The Apex Legends maker has a reputation for sucking money out of the things people love

It’s been a while since Electronic Arts was the video game villain of the moment, but on Thursday the FIFA publisher sucked up all the oxygen in the room thanks to a bad joke made even worse by the company’s cutthroat history. If there’s one gaming mega corporation out there who shouldn’t have been taking casual shots at single-player games, it’s the one with a track record of shutting down the studios that make them, and jamming multiplayer releases full of microtransactions and loot boxes.

“They’re a 10 but they only like playing single-player games,” EA posted at 7:33 p.m. It was a play on a meme that first blew up on TikTok at the start of June, and was already losing steam on Twitter by late last week. It also quickly invited heaps of scorn. “Understandable you are unfamiliar with the concept of 10s,” responded Forbes’ Paul Tassi. “You made Anthem. Just saying a fact here,” replied the Washington Post’s Gene Park.