I tend to disagree because what EA is doing is removing things from products, or using the products themselves as platforms to sell you things. The microtransaction system added into Dead Space for example wasn't the equivilent of just adding another charge, it was creating an entire game mechanic based around making the experience less ideal
unless you paid them additional money. If your a really good gamer, you might be able to get by without paying EA a dime, but for a lot of gamers they will wind up being undergeared or suffering from bad desicians in choosing what to make and upgrade, unless they exploit a glitch to "grind" money amounting to potentially hours of wasted busywork to progress, or pay EA to move on. The idea being that someone who already paid $60 is going to want to finish the game they already paid for (especially since they can't get a refund) and doesn't want to spend hours grinding, so they will pay money in order to progress in the game. EA's own people "slipped" recently in flat out saying that they intended to put these kinds of microtransactions into all of their games, to keep people paying for a product they already bought. EA backpedaled on this (not that anyone was buying it) but the damage was done, and we peaked behind the curtain.
See, with Valve it can be argued they are "Greedy" as well, but at the end of the day they are giving you complete products for less money than you would pay otherwise. Sure they are exploiting impulse buyers, but they aren't selling you a product that is simply a gateway to try and get you to pay more money for what should be basic functionality.
Also, the thing is with EA's "problems" is that they do not seem to be genuinely failing so much as not being able to meet their own self-imposed expectations for success. Like most big corperations they engage in layoffs and other behaviors rather than actually dealing with lower profits. What's more a lot of their failures are the direct result of some of their greedier plans backfiring on them, mismanaging their brands, or just flat out creating crappy products.
To be honest I think a lot of EA's problems are also that it just flat out upset too many of it's customers, especially the "core gamers" they were reliant on, whom they figured were so game obsessed they would tolerate anything they did in pursueing the casual audience and still be there as a safety net. It's just your seeing the effects of this over time as people drop away a few at a time and it adds up, rather than due to some great boycott happening all at once.
I'll also say that EA's problems have also been customer service related, EA simply treats people like crap at the best of times, and then wonders why people hate them. It's a big part of why when someone "slips" and makes an annoucement to the public that should have only been made to people in the industry, it's hammered even worse than usual, because not only does it reinforce the worst sentimnents about EA, but because they have genuinely POed people to want to jump on them for how they were treated.
Add to this EA's somewhat deceptive marketing techniques, and there are other issues as well. To give one example, I recently got talked into trying ToR again recently due to some of the things I said about it. I figured since they went FTP I'd pay to unlock the account features once with a big pile of cash and get the equivilent of a lifetime subscription (which I have for other games) and bounce in and out because I figure with the upcoming Star Wars movies and such the game isn't going to be going anywhere despite it's lukewarm reception. I spent a fairly generous sum of money, only to actually start playing the game and learn that what I set out to do isn't possible because of the things you simply can't pay to unlock, and that even after paying a decent chunk of change you basically run around and have the game periodically say "hahaha, you freeloader scumbag, we're not going to give you full exps, or let you select all the quest rewards because you don't pay a monthly fee" which is ironic because after what I paid there really aren't many benefits left to subscribing other than that.... but really that isn't the point, so much as the constant attempts to remind me that despite the money I sunk into the game they don't give a crap, they still demand moar money, and can't even have the courtasy to shut the hell up in reminding me that I'm not a subscriber. Other games might still try and sell you things, but really ToR is the only one I've personally played that literally intergrates reminders about how much you suck into their central game engine.
Not to mention in doing unlocks I wasted money because for some reason the option to do "global account wide unlock" didn't show up at first (honestly) sound I wound up paying for a single character, and then for an account-wide unlock at a higher price at least once. Error, or intentional, I have no idea. But I'll tell you EA's game is the only one I've ever had an issue like that with.
That said, I will say that they did clean up the game nicely since when I played after launch, it runs much better now and some of the little tweaks and additions do show.
... also as a side note for anyone still developing MMOs, I'm a big fan of lifetime subscriptions when availible. I get that $60 isn't enough to maintain a game infrastructure and additions for years on end. However I vastly prefer to drop one big allotment of money all at once and then not worry about it, to either a subscription model or a forced "piecemeal" microtransaction system. I'm just saying.
