Like any other big company, there are probably good sides to working at EA, and there are probably bad sides. Here's one of the bad sides: the publisher keeps track of former employees, and sends them threatening letters when it's worried those former employees will start spilling company secrets.
Below you'll see correspondence sent by Electronic Arts to Ben Cousins, formerly of EA's free-to-play business but now an employee of rival ngmoco. He published it on Twitter earlier today (via GI.biz), later adding "The irony of course is that what EA covets as 'trade secrets', is actually 'crappy old-fashioned design' by DeNA standards :)"
UPDATE: Read EA's side of the story. They say Cousins was sent this letter for specific reasons and that it is not standard.
I get it, when you're high enough up the corporate ladder, you're privy to things your employer wouldn't want the competition knowing about. So when you up and leave and join the competition, they've every right to be worried.
But this letter isn't saying anything new. It's just reminding Cousins of stuff he already knew, and had signed off on. So this is just a follow-up, leaning on him about as heavily as a legal document can, while also treating him like a criminal suspect instead of a guy who, until last year, had done a damn good job being the public face of one of EA's less marketable divisions.
You can read it in full below.
@BenjaminCousins [Twitter, via Gamesindustry]