sadly they seem to get away with it, they're still financially successful.

i havent lost any games on origin yet
but even if i do i dont care much they were all freebies

so are acti blizz and the only two video game companies i actively go out of my way to avoid
wb interactive and gearbox
thats uhh still 17 years ago

I think this is an important part of the issue that a lot of people ignore when there's a discussion about the state of the video game industry. It's that a lot of the fault also lies with us, the consumers. Companies like EA, ActivisionBlizzard, Sony and Microsoft get away with this behaviour because they're constantly rewarded for it with the money from pre-orders/season passes, and hype from consumers. As long as the consumers get their latest and greatest shiny AAA thing, they don't care about quality studios and developers being destroyed, or time-honored IP being turned into freemium/mobile-esque cash cows designed to maximize input from whales.

another problem is that the people who dont buy in the pre order season pass dlc bullshit are stil outnumbered 100 to 1 by the mindless masses who line up to buy the same drivel year in and year out

( before anybody starts i loath dlc the dlc i got is whatever comes with the super uber duper speshul super turbo hyper edition thats eventually shat out
i dont pre order ...other then that mini nes
i dont buy in to hype
and havent bought a game new since 2008 ( saints row 2 if wondering ) or paid full price for it ie i only buy in sales )

I do not hate DLC. They are just expansion pack for me, like what we have had from 1980s.

I hate DRM, microtransaction/pay-to-win, account-binding gamesaves.
They make games unplayable, hard to backup, can not transfered to others.

Gamers at 2016 can play classic games from past 30 years, but I doubt how many DRM-protect-games we could play at 2046.

does this include the bullshit cosmetic garbage that gets gobbled up ?

Hmm I loved SSX & SSX tricky. Those were great fun.

by whom? like what? good as long as you like sports games most of these companies were as good as dead when EA bought them, and they actually made them survive a bit longer as opposed to all other big companies these days? same as above same as always - growing big and branching out. This question here is the same as "why is gOg no longer releasing classic games".... it did?

god damn it ! dont expect me to adress all of that one by one !

Actually Activision I believe got bought up by Infogrames, but they later figured Activision was a stronger brand than their own, and changed their name to Activision. Not really sure how Infogrames became so big though. Only games I remember them releasing was a Smurfs game and the Alone in the Dark games.

Also, I began disliking EA in the 90ies when they bought up and practically ended Bullfrog in the 90ies. They have sure ended many good companies, only to fail at really using any of their franchises very well which then killed them and then they just sit on it. I guess I liked C&C Kanes Wrath, also Dragonage, but Dragonagewas at the same time the game that made me stop buying EA games seeing how you found a quest the first time you got into camp that then went "oh, btw you need this DLC to do this quest". A quest to get a chest no less for storing items. Then they also started Origin, which was the final nail.

Oh, I wasn't saying that EA and Activision were directly linked. I just think it's interesting that each company was founded in the early 80s with the intention of promoting game designers as the main draw, so you knew that Bill Budge, David Crane, and Dan Bunten were big deals, only for each company to eventually drop that angle (even becoming hostile to it like the rest of the industry) and evolve into these huge, controversial corporations.

My point was that its not really Activision anymore. I guess some people who worked at Activision might still be there, but its essentially Infogrames with a "new" name.

Regarding huge companies becoming huge and starting to focus on being mainstream and maximizing profits, its sad to see where Blizzard is going these days. Remember how Starcraft and Warcraft 3 got free campaigns made by Blizzard, and free user made maps, made by the Blizzard team? In SC2 that has certainly changed, every race got its own game, and after SC2 and its 2 expansions had been released, they began selling a DLC campaign. In WoW you can now buy extra items for money, for the game you are already paying for every month, and paying for each expansion...

Just does not feel the same. Pretty sure I will finish SC2 single player and then probably not buy any more Blizzard games. Overwatch, you pay full price for the game, and then you seem to have to pay more to unlock all characters? Oh, also in SC2 you can buy extra "commanders".

Maybe the quality is higher because of it, not sure. I will probably become much more focused on indiegames though.

Dragon Age 2 didn't sell well enough for them to put out a physical copy with the DLCs, but there really isn't an excuse for them not putting out a digital edition with the DLC included. If it ever comes to GOG hopefully they do that.
Diablo, Warcraft 2 and Starcraft were pretty revolutionary back in the 90s. You're probably too young to understand the significance.