Plants vs Zombies - Garden Warfare - 2

Can EA go for a three-peat that nobody wants? The Consumerist is once again running its now infamous poll to determine who its readers believe is the “Worst Company in America,” and two time reigning champion video game publisher EA finds itself on the nomination list.

It finds itself among the usual competition,  three time runner-up Bank of America, previous champion Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Facebook, Yahoo, McDonalds, SeaWorld, and pretty much every other major corporation you see in the news these days.

Over the past three years, gamers have used this poll as a rallying cry against video game trends, and they have offered up EA as the ideal bad guy for the video game industry. Before you blindly rush to spitefully vent your anger again, really stop and think about what has EA done this year to incite your wrath recently.

Mass Effect 3‘s controversial ending was two years ago, and not only was the SimCity debacle was last year, EA also just rectified it by releasing the offline mode probably not-so-coincidentally the day before the poll went live.

E3 2013 - EA - Mirrors Edge - 023

EA hasn’t falsely advertised games like SEGA and Gearbox have all done in recent memory. It has backed off from unpopular Online Passes because gamers demanded it. It had a killer E3, took an unprecedented move in unifying its graphic engines, announced a handful of wonderful new gamer-focused games like Mirror’s Edge and Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, and even started sporting free DLC through draconian Microsoft of all places.

It focuses less on Origin, focuses more on a future with virtual reality, and it frequently puts all of its games on sale universally across all platforms.

In fact, CEO Andrew Wilson even came out to acknowledge why it had won the award and genuinely promised to do better, and last time I checked, Titanfall was a huge hit enjoyed universally by everyone. Low and behold, it is also microtransaction free.

EA has provided you with good entertainment and addressed a lot of the problems that hindered its image for the past few years.

Titanfall - 5

This running joke needs to stop, but no doubt, gamers will still put it on a pedestal for stupid reasons like “Battlefield 4 wasn’t as good as I thought it would be,” “Titanfall favors Microsoft and is not on the PlayStation 4 yet,” or “Dungeon Keeper was a travesty of free-to-play,” which by the way, EA offered the classic game for free to make amends. Misfiring on a game here and there is not poor business, it’s just life.

Get over it, gamers. EA is not the bad guy here. Certainly not compared to the competition.