Electronic Arts
American video game company
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| January 2019 | EA disabled the ability for Belgian players to purchase loot boxes in FIFA games to comply with Belgian gambling regulations. |
| 2018 | USA Today ranked Electronic Arts as the 5th most hated company in the United States, indicating continued negative public perception. |
| March 2018 | EA reactivated the Battlefront II loot box system, removing pay-to-win elements after widespread criticism. |
| 2017 | EA's Reddit post explaining the loot box system became the most down-voted comment in Reddit history, receiving over 668,000 downvotes. |
| 2017 | EA closed Visceral Games, which was seen by Engadget as a return to the company's previous practice of shutting down well-known studios. |
| November 2017 | Disney warned EA to disable the Battlefront II loot box system due to concerns about potentially encouraging gambling-like behavior among players, including children. |
| November 2017 | Electronic Arts faced significant criticism for the pay-to-win loot box system in Star Wars Battlefront II, which allowed players to purchase powerful unlockable characters and in-game boosts that could otherwise take hours to acquire. |
| June 2016 | EA settled with former NFL player Jim Brown for $600,000 in a lawsuit related to unauthorized use of player likenesses. |
| 2015 | United States Courts of Appeals rejected EA's argument that player likenesses were incidentally used in their sports games. |
| 2013 | Electronic Arts was named 'Worst Company in America' by Consumerist for the second consecutive year, reinforcing ongoing criticism of the company. |
| September 26 2013 | EA settled class action lawsuits filed by former NCAA players over unauthorized use of player likenesses in football and basketball games, with a settlement estimated around $40 million affecting 200,000 to 300,000 players. |
| April 2013 | EA won the Consumerist 'Worst Company in America' poll for the second consecutive year, becoming the first company to achieve this. The win was linked to controversial games like Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3, and the poorly launched SimCity reboot, as well as criticisms about poor customer support and dismissive attitudes towards consumer concerns. |
| 2012 | Electronic Arts was named 'Worst Company in America' by Consumerist, highlighting significant consumer dissatisfaction with the company's practices. |
| 2012 | Electronic Arts was ranked highest among large game publishers in the industry according to Metacritic, demonstrating an improvement in game quality from previous criticisms. |
| April 2012 | Electronic Arts was awarded the 'Worst Company in America' by Consumerist in a record-breaking poll with over 250,000 votes, defeating Bank of America in the final round with 64.03% of votes (50,575 votes). The win was attributed to controversies surrounding Mass Effect 3's ending, day-one DLC practices, and acquisition of smaller developers. |
| July 2010 | EA sold its 15 percent share in Ubisoft, ending its partial ownership of the competing game development company. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Criticism of Electronic Arts, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.