Publishers=developers, duh.
I don't think the issue is quite as simple as you purport it to be. Quickly put (because I don't want this to devolve into an essay of horseshit), while the publisher is partially to blame, the whole notion of being required to deliver an expensive and bloated AAA title (that 'gamers' may not have necessarily ever wanted) as a result of being attached to a big publisher should be blamed more.
No - I may have phrased it badly, so put more simply I am saying that expectations put on the publisher as a result of it being a major leader in a multi-billion dollar industry are to blame, and it's reaction to that expectation should be expected; merely blaming EA means you are ignoring a larger issue.
But its not pressure put on EA, its by EA. EA rushed BF4 to get it out before COD, which turned out to be a general flop. My problem isn't just with battlefield. Most of the games they've launched since 2013 have been laden with bugs, crashed, and incomplete content. I'm a PC gamer as well and they hate EA even more than console gamers do.