[vkou]

Does EA 202X stomp their workforce? I had a vague idea that this was largely a thing of the past.

The wiki article linked cites a lot of abuse, but all of it is nearly 2 decades old. My understanding was that it course corrected, and is one of the better gaming firms to work for ATM.

[byronic]

Jason Schreier (sp?) is probably the journalist with the best track record on covering EA and it’s generally been rotten all the way down. His recent book Play Nice focuses on just Blizzard but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does one on EA someday because they are in a league of their own when it comes to toxic workplace practices

[vkou]

From a cursory search, he dunks on mismanagement in EA fairly regularly, but I'm not finding a lot of evidence of him reporting on worker abuse. (Layoffs in a failing sub-studio are shitty, but aren't that. Vision whiplash is shitty, but is also not that. Management mandates to implement features that you know will tank your game are shitty, but are also not that.)

Maybe it's pay walled.

Do you have a source?

[byronic]

I'll defer to people who claim to work there now (avanderveen in the other replies). If you want my perspective, your parenthetical is describing worker abuse. Severance-avoidant layoffs and crunch are shitty and _are_ worker abuse -- in my opinion.

[avanderveen]

In my experience at Maxis (2021-2024), EA 202X was quite a nice place to work

[Tiktaalik]

I do not have first hand experience, but my impression from being in the industry is that modern EA is not at all like the "EA spouse" era.