It's Official: EA Is The Worst Company In America

Congratulations EA, I don't know how you did it but you managed to beat out one of the most evil banking entities in the entire world and crown yourself as the worst company in the United States of America. Bravo....bravo.

The Consumerist ran their final showdown between EA and the Bank of America and more than 250,000 votes later, EA took the crown as the worst in America. I think the Consumerist summed up the feeling from informed consumers like you and me, saying...

To those who might sneer at something as "non-essential" as a video game company winning the Worst Company In America vote: It's that exact kind of attitude that allows people to ignore the complaints as companies like EA to nickel and dime consumers to death.

Totally agreed.

EA has been destroying jobs, destroying a fan-favorite hobby and ruining the artistic integrity of creative artists the world around for years, despite constantly growing bigger, and bigger, and bigger, with a venture capital expected to peak at close to $5 billion by the end of this year. They even managed to escape two class action lawsuits not from consumers or gamers, but from employees due to mistreatment and poor working conditions. While big businesses such as oil companies, banks and defense contractors are always middled out as being "the worst", I think it's fair to say that it doesn't matter what industry you're in, if you screw over consumers you need to be held accountable for it. Period.

GameIndustry.biz international landed a quote from John Reseburg in EA Corporate Communications, as he commented about EA's win as worst in America, saying...

"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,"

It might also be safe to say that Award Winning doesn't really equate to quality service (i.e., Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3) and the number of people playing a game certainly doesn't equate to consumer importance (i.e., pick any game from Zynga). You can basically take that quote from Reseburg and toss in the pile of other hollow PR responses from a big business.

You would think a company might show a little more humility in the wake of hundreds of thousands of people chiming in to voice their displeasure with the way the company does business. But I guess EA makes enough money to maintain their hubris.

Anyways, I'm glad this garnered enough exposure as it did, because a lot of consumers are just completely blind to what EA pulled with their digital distribution platform Origin, or their Project $10, or what they plan to do with the Mass Effect 3 ending. At least smart marks used a large enough platform to make their cries heard. Score one win for consumers.