StormHammer: Hardly surprising. I just feel sorry for the thousand people losing their jobs - but I can't sympathise with EA as a corporation due to their consumer-hostile policies.
keeveek: I don't get all that "hate EA" hype.
EA games are mostly good or at least mediocre. They also become ridiculously cheap real fast (at least in Poland). For example, a game that costs 135 PLN in january, will probably cost 50 PLN in September (from 40 EUR to 12 EUR)
And their DLC and "Being online" policy is nothing different than any other major gaming company.
Why do you hate EA?
If I would have to pick one from Activision, Ubisoft and EA, I would definitely pick EA as the best one.
Is it just hip to dislike EA or it's something more?
I didn't read past your statement here. But I wanted to share my EA-hate story.
I got a new hockey game to play with my brother. A few months after I got it, EA decided that enough people didn't play it, so they pulled the plug on their servers. But they have no way to actually direct connect to play the game. You can only play on their servers. So I paid for a game that was only a year and a half old -- still sold on the shelves -- and they yanked their servers shortly thereafter.
Now, I understand that they can pull servers. I understand that it's their right to pull servers and that I agreed to allow them to do it after my purchase. And now they need to understand that the $200+ I tended to spend on them every year is gone. And I hope that others that get burned do the same.
There's the primary source of my EA hate.
I should also say that my blacklist only goes so far. Sometimes I accidentally buy EA products without thinking about it (I bought a ME2 DLC -- some of that $ surely goes to EA). But I do my best to keep my money going into their hands while I patiently wait for 2K or someone else to come out with a good hockey game with direct-connect capability.