Those thinking that Electronic Arts would win The Consumerist's 'Worst Company in America' award (or the "Golden Poo" as they like to call it) for the third year in a row will be disappointed to hear that the publisher of The Sims, SimCity, and Battlefield 4 has been knocked off in the first round of the playoffs by Time Warner Cable. EA was knocked out in the first round of the tournament, with its competitor Time Warner Cable receiving 51.2 percent of reader votes.

In 2012 Jay Pavlina raised $53,509 on Kickstarter for a game called Super Action Squad. Flash forward to 2014 and we learn that the game is now "on hold" as Pavlina admits that he bit off more than he could chew with this project, calling it "a bad idea in the first place." The news is a stark reminder that you are investing in something when you back a Kickstarter project, and sometimes you lose money on investments.

The first round brackets for The Consumerist's "Worst Company in America" award have been announced, with plenty of companies familiar to downtrodden consumers for their poor service, generally bad attitudes towards customers, and policies that make using their products and services a living hell for some. Of note to video game fans is Electronic Arts going up against Time Warner Cable in the first round.

According to this Polygon report, video games retailer GameStop is engaging in a little bit of price gouging. According to the report, the retailer has raised the price of the PS4 camera peripheral to $69.99. When Sony announced the peripheral back in 2013 it carried a suggested retail price of $59. Last month the device was listed at that price point, but recently the PS4 camera has been scarce or sold out at most major retailers in the United States.

In a recent interview with IDG News Service, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said that customers who use lots of bandwidth should be charged more. People who download lots of files or stream content on a regular basis should naturally be charged, in his mind.

Peter Molyneux, creator of the original 1997 strategy game hit Dungeon Keeper, recently described EA's free-to-play mobile reboot as "ridiculous" in an interview with the BBC.

Since its release on iOS and Android versions, the new Dungeon Keeper has managed to raise the ire of fans and critics alike for forcing players to choose between spending significant periods of time farming resources, or to pay lots of real-world money to buy items that allow them to skip those requirements.

Electronic Arts is taking a bit of heat for its "free-to-play" mobile game, Dungeon Keeper. Besides players and critics complaining about how horribly the microtransactions are implemented into the gameplay, there's also accusations that EA is gaming the ratings system on Google Play.

Warner Bros. has cancelled the planned downloadable content for the Wii U game Arkham Origins and refunded customers who purchased the DLC-associated Season Pass.

Nintendo said that the DLC was canceled because demand for it was "low." Obviously fans who bought the Season Pass would disagree. Wii U owners who purchased a season pass for the Arkham Origins DLC will be refunded with eShop credit, Nintendo said.

In calling for nominations for this year's "The Worst Company in America" awards, awards host The Consumerist says that Electronic Arts might be in the running for winning the dubious distinction for a third year in a row. According to the publication, EA is already getting a lot of nominations in the early part of the process.

Disney is the latest company to receive pushback from gamers who are growing increasingly tired of free-to-play games having aggressive in-game micro-transaction schemes.

According to this Polygon report citing a YouTube video from "Team Spooky After Hours," the DRM in the Xbox One title Killer Instinct reared its ugly head during a tournament that took place at Queens College in New York.

Indie developers including the makers of The Witness, Thomas Was Alone, VVVVVV, and Ridiculous Fishing, are railing against YouTube and Google over their new copyright detection policies after being the target of false copyright claims on videos of their own games.

Mike Bithell, creator of puzzle platformer game Thomas Was Alone, was the target of a claim by a group called 'Indmusic' for "systematically" claiming rights to footage of his game. He lashed out at the group via Twitter:

Microsoft has confirmed that it has raised prices on the digital downloads of Ryse, Forza Motorsport 5 and Dead Rising 3 in the UK. The games were initially offered at £45 when the system launched on Nov. 22 in the region, but today those games costs £50 each.

By all accounts online retailer Zavvi made a mistake when it mailed out a PlayStation Vita and Tearaway bundle to UK customers who simply ordered only the PS Vita game, but the company's response to customers is what's making news this morning. According to Eurogamer, the retailer has sent customers who received the PS Vita bundle by accident emails filled with ultimatums and legal threats.

You've probably heard of games being cancelled while being in early development, in beta, and at various stages of development but one game is likely the first to be cancelled after it has been released. Published by 505 Games and developed by Trickstar, Ashes Cricket 2013 is the first game to be cancelled publicly by a publisher - in addition to being unceremoniously pulled from Steam for being awful. Naturally 505 Games points its fingers at the game's developer who did not deliver a game up to anyone's standards.

Over the weekend Kotaku continued to report on disc drive failures in Microsoft's new Xbox One console, according to the publication, it has received over 150 readers saying that they have bought an Xbox One with a faulty disc drive. In addition editors from websites Polygon, IGN, and GamesRadar have reported receiving one of these faulty units directly from Microsoft.

Microsoft has been pretty lukewarm in its response to the news:

According to several YouTube videos being made public today, frustrated Xbox One owners who have just purchased the shiny new console are having disc read errors. Several Xbox One buyers have reported disc drive issues, though just how widespread this issue is is unknown at this time.

In most of the videos, Xbox One owners pop in game discs only to find that the systems' drives don't work. Then, as documented by at least four different YouTube videos, there's a loud grinding noise that will make you wince.

Earlier today Microsoft offered instructions similar to Sony's (for the PS4) on how to download the Day One update for its Xbox One, put it on a USB drive and apply it offline. Then they removed it. The 20-step guide for downloading the latest Xbox One firmware to a USB stick was pulled after news about it got out, and Microsoft responded by saying that it was important that consumers log onto Xbox Live at least once when they get their shiny new console beginning tomorrow.

EA DICE has published an update to the Battlelog detailing its work to improve Battlefield 4 across multiple platforms.

In a post on Battlelog today DICE said it hoped to get an update for the PS4 version out early next week and that it was dealing with a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) that made the PC version of the game unplayable for most of the weekend.

As the PlayStation 4 hit North America some consumers took their shiny new next-generation home and realized that it didn't work very well. On Friday Sony said that it was looking into an issue some customers were experiencing with the PS4, and today they have put together a page dedicated to working out the problem. What was the problem? Some customers in North America were reporting that the console was giving them a blue blinking light. A blue blinking light was replacing the white solid light, which means that the console is in the "powered on" state.

The latest bundle from Humble Bundle - the Humble WB Games bundle is inching towards $3 million on the sale of over 600,000 bundles. As of this writing the bundle has raked in $2.874 million. The Humble WB Games Bundle offers consumers Batman: Arkham Asylum, FEAR 2: Project Origin, FEAR 3, and Lord of the Rings: War in the North for any price they want. Paying more than the current average price (right now it is at $4.64) will get you two additional games - Scribblenauts Unlimited and Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition.

An angry Blockbuster customer in the UK decided that he'd had enough concerning getting a refund for the PS4 he bought and took to the Dunstable store to protest outside. He brought a megaphone with him and let customers going into the store that they would get ripped off.

A post on Steam this morning reveals that if you purchased Batman Arkham Asylum or Batman: Arkham City through anywhere other than Steam then you will have to jump through a few hoops to have the games maintain their functionality and you may have to start playing the aforementioned games from the very beginning.

If you have lost characters in Grand Theft Auto Online and were hoping for some magic bullet to fix the problem, then you are out of luck, according to Rockstar Games. The company has confirmed, much to the chagrin of those affected by the glitch that made characters and online rankings disappear last week, that there's no fix for it. Instead they hope that the $500,000 in-game credit stimulus will be enough to satisfy players who have had trouble with the game since it launched on October 1.

Kickstarter-funded sword fighting game Clang has run out of cash and is looking - with little success - for additional funding. In an update to the Kickstarter page for the game, Neal Stephenson from Subutai Studio told backers that the $526,000 pledged by Kickstarter donors in July 2012 is all gone and raising funding from other sources has proven difficult because publishers and investors interested in the sector are "risk-averse."

Update: A spokesperson for PayPal has informed us that the situation has been resolved. The company's statement can be found below:

Admitting that the launch of its newest Final Fantasy MMO was less than stable, Square Enix announced that it will compensate subscribers of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn with an extra seven days of game time.

The publisher admitted that it has been unable to deliver a reliable and stable service to customers since the game launched on PC and PS3 last week. The company chalked up the game's technical difficulties to high user demand. This led to a temporary halt in digital sales as it attempted to expand server capacity.

Some owners of the PlayStation Vita version of Ubisoft's Rayman Legends game claim that the game contains less content than the game on other platforms. According to this NeoGAF thread, the PS Vita version of Rayman Legends is missing 28 levels, despite Ubisoft claiming prior to the game's launch that it offered the same amount of content as the other games.

If you are a Time Warner Cable internet customer, you can look forward to a price hike on that cable modem lease the company instituted late last year. Customers weren't happy that TWC decided to charge a leasing fee of $3.95 (in most regions) per month which officially kicked in last November. Now customers will see that fee increase about a little over $2. The modem leasing price will jump from $3.95 to $5.99 per month. - roughly an extra $24.48 per year.

Backers of the The Doom That Came to Atlantic City boardgame Kickstarter are learning a harsh lesson about crowd-funding: there's always a risk that the project you put money into will fail miserably. Eurogamer chronicled the epic failure of this popular Kickstarter-funded board game in an extensive report this morning.