here's how it works
EA is a producer. Company X is a developer. Company X has no money of their own to finance the production of a game they want to make. They turn to EA. EA gives them all the money they could ever need to develop the game, and handles things like advertising and distribution. In turn, EA can influence production of the game (since, after all, they're paying for it) and I'm sure receives some portion of any profits.
EA never once directly changes development of the game. They may, I'm sure, see the direction a game is taking and say "No, that won't work, not enough people will buy it - if you want our money you'll have to change that." They're just trying to make a smart investment, and who can blame them? They're paying another company millions of dollars to develop a game that could just flop.
So all I'm trying to figure out is if EA was actually the one that ruined games like Spore. I've never seen a single shred of evidence to suggest that.
(And, on another level, you should ask yourself if Spore was actually ruined - sure, it wasn't the game YOU wanted, but it was pretty successful and plenty of people loved it)
1st and 2nd boldface segments:
wrong wrong wrong wrong WROOOOOOOOOONG.
They don't just influence production of a game.
THEY OWN THE PRODUCTION. They can do whatever they want with a game's production because they're investing in the developer company technically. If EA doesn't like what the developer is doing, then EA can simply pull the plug and close the studio. The developers are EA's bitches in short. EA tells them what to make and how to make it in order to rake in the maximum profit (i.e. "make a new simcity, make it run on origin so they have to use our online service, and make it online-only so there's really no way around it at all... for $59.99 and a $79.99 deluxe DLC edition" which works because SimCity is a great franchise to revive and give new life into. Same thing with C&C4, "make a new C&C, lets make it the finale! remove basebuilding so we can attract new and inexperienced players and open the target audience for this game further despite the fact that it's practically sinful to make a C&C without it."
They also reap plenty of the excess profits from their big title games, i.e. BF3, etc.
EA was partially responsible. The "dumbing down" of Spore's gameplay was done in order to make it more user friendly for children.
