It seems that gamers have listened to the pleas for sanity and did not elect to vote for EA as the Worst Company in America for the third year running in The Consumerist's poll. In fact, it didn't even make it out of the first round, losing to Time Warner in a close match that ended at 48.8% and 51.2% respectively.
EA had promised to fix its image from the last two years, and aside from Battlefield 4's botched launch, I believe the company has done enough to at least allow it to not be lumped in the same category of some of these other despicable entities. It might not be the most friendly of gamer companies, but at least EA never stole your house. It remains to be seen who will take the award nobody wants, but EA can rest assured that they've dodged this publicity bullet this year.
In fact, now that EA 's fortunes have been turning, it could continue continue to ride this wave and improve its image even further. With exclusive Star Wars rights under its belt and the widely utilized Frostbite 3 and Ignite Engines powering all of their games, EA won't want to put any toes out of line. Of course, those highly visible engines and properties mean that EA risks a bigger fall with any major mishandlings.
On the Battlefield 4 front, yes. EA must improve its launches for online games, that goes without question. Keep in mind that this idea of launching such massive games through such tremendous servers on a bi-annual basis is still in its infancy. This isn't Call of Duty retreading on the same ground year in and year out. Battlefield actually shows major leaps in technology from release to release, and finding a method that can consistently support such grandiose ideas takes time.
EA has taken the brunt of the negative publicity for pioneering this beast of a task, but that is because it is trying the hardest with the biggest games to make it a viable system. It doesn't help that a lot of their consumer facing policies have been awful in the past. If they continue releasing titles without microtransactions or day one DLC, gamers might be happier.
Soon, others will follow in EA's path once it hammer big releases down right. By then, we'll probably find something else to hate EA for and server issues will be a thing of the past.
