Personally as a long time customer of the BF franchise prior to origin, Im deeply sadden that EA along with other game companies and publishers have taken it upon themselves to get involved in political movements and or agendas. For a game or publisher ; this is one of the most problematic areas simply because their core consumers dont care at all about politics, they dont by games for politics , they buy games to escape that and many other facets of everyday life. Most of all; they buy games because they like them and want to have fun.
Watching EA consistently barrage its customers (of all people) with comments that are in my opinion as well as many others; simply unprofessional and well; from a business standpoint ; completely and utterly obtuse. Politics has invaded every aspect of our lives and has ruined those aspects by and large. You could probably plot on a graph the success of a company and their subsequent turn into failure by simply plotting their public "politically themed and or motivated" comments in a timeline and relating it to the stock graphs.
Suffice it to say; customers are your success ; without them there is no company, no money, no political agenda to mistakenly take some stance on. A game company needs to focused on one thing; making great games! Once you start demonizing / blaming your customers for your p.r mistakes,mistakes you continually make apparently (launch party); your going to lose because happy customers are directly tied to your success. Its not about women; genders, or anything of the sort with the bulk of real gamers; its about EA attacking its customers as the bad guy. I (personally) could have handle this better than your entire P.R Department and whoever is there that thinks attacking the people that are buying your products is a great idea; should be terminated immediately or the very future of the entire company will be uncertain and possibly fail. This is just how business is; Its unfortunate that I , a lonely consumer whom EA has attacked , have to try to help a major billion dollar company on this. I'm only doing it because I want EA to succeed , we all (gamers) want EA to succeed. Its not going to happen getting involved in politics in ANY way. you can make fun of it (like in GTA) but when you are serious and use it as some sort of marketing plot or ploy to score points; you get loved by one group and despised by the other. money is money and if it were me; I want all of it; not just from one group of people whom subscribe to my ideals. its not rocket science.
Customers want from EA:
1.) A public apology. (We got political and it was mistake; we should have listened to our consumers and we didn't)
2.) You can do any number of things here ( if it were me; Id give one of my major most successful titles out for free via the Origin Free Game (used to be a thing) with a commitment to the consumer to never; not ever repeat these mistakes again.
3.) Remove all micro-transactions, make it point to never have them. not ever. (if you make great games, you will NEVER need them anyway)
4) Great games (full versions , full of content ) for a great price. Nice sized dlc (10-20 bucks but no more than 2 or 3 at most)
Happy customers is the greatest road to success and profit. Its just common sense.