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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

EA won the most hated company award because video game players are dramatic. Charging $5 for a launch DLC is a drop in the bucket compared to the ways that some larger more critical companies can affect your life.

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EA has been a target of scorn for a while because of a laundry list of issues (including pay-to-win schemes, loot boxes, treatment of employees, etc.) which is long enough to warrant its own dedicated wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Electronic_Arts

EA doing any amount of shenanigans isn't making people sick, killing people, making people homeless or destitute. Their crimes are minor and petty.

Addictive gambling for kids is hardly minor and petty. Many children have spent thousands on EA Sports games.

TBQH Valve/Steam is a major factor in this gambling in games scene but gamers love them. So I don't think this is the real reason gamers have a problem with EA.

Which Valve game involves a pay-to-win mechanic that affects gameplay?

I don't know about pay to win, but TF2 and CS:Go have had extensive gambling scenes from what I've heard.

My defence with Valve is that at least on their stuff you most of time get stored credit. With the rest it is same, but it is actually drown the drain.

For me, it's their support for linux and their easy return policy for games that don't end up working. Gaben could light an orphanage on fire and I'd forgive him.

So I guess that no other matter can receive attention if some people are homeless in the world?

Not so, but if you're to pick one company over all the others as being the most deserving of your ire, EA seems like a rather strange choice compared to, say, Nestlé [1], Chiquita [2], The Coca-Cola Company [3] or Shell [4]. One might even wonder if there isn't something wrong with your priorities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_of_Nestl%C3%A9

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita#Criticism

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Coca-Cola

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_plc#Controversies

Well that's all well and good, but the ignorant masses who called EA the most evil company did so for basically the same reasons that you'd critique those other companies. Big corporations that put out productions designed to do nothing but take money from (often poor) people at the expense of their health.

To me, the constant criticism of gamers over the issue reads like shilling for that pathetic open letter EA put out in response. Classic deflection from a toxic entity.

So EA also does not help starving children.

Sure, their “crimes” are minor compared to RealPage raising rents on everyone but it wasn’t because gamers were dramatic. It was most hated because it was so in your face.

Nah, EA's history is laden with terrible decisions, killing creative teams, neglecting good project's marketing and killing them in the process because they had another internal game in the same genre and the like. It's a fucking cesspit of a company.

And they sit on a lot of good franchises and they literally do nothing with them.

Gamers will forgive anything if the games are good. But EA is nothing but a slop factory.

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