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Continuing the backlash over EA's recent blunders, users have voted the publisher as America's worst company of 2012. Conducted by Consumerist.com, the annual poll pits 32 companies against each other in a weekly faceoff. To earn its title, EA trumped Sony, Best Buy, Comcast, AT&T and the runner up, Bank of America. As the "winner," the gaming outfit will receive a "Golden Poo" trophy. In previous contests, other finalists received equally demoralizing Bronze and Silver Poos.
Readers have mixed feelings about the outcome, with many noting that companies like Bank of America have undoubtedly had a greater overall negative impact on consumers. It's tough to argue that a bank's worst offenses outweigh a game publisher's. In that respect, it's safe to say EA isn't necessarily the "worst" company in America, but it's certainly one of the most hated. Recent controversy surrounding Mass Effect 3 surely contributed to and perhaps clinched EA's position in the polls.
Gamers who voted for EA over Bank of America believe "award" might change the former's behavior, whereas the latter would casually dismiss such criticism. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. "We're sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco, and weapons companies are all relieved they weren't on the list this year. We’re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide," said EA representative John Reseburg.
Contrasting the Consumerist poll, Reseburg noted that EA subsidiary BioWare recently made it to the finals of Escapist Magazine's "Best Developer" competition, beaten only by Valve. He also mentioned praise from the Human Rights Campaign, which is distributing a petition supporting EA's "decision to have developers include same-sex relationships in recent games." It was to be expected that EA would downplay the hostility, but hopefully it's quietly taking the criticism to heart.
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User Comments: 35
Got something to say? Post a comment-
EA Killed Need For Speed Series among other Poo things...They deserve this Poo Prize! 100% Correct.
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A golden poo prize for a company that worked so hard to achieve it,and his ace card was ME3.Got to think that the guys from Bioware are out fo his mind at time of writing scripts.Ea must be very pride of them.
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Tygerstrike said:
I had to call EA about 20 different times.
This is not good customer service. Now, 20 years ago, or a hundred years in the future.
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Umm, what did Bank of America do to hurt the economy?
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Umm, what did Bank of America do to hurt the economy?The same things that many other major banks were doing. Is this the time or place for that discussion? I don't care, we can have it anyway. Just curious, that's all.....
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"We're sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco, and weapons companies are all relieved they weren't on the list this year. We?re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide," -EA representative John Reseburg.
Talk about a loaded statement. I can't say I completely agree or disagree. Surely the poll voters have completely lost perspective on the real world and what truly matters but EA is extremely content to disregard completely the severe unhappiness of their consumers almost as if daring them to try and boycott their products. I applaud EA's cockiness. Its the best chance we have of the gaming community becoming polarized against the actions of these gaming companies that are greedy to the point where they could possibly be considered elaborate scams. I don't refer to ME in this statement although I don't exclude the possibility of ME3 being involved. I'm not informed to the details of the ME3 ending debacle.
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This doesn't surprise me when most of the people playing these games are unaware kids.
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I can confirm that EA deserves this award. I am playing SW TOR atm, though I used to play WoW for, um, 6 years before that. EA's customer service is very bad, in fact it is the worst I have ever seen coming from a U.S. based company. My advice to EA would be to hire people from Blizzard's Customer Service Dept, and to copy-paste what Blizzard is doing. Blizzard has got, beyond any doubt, the best customer service in the industry as well as the best GM's, Customer Reps and forums.
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tengeta said:
I can't actually believe I'm saying this, but how does a bank lose to EA? Banks have screwed generations of people, you HAVE to choose to get screwed by EA. Aside from that they sure have destroyed generations of game franchises...
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"We're sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco, and weapons companies are all relieved they weren't on the list this year. We?re going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide," -EA representative John Reseburg.Hmm.....Talk about a loaded statement. I can't say I completely agree or disagree. Surely the poll voters have completely lost perspective on the real world and what truly matters but EA is extremely content to disregard completely the severe .Here I would argue that gamers have lost perspective on what's relevant as well. If you're detached and addicted enough to think video games are all that important, then EA is all to happy to step in and play the predator of of opportunity, or a drug dealer. I suppose that depends on whatever analog you're willing to accept. The statement will probably meet with denial. But then, the first sign of any addiction is denial.
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