Sometime last year, I finally got to the point I that I decided I was disillusioned with just about everything EA was doing. The yearly avalanche of half ass sports titles, and the flood of Sims expansion packs were bad enough, but the issues they were having with SecuROM made me start to think about not buying anything from them again. Then there were their repeated unsolicited attempts to buy 2K Games, including a threat of a hostile take over. Last year was the first year I didn't buy Madden since EA got the exclusive NFL license.

But my fiance and I had been following the development of Spore and decided that was a game we could both enjoy together. Soooo I made one more EA purchase. I bought it, she installed it first, and then I found out I couldn't play and access ALL the features because she had activated it first. Despite the fact that EA insisted you'd be able to have up to 3 accounts prior to launch. So that was the straw that broke the camel's back, I was done with EA, until they showed me they were different.

The divorce was messy, and it caused me to miss out on some decent/good/great games. Like Mercenaries 2, Mirror's Edge, and Dead Space. All 3 made me thinkabout crawling back to EA's abusive ways, but it's not easy having principles. I skipped them all, and let them go.

Then around Christmas, things started to shif. EA put several of their best PC titles (including Spore) up on Steam, without Securom. I thought that was pretty awesome, but was still leary. But EA's continued to impress me with little things here and there in this year. Giving away updates for free that they'd normally try to nickel and dime customers with (like this day 0 update for Godfather 2). Are the winds finally changing?

I hope EA continues on this path. It's good to see one of the "big guys" in the industry playing nicely for a change, instead of throwing their weight around like Activision, and recently, Capcom has begun to do.