EA Nominated For Worst Company in America... Again

can you write that in a bigger font?

I honestly don't understand what you are trying to say

gamers can be petulant children sometimes.

Irrelevant.

it's very relevant. Only reason EA is even on this list is because gamers are petulant children.

EA is the worst gaming company and the internet is infested with gamers because gamers were one of the first groups to jump on the internet bandwagon. It isn't rocket science.

EA screws over lots of people in small ways, so a lot more people have experience with their BS. While other companies are worse, relatively few people in America feel the impact. That is how EA gets voted the worst company. It isn't because gamers suck, it is just because EA screws over millions at a time, and people vote what they experience, not what they read about happening to others.

No reason to hate on gamers. There is nothing wrong with voting your personal experience, instead of what some internet articles you probably didn't read say happened to other people.

there can't be a worse American company than Monsato because they are poisoning us with their genetically modified food.

I mean no EA isn't the worst company in America, but as far as game companies go they're pretty bad.

And they'll win because gamers are petty and fickle.

oh jesus...

pretty much..i mean if this was taking about the worse game development team i would understand ,but worse company in NA?

If people would really be pissed at EA, EA games would not sell. It's that simple.

Yet despite all of the bitching, BF4 sold just as many, if not more copies than BF3 to the same audience who day after day flooded the Battlelog forums, Reddit, 4chan, and every other forum with pure hate while still logging in several hours a week.

Gamers are petty and fickle. This is one of the only industries where, despite all of the alternatives, game devs and publishers are hated yet still sell millions.

No surprise.

My young friends, it's in the context of each industry and field.

If you keep it up with "my young fiends" I'm going to start taking it as you're looking down on people and thus disrupting this place. Cut it out.

Even in the context of the gaming industry they aren't a terrible company. You may disagree with some of their business practices but they continue to sell millions of copies of a variety of games to millions of different people on different platforms. Ignoring that and focusing on the fact that a game didn't perfectly satisfy you is petty and is exactly what I was saying.

about fcking time wasdie.

@Wasdie: First off, generalizing and insulting tens of millions of people isn't exactly well reasoned and mature.

Second, Gamers don't boycott because there is so very little competition on consoles. If you want a realistic tactical shooter that puts a heavy emphasis on team work, your options are to buy battlefield or learn to like run and gun. Gamers are gamers because they play games as their chief form of idle entertainment. Not playing isn't really an option, particularly when you have lots of friends you interact with in game.

Besides, everyone knew that eventually BF4 would be a good game. It is the eventually part that is a problem, but the video game industry gets away with things no other industry could.

The majority says otherwise. You are (factually) a minority.

You could buy ARMA. I certainly wouldn't consider Battlefield a realistic tactical shooter, anyway.

Excellent point comrade.

@kittennose: You're now furthering the goal. The fact is there are plenty of alternatives to Battlefield yet Battlefield 4, despite the piles of hate BF3 got, still sold well and, despite the massive hate BF4 gets, is still being playing quite a bit by a large variety of gamers each week.

What's immature is voting EA as the worst company in North America because they sometimes don't offer the best value for entertainment. That's immature. Up against companies that have literally killed people for money and bankrupt millions, EA is a saint. Hell even the cable companies, with their monopolies over entire regions forcing people to pay huge premiums for terrible service all while strangling the internet through throttling websites and speeds, are far worse than EA.

he said consoles..PC gaming doesn't have this problem.

What facts? How many people actually voted for the 2012 and 2013 worst company of the year? You have no real data to back up that ridiculous claim.

EA have won two years in a now (shamefully) could win a third time. This happened, is happening, thus, is fact. Nothing needs backed up. Not a discussion. Waste of time.

@Wasdie: They take money in exchange for products that don't work when you get them home. That isn't failing to offer the best value for entertainment. Few companies screw over the average person that hard. Yes, many companies screw over people much harder, but it is only in the gaming industry where you can screw over tens of millions and stay in business.

Please also name me some battlefield like games on the console. I don't mean FPSes, I mean games that emphasize teamwork, strategic thinking, and realism.

Finally, thank you kindly for narrowing the complaint down to just those who participate in the poll. I still think you are incorrect, I strongly dislike gamer hate I am glad you rolled it back.

@lawlessx exactly right. EA had to start offering refunds to stay relevant in the PC world.

Still not proof of what you said. How am I the minority when there are easily over 100 million gamers? How many actually voted for that poll? Furthemore, out of those who voted, who actually is a gamer? The sample size isn't really a good sample of gamers. It's too varied and easily hijacked by mass internet hysteria. That's the problem with all internet polls.

I'm not saying EA is liked, but I highly doubt the majority of gamers hate them. Otherwise their games won't sell. What part of that don't you get?

"Battlefield like games" that's too damn specific and is moving the goal. Battlefield is competing against all other FPSs. You know it, don't try to narrow the definition to win an argument.

Furthermore Battlefield 4 is just one game that has had problems for a small chunk of its players (it's not over 50%, not close, never is or they would never have launched it). EA is FAR more than just Battlefield. A lot of those problems are on DICE. This is what i'm talking about. You've narrowed it down to one game really. EA puts out dozens of titles each year in many different genres on many different platforms. The bugs experienced by owners of just one of those games by one of their developers do not reflect on all of EA's performance as a whole.

EA just published Titanfall which has had practically no large problems outside of a small period of connection issues shortly after launch on the PC which were fixed within 24 hours, well within the acceptable time post-launch to clear up some issues of a multiplayer game. EA also just published that new Plants vs. Zombies game, EA publishes the extremely successful FIFA series each year, EA publishes Madden which sells well... Their library of published games in a single year is massive and only a few ever have had major complaints about bugs or value (DLC/Price).

is there a reason why you edit your posts to add in even more ridiculous comments?

Let me get this straight. You used this poll to generalize and insult gamers in this thread. Now in a tangential argument you are claiming the poll is in no way representative of gamers? That is so many layers of not cool.

*edit to delete argument* Never mind. The fact that you will construct arguments and insults you know are wrong makes discussion pretty pointless.

You assumed when I said gamers I meant everybody who plays video games. I should have clarified. I really meant to narrow it down to those who sit and whine all day about video games. In my head I've always associated gamers as a negative term toward those kind of people as they are the ones who make the most noise and have the least amount of real market influence. They are the small group of people who play video games who hijack these kind of polls and make a big deal out of nothing.

I know that sounds like I'm backpedaling but I don't really care. Obviously if millions of people are still buying EA games then I'm not really including those people as they aren't the ones (probably) that are voting them as the worst company in north america. If they do they would be hypocrites. I believe most people who play video games aren't as petty as those who loudly whine on the internet about them day in and day out like we see on a lot of internet gaming communities.

You've still narrowed the scope when you say "battlefield like games". Battlefield competes against other FPSs. If there wasn't Battlefield, those gamers would most likely play any of the other options. Hell many of the mechanics of BC2-BF4 have been modeled after Call of Duty in a direct attempt to compete against Call of Duty. Call of Duty hasn't responded because they haven't needed too. They just kept doing what they do and they kept selling while DICE continued to implement more features found in Call of Duty in an attempt to compete.

In the context of those participating in the vote, it is fact. We have a solid basis. Thus that's what we work off.

A deep regrettable mistake is being made. What you are doing is speculating. Indeed your initial post is exactly that, speculative. The argument used here regarding game sales is also speculative vagueness. Meta-data (not necessarily or definitively formed on positive opinion) used to form a definitive emotion and (from the initial comment) a derogatory description. Which frankly, seems to be an emotional negative connotation formed from your own personal feelings. In simple terms, a knee jerk.

So you can throw around speculations on the sample used and take that as a fact, but I can't? The sample size isn't truly random since it's open doors and people literally campaigned on gaming websites to vote against EA, and that's a fact. That right there throws a bias into the data and basically renders it irrelevant.

Unless it's a truly random sample of just gamers, then the data is inconclusive and biased. That's how statistics really work. We can't summarize from the poll that the majority of gamers think EA is a bad company. I would say the majority are indifferent with a larger percent who are unhappy and a smaller percent who are happy with EA's products, but that's just my own guess.

Gaelic is my native language. I only started learning English after the Falkland War.

Vote for EA people!

Both of you are pulling shit out of thin air and coming to random conclusions based on nothing solid. Not even as solid as Styrofoam.

The conversation you two are having is completely pointless.

They're so evil, I mean they make games I can't help but buy and can't help but enjoy, they're god damn evil geniuses.

@Wasdie:

First off, gamers are people who play games. So yeah saying gamers are X or Y does apply to all gamers. That isn't an assumption, if you don't want it to apply to all gamers you have to use qualifiers.

Second, bite me if you it is a negative term.

Third, I never moved any goal post. Look at my post history instead of other people's. You really shouldn't be criticizing the way I argue given what you have done in this thread,

Forth, you said people wouldn't buy battlefield four if they disliked EA, and specifically started talking about it's sales. Please stop claiming I am narrowing things. This kind of stuff is really uncool man. I would also like to point out that you are demanding numbers from others to prove claims, but you haven't offered proof that Battlefield 4's sales were not impacted by the whole 'not working for a month or two' thing.

Finally: People play Battlefield instead of Cod for a reason. People are not going to boycott the only console game that gives them the experience they are after because it isn't going to work for the first couple months. I asked for alternatives to illustrate this point. By the way, if you stick to the same tactics I am done.

I find it difficult to believe that we can accurately generalize the feelings of all gamers, especially, as Wasdie pointed out, an online poll is a convenience sampling method, which is only accessible to those who go online to view the polls. If most gamers simply sit down and power on a console, I feel that generalizing based on an online pole to be an inaccurate measure for gauging the feelings toward companies. The gaming community's campaigns to vote against EA, also as Waside pointed out, don't bode well for internal validity either.

Also, I think that a good number of those who vote in online polls are gamers. With postings on human rights pages of petitions for Sega to release more games on PC and the like, I feel that many online voters are probably gamers. As mentioned before, this sample of people who vote online are probably similar in thought to those on forums such as IGN and Gamespot. If so, then it can be reasoned that they may hate EA.

But what do I know? I'm making plenty of assumptions myself, but when I have friends who enjoy playing games that go against the grain of forums such as this, I can only imagine that they don't care much for forums. I also think that if people didn't post about how bad games are, the strikingly obvious flaws in a game may be a lot less noticeable (and yes, I know this is anecdotal support).

Driving farmers in poor, third world countries to suicide because of loan imposed debts thanks to ridiculous business policies such as patenting seeds which spread through spores, meaning farmers have no control over whether they cross over into their property, for one.

Suspect genetic modification of our food, for another.

If you want to discuss this more, please PM me. I will not derail this thread by discussing Monsanto here.

You will not discuss Monsanto here, but you will make sure to bring it up in the second post of this thread. Makes sense.

I brought them up as who I think should win. You will see plenty of people raising their ideas of who they think should win because they think there are greater evils in this world than a game company with shitty practices. Same with me. I think the greatest of those evils is Monsanto, and I expressed that. I gave a general idea about why I think so, but the rest of it is not a discussion for a gaming forum.

Again, I am more than open to have this discussion with you- PM me, add me on Steam and message me there, whatever. We'll talk, but I don't want to inundate a gaming board with non gaming discussion.

Eh. Not speculation. A sect of opinion. It is specifically, opinion.

Using sales data is much more vague and open to interpretation and unlike my excellent argument which uses a specific to make a specific, using vagueness to come up with a specifics is questionable. Perhaps if these games came with and had returned pages of questionnaires from the consumer it would be a much more solid based discussion to put forward but purely on on sales data, it's just not solid enough. I'm sure if you work at it, you probably can dig up more solid arguments as EA no doubt do surveys but sales data alone.

Would it hurt EA so much to improve as a company so people can get a better perspective on companies that are legit worse than them? I mean don't get me wrong, I agree that it's silly that gamers would go to that poll and make EA win over companies that have done some of the most despicable things, but... after 2 years in a row, i find it baffling that EA just doesn't want to learn, even trying to claim that "gamers got some perspective" or start crying that "gamers are horrible petulants" isn't excuse for their stupid decisions

It's like the kid that gets constantly sent to the principal's office for misbehaving, he knows he did wrong, but he loves to insist that "other kids do worse things than i do but you keep punishing ME!"

Petulance and inmaturity goes on both sides in this situation

@kittennose: I didn't mean to insult you, I was just clarifying what I meant when I said gamers.

EA should not be on this list at all.

@Wasdie: Thinking gamer is a negative term is what is insulting, and the reason for the bite me comment. I do not take it personal. I just really dislike how trendy and cool it has become to insult gamers. Slow news day? Lets dig up an article about something a gamer did, and apply it to all gamers!

No reason to be sorry, and I am happy to just agree to disagree. Enjoy the night.

Sorry man, It's in between Bank of America and Chase, Monsanto does not go on harming sprees, they prop up, wait till it dies, and prop up again. Chase could care less and does it constantly, Bank of America acts like everyones are IDIOTS while trying to hide what they do, basically also meaning, they do harm constantly. However, Chases has crippled many financial systems, dented governments, screwed the U.S. as a country, and drifted out millions of people.

Sigh. This says alot more about how immature and entitled gamers are. Than proof of EA.

Not surprised Chaz posted this either and rolled with it.

Wait, why was Facebook, eBay and Yahoo nominated?

Just like EA, these companies impact the lives of tens to hundreds of millions of people every single day. Any mistake they make is sure to enrage millions. Any poll open to the public like this is going to be very dependent on good customer service, etc. When Bank of America screws up, the people they harm directly are impacted far more greatly than the people who couldn't play Sim City. However, millions of people couldn't play Sim City. Bank of America doesn't harm millions at a time, so they are going to have to try extra hard to win a poll like this. If you just look at this as a poll on who has the worst customer service and treats their employees the worst, you probably won't be as surprised at the results as everybody seems to get every year.