It's still a much better experience when pirated, since there's no DRM. Also, it'll make you feel glad you didn't pay for it when you learn they wasted the entire budget for C&C4 on a movie set and an "unbreakable" DRM that someone cracked within a few hours after the launch. They also killed the series with a very cheesy "and everyone lived happily ever after" with that one, and I never forgave them for it.
Did EA actually do anything to get better? From my point of view all they've done is stop getting worse—they're still in the shitty hole they spent 2 decades digging
IDK, I usually don't bother ranking companies if they're below some level. EA requires their launcher on a lot of their games, and that alone puts them on the "terrible" list.
Nintendo at least makes good games with minimal BS, so I'm more likely to give them a pass than the others since they make mediocre games with a lot of BS to deal with.
I heard the remastered collection was half decent too, but it's still too little too late. That company has done so much damage to the whole industry for so long that I just want to see it burn to the ground to release all those rights and licenses to those franchises to studios that actually mean well.
I get that corporations are all ultimately after your money and nothing else, but I'm curious why Nintendo is on here. As far as game companies, the only thing I really see from them that's kind of ass is their hyperprotectiveness of their own IPs. It sucks, but I don't need a battlepass to get the full experience of the next Mario game. Zelda doesn't require an always online connection. Metroid Prime 4 is actually gonna be finished on release instead of just shipping it in a terrible state