It seems that EA, Origin, and Battlefield have been in the news for all of the wrong reasons in 2013. EA has gotten the new year off on the entirely wrong PR foot by getting totally knocked off the internet(again).
Yesterday, 1/2/2014, Origin and Battlefield 4 were again knocked offline due to a massive denial of service attack. It would appear that while no company or game is safe from these attacks, EA is a pretty popular target in recent weeks. When it rains it pours.