The two-time reigning and defending Golden Poo winner as Consumerist’s Worst Company in America won’t be scoring the three-peat. Electronic Arts was bounced from the 2014 Worst Company tournament after suffering a close first round exit at the hands of Time Warner Cable.

The EA / Time Warner results were the closest in the WCIA poll in the last three years. TWC managed to pick up the win by a margin of only 2.4% (51.2% to 48.8%).

EA certainly looked like an early favourite to claim a third-straight Worst Company in America crown. Given my frequent visits to various gaming news subreddits on Reddit and not seeing a word about the poll, I’d imagine EA would have done better if word had gotten out about the poll.

Over the last twelve months, EA’s launch of Battlefield 4 was so glitchy that they faced two class-action lawsuits over lost share value. Titanfall was a disappointment to some and the 50 GB download size was outlandish but at least the servers weren’t as bad as BF4. The mobile version of Dungeon Keeper has some of the most exploitative microtransactions ever conceived in the industry. Maxis finally admitted that they could make SimCity offline after claiming for months that it wasn’t possible even though fans knew that it could be done just weeks after launch. And there’s always your standard Origin complaints.

Time Warner’s win comes as a bit of an upset but they haven’t not earned a shot at the crown. They’re often the subject of complaints about poor service from internet and cable customers. The merger in the works between them and Comcast isn’t likely to help matters either.

Despite being a two-time champion of the Golden Poo, I doubt you’re going to find too many level-headed gamers who would adamantly claim that EA actually was the Worst Company in America. The most hated, maybe. Worst? No, not when the poll includes Monsanto, Koch Industries, Verizon and any American-based airline or investment bank.

Source: The Consumerist