Content gets cut because games release on a set schedule, rather than "when it's done", so corners are cut. This problem is seen as normal in the game industry, especially as they often want to target Christmas releases. The side effect is that things that might be mostly done get cut out, or removed because they couldn't test it, etc.
I get that things get cut. The problem is not that it's unfinished, it's that remaining things are _added as DLC_, or things that masquerade as "free" unlocks, but where buying it with real money is far more appealing than the time they allocate to it (e.g. recent star wars battleground game). This is not solely EA's fault, but it's endemic in the industry. I don't want to buy a "season pass" for my game, I want to _buy the game_.
For an example game release, and pretty much started this thing. I'd be very surprised if it were not developed pre-release. Gran Tourismo HD even had a plan where buying the things you'd want to play was the big plan (though it never made it to release).
Javik, in Mass Effect 3, evokes considerable ire.
It was quite clear that Javik was expected to be a standard character (several things simply don't make sense if you don't interact with him) but they ripped him out specifically for the purposes of creating a downloadable available ON RELEASE DAY.
Most of it is wrong on many levels unfortunately, I feel like reading someone that has no idea of how the industry work. You think EA as company is screwing franchises on purpose, never occurs to you that the studio that is developing the game is doing the mistakes and EA as a whole has pretty much nothing to do with it?
"EA gets hate because it yanks critical content out of its games and makes it pay to download"
Please give an example of a game where the dev were done finishing the game weeks / month in advance and chose to not include part of the game in the release.
Read this: https://kotaku.com/former-bioware-studio-head-talks-about-li...