Electronic Arts Repeats as “Worst Company in America”

With more than three-quarters of the vote, the videogame publisher absolutely crushed second-place finisher Bank of America.

Bank of America is a multi-trillion-dollar operation with a reputation for horrid customer service and bad behavior that’s cost it more than $40 billion in lawsuit settlements with everyone from individual investors to the U.S. government. But for all its power, corruption and the damage it’s left in its wake, it never stood a chance against a company that publishes videogames we all like to play.

Voting for the 2013 Worst Company in America award has concluded and once again, Electronic Arts has run away with it, drawing nearly 78 percent of the vote to claim the prize for an unprecedented second year running. “EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business,” according to The Consumerist, by producing too many rushed, cash-in games, overpricing its products and then failing to properly support them post-release. Although they’re not all 2012 releases, it cited Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3 and the admittedly-disastrous launch of SimCity as among its most egregious missteps.

EA beat out companies including Facebook, Ticketmaster, Walmart, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and of course Bank of America on its way to claiming the crown, which is an impressive feat in its own right, and no organization – not Haliburton, not the RIAA, not even BP – has ever won twice. But when “we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industries,” as the site notes, does this poll really suggest that EA is the Worst Company in America, or is it just the easiest one for people on the internet to get mad at?

Either way, congratulations, I guess. Dare we dream for a three-peat in ’14?

Source: The Consumerist