Criticism of Electronic Arts

[2] The company gained the derogatory nickname as the "Evil Empire" within the video game industry as a result of these business practices.

[12] However, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot later indicated that a merger with EA was a possibility, stating, "The first option for us is to manage our own company and grow it.

In addition to the settlement funds, EA reclassified several of the low-level developers into hourly-rate schedules to qualify for overtime in the future, but forgoing company stock options.

[16] Since these criticisms first aired, it has been reported that EA has taken steps to address work-life balance concerns by focusing on long-term project planning, compensation, and communication with employees.

Such titles including 2006's Superman Returns which suffered from culture changes as EA reacted to the class action lawsuits,[22] and 2019's Anthem.

[23] EA's aggregate review performance had shown a downward trend in quality over recent years and was expected to affect market shares during competitive seasons.

Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson had said, "Poor reviews and quality are beginning to tarnish the EA brand.

One critique compared EA to companies like Ubisoft and concluded that EA's innovation in new and old IPs "Crawls along at a snail's pace,"[26] while even the company's own CEO, John Riccitiello, acknowledged the lack of innovation seen in the industry generally, saying, "We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play.

EA has announced that it is turning its attention to creating new game IPs in order to stem this trend, with recently acquired and critically acclaimed studios BioWare and Pandemic would be contributing to this process.

[39] This result came in the aftermath of the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy which several commentators viewed as a significant contribution to EA's win in the poll.

[41] EA spokesman John Reseburg responded to the poll by saying, "We're sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco and weapons companies are all relieved they weren't on the list this year.

Games mentioned in the announcement included the critically controversial Mass Effect 3 for its ending, Dead Space 3 for its use of microtransactions, and the more recent SimCity reboot due to its poorly handled launch.

Consumerist summarized the results by asking, "When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have—for the second year in a row—come out to hand it the title of Worst Company in America?

"[44] Gibeau attributed the elimination of online passes, the decision to make The Sims 4 a single-player, offline experience, as well as the unveiling of more new games to the shift in thinking.

One approach used when creating loot boxes is to limit the system to only provide items that do not alter gameplay, such as visual customization options for characters.

[46][47][48] Players complained about the pay-to-win aspects, leading EA to change what the Battlefront II loot boxes contained, including assuring all items could otherwise be earned through in-game means.

[49][50] The changes still allowed players that spent money on loot boxes to gain game-affecting elements at a faster rate than those trying to earn them in-game, leading to further criticism.

Just prior to the game's full release in November 2017, Disney, which owns the Star Wars intellectual property, warned EA to disable the game's loot boxes until they could devise a non-pay-to-win system, fearing the loot box system could be seen as encouraging players, including children, into gambling.

Among other things, we're looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.

[53] A day after the post on Reddit was made, a Twitter user, who claimed to be a developer at Electronic Arts, had reportedly received over 1,600 death threats due to Battlefront II, and the story was picked up by CNBC.

Both Belgium[58] and the Netherlands[59] issued rulings that loot boxes may be considered unregulated gambling and instructed developers and publishers of games they found out of compliance (including FIFA) to take corrective actions.