The topic “Sony Open” is currently trending with over 10,000 searches, primarily due to its prominent role in the PGA Tour calendar. The event, which is set to kick off the 2026 season, has garnered attention as it represents a significant occasion for golf enthusiasts and players alike, marking the beginning of competitive play in the new year.
Recent reports highlight key moments from the tournament, such as Mark Hubbard’s impressive 24-foot birdie putt on the 11th hole, further fueling interest among fans. Such highlights not only showcase the skill level displayed at the event but also draw in viewers who want to keep up with notable performances.
Additionally, the release of tee times and groupings for the second round of the 2026 Sony Open has spurred searches as fans and participants look for information on player matchups and schedules. This availability of detailed information helps maintain engagement with the event and reinforces the heightened search interest.
Watch the Moment
Internet Reacts
L
Nah man, just look up a list of what games, franchises or studios they’ve ruined to understand. Fuck EA.
K
Not even their own studios are safe.
D
A studio getting bought by EA is like a death sentence.
T
Nah, getting bought by EA is dangerous ground, but getting bought by Embracer is an actual death sentence.
P
Maxis.. Bioware.. the developers of some of my favorite games of my childhood. They were so creatively castrated that everyone forgot about/gave up on them.
B
Criterion
B
**Westwood** Still salty about that one
_
Extending this: a bunch of the small studios they’ve destroyed have produced alumni that went on to make other games and other studios- these companies are really important for the gaming market Bullfrog studios after being merged with EA: In July 1996, Molyneux (a founder) decided to resign from Bullfrog to focus on game design, rather than become a mere employee. In response, Electronic Arts banned him from its offices in fear of him taking employees, forcing him to move development of Dungeon Keeper to his house. Without Bullfrog’s alumni, we may not have had the Fable series, LittleBigPlanet, and we straight up wouldn’t have Two Point Studios (two point hospital etc shout out to Sega)
M
I will never forgive EA for what they have done to Command and Conquer
B
Their support is still beyond dogshit and their launcher still ass too. I’ll admit they have made some improvements by not requiring their launcher for some Steam purchased games, publishing Hazelight games and most games have much less invasive microtransactions (and sometimes even none! But usually still some). So credit where it is due, but they’re not off the shitlist yet IMO. ESPECIALLY after a purchase of them like that and their “committent to AI” bullshit.
X
Came here to say this. Their track record is terrible. Don’t pay attention to what people say, pay attention to what people do.
M
After you do that, take a look at all the amazing games they published that didn’t sell well because gamers are all talk. Of course games are going to underperform and lead to studio shutdowns if fake fans don’t support them. But then at least they get to turn around and blame EA for 100% of the fault, right? Corporations are always going to do good things and bad things, but if all you do is condemn them and don’t buy the quality stuff they sometimes put out, don’t be surprised when they stop producing it and all you’re left with is trash.
B
>After you do that, take a look at all the amazing games they published that didn’t sell well because gamers are all talk. which ones, for example?
M
Freedom Fighters, Timesplitters 3, Mirror’s Edge 1&2, Brutal Legend, Alice: Madness Returns, Shadows of the Damned, and many more. That’s not considering a lot of fantastic games people forget they published that were actually successful like The Orange Box and The Simpsons Game. I think the quality of their offerings definitely declined during the PS4 generation, but by that time they had given up on all the IPs that didn’t sell, leaving them with just Star Wars, NFS, generic sports games, Battlefield, and BioWare’s questionable efforts.
M
A nuanced take in a gaming thread, and about EA no less? I’m shocked. Yes, as with all things, there’s good and bad. I literally can’t even remember the last EA controversy, was it Battlefront 2? The game from 2017? 9 years ago? Yet I imagine EA could do literally no wrong for the next decade and there’ll still be people like mr. “Fuck EA” up there crying that they’re the worst company to exist because of some random issue from a bygone era that they haven’t gotten over. Exactly the situation with Overwatch 2, that game *still* receives endless negative reviews on Steam over the canceled PVE mode. Gamers truly are just an endless font of misguided anger, with Highguard being the latest victim because they had the audacity to announce a game and have a trailer.
B
yeah they suck but there are far worse studios out there that crunch their developers and fire them for talks of unionizing. I really wish gamers would direct their hate towards things that actually matter.
L
EA is in the fire mainly because they’ve been doing this shit the longest.
B
so just because they’ve been doing something the longest means they’re the most evilest company in the world? there are actual bigger problems in the gaming industry.
L
Sure. Doesn’t change the fact that EA is a terrible company and any hatred towards them is well justified.
T
They’ve been doing the horrible things the longest, not that they’ve been publishing the longest.
V
EA popularized lootboxes, and forcing terrible multiplayer into single player experiences. We can hate all the big publishers. But EA still deserves what they get I haven’t heard any big stories from Ubisoft or Activision about forcing studios to restart development multiple times to feed the whims of the CEOs and then kill the studios when the game releases as a scramble mess like EA does with BioWare studios and the Dead Space developer Closest thing I can think of is whatever the hell is / was going on with Beyond Good and Evil 2 I guess maybe Bethesda did that with Arkane, but last I heard Arkane fell on their own sword over it and didn’t blame Bethesda, so who knows how much creative freedom they actually had
G
Aren’t lootboxes mostly attributed to Valve? And multiplayer modes forced into singleplayer games? How do you even attribute that to anyone? Games often just came with multiplayer, when was the limit when they all of a sudden were “forced”? People even liked the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.
S
you mean the CS:GO cases? I mean… yeah I guess… but those were all skins, not locking playable content behind gambling… sorry, “surprise” mechanics
V
I’m not attributing it to them. I’m saying they popularized it. They also got well-deserved backlash for doing so. Loot boxes were a thing in the mobile space for a long time before that. And those of us paying attention dreaded the day they came over to console and PC games. And EA ushered that era in
B
>Aren’t lootboxes mostly attributed to Valve? no, season passes are. lootboxes are also known as “Wilson/Andrew Wilson lootboxes” for a reason
B
yeah not once have I said that ea isn’t bad. I’m saying that there are actual bigger issues that do not involve ea.
P
Okay but it’s not a competition so what’s your point? You can still say that Mussolini sucks despite Hitler being worse
–
The problem with this is two-fold. They closed a lot of studios thats correct, but alot of those studios made games no one bought and you really can’t blame EA for closing studios that don’t make profits. Part of it is because of EA and its need to stick to trends sure, but look at Bioware. Biowares issues aren’t because of EA and it’s been mentioned multiple times. Respawn would of made a Titanfall 3 if the 2nd game didn’t die on release and sold better. EA is just as bad as the rest of them but they still support smaller studios and release games that have a tiny bit of risk attached. Wild Hearts and Immortals of Avevum are two examples. Part of the issue is gamers just don’t buy these types of games anymore for EA to support them. They bought Westwood but RTS games don’t sell to EA numbers. Horror games don’t sell (EA numbers) so Visceral closed. There are tons of examples of this.
A
It’s a business. Richard Garriott only became a billionaire because he told Ultima fans, “If you don’t like my games, make your own.” …there was a DEAFENING outcry over that statement, only for a THOUSAND fly-by-night game companies release a crappy game and fold, because they didn’t realize how much work it actually takes to make a game…
A
I love that dude and the studio’s output, but it’s not because you are the only studio being treated okay that the publisher is less sh\*tty overall. That’s just priviledge xD
C
EA ranks high on employee satisfaction, so its not “priviledge.”
A
That’s for the employees that manage to stay at EA somewhere, and are not part of the studios they regularly buy to just acquire an IP and then shut down, or close just because they don’t help the line go up enough like FIFA and Madden. Bullfrog, Origin Systems, Pandemic, Visceral….recently they even created a studio for a Black Panther game and shut it down two years later after cancelling the game. That’s not exactly fertile ground for long and happy carreers. I mean, it’s really cool that there is this bastion of great, almost indie vibe, game dev inside EA thanks to Hazelight. But they are the exception, not the rule.
C
Nice fan fiction.
F
The only reason they do not interfere with Hazelight Studios is because the games sell really well. But sometimes not even that is enough. RIP: * Blackbox (Need for Speed, Skate) * Visceral (Dead Space) * Pandemic (Mercenaries, Battlefront, Saboteur) * Westwood Studios (Command & Conquer) and many more, where they didn’t shut down the studio, but fired most of the stuff, making them effectively obsolete (RIP Codemasters)
_
RIP SimCity
B
And Maxis’ Sims
B
No, they do not get enough.
S
Agreed. People say it’s unfair, but at the end of the day people are still buying EA’s games, and they’re still rolling in money without actually changing anything about what they’re doing. At the moment I’m honestly playing the world’s smallest violin at pity and sympathy for EA.
G
>without actually changing anything about what they’re doing. Did no one play EA Originals games? Did no one notice that EA singleplayer games have come out without microtransations? Why even change anything if everyone will willfully ignore it?
S
100%.
M
A huge number of people thinking they’re the worst company in America, even below oil companies who fund disinformation about climate change, isn’t enough? What would be enough?
E
My dude isn’t paying attention, it’s not that EA gets too much shit, it’s that other publishers don’t get enough. Look at how many games and studios EA have ruined. Cancelled projects, mass layoffs, great games getting turned in to live service abominations, plus customer communications and optics that are absolutely abysmal. EA gets less shit that it deserves. And other publishers get WAY less shit than they deserve. I just wish these things were run by creatives instead of money hungry narcissists.
M
Gotta disagree with you there, and give the opposite take. EA gets more shit than it deserves, because as scummy as they are, they get more shit than the worst companies in America. EA doesn’t fund disinformation about climate change. They kill beloved gaming franchises and maybe sometimes mistreat employees. There’s a world of difference. Nintendo especially is the ultimate target of undeserved hate. And it’s something I don’t want to get started on because I’d end up writing an essay. Summarily, they’ve done a *lot* more good than bad for the gaming industry, they treat employees well, and people who hate on them generally are blinded by ideology, have 0 nuance, and think themselves legal experts. Sony and Microsoft are at about the right amount of hate. It’s a moderate amount.
B
this is the most reasonable take ive heard in a while ea screws up a lot but people act like theyre uniquely evil when every big publisher has the same skeletons
J
So what you’re saying is, we need to be angrier at the others to help balance it out.
F
Does your anger solve anything? If the answer is no, then you shouldn’t be angry. It’s pointless
S
If it causes enough people to stop blindly buying their stuff it might. Voting with your wallet has proven to be an effective means of consumer power in capitalist societies. As have reviewing companies, and discussing or exposing them on social media. Better than sitting back and doing nothing about it, and a much better than continuing to throw your money at companies blindly But there’s probably a balance to be had. I wouldn’t say it’s worth ruining your mood in real life over. Accept. Act. Move on.
J
You’ll never convince enough people to stop buying stuff. The people complaining on the internet, despite what you’re lead to believe by how much noise they make, are a very small minority. The famous SWBF2 reddit comment is proof of that. Most downvoted comment in reddit history, quite possibly the largest controversy to ever land on a game that had a visible effect on sales, and let’s be honest, it only occured because it was Star Wars, and it *still* made a substantial profit. Edit: Dude replied and then blocked me..? Not sure what I said that warranted that but ok. Redditors gonna reddit i guess.
S
Well, if you have any better ideas to protest against them outside of boycotts and voicing your opinion, then I’d love to hear them. Legal ideas of course, accessible to the average person. Otherwise I’m just gonna continue, since anything is better than nothing at all/just giving up.
F
I would be surprised if any significant number of people decide not to buy a game they otherwise would have bought purely because people are mad at the publisher
Additional Sources:
PGA Tour – Mark Hubbard sinks 24-foot birdie putt on No. 11 at Sony Open
GOLF.com – 2026 Sony Open Friday tee times: Round 2 groupings
