EA has been defeated in the first round of the 2014 “Worst Company In America” bracket, ending the video game studio’s streak of two consecutive “victories” in Consumerist’s annual customer-disservice competition. EA detractors were narrowly beaten in the reader vote by Time Warner Cable haters, which is a stunning upset—it comes as a surprise that so many Time Warner customers were able to maintain an Internet connection long enough to vote in an online poll.
EA was probably edged because of timing: Last year, the Worst Company vote came soon after EA badly bungled the launch of its new, online-only SimCity. And this year, Time Warner Cable is in the preliminary stages of a deal with Comcast to merge the country’s least-liked cable companies into one, presumably even less-liked company. EA hasn’t done anything especially detestable in 2014 so far, and its most recent high-profile release, Titanfall, debuted to excellent sales and favorable reviews (including our own).