Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-33532122-20180316170537/@comment-32811455-20180317132712

It's irrelevant whether or not the game is "free" initially. The only criterion should be how much money EA generates with it. And when you have hardcore players who buy hundreds of dollars worth of energy every H2H season (plus those who spend a bit less like myself), that's going to be significant.

I've seen many (much smaller) game companies put much more effort into "free" games with a similar profit model (virtual currencies). People complained about those games too, of course. But I have to say that those companies did a lot more updates and were generally doing much more to ensure people stayed interested and kept playing -- especially their long-time "hard-core" players. EA seems unusual in it's failure to please long-term players of this game.