Demonstrating the fallibility of online polls and the fact that video games are serious business, Electronic Arts Inc has previously been chosen by a Consumerist poll as the worst company in America. Twice.

What did they do to earn this dubious honor? If other companies have been guilty of using child labor or financially supporting corrupt governments, EA must have done something truly terrible indeed.

Well, actually no, not really. While EA has been accused of overworking its employees, the publisher’s poor reputation comes more from its role in buying up beloved game studios, milking their franchises for everything they are worth, and then shutting them down. Oh, and they also use a lot of microtransactions in their games. Those monsters.

At first, EA’s response to being chosen as the “worst company” was flippant. “We’re sure that bank presidents, oil, tobacco, and weapons companies are all relieved they weren’t on the list this year,” an EA representative told Gamasutra at the time.

But after being chosen for the second year in a row, the publisher realized that whether or not it considered itself to be a bad company, its primary audience certainly did.

An image popularly circulated by anti-EA gamers

“We needed to look at systemic problems,” Patrick Söderlund, Executive Vice President at EA Studios, told CNET in a recent interview. “We needed to understand this is how people perceive us — right or wrong, it was as simple as that.”

EA set out to change its image, first by directly addressing consumers’ primary complaints. “Very early on, we developed a list of policies,” Söderlund said. “We systematically went down the list — what can we do differently?”

This included stepping back from some of the publisher’s harsher DRM policies that often made it difficult for legitimate customers to play their games. Their games still use DRM, but consumers are no longer required to enter a code on their PC or game console to unlock the game. EA also began offering refunds for games within 24 hours of first playing or within the first seven days of purchase.

Other changes included a greater focus on game quality, such as when the studio decided to delay the release of Titanfall in order to improve the game’s performance on last-gen consoles.

While EA ducked the “worst company” title last year, the publisher still faces an intensely cynical audience, and its upcoming reboot of the Star Wars: Battlefront franchise could be a pivotal moment that will determine whether the company has redeemed itself in the eyes of gamers.

Image credit: Mass Effect 3 | Electronic Arts Inc