It's no secret that EA isn't exactly the most liked gaming company in the world. However, a surprising amount of things gamers hate them for aren't EA's fault.
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General
- Fans of BioWare games are convinced that any "dumbing down" of RPG mechanics or DLC offers are all the nefarious influence of EA having bought them, and might not just be BioWare themselves trying to streamline their games and give the players more content that might not have been available otherwise.
- EA was one of the major suspects to blame for Mass Effect 3's infamous Audience-Alienating Ending that is almost unanimously considered to be terrible in the fandom. This despite the fact that EA had little to do with the creative process and it was mostly BioWare's work to begin with. At worst EA may have indirectly been responsible for the implementation of the ending (in particular how rushed and perfunctory it seemed prior to the Extended Cut DLC), but the fact that Shepard dies in nearly every ending variation was entirely the choice of the lead developers.
- Microing down even further, a self-proclaimed writer for the game came out and said that most of the writing staff were cut out of the development of the final part of the story where Shepard meets the Catalyst, with lead writer Mac Walters and executive producer Casey Hudson writing it exclusively themselves without any input from the rest of the writing staff. Whether this is true or not is up to contention, but it certainly caused a stir in an already hot topic discussion.
- EA in general catches a lot of flack for "ruining" companies they buy up, but in many cases, prior to the purchase said companies weren't all that profitable, and in some cases they couldn't do what they did without EA's money. Full Motion Video games Wing Commander and Ultima Online were feasible only with financial support from EA, as Origin prior to being bought by EAnote was, at best, "holding on", financially, in spite of the critical acclaim of their games. The critically acclaimed System Shock 2, meanwhile, was published by EA, and it was their idea to rework the originally unrelated game into a sequel.
- At a Q&A session at Dragon Con 2014, Richard Garriott went on record saying that blame for the quality of Ultima VIII should be spread around between himself and EA, stating that if he could go back and 'fix' just one game, that would be it. EA had been around no longer than Origin, but was far more (financially) successful, so Garriott assumed they knew what they were doing and didn't object when they insisted he cut his game to the bone (to the point where the cloth map no longer made sense) in order to make its release date. The problem was that EA had been making money by constantly updating the Madden engine (among others) and consistently releasing the latest version in time for football season, so they were anal about scheduling. This was...less than good for a complex action RPG. Of course, Ultima IX was the result of Executive Meddling pulling much of the staff to work on Ultima Online (which was dismissed as a dead concept before the paid beta). The cancelled sequel to Ultima Online was also against Garriott's wishes, who said it would be cancelled within a year and wanted to make Wing Commander Online instead.
- Anthem: EA got the bulk of the blame for the maligned game, with many people accusing the publisher of forcing BioWare into creating a Destiny copycat. Granted, EA did cause some problems during the Troubled Production like mandating Bioware to use the Frostbite engine, which was designed for FPS games and not suited for RPGs, and EA offered little support as they were more interested at the time in creating the FIFA games. However, the majority of Anthem's production problems came from BioWare itself. Not only did EA actually give them 6 years to make the game, later extended to 7, but EA also interfered very little with the creative process of the production. The studio itself had little idea of what they wanted to do and was constantly scrapping ideas and going back to the drawing board, stuck 5 years in pre-production, during a time of intense stress during which many people took sabbaticals for their health or just plain quit because they couldn't take it, and all the ideas of the game came from BioWare itself. Ironically, EA's real error was being too lenient towards BioWare as their Executive Meddling was the reason for the game having its few saving graces, most notably the flying mechanic.
- Some disgruntled Titanfall fans blamed EA executives for cancelling Titanfall 3 and greenlighting Apex Legends to chase the Battle Royale Game fad. In actuality, former developer Mohammad Alavi confirmed that it was studio Respawn Entertainment who made the decision to create on Apex Legends after several developers got hooked on Player Unknowns Battlegrounds. Likewise, former producer Drew McCoy revealed that EA executives weren't even aware that the studio pivoted towards Apex Legends and was initially hesitant to support the new title instead of Titanfall installment.
EA Sports
- EA receives a lot of flak for their exclusive license to make games with National Football League players and teams, with many gamers believing that EA simply threw a lot of money at the NFL to get the license. In fact, the NFL took bids from a number of video game companies
before awarding the contract to EA. Gamers, however, deny this, believing that the league would never willingly enter such anti-competitive agreements — never mind that the NFL's own actions in regards to television distribution and apparel licensing indicates that they not only willingly agree to, but also encourage these kinds of licensing deals.- EA still may not be totally blameless in this area, as their similarly exclusive deals with the NCAA and Arena Football League seem to indicate they have no problem pursuing exclusive rights (these and the NFL deal are all part of a California-based class action suit against the company). Of course, it may be possible that the AFL and NCAA simply follow the same hardball tactics as the NFL.
- Whenever the NBA 2K series gets bad publicity, many jump to blame EA - even though it's Take-Two Interactive that makes the game. EA does have a competing series in the form of NBA Live, which largely goes ignored.
- They are often criticized for releasing essentially the same EA Sports' games such as Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer, NHL Hockey and F1 with updated rosters year after year. While this is arguably true, the sports' themselves doesn't really change from year to year.
