EA Forum Ban Will Now Mean EA Game Ban 549
An anonymous reader writes "A post on the EA Support Forums from APOC, online community manager for Electronic Arts, outlines a new policy for their new forums, saying users who earn a ban based on their behavior in the forums will be locked out of all of the EA games tied to that account: 'Well, its actually going to be a bit nastier for those who get banned. Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you'd actually be banned from your other EA games as well since it's all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It's all one in the same, so I strongly recommend people play nice and act mature. All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but it's what we have to do.'" Update: 10/31 12:36 GMT by T : Not so! Pandanapper writes "After a flood of complaints the EA community moderator APOC corrects his statement about how banning you from the forums bans you from your game access as well:"That said, the previous statement I made recently (that's being quoted on the blogs) was inaccurate and a mistake on my part. I had a misunderstanding with regards to our new upcoming forums and website and never meant to infer that if we ban or suspend you on the forums, you would be banned in-game as well. This is not correct, my mistake, my bad."
EA = Lazy Bastards (Score:2, Interesting)
EA is not gonna get any of my business with their shoddy transgaming Cedega-wrapped junk that they deploy on the Mac platform.
They need to stop burning their users, which EA has done for years. Kinda sounds like a consumer case of abuse where the victims keep coming back time after time. A shame, really.
Re:Awwww (Score:3, Interesting)
spoken like a true tyrant. "Obey me, or I will be forced to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you but you're forcing me".
In other news.... EA has forums?
Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Are they TRYING to start a class action lawsuit???
Judge: "What did you do?"
Me: "Called him an asshat."
Judge: "What did they do?"
Me: "Locked me out of $500 worth of software"
Judge: "I rule in favor of the plantif for 1 ass-ton of money"
Re:Awwww (Score:5, Interesting)
I started buying EA titles used a while back because I didn't want to directly support EA anymore. I certainly won't purchase Spore with their DRM.
Star Wars: The Old Republic (Score:2, Interesting)
EA bought Bioware, so a ban on their forums would also ban you from playing the upcoming Star Wars MMO as well.
Re:money back ? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, they take away something I paid for - will they refund? Probably not. I wonder how that would play out in a court of law.
My guess is they would argue you agreed to the TOS which allows them to ban you; and that the money you paid was damages for violating the TOS and hence non-refundable.
Would that fly, especially for games that you did not do anything wrong? Who knows, certainly not me since IANAL.
Re:One problem is... (Score:2, Interesting)
If they are going to do this, they better be damned sure of the training and ability of the people who will be issuing the death penalty to the gamers.
I think that's one part of the problem, but I don't think that's *the* major problem (although I'm sure there will be plenty of false bans that will cause enough of a problem without the complications of linking the games/forums). I see more of a problem in the linking between games; Daddy buys two games, one for little Johnny and one for little Suzy, which he installs and registers via the same EA account. Little Johnny posts something stupid or does something in-game that results in a ban, and little Suzy loses her rights to play Barbie Dressup 2008 or whatever. That's not going to please Daddy, and the problem gets a lot more complicated if little Johnny sells his game to a friend who then gets banned.
Spore isn't even multiplayer (Score:2, Interesting)
I haven't bought spore, but I have played through much of it. It really isn't even a multiplayer game aside from downloading content from other users to be added to your own single-player game. What purpose would banning a player from Spore serve? Are they trying to tell us that they would ban people from a single-player game?
Re:money back ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lets say you buy a car and one of the features is a fancy stereo and you get caught playing unauthorized music. Is it acceptable for the manufacturer to disable your stereo because you broke the rules?
corporate ethics (Score:5, Interesting)
it always seems kinda odd when major corporations that don't mind being unethical themselves when they can make a profit then turn around and try to force their sense of morality on others (e.g. censorship policies). i think companies like Sony, EA, Gamespot, etc. should focus more on correcting their own bad behaviors rather than trying to control the behavior of others. trampling on the rights of consumers, extorting your customers, and selling out your journalistic integrity to advertisers are not exactly shining examples of corporate responsibility.
it's especially annoying when major gaming sites have incompetently implemented profanity filters that prevent you from using ordinary words that happen to contain the same letter sequence as an "inappropriate word or phrase." i don't even bother posting reviews on Gamespot anymore because it's such a pain in the ass trying to figure out what word i used that triggered their profanity filter.
and then there are sites like IGN that have imbeciles for moderators, who think that homebrew/emulation/ripping CDs is illegal. if i want to rip one of my PSX games onto my hard drive and convert it into an eboot that i can play on my PSP that's my own prerogative. censoring posts that talk about homebrew/CFW/etc. is blatant posturing by the gaming industry to condition the public into thinking that only industry sanctioned uses of games/consoles are legal, and that using homebrew, CFW, etc. is illegal/unethical/taboo.
EA Games (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:EA = Lazy Bastards (Score:5, Interesting)
The term "burning" brought up a memory - I was in the Oakland firestorm back in 1991, got out with clothes on my back and my car. The entire Bay Area community was very supportive in helping people recover - with the notable exception of Electronic Arts. I had about ten EA titles for my beloved Amiga 3000 system at the time. When I called EA, explained the situation, and asked how to get replacement media, the answer was "We have no way of knowing you really owned those games. Feel free to buy them at full retail again." When I asked what the point of all the registration cards I'd dutifully mailed in was, the answer was that "Those go to marketing, we don't have any record of them."
Needless to say, I don't have to worry about dealing with the EA forums.
KeS
Re:No different than bars and restaurants (Score:1, Interesting)
They aren't just banning you from the restaurant.
Take a large franchise that you frequent. Say for instance you .. eat McDonalds. (perhaps a really bad example for you, but think of a place you eat/shop at a lot - that has many stores).
You get drunk one night, and make a complete tool of yourself in 1 store, and get rightfully kicked out - and banned - from that store. I'm totally happy with that, you *deserve* to be banned from that store.
Now, couple months later you feel like Maccas, so you go to another store out of your way (because you are banned from your local store) its annoying but you show up, and they refuse to serve you because your name/face has been posted to all stores and you are banned from all stores.
The forum ban is not the problem. Its the system-wide ban from everything that is the problem.
Remember EA isn't your small time publisher with 1 or 2 games, these guys publish stuff all over the place from all kinds of game devs all the time. Worse than that, they are actively going around buying (and trying to buy) up large game developers with good franchises.
One more thing to keep in mind (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't matter even if the forum accounts are linked to the game accounts.
After all, just because you can play Game A in your EA account doesn't automatically mean you can play Game B.
Just because you can't play Game C, doesn't mean you can't play ALL other games.
So it should technically be possible for EA to stop people from using the forums without stopping people from playing their games, even if the accounts are the "same".
Just make the forum a "game" and fix the access/authorization crap accordingly.
You could even treat different forum areas as different games.
So, how many game companies is there left? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft? No thanks, I don't do Windows or Xbox.
Sony? No thanks I don't want a Blu-Ray player nor DRM in my games.
EA? Transgaming/Cedega, DRM and now this? No thanks.
Companies I still trust enough to buy their games:
- Nintendo (for Zelda, Metroid, etc)
- Blizzard (still waiting on Starcraft II and Diablo III)
In fact, almost any Zelda, Metroid, Starcraft or Diablo game is already pre-sold because I trust them enough to sell me good quality games that don't make me feel like a thief or a beta-tester.
Re:Awwww (Score:2, Interesting)
Mmm, you pretty much summed up exactly what I was thinking. The major problem with this new change is that EA is a crazy irresponsible dictatorship with no oversight. There have been reports of people being banned from Spore for using the word 'drat'. No really, what the hell kind of a stick must someone have up their arse to think that that's even remotely worthy of notice, let alone actually approaching unacceptable. It's worth noting that the word 'drat' doesn't even violate the section of the TOS/EULA that they quoted. Until EA can learn to play by their own rules, they have no business banning anyone. (And yes, before someone points it out, I know that EA reserves the right to ban anyone for no good reason. But unless they can claim that the ban was justified, good luck hanging on to any customers.)
A better way (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I just thought of perhaps a better way to play. How about giving games the option for players to flag themselves as "mature" and choose whether to allow games with other players that are not marked as "mature."
If you start acting like an immature dickhead, you can still play online and post in the forums, but you have to play in the little kid's sandbox while the others can happily ignore you from the "adults" table...
All Down Hill (Score:3, Interesting)
EA's been all down hill since Archon 2. I'm not going to miss them.
Re:Misunderstanding... (Score:3, Interesting)
People in positions of authority on a message board for a professional organisation should probably learn how to spell and use common phrases too (it's "one and the same", if he used his brain he could figure out what that actually means and not say "one in the same"). On top of that he is outright lying, saying he didn't mean to imply anything by his original post:
I had a misunderstanding with regards to our new upcoming forums and website and never meant to infer that if we ban or suspend you on the forums, you would be banned in-game as well.
He did mean to infer that otherwise he wouldn't have outright said it. If he didn't bother to check up then he is an idiot (though I suspect he ws just trying to scare people into playing nice, he sounds like the manipulative type who switches between aggressive/brown-nosing at the drop of a hat). Nobody in their right mind would say it is fair for someone who got banned from a forum to have all the games accounts they paid for annulled just because of one moment of trolling, or a mod having a bad day.
Seen forum bans for pretty civilized conduct (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, if you've looked at enough game forums, you'll see lots of bans which are for stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with being uncivilized.
There are whole companies where they delete posts, and even ban accounts for stuff like reporting or discussing bugs. And I don't mean the "you gay motherfuckers get off your lazy arses and fix my pet peeve right now" kind of "discussion", but even mentioning that some exploits exist at all, or that some DRM bug has prevented someone from starting the game. Especially if someone from Marketing got ideas like, "omg, if people find out we have bugs or multiplayer exploits, our sales will drop, and we can't have that before Christmas." But whatever the reason, trying to prevent people from posting bugs, especially if a bug has showed up already too often on the forum, _is_ a pretty popular way to avoid fixing them.
Heck, Sony even had a sandbox for new forum users (which included veterans finally activating their forum account), just so they can't complain about the NGE in SWG. Apparently enough people activated their forum account just to say a final "good bye, but this is no longer fun" when unsubscribing, and we can't have that, can we?
I also remember forum bans and account bans for as little as distasteful fanfic about someone's game. But it wasn't in the game, and it wasn't even on the game's forums. Just, you know, if you dare post something we dislike about our games, we'll kick you out.
So I'm really not looking forward for more of that dictatorial accounts. If someone actually cheated in a multiplayer game or anything, fine, ban them. But not for offending an already arbitrary forum moderation system.
And how does a Spore ban (since they used that particular example) even fit that picture? Even EA marketed Spore as a "massively single-player game". Let's say I was a forum troll. So exactly how's my temper going to affect someone else's game? Can I even get into anyone's game to spew obscenities at them? Or what?
Plus, here's another idea: it seems to me like if you have a player rebellion on your hands, on the forums or in game or otherwise, the best policy is to be open and fair. People don't run amok about a bug when they know it'll get put in the queue and looked at later. You might get one, though, if it becomes obvious that you use PR bullshit and deleting bug reports, instead of fixing very real problems and exploits. They don't run amok about some griefer being banned, especially if again you're open as to why and what the rules are. You get a virtual rebellion when you're acting like an ass to the customers in the first place.
Adding a game ban there just adds injury to the already existing insult.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)