I actually don't mind EA all that much. To me, they don't seem particularly evil, just clueless. It's like watching a self-destructive child eat glue. EA's worst problem is their ignorance of the market they work in. The fact that they keep aping terrible practices of other publishers without as much as a fleeting thought (like that always-on thing that they thought they would get away with even after Ubisoft and Blizzard didn't); The fact that they keep misjudging the market and acting thoughtlessly without considering the possible consequences (and making horrible financial decision in the process - like pumping obscene amounts of money into a new graphics engine for a game that can't possibly sell well enough to justify the costs, then not making any returns and closing one studio after another to even out the losses)... all these little things that no sensible person would have done, no matter how evil.
No, EA isn't evil. They're just really, really, REALLY dumb. Most of their problems can be (and indeed some already have been) solved by reading a newspaper once in a while.
In fact, EA has been showing signs of improvement lately. They KNOW they fucked up. And they are now trying to fix their PR. I haven't heard a truly outrageous statement from them since Ricitello resigned. Plus they got rid of that whole online pass thing, they've been working to improve origin, they fixed SOME of their pricing and their E3 presentation a few months back was surprisingly solid, with some of the announcements being sequels to cult hits that fans have been going on about for a while now.
They have been keeping quiet lately so I can't really tell what's going on with them. Now I'm not trying to defend EA. They have treated their customers like shit in the past and I am not going to forget that quite so soon. But I have seen effort on their part to improve their customer relations and I think that's commendable, if nothing else. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
Activision, on the other hand, are proper bastards. Unlike EA, they know very well what they are doing. In a way, I have to respect their talent for business. They keep pushing the line of what they can get away with but they never go over it. They keep a tight leash on both the consumers and the developers, function like a well-oiled machine, sticking to deadlines and never going over budget.
Activision is the epitome of the soulless production-line approach to game making. They do not care for the creative or artistic value of their games. They do not care if the games they are selling are good or not. All that matters is that they make money. And while I do appreciate that unlike EA, Activision is an amazing business and an investor's wet dream, this approach is bad news for both the customer and the devs. Activision shovels out one mediocre game after another but manage to sell them anyway because they can do wonders with brands and licences. When they get their hands on a profitable brand, they will just start producing games based on that brand as quickly as they can, leaving the developer no creative freedom, sticking to their guns as if with industrial adhesive. They will proceed to milk this brand until it's no longer profitable, then discard it and move onto another one. They kill off one franchise after another, and they ALWAYS keep the IP. They will not let anyone touch their franchises on the off chance some of them ever become profitable again. They will take an IP away from a developer who created it and either give it to another studio or simply bin it with no intention to ever use it again. They will refuse to sell the IP back to the dev.
That Crash Bandicoot incidents springs to mind. Activision was never going to use it again. Crash is in their backlog of misused and discarded IPs that they don't care about but are not willing to part with. They do not want Sony to have an IP which could potentially turn out to be profitable again - instead, they see that people are excited about the idea of a new crash bandicoot game and immediatelly go 'nope, we're keeping the IP and are probably going to spit out a few mediocre and rushed CB games now that you're all nice and excited and willing to pay for them.'
I'd argue that in terms of actual game-making, those two are far bigger train-wrecks than EA or Activision. Square-Enix is pretty up there too.
