Game publisher Electronic Arts has beaten Bank of America to become the worst company in America by more than a 3-to-1 margin, in an unscientific poll conducted by Consumerist.
It is the second year in a row that EA has "won" this accolade.
The company beat out competitors such as Walmart, AT&T, Comcast, and of course the Bank of America, in several rounds of voting to be crowned the champion of 2013's Worst Company in America competition.
In analysing the result, the SimCity fiasco, still obviously fresh in the minds of voters, was seen as an important factor in EA's decisive victory.
EA's SimCity has earned the ire of gamers due to its controversial "always-connected" Internet requirement, something critics have labeled as an oppressive DRM, while EA and Maxis, the developer of the game, says is feature-driven instead.
Worse, the release of a rushed and poorly tested game, continues to drive SimCity mayors crazy, with cynics pointing to missing features that they feel will only be added on later with paid downloadable content - not an unfamiliar tactic for EA. And those more cynical believing many of the game's biggest problems will not be fixed, and so far being proven correct given the game's seven current patches and the lack of resolution for most of the major bugs.
The rushed Mass Effect 3 ending, the re-release of FIFA 12 as FIFA 13 on the Wii with minimal changes, overruling developers for financial reasons and other things that gamers see as a company whose decision making is firmly biased towards quick pay-offs (or as the Consumerist puts it, treating customers like "human piggy banks"), rather than the production of quality games, also helped EA earn the WCIA 2013 award.
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