Electronic Arts: Difference between revisions
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*Exclusive licensing deals that lead to monopolies in sports genres | *Exclusive licensing deals that lead to monopolies in sports genres | ||
*Studio closures and buyouts resulting in orphaned franchises | *Studio closures and buyouts resulting in orphaned franchises | ||
*Switching to in-house kernel-level anti-cheat after purchase | See also: [[EA moves to in-house kernel-level anti-cheat on PC after purchase]] | |||
Revision as of 12:27, 8 April 2025
| Basic information | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1982 |
| Type | Public |
| Industry | Video Games |
| Official website | https://ea.com/ |
Electronic Arts (EA) is a former video-game developer and now publisher founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins. It is well known for its simulator titles under the Sim series (The Sims, SimCity, MySims, etc.), titles published under its EA Sports division (Madden, FIFA, etc.), and its Battlefield series.
EA has received criticism for its reliance on microtransactions, its focus on downloadable content (DLC), and other business practices that some consumers perceive as excessively unfavorable (predatory and anti-consumer).
Consumer impact summary
The company has been widely criticized for anti-consumer behavior, including:
- Forced obsolescence (cutting off 32-bit Origin support, blocking access to games players bought)
- Predatory monetization (sports game lootboxes and Star Wars Battlefront II, overpriced DLC)
- Restrictive DRM (SecuROM, Denuvo) that restricts game access and modding
- Exclusive licensing deals that lead to monopolies in sports genres
- Studio closures and buyouts resulting in orphaned franchises
- Switching to in-house kernel-level anti-cheat after purchase | See also: EA moves to in-house kernel-level anti-cheat on PC after purchase
Though EA did something right by open-sourcing older Command & Conquer games in 2025, its history of putting profits ahead of player experience continues to dismantle consumer trust.
For more information see EA releases source code of classic command and conquer titles
Incidents
Origin shutdown
On April 17, 2025, EA will shut down its Origin client,[1] which was the final option for 32-bit hardware to run EA-published titles. While most consumers have already switched to using 64-bit hardware, the end-of-life of 32-bit support means that vintage enthusiasts, tech historians, and users who previously did not need to upgrade their 32-bit hardware are unable to either install or run the libraries that they paid for.
Lootboxes
Multiple games published by EA in recent years have garnered significant controversy over what is essentially legal gambling. This is most commonly seen in EA sports titles and their "Ultimate Team" modes, which has players using in-game currency that can be purchased with real-world money to buy card packs, in order to potentially get high-value player cards. This monetization method, considered by many to be "predatory", most notably introduced controversy within the modern release of Star Wars Battlefront 2, wherein the most powerful character in-game, Darth Vader, could only be obtained through this lootbox system.[2][3][4] It was not until several weeks after the backlash that EA would tone down these lootboxes by changing loot pools.[5][6] Lootboxes remained within the title until Disney directly instructed EA to stop because of gambling concerns.[7]
DRM
EA holds the record for most pirated game with the title Spore, which was directly because of EA's use of SecuROM, and was one of the earlier known titles to introduce always-online digital rights management (DRM).[8] Some releases of Mass Effect also used SecuROM, and would instill excessive limits, such as a three-install limit that both could not be refunded by uninstalling and could only be increased through customer-service calls, and a recurring-validation system that required that the game have its activation code run every 10 days.[9] While its use of SecuROM died off in the mid-2010s, the company merely switched to DRM that has been far worse for consumers, Denuvo. One significant EA title that has used this DRM is Star Wars: Jedi Survivor.
Spore
Spore retains a historical 1.7+ million pirated copies,[10][11] directly related to EA's use of SecuROM.[8] In more recent years, Spore's server access was locked down to EA accounts,[12] mostly thanks to a free Steam key exploit. This has led to various problems for legitimate consumers who merely wanted to play the iconic game and its sibling Darkspore, since according to guides,[12] users could only have a singular install of the game on any device, were required to have an EA account using an alphanumeric password, and needed a CD key to redeem on the user's EA account.[13] This has brought concern among the community, leading to community-developed tools to circumvent these server problems.[14]
License exclusivity
With various intellectual properties, from Star Wars[15] to the NFL, EA has forced its way into holding what is essentially an artificial monopoly over large genres of the industry. Its exclusive licenses with various football organizations, such as the AFL and NFL, has resulted in an antitrust lawsuit against it.[16] This lawsuit ended in a $600K settlement, but did not resolve the primary problems caused by EA's exclusive deals.[17][18] NCAA players brought additional lawsuits against EA, alleging that it was not authorized to use their likeness in its games. These suits were also settled out of court.[19][20]
Buyouts and closures
In order for EA to hold its high position, it has been known to buy out its competition.[21] Often, this has led to the detriment of the companies they buy out,[22] and by extension, the media which they release. A historical example, Westwood Studios, which pioneered the RTS genre with the Command & Conquer series, was shut down about five years after its purchase by EA, and its notable franchise was left abandoned years later, with entries either delisted or broken after GameSpy-based DRM were broken circa 2014.[23] While its habit of buying and closing studios has thinned since 2008, it similarly closed Visceral Games, the developer of Dead Space, in 2017.[24]
Positive incidents
Release of Command & Conquer source code (2025)
In February 2025, EA worked with C&C community members to open source four Command & Conquer games under the GPL license, in a move widely celebrated by the gaming community.[25][26]
References
- ↑ Nelson, Will. "EA is ditching Origin, which means you could lose access to your games". PCGamesN. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Dingman, Hayden (10 Oct 2017). "How loot boxes are turning full-priced PC games into pay-to-win games of chance". PCWorld. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Purchese, Robert (10 Oct 2017). "Star Wars Battlefront 2 has a loot crate problem". Robert Purchese. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Fahey, Rob (13 Oct 2017). "Thinking outside the loot box". Games Industry. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Machkovech, Sam (1 Nov 2017). "Star Wars: Battlefront II changes its loot box plans… but is it enough?". ArsTechnica. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ O'Connor, James (13 Oct 2017). "After beta controversy, DICE has better clarified the 'loot crate' and progression systems in Star Wars Battlefront 2". VG247. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Needleman, Sarah E.; Fritz, Ben (17 Nov 2017). "Electronic Arts Pulls Microtransactions From 'Star Wars Battlefront II' After Fan Backlash". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ 8.0 8.1 Modern Vintage Gamer (25 Nov 2019). "SecuROM - The PC CD-ROM DRM that broke games | MVG". YouTube. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Chalk, Andy (8 May 2008). "Mass Effect, Spore To Use Recurring Validation". The Escapist. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Molina, Andres (21 Jun 2024). "How many times was Spore pirated?". ncesc.com. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Van der Sar, Ernesto (13 Sep 2008). "Spore: Most Pirated Game Ever Thanks to DRM". TorrentFreak. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ 12.0 12.1 How to Connect to Spore Servers (Steam/GOG/EA App)
- ↑ Spore - How to get access to online features
- ↑ Spore Community Hub
- ↑ Dolen, Rob (15 Jan 2021). "EA No Longer Has Exclusive Rights to Star Wars, But Is It Too Late?". Game Rant. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110510050257/http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_documents/0611_nfl_ea_wm.pdf
- ↑ Kuchera, Ben (13 Jun 2008). "Lawsuit flags EA for illegal procedure on football monopoly". ArsTechnica. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Kravets, David (28 Jun 2016). "EA punts, gives $600k to former football star in Madden NFL rights flap". ArsTechnica. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Eder, Steve (26 Sep 2016). "E.A. Sports Settles Lawsuit With College Athletes". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/dennis-dodd/23859858/ea-sports-settles-likeness-suits-thousands-of-current-former-players-eligible-for-money
- ↑ Stebbins, Samuel; Comen, Evan; Sauter, Michael B.; Stockdale, Charles (1 Feb 2018). "Bad reputation: America's Top 20 most-hated companies". Usa Today. Archived from the original on 30 Dec 2019. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
- ↑ Hsu, Tiffany (4 Apr 2012). "Electronic Arts: 'Worst company in America'? Consumerist says yes". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Maiberg, Emanuel (8 Apr 2014). "Reddit compiles terrifying list of games affected by GameSpy shutdown". PCGamer. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Fingas, Jon (18 Oct 2017). "EA shuts down the studio behind 'Dead Space'". endgadget. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ "EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert, along with other games". HackerNews. Feb 2025. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Rudra, Sourav (28 Feb 2025). "Unbelievable! EA Open Sources 4 Command & Conquer Games". It's FOSS News. Retrieved 31 Mar 2025.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)