EA Voted Worst Company in America Again

[Imhullu]

"Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong."

People still want too play your games, but you removed a ton of them from steam when you launched origin,, and moving ahead made them exclusive to origin, so yeah people will sign up, but they don't have to like it.

[Wilian]

Apologize in form of arrogant blame shifted on paying player-base. Definately not the first time EA does and will not be last.

Pride before the fall, EA, pride before the fall.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Apologize in form of arrogant blame shifted on paying player-base. Definately not the first time EA does and will not be last.

Pride before the fall, EA, pride before the fall.

EA: I'm twice as powerful then the last time.

Playerbase: Twice the pride double the fall. I've been looking forward to this.

[Frenegade42]

Its quite funny, while Bank of America steals people's home, oil company's start wars and produce disasters for the enviroment, EA gets voted for worst company in america for ruining some computer games, dont get me wrong the company is utter shit and deserves all the hate from gamers,and it would be a better gaming world if it would go bankrupt tommorow, but its hardly the worst company in America considering the bigger picture.

I am assuming you didn't read the article linked in the OP. The point of the "Worst Company in America" contest is purely about consumers and their relationship to companies that provide goods/services. It's not about prioritising elements of real life and various companies negative impacts on those elements. It's about their day to day relationships with customers. BP? Before the spill, they were one of 3 companies nearest my neighborhood who I would buy fuel from. That begins and ends my experience and opinions on BP. Prior to the spill I had no interest in fringe reporting on the evils of fuel companies.

As was stated in the article, no company should be a free pass because they deal in "trivial" non-essential services like entertainment.

[Sky High]

I just can't help but think at how telecom and bank CEO's are snickering knowing EA managed to be the Red Herring they've so desperately craved.

indeed. oh look a game company who treats its "customers" poorly. while we have the hedge fund/ investment bank taking your money and gambling with it. but oh no. its the guys who screw you for paying more for games that are the REAL bad guys. there is no hope for humanity. this is why we don't get nice things.

[NatePsy]

Here ya go:


They remain proud and unbowed...and their recent publication is well on the way to being the worst thing on Amazon ever. That isn't pride, it's blind arrogance.

LOL! Holy crap! 3.1k+ 1-star reviews.

[Wilian]

It's not because there's something wrong with the game or it's surrounding systems. It's because there's internet-wide conspiracy full of LGBT-haters who want to see EA burn.

Just like with DA2, TOR and pretty much any release in past 5 years.

[Belize]

It's kinda sad in the end because EA used to make really good games (I'm looking at you Battlefield 1942)

[narzinor]

To all of those who keep saying "There are far worse companies than EA, BP for example," while true, that was not the point of the Consumerist contest. As a matter of fact, BP was not even on their list to choose from.

A lot of people are inconvenienced or wronged every single day by companies that they -directly- obtain a product or service from, and the contest is more supposed to be a large gathering of people to make a giant "customer complaint card" to said companies.

Most people are not sending complaints to big investment banks and BP oil because, even though what they've done is absolutely terrible, but for a lot of people those companies don't engage in their day to day lives nearly as much as something like EA or Wal-mart does.

[Kelesti]

Its quite funny, while Bank of America steals people's home, oil company's start wars and produce disasters for the enviroment, EA gets voted for worst company in america for ruining some computer games, dont get me wrong the company is utter shit and deserves all the hate from gamers,and it would be a better gaming world if it would go bankrupt tommorow, but its hardly the worst company in America considering the bigger picture.

Put it right up next to the entire medical industry, yeah...

My opinions on EA are irrelevant, but they certainly are not the "worst company evar" by any standards.

[Dblbaconator]

indeed. oh look a game company who treats its "customers" poorly. while we have the hedge fund/ investment bank taking your money and gambling with it. but oh no. its the guys who screw you for paying more for games that are the REAL bad guys. there is no hope for humanity. this is why we don't get nice things.

It's comments like these and your quote that I don't understand.

Huge conglomerate corporations like BofA and BP have won in the past. You know what happened? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. No statement, no PR bullshit, they just ignored it and moved on. They're too big to care about a dinky "worst company" award from a consumer rights website.

EA won last year, and are getting close to winning again. What happened? Quite a lot more. They responded with canned PR shit (obviously), but it showed that EA was worried about their public image, enough to put out some damage control. It's a shame their damage control sure doesn't help matters, considering that their responses mostly revolve around "we're not THAT bad! honest!" and "you know who hates us? HOMOPHOBES!"

There's two more points to consider.

First, you can choose your bank. You can choose who you buy fuel from. All banks, all fuel companies, all megamarts provide the same general services. If you disagree with the practices or policies of one, you can choose to buy from another with no real detriment. With video games, however, if your favorite series/developer gets bought up by a megapublisher you dislike, you have two choices:

A. Begrudgingly continue to buy games in the series, despite the quality possibly declining, shoddy business practices, and the like, knowing that your money will go to a publisher who doesn't care about quality
B. Stop supporting the series, knowing that if too many do, the series will probably be canned due to poor sales, and your favorite game series won't see the light of day again (until they decide they need to cash a nostalgia buck by bringing it back with a reboot a decade later, now with 90% more bloom and 240% more dubstep)

Neither of these options are good, but that's exactly what EA has done over the past decade, or more. It was hard for me to swear off of EA's games, but after ME3, BF3, DS3 (wow, a lot of 3's), and other series going to shit, I decided that it was time to stop. No more purchases at all. No DLC, no games, nothing. EA has not seen a dollar from me in about a year.

Second, EA is predominantly an internet-based company. BofA, BP, Walmart, they all have major presence in the real world, but not as much online. EA's image depends on a good online face, and any tarnish to that image spreads like wildfire. It's the nature of the internet, really.

EA's image hasn't been good in recent years as people have finally started waking up to their shit practices. Rampant day-1 DLC (especially DLC for things that should have been in the main game to begin with), shoved-in multiplayer in everything, online passes, season passes, gobbling up developers and franchises only to run them into the ground (or use their name for a thousand unrelated things; see Bioware and Origin), and even more have not won them any favors. Winning an award that literally says they're the worst company in America means more to them than it ever could to BofA.

Don't lose faith in humanity because people are upset that their favorite hobby is being torn to shreds for profit. EA deserves to win (lose?) because of how they treat their consumers. That's all there is to it.

[Pancha]

The largest complaint, among many, is the way EA has killed a ton of small and creative studios over the years. EA is to big for its own good, but I doubt we'll see them downscaling any time soon.

[Tackhisis]

So the greedy kids who cannot pirate their games anymore voted down a company. What a tragedy.

Sadly I didn't knew you could complain about homosexual bacchanalia in modern Bioware games; that is a valid reason to downvote them and their parent studio.

[endersblade]

I honestly don't understand how they are PERFECTLY OK with the extremely negative stigma attached to their name. I know if I owned a major game company like that, I'd do everything in my power to change it. Do they make a lot of money? Sure they do. There are a fuck-ton of people in this world, of course they're going to make money. But any time I ask my gamer friends which gaming company they hate the most, EA is always #1, and we spend the next hour+ talking about it. It's just anti-fanboi'ism, they are legitimately just a terrible freaking company. Their customer support is the worst I've ever had to contact, their games get more sub-par with each passing year, they're terrible with patches...they're just a bad company. They ruin anything they touch, amazing game companies they buy out inevitably crumble to dust, and I can't think of ANYONE who likes the mandatory watching of the fucking EA logo in every single one of their games.

[Sunseeker]

That's probably the worst apology I've ever seen. There was no commitment to specific improvement and the blamed LGBT issues and people complaining about Madden, what the hell.

[Mezzolith]

It's comments like these and your quote that I don't understand.

Huge conglomerate corporations like BofA and BP have won in the past. You know what happened? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. No statement, no PR bullshit, they just ignored it and moved on. They're too big to care about a dinky "worst company" award from a consumer rights website.

EA won last year, and are getting close to winning again. What happened? Quite a lot more. They responded with canned PR shit (obviously), but it showed that EA was worried about their public image, enough to put out some damage control. It's a shame their damage control sure doesn't help matters, considering that their responses mostly revolve around "we're not THAT bad! honest!" and "you know who hates us? HOMOPHOBES!"

There's two more points to consider.

First, you can choose your bank. You can choose who you buy fuel from. All banks, all fuel companies, all megamarts provide the same general services. If you disagree with the practices or policies of one, you can choose to buy from another with no real detriment. With video games, however, if your favorite series/developer gets bought up by a megapublisher you dislike, you have two choices:

A. Begrudgingly continue to buy games in the series, despite the quality possibly declining, shoddy business practices, and the like, knowing that your money will go to a publisher who doesn't care about quality
B. Stop supporting the series, knowing that if too many do, the series will probably be canned due to poor sales, and your favorite game series won't see the light of day again (until they decide they need to cash a nostalgia buck by bringing it back with a reboot a decade later, now with 90% more bloom and 240% more dubstep)

Neither of these options are good, but that's exactly what EA has done over the past decade, or more. It was hard for me to swear off of EA's games, but after ME3, BF3, DS3 (wow, a lot of 3's), and other series going to shit, I decided that it was time to stop. No more purchases at all. No DLC, no games, nothing. EA has not seen a dollar from me in about a year.

Second, EA is predominantly an internet-based company. BofA, BP, Walmart, they all have major presence in the real world, but not as much online. EA's image depends on a good online face, and any tarnish to that image spreads like wildfire. It's the nature of the internet, really.

EA's image hasn't been good in recent years as people have finally started waking up to their shit practices. Rampant day-1 DLC (especially DLC for things that should have been in the main game to begin with), shoved-in multiplayer in everything, online passes, season passes, gobbling up developers and franchises only to run them into the ground (or use their name for a thousand unrelated things; see Bioware and Origin), and even more have not won them any favors. Winning an award that literally says they're the worst company in America means more to them than it ever could to BofA.

Don't lose faith in humanity because people are upset that their favorite hobby is being torn to shreds for profit. EA deserves to win (lose?) because of how they treat their consumers. That's all there is to it.

After reading a few people complain about banks, telecom and oil not getting the award I had wanted to say something. But this right here is everything I could've said and more. Perfect!

[PACOX]

The largest complaint, among many, is the way EA has killed a ton of small and creative studios over the years. EA is to big for its own good, but I doubt we'll see them downscaling any time soon.

I don't even care for EA but they didn't kill those studios. A lot of those studios would have sunk with or without EA. EA has less of an impact on devs then people believe, especially after they acquire a studio.

Its weird how people attributed the original ME3 ending to EA but give BioWare credit for the free multiplayer updates and ending expansion. Its one way or the other, not both.

[kail]

Worse company? I despise EA as much as the next guy, but there are at least 10 companies that deserve the Worst Company Award far more than EA. While I do feel for the "big trees" sometimes this guy makes some pointless statements.

Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.

Honestly, DRM is the best excuse I can think of for always online single player games. He's stating that it isn't the case...

Then WTF is the reason? Really, I'm curious. They need to learn that Always Online will always create more problems than solutions to games that do not require it.

Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong.

Guess I'm part of that 45mil even tho I used it for one game (SWTOR). Compared to how many games I bought through steam, hell even XBox Live market place is lol. "Registered Users" isn't the best metric.

[TheRabidDeer]

Though I despise EA for a few reasons, what they're said is correct. Millions of people play their games and enjoy them. Hating on them doesn't matter for shit because they just have a different audience.

You are correct that millions play their games. But not necessarily for the reasons you think
1) EA has a monopoly on sports games. Other companies cant make them. Example: The NFL 2k series was widely gaining in popularity, then EA bought the exclusive rights and shut out other companies. Just having this single monopoly grants millions in sales each year
2) They buy out companies for their games, to put their own name on it. This technically isnt an EA game
3) They have wads of cash for advertising and development. There are a lot of games out there that are great but never gained media attention so you dont know they exist.

Then aside from that, people hate EA because of their business practices. They want to stop used games, they are hardcore with DRM and have been trying a huge number of things that hurt the consumer that purchases. They flood DLC which shouldnt be DLC, they keep prices high, they shut out competition every way possible, they largely have their head up their asses and think "nah, not our fault" and they outright lie.

[Deleted]

I find it funny that his apology is mostly saying that every misstep they've made is not only not a misstep at all, but not their fault really. It's uninformed consumers not knowing what they want as well as EA does. Also the quote: "The tallest trees catch the most wind. At EA we remain proud and unbowed." One might note that a tree isn't in any way that I know of need or want to catch the wind, and those that don't bend with it either break or get blown over. Good luck with that proud and unbowed thing EA.

well the tree that can catch more wind would have a major advantage in seed distribution...