My little brother is a big gamer, he and his friends generally buy 4 or 5 games a month between them and swap them between themselves, and I explained all the happenings in the Sims community to him a couple days ago. He had been planning to pick up an EA game, but decided to go for one by a different company instead (Ubisoft, i think) and convinced all his friends to avoid them too.
He said that while it might not be directly relevant to him, (he played The Sims once and thought it sucked) if EA treat one gaming community like this, how long will it be until they start to treat others the same? He is already well aware of their excellent customer service "skills". It's not much, but if he spreads the word at school too EA will be losing a good 8 - 10 sales a month just from him and his friends and acquaintances from school.
I might pick up TS3 secondhand in about a years time, maybe.