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EA brushes off "worst company in America" award

"We're sure BP, AIG, Philip Morris and Halliburton are all relieved they weren't nominated."

EA has been voted the "worst company in America" by readers of customer watchdog site The Consumerist.

EA and Bank America had beaten a number of other contenders - including Ticketmaster, Apple, GameStop, WalMart, Sony and PayPal - to reach the final round, which the games publisher won with 64.03 per cent of the public vote. Over 250,000 votes were counted throughout the contest.

Reasons cited for its win include nickel and diming customers with post-launch DLC, buying up small developers to snuff out competition and releasing buggy games.

However, the gong doesn't seem to have knocked EA off its stride. Corporate comms chief John Reseburg brushed off the award in a Kotaku interview, pointing to its efforts to include same-sex relationships in recent games such as Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic as proof that it's not all bad.

"We're sure that British Petroleum, AIG, Philip Morris, and Halliburton are all relieved they weren't nominated this year," he added.

"We're going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide."