EA might not care about making the best games possible, but they sure as hell did care about their employees when i worked there. When i worked there i think i was on crunch maybe 2 weeks out of the 5 years i was there. I worked with people who had been there for 10+ years and they sang praise for how people were handled internally.
I do however know there were a lot of people there who would basically force themselves into crunch mode for no reason, other than to perfect or try to add a specific feature. Even when they were heavily dissuaded by both management. I have a very specific memory of someone crunching for ~6 months to finish their little pet project only to completely burn out.
Also as far as i know when crunch was required, it required a bunch of approval, and we were paid extra during crunch time, and we were allowed to refuse to do crunch.
I do however know there were a lot of people there who would basically force themselves into crunch mode for no reason, other than to perfect or try to add a specific feature. Even when they were heavily dissuaded by both management. I have a very specific memory of someone crunching for ~6 months to finish their little pet project only to completely burn out.
Also as far as i know when crunch was required, it required a bunch of approval, and we were paid extra during crunch time, and we were allowed to refuse to do crunch.