Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts

Basic information
Founded	1982
Legal Structure	Public
Industry	Video Games
Also known as
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 both consumers and the media perceive as excessively unfavorable predatory and anti-consumer.

Consumer impact summary

• User freedom: limited; removed capability to play games on 32-bit systems via Origin, extensive abuse of DRM (SecuROM, Denuvo), monopolization of game genres, orphaned content/game licenses, and more.
• User privacy: questionable; uses kernel-level anti-cheat in many games, DRM abuse, considerations for advertisements in games.
• Business model: Game sales, microtransactions, DLC, NFTs
• Market competition: Extensive; Nintendo, Microsoft/Xbox, Ubisoft, Valve

EA has open-sourcing older Command & Conquer games in 2025. However, the company continues to have a history of little to no consumer rights.

Incidents

Origin shutdown

On April 17, 2025, EA shut down the Origin client, which was the last option for 32-bit hardware owners to run EA-published titles. While most consumers have switched to 64-bit hardware, the discontinued support for 32-bit hardware signifies that vintage enthusiasts, tech historians, and others users of 32-bit hardware are unable to either install or play the games they have purchased, unless they upgrade to 64-bit hardware.

Lootboxes

See also: Microtransactions

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. It was not until several weeks after the backlash that EA would tone down these lootboxes by changing loot pools. Lootboxes remained within the title until Disney directly instructed EA to stop because of gambling concerns.

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). 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. 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.x

Spore

Further reading: Spore (game)

Spore retains a historical 1.7+ million pirated copies, directly related to EA's use of SecuROM. In more recent years, Spore's server access was locked down to EA accounts, mostly because of free Steam key exploit. This has led to various problems for legitimate consumers who wanted to play the iconic game and its sibling Darkspore, since according to guides, 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. (Archived) This has brought concern among the community, leading to community-developed tools to circumvent these server problems.

License exclusivity

With various intellectual properties, from Star Wars to the NFL, EA has created an artificial monopoly over large genres and major IP of the industry. Its exclusive licenses with various football organizations, such as the AFL and NFL, has resulted in an antitrust lawsuit against it. This lawsuit ended in a $600K settlement, but did not resolve the primary problems caused by EA's exclusive deals. 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.

Buyouts and closures

In order for EA to hold its high position, it has been known to buy out its competition. Often, this has led to the detriment of the companies they buy out, 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. While its habit of buying and closing studios has thinned since 2008, it similarly closed Visceral Games, the developer of Dead Space, in 2017.

Switching to in-house kernel-level anti-cheat after purchase

Main article: EA moves to in-house kernel-level anti-cheat on PC after purchase

EA has implemented a change to the anti-cheat of several games after release including: EA SPORTS WRC, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2, Battlefield 2042, Battlefield V, and Battlefield 1. This change breaks the ability to play the game, even after purchase, on older Windows versions and alternative operating systems to Windows including Linux and SteamOS. EA refuses to give you a refund for these games.

Shutting down Anthem

Main article: Anthem server shutdown

On 3 July, 2025, EA announced that the Anthem servers would be sunset on 12 January, 2026. Since the game was designed to require connection to the Anthem servers, the game would become unplayable following the shutdown of the servers. According to the terms of service that all consumers must agree to in order to play the game, this action by EA to revoke the purchase from the consumer is legal and permissible so long as 30 days notice was provided.

On 12 January, 2026, the servers were shut down to the dismay of many.

Battlefield 6

Main article: EA requires open beta players of battlefield 6 to change their motherboard bios settings

The open beta of Battlefield 6 imposes strict requirements on the computer hardware people use to play the game, which caused discontent among the player base.

Positive incidents

Release of Command & Conquer source code (2025)

Main article: EA releases source code of classic command and conquer titles

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. Despite this good measure, the only content available to consumers via these repositories is exclusively the code, and the only way to compile the source code continues to require ownership of a copy of Command & Conquer, meaning once users cannot purchase any Command & Conquer game, this source code repository is effectively useless.