Jiminy Christmas. Can you get a better illustration of the seething entitlement of gamers than EA being a finalist in a worst-companies bracket that included ABInBev, both AT&T and Verizon, Ticketmaster, credit-reporting agency Equifax, United Airlines, Carnival Fecal Coliform Cruises, Comcast, yes, really, Comcast, Walmart, and Bank of America?
There is no parallel universe in which EA is worse than half these companies. The result we have now brings discredit to the whole enterprise of worst-company contests.
If EA's COO had a soul, he'd write a long-form blog post about how bad United Airlines, Ticketmaster, Equifax and BofA are.
I think it was "most hated" rather than "worse", you're right there are lots of companies much worse than EA.
OTOH I think that people feel that video games should be a source of joy and pleasure so feel especially betrayed when a game company turns around and sprays them with this sort of corporate BS.
It's like if my bank sends me a letter charging me for not having enough money + another charge for sending me the letter I just expect that because they are a bank, I just accept them as a necessary evil. They don't exist to make me feel good.
OTOH a video game company's raison d'être is to make people feel good so if they are attracting hate then they're really fucked something up.
Who hates a video game company more than a credit agency, or the cable company that packet shapes and MITMs your Internet connection? Just don't play the game, and you never have to think about them. You can't say that about Equifax.
You just need to thread on some popular forum pushing people to vote. After the Time's Person of the Year and other 4chan-influenced polls, you shouldn't assume there's anything valid about online polls.
Maybe I'm naive, but I dislike EA more than Equifax, and I have actually had Equifax stick nonsense on my report before. I believe Equifax are actually trying to do a good job in general — their mistakes are not the sort where I feel like somebody actively considered me and said, "Eh, screw him" — whereas I don't believe that about EA. Similarly, I don't think Ticketmaster is all that bad these days. My dealings with Ticketmaster have been more pleasant than my dealings with EA.
Your dealings with the company that coerced every concert venue in your major metro area to accept contracts that prevented them from booking concerts through anybody but Ticketmaster so that they could continue to collect nonsensical exorbitant handling fees were better than your dealings with EA, because you didn't like one of EA's games?
I don't recall the fees being all that exorbitant the last several times I bought through Ticketmaster. They came out to something like $2. I am not a rich man, but boy would I feel silly hating a company over a couple of dollars.
Meanwhile, my distaste for EA comes not from my critical evaluation of one of their games, but from the fact that their games don't friggin' work. I don't even play EA games (simply not my cup of tea), but my fiancee loves her some Sims. I defy you to try and do tech support for an EA game and come out still hating Ticketmaster more. I would gladly pay a $5 fee to make their games stop crashing and corrupting her data! There are game-breaking issues in their products that have existed for years for which the only known solution is "Use the version on The Pirate Bay." As one of the few honest PC players who refuses to torrent games, that is just galling to me.
When people wait X years for a game they really want to play and they find it has all of these problem then they will feel let down. Especially when they have competitors who are known for giving much better service.
If you have a shitty ISP who MITMs your connections then either you have the choice of moving elsewhere or if you can't it's because all their competitors are just as shitty.
You can't just go and get Sim City 4 from another company.
You can never have even heard of Equifax and something they screw up can keep you from getting a mortgage, or get your rental car reservation cancelled at 11:00PM right as your plane lands.
I'm sure there are many companies and government agencies fucking me in all sorts of horrible and unexpected ways every day, in fact I basically expect it.
But then at the end of the day when I go to my favorite bar and they serve me warm beer in a plastic glass, guess what I spend the most time bitching about?
There is no parallel universe in which EA is worse than half these companies. The result we have now brings discredit to the whole enterprise of worst-company contests.
If EA's COO had a soul, he'd write a long-form blog post about how bad United Airlines, Ticketmaster, Equifax and BofA are.