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Business Practices
Electronic Arts is mainly a publisher as most of the games they produce are developed by other studios. As a publisher, they ensure that things get done and have promise of marketable success. In the past, they have rushed projects, prevented creative freedom, shut down various studios, bought out companies to eliminate potential competition, and has also embraced social/casual gaming over core gaming (they shut down a studio that was developing a game while acquired a casual game studios). They might have changed throughout the years though. Look up on the history of Infinity Ward and you'll see that it started 22 developers leaving EA to working on Call of Duty and being picked up by Activision only to leave after Modern Warfare 2 to start a new studio under Electronic Arts once again. I guess you can't really change how a publisher works. You can't live with them, but you can live without them (unless you're an indie developer I guess).
Launch of Origin
Electronic Arts games for PC can be bought at retail stores while digital versions were also available on Steam. Games sold well on the Steam platform and it made Valve quite a bit of money to host those games. EA seemed like they wanted a crack at it and created Origin, a platform geared towards selling their own games on their own platform. A lot of people were upset, some were excited, and others didn't care.
Problems:
-Crysis 2 was about to be launched on Steam and some pre-purchased it. It was pulled from Steam and forced players to create an account and use the Origin platform in order to play it
-EA having total control over their games meant no awesome deals like it did on Steam
-The program is slow, buggy, and intrusive to the computer
-Origin apparently scans the user's computer to see what games they have, whether the player liked it or not
-Players were locked out of games they bought, crashed on games they played, and some couldn't even log in
Okay, this could be one of the reasons why it rubbed players the wrong way. I tried out Origin and really didn't like how I could barely download the games, had trouble starting up any of them, the amount of resources it took up on my laptop (probably constantly scanning my computer to see what games I had), the amount of times it crashed or froze my computer, and the fact that games stayed at its retail price. It converted me back to playing EA games on consoles rather than on PC as it caused too many problems for it to be worth it. I would like to remind everyone that Steam was once like that: took forever to load, froze the computer, was buggy, etc. and sometimes it's still like that. So maybe Origin will get better one day.
Secret support of SOPA
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a government bill that would have allowed government intervention on the internet. If passed, the government could block any site that was considered a breach of copyright. It would be nice if piracy would stop killing the entertainment industry, but this was a bad solution to that problem. Fan made sites for games or shows would be blocked, your favorite video streaming sites would no longer exist, and those who possess their own intellectual property with reference to existing ones (videogame remixes, videogame comics, meme sites, etc.) would be considered a breach and be blocked. Many companies understood this to be a problem too and took the effort to prevent such an atrocity to ever be passed. EA was the suspect of one of the companies being a supporter of the bill and has been since looked down upon by the community.
Downloadable Content (DLC) Galore
Sure, we can pan EA for always pumping out DLCs, but that goes for a lot of other companies too. I think what really hit fans of EA hard was the day-one DLC that wasn't included with Mass Effect 3 when it launched. The purpose of DLCs was to provide extra content to fans who wanted more out of their games. The problem is that publishers (and possibly the minds of developers) has taken advantage of that option and has exploited the term DLC to being "more money" rather than "extra content". It's not considered extra content when it should have already been on the disc already. This brings about another irony in the game industry as Capcom's latest release of Street Fighter X Tekken really did have day-one DLC on the disc but was unaccessible to players unless they paid the extra cash for it. I really hate DLCs as publishers abuse this power way too much and it is creating a horrible trend in game development where projects are rushed, lack content, and are unpolished just because they can be fixed later, added later or alongside the launch for extra money, and sometimes go unfinished entirely. This seems to be the problem with EA's Mass Effect 3 where the ending was unsatisfactory and has forced EA to create a DLC (which they have announced will be free shortly after being awarded worst company in America) that as a more conclusive ending. I swear, the trend of DLCs will one day cause players to buy portions of a game rather than an entire game (pay this much for single-player, pay that much for levels 1-5, pay monthly for the multiplayer portion).
Mass Effect 3
EA received an overwhelming response from fans of the series about the ending (*cough* even though BioWare was the one that developed it *cough*). I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW! I have yet to complete 1 and 2 and so I don't want any spoilers. Anyhow, this seems to be the major factor for causing all those votes to focus on EA since it wasn't too long ago. This has caused EA to bring about a DLC with a new/alternate ending (I'm not sure). BioWare's working hard I suppose since EA has the studio on 2-3 different projects, and now they still have to make additional content to a game everyone's so angry about.
Electronic Arts might have done things that did not favor their audience, but I'm not sure if they really deserved the title of "worst company in America" (compared to those listed, not comparing it to other companies in the game industry). It's commendable that EA has ensured the launches of games such as Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Syndicate and Mass Effect 3 (hey, everyone wanted it so bad before it came out) during the first-quarter as game releases have been sort of slow in the beginning of this year. I'm not sure if I can quite call myself an EA fan as I do play a good amount of games published by them, but I also question some of their practices in the industry too. What keeps me from delving too deep into how they work is the way other companies have worked in the past as well. Notable companies are currently Capcom and Activision. I have my doubts that EA will change anytime soon as they're a huge corporation and making any changes to it while they still have their success (despite low market value and angry fans) would be dangerous for them, or so the higher ups and business men would say. Sad but true.
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