abysmal state it currently is.

you mean bland boring and grindy ?
and once you finished it you can grind some more for the higher difficulty and grind again

..yeah..whoo...fun

They've certainly displeased people, by hoarding franchises and IPs but not doing anything with them, by having micro-transactions, by making some bad game design choices and so on. There's a number of examples already given by others in this post.

So it's not difficult to find valid reasons for disliking EA, but the same can be said about all major publishers.

I also think most of the kids and teens who complain about EA en masse don't really have a clue as to why they are supposed to hate EA:' it's what everyone else does, including my favourite youtuber ... and I want to be like everyone else'.

The media too needs villainous companies to write angry articles about, if its not EA it's NIntendo or someone else.

So in summary it's a combination of:
1) people with valid reasons for disliking EA
2) kids and teens who are just following the stream
3) media spurring things on and keeping the hate alive

Two reasons really, lack of confident leadership and hubris.

The people running that place have gotten worse and worse, more power hungry, more criminally eccentric, leading to an overall severe lack of confidence and structure.

On top of that, the aforementioned hubris. For way too long they have seen themselves as untouchable, and it has cause them to lower their guard, leaving themselves open for the inevitable invasion and collapse.



Wait.


Shit, sorry, I'm thinking of the Rise and Fall of The Roman Empire.

Nobody forces people to buy EA games.
Nobody forces studios to sell their souls to EA.
But they do anyway, and thus they keep the evil alive.

i suppose i am in category 1
i am a fan of the sims but dont like what they did with 3 and like what they did with 4 even less
less said about all the extra crap you can ( and have to buy in some cases) the better

simcity 5 was a clusterfuck too

multiple times
i dont know how they can stomach that shit load of fuck

or worse : even like it or play diablo 3

I don't think there will be more reasons that already stated (which are plenty :P ). The other big ones just don't have the "Grim Reaper of gaming studios" tag EA has.

Oh yeah, and then there where this "you have 3 activations for your game" phase (see downfall of Spore). And I heard that games that Origin drops are also dropped from the account. I do not use it so I don't know but I'm inclined to belive that this is fearmongering someone spread.