The people of The Consumerist have spoken. The website has been holding their annual poll where readers vote who the company with the worst practices are, and the results are finally in. Good ol’ Electronic Arts and their ass backwards ways of doing business managed to take the Golden Poo award, beating out Bank of America’s greedy activities by almost 30% of the votes.

The staff explains the reasoning for the results by 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.” The article then goes on to explain their DLC practices, as well their tendency to snatch up any budding game developers and dismantling them to bolster their own game library. Surprisingly, they make no mention of the Origin system, EA’s response to the growing popularity of Valve’s Steam service, and all the controversies it’s brought in with it.

Over 250,000 people voted in on the issue, but at the end of the day, the game publisher/developer was able to convince people just how crooked they are in the face of American business. On the other hand, complaints that BoA didn’t take the prize for its contributions in wrecking the American economy have been growing quickly since the results have been posted. Apparently EA’s practices are just that diabolical in comparison to BoA’s shenanigans, which can probably be attributed to banks being, well, banks, and excessive avarice being their motto in the first place.

EA themselves are taking the (dis)honor surprisingly well. A statement made to gamesindustry.biz goes, ”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.” A bit too much on the arrogant side, in my opinion, though it may simply show just how few f*cks they give about the whole thing.

What are your opinions about this? Does Electronic Arts truly deserve the title Worst Company in America? Or is Bank of America more deserving of the Golden Poo? Give the new comments section a whirl and let us know.

Michael Revis

Michael is a man of many things. Journalist, writer, gamer, professional procrastinator, cosplayer, super hero, whale wrestler, evil mastermind, and robot master. And that’s just on the weekends.