I honestly think that any game developer taking EA as its publisher has to sacrifice a family member to Satan - their game then gets a gajillion dollars in development costs but in exchange it loses it soul and becomes a soulless husk of itself doomed to die unloved and forgotten - Bioware made the excellent Baldur's Gate games, signed and then cranked out the Mass Effect games which got progressively worse - Maxis made loads of good ol Sims games, signed to make SimCity 3000 and then cranked out the Sims Games which are just the most evilest of DLC ridden evil Ive seen in gaming. Bullfrog ditto- Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet etc, then it got signed and made load of sequels none of which were any good - hell they even made a mobile port of Dungeon Keeper - and Im fairly sure that its round this time that EA subbourned Peter Molyneux's soul to Satan leading him to become the world champion bulls**t artist that he now is.
Basically - my general rule of thumb is that if EA gets its mitts into a game then it's generally going to be a highly polished to a diamond sheen turd of game.
I also have a theory that whenever the phrase "EA SPORTS - Its in the game" is made by a console whoever's listening has a tiny part of his/her immortal soul siphoned off to some Dark Portal at EA Headquarters that sucks all those soul fragments to Hell and once a year farts out an NFL, NHL and a PGL game each year.