@happy
Not my news, the other guy posted and it's just a rumour apparently.
But..it's hard to overstate the difference between a company like Valve and a company like EA, both in terms of the culture inside the company itself and, in this specific case, their knowledge of creating a good online service.
I'll just put it out there that Steam is the best online experience available to gamers, and it along with with Valve's consistently well-thought-of game releases is the product of their unorthodox corporate structure - as in, they have none. There is no formal hierarchy at Valve, game projects and new ideas for their online service are driven simply by individuals in the company...having good ideas. People will collaborate freely if they believe the idea to be worthwhile and an informal lead for the project is assigned by the team.
I remember a comment of theirs saying that the most important part of creating good experiences for the user these days is individual creativity; thousands of tech companies can now copy eachothers' products to a high degree of quality simply because of how many people there are in the field working today and how cheap labour is, so the only valuable asset to them is creativity - and a formal hierarchy in a tech company bottlenecks that creativity at the top of the chain.
I could go on for a few pages about how EA is different, simply:
They are the opposite of this.
Creativity being bottlenecked is exactly the situation at EA, and a net result of the few at the top controlling the company is that business is always put before consumer (and employee..). They use draconian regulation on their online servcies...if your Origin account is banned due to an offense, you cannot play any of your games, not even singleplayer. If you are a member of a forum of an Origin game (Battlefield, Mass Effect etc) and a moderator bans you for offensive language, say bye bye to your games. They are also moving towards an always-online future with singleplayer games requiring a constant internet connection. They are possibly the worst offenders when it comes to abusing the customer with high digital prices and day 1 DLC.
I need to stop now, I write too much. But you get the point! So if Nintendo is going to elope with someone, they should pick the creative rich free spirited partner, i.e. Valve, not the rich failing but narrow-minded and shallow partner, EA.
