I am an occasional player of this game. I enjoy it when I play, though my last run was cut short because steam decided W7 wasn't good enough anymore so I lost access to all my steam games on my main PC.
Anyways, this game has come along pretty well I think. I will probably start a game up when 42 comes out whenever that is. No rush.
As to learning from EA?...geez, I hope not. The person who started TIS would need to start sending death threats to their employees, punching people, sexually assaulting people, and generally start being human garbage that stays above the law since they're rich because they've managed to scam an enormous number of people with their "games". That's EA. I hope TIS stays away from all of that.