EA Wins "Worst Company" In America Award

Electronic Arts has been crowned "Worst Company in America" in a Consumerist.com poll. EA will be sent the not-so-coveted "Golden Poo" trophy as recognition of their victory. As is the history of the award, The Poo is delivered on a red pillow, but in light of gamers' current views towards EA "this year, we'll give EA three different color options for its pillow, though in the end it's still the same old Poo." I laughed.

More than 250,000 people voted in the Consumerist.com poll. EA was up against some pretty solid competition. Bank of America came in second, with WalMart, AT&T, and Sony all making the list. Consumerist mused on why EA harbors such ill feelings. They sited the trend of "deliberately hold[ing] back game content with the sole intent of charging a fee for it at a later date."

An EA representative released a statement to Kotaku addressing their award. Normally, winners don't respond to this award in favor of perhaps, reflecting on why their consumers voted for them. EA said, "We're sure that British Petroleum, AIG, Philip Morris, and Halliburton are all relieved they weren't nominated this year. We're going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide."

Obviously anything EA has done is trivial in comparison to some of the past winners of The Golden Poo awards. However, as someone who covers the news daily, and someone who reads the comments more often than that, I see negative feelings towards EA. In the past few months we've seen outrage over exclusive BF3 DLC, dismay over Orgin (everything about Origin has caused people headaches) and most recently, the controversy surrounding Mass Effect 3's seemingly cookie-cutter endings.

The Consumerist.com had some words for EA to help them understand their award. "Stop treating your loyal customers like crap." That's a notion I can support.