I disagree. Tencent acquired Riot way after they became successful. Riot already had a working business model that exploded and made them big. Then Tencent gave them a good offer, and they took it. Notice how the game was already big and working when Tencent put their hands on it.
On the other hand, Phenomic was acquired explicitly to make this game for EA. To my knowledge they disagreed with many of the development choices, but they coundn't do anything because EA owned them and they had no word in the matter.
Just look at how Infinity Ward deserted from Activision and eventually joined EA as Respawn. Activision was trying to force them to make things they didn't think was right. But they had the means and the courage to show their middle fingers and gtfo because they were a very successful studio and pretty much anyone on the market would hire them instantly. Back then, Phenomic was not in a situation when they could just casually say no to EA and be on their way, so they had to do as EA told them to. And that inevitably caused their downfall.
Good thing you brought up advertising, because i have seen none of that happening. Only a couple dozen thousand people ever knew this game even existed. No hype, no trailers, nothing. The Battleforge Announcement trailer didn't even manage to get 500k views on youtube until today. I record a video of myself shitting and get more views than that. What advertising do we speak of exactly?
EA is the type of villain who doesn't want to be one, but they make so many mistakes and terrible business decisions, that they make a lot of people mad, and eventually they'll be treated as villains.