I'd like to play devil's advocate here:
As hard as it is for everyone to believe, sometimes these things do undergo testing with no visible results. I work in the technology department of a major bank, and I know it all depends on what the QA (quality assurance) environment is set up like; maybe it's nothing like our consoles and save files. While I agree that something clearly went wrong with this patch and it should have already been reversed, sometimes it's impossible to know exactly how the end users have their data set up -- hence the request for actual save files to test on. For instance, I have cheats enabled, and that's not a question anyone has asked... but I love to cheat (a little here and there) at this game. Maybe that affects it somehow.
As angry as we all are that we can't play our video games (first world problems), let's give EA the benefit of the doubt... some programmer is getting raked over the coals as we speak. I'm just going back to the real world for the time being (maybe as painful or judgmental as that sounds) and will find another hobby until they fix it. (But I really want them to fix it!)
