EA might not care about making the best games possible, but they sure as hell did care about their employees when i worked there. When i worked there i think i was on crunch maybe 2 weeks out of the 5 years i was there. I worked with people who had been there for 10+ years and they sang praise for how people were handled internally.

I do however know there were a lot of people there who would basically force themselves into crunch mode for no reason, other than to perfect or try to add a specific feature. Even when they were heavily dissuaded by both management. I have a very specific memory of someone crunching for ~6 months to finish their little pet project only to completely burn out.

Also as far as i know when crunch was required, it required a bunch of approval, and we were paid extra during crunch time, and we were allowed to refuse to do crunch.

> I worked with people who had been there for 10+ years and they sang praise for how people were handled internally.

EA developed a reputation for abusing their employees first and only after facing tons of bad press and lawsuits did they promise to try to turn that around.

I mean, props to them if they really have improved things, but in order to get there they had to be dragged kicking and screaming

This has been my experience as well as an employee.

Can't speak to EA's motivations then, though I worked with a couple of Origin engineers who worked at Origin post-acquisition and have been at EA in Austin most of my career. The impression I got from the ex-Origin folks is that Origin was a ripe acquisition target: large portfolio of games and franchises; good body of talent in a major game development hub; and a failing business that they could get on the cheap.

I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside. EA is a large business (~30B market cap) and subject to the same sorts of challenges of any business at that scale. From my perspective EA is a federation of mostly autonomous studios trying to "find the fun" in an increasingly competitive entertainment landscape. Even if you manage to create a compelling core experience, bringing that to market is a challenge even at EA's scale.

>I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside. EA is a large business (~30B market cap) and subject to the same sorts of challenges of any business at that scale. From my perspective EA is a federation of mostly autonomous studios trying to "find the fun" in an increasingly competitive entertainment landscape.

Maybe you should listen to what those outsiders are saying. EA ships half baked games for full price and loads them with the most scummy and deplorable monetization models in existence (looking at you too Activision.) I haven't heard wonderful things about the working conditions come crunch time either. It's not difficult to understand.

And let's not forget the now (in)famous "surprise mechanics" debacle. EA deserves every bit of their current public image.

EA certainly deserves their reputation, perhaps several times over.

That said, I also suspect they don't care. They make money off their properties, and as long as that is working for them, they can continue to have their jobs.

>That said, I also suspect they don't care

Oh yeah, that much is obvious.

> I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside

They're a publicly traded company that needs to continually meet analyst targets or the stock tanks. It's a lot harder to align yourself to customer expectations when the market is constantly pressuring you for more short term revenue, even at the cost of long term goals and motivations.

> They're a publicly traded company.

Period.

Few - if any - at the 'C' level are a game developer or likely even a gamer. Their job is to make a profit selling potatoes or car parts - it doesn't matter.

Depends on the company. I could be wrong but both Sony and Nintendo have a decent number of former developers or engineers as high level execs. Even then, it's just really hard to not be reactive to the markets. There are very few CEOs with that superpower

Yet even then, you can turn a profit without pushing gambling on children.

Them being a gamer or developer doesn't actually add a great deal of value to their leadership abilities. Many are the examples of management justifying bad decisions as a "one of us" move.

What EA and any company of that scale needs most at the top is people who are interested in large-scale workflows, IP management, and labor issues. Some aspects of these things are tied to the creative and intellectual parts of the work, others aren't. But the point of being that big should be to capitalize on unique opportunities to do R&D or push larger-scope experiences. It's not the nickel and diming that makes for lasting success.

The current CEO of the company started as a designer at EA Australia. Many of the people at the (S)VP level had development experience and play games.

Too bad their greed outweighs their good will toward the rest of us. Plenty of dev studios turn a profit without exploiting the weaknesses of their customers. EA's actions aren't really defensible.

> I've never understood the cynical way certain people view EA from the outside.

Then you haven't been paying attention. I'm a gamer, so I see the criticisms all over the place.

> EA is a large business (~30B market cap) and subject to the same sorts of challenges of any business at that scale.

There are plenty of entertainment companies with much larger market caps that have succeeded without relying on getting children to gamble.

> From my perspective EA is a federation of mostly autonomous studios trying to "find the fun" in an increasingly competitive entertainment landscape.

Replace "find the fun" with "find the money", and completely scratch out anything to do with autonomy, and you'd be correct.

> Even if you manage to create a compelling core experience, bringing that to market is a challenge even at EA's scale.

The vast number of successful indie developers would like a word with you.

Honestly, your comment just reeks of being out-dated. Everything you said may have been true 20 years ago. In the 90's, I would have considered EA to be a respectable studio. But today? They're the most anti-consumer company out there, even worse than Comcast.

> Are they really just money-hungry executives who like buying brands to suck the money out of them and kill anything good there?

EA is to gaming as Oracle is to enterprise software products.