More EA bashfests. I'll take some middle ground here.
EA has ruined a few good companies yes, but honestly Pandemic was never particularly noteworthy, it's not as much of a loss as it's being made out to be. Sorry to be so heartless and blunt. Some developers are doing fine under EA, releasing quality titles still.
Publishers are akin to investors, they fund game projects, and as such they have reason to be concerned. Some Publishers trust developers under their banner. Some do not. It's true, at the end of the day, the publisher wants to make money and nothing else, the quality of a title is independent from the money it brings in. They would sell a brick in a jewel case if they could. As such, some publishers are in that shady area of knowledge, where they know enough to think they know enough. And that's when you get Publisher input, which is where stupid ideas come in. Now by the end of this paragraph, you're thinking "Publisher = Evil" well, it's true, but if there was no evil, there'd be no good, so let me validate some position from a publisher's stand.
As I said, a publisher is investing into a team and funding their project. They do this because of the promise of a return and profit. Games are not built of charity, and when you have situations like a horrible game sinking a publisher's fiscal year, or in the worst case, a Duke Nuke'em Forever Syndrome where all your investments wind up in an offshore account in Thailand or some such, it's really hard to fault a publisher for trying to keep tabs and direct the situation. This is especially difficult for new developers who are unproven. Bioware I doubt has to really worry about much more than deadlines from EA, they are a proven developer, and unless some obvious calamity in a development cycle is occurring, EA has no financial reason I'm aware of to mistrust the Bioware team. And as such, they get probably a lot more wiggle room than most. We'll have to see with Mass Effect2 before I can really say how badly EA has harmed Bioware. It's possible with the funding EA could and would provide for such a high-profile developer, this would be one of the few cases where EA helps, like Valve with Left 4 Dead.
Bethesda does not self-publish. Bethesda Game Studios has their games published in North America by Bethesda Softworks (A seperate entity) which is part of Zenimax Media. Bethesda Softworks is now trying to become a bigger publishing firm, unforunately all their titles aside from The Elder Scrolls are mediocre at best(Wet) and pure putrid, anally leaked bile(ROgue Warrior). The actual developers of The Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3 don't publish their own titles.
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