EA has once again found itself the winner of the not so prestigious Golden Poo award for Worst Company in America for the second straight year. While there are certainly far worse companies out there despite the award, consumers voted EA as the worst company out of names such as Bank of America, Comcast, Time Warner, Microsoft, AT&T, and many others.

Last week EA COO Peter Moore responded to his company’s making it into the final few of the poll in which he stated that EA needed to do better and cited off some statistics while indicating that he felt many of the votes came from conservative websites urging people to vote EA as worst company for their LGBT policy. Moore closed out his blog in saying:

“So here’s my response to this poll: We can do better.  We will do better.  But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them.”

The Consumerist responded to Moore’s blog on the same day with their own analysis and statistics, explaining that many of those that voted EA the worst company in last year’s poll did so because of the publisher’s “history of buying up smaller, successful developers with the intention of milking — and arguably ruining — the intellectual properties that made these acquired companies so attractive.” In past years EA has purchased developers such as BioWare, Origin, Mythic, Maxis, and several others.

The response downplays Moore’s claims that votes were cast because of EA’s LGBT stance and points to EA’s exclusive licensing deals of sports games and their use of microtransactions and DLC practices as other main causes.

“Many customers believe that EA’s view of microtransactions isn’t to simply charge customers a little bit of money for something that is additional, but not integral, to the core game, but rather to put out broken or deliberately incomplete games with the ultimate goal of selling add-on content that should have been included in the $60 price tag to begin with.”

The Consumerist response is quite a bit longer than Moore’s, which you can read all of here.

In any case, this year EA takes 78% of the vote for worst company whether others deserve it more or not. It’s no secret in many gaming circles that EA has gained a negative reputation for their DLC practices and the always online DRM approach that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of most gamers, most recently those of the latest SimCity game.

EA certainly has some work to do to get in the good graces of gamers, but are they really the worst company in America, or just one of the most hated? What do you think? Does EA deserve the Golden Poo award for the second year running? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

via Polygon

Source: Consumerist