Gamer Banned From Dragon Age II Over Forum Post 469
RogueyWon writes "Kotaku is reporting that a Dragon Age II gamer banned from BioWare's forums for an allegedly inflammatory post has been locked out of the (singleplayer only) game for the duration of the ban. This is a consequence of EA's backend systems, which link forum accounts to the accounts that players use to access their games. This would appear to be a worrying new development; while trolling forums has led to bans from massively multiplayer games in the past (arguably with some justification), the extension of the principle to singleplayer games, where an abusive player cannot affect the enjoyment of others, must surely be a step too far."
Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Interesting)
>>If it is an accident, and EA agrees that it is wrong, and fixes it... then there is no reason to attribute malice to EA.
Except it does sound like working-as-intended.
But then again, this is the same company that jumped onto the social media bandwagon, merged their accounts with EA, corrupting them in the process so that I both couldn't log on and couldn't reset the password (it would fall into an infinite loop). And did things like tying their server uptime during the demo into getting exclusive items in DA2, which promptly killed their servers and forced (well, if that's the right word) people to play the demo over and over until the damn servers stayed up long enough to get credit for it. If it dropped even once during the demo, you wouldn't get credit at the end.
And so forth. I believe they're both incompetent *and* filled with hate and malice.
Probably a new thing Bioware got from the EA merger.
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
..In a world where it is ok for a restaurant to refuse to serve any TSA agents and your employer can fire you for burning a koran on your own time, why *can't* a game company revoke service from a troll?
I think all three are really shitty, but chances are most people only disagree with 1 or 2 of the above and those are the people who make it all possible.
Re:Someone needs to lay down the legal smack down (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a more relevant analogy would be buying a Ford, you hurling abuse on the forecourt of the only Ford dealer in town and then that Ford dealer not allowing you on their property to pickup the car when it's ready.
You aren't banned from the car, rather banned from the only available means of getting hold of the car.
In both the real and analogous cases, the common sense solution would be for either a workaround or a refund. But no-one likes common sense in the land of media and blogosphere hyperbole.
Re:Bad summary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That was stupid of him (Score:3, Interesting)
Uncommon stupidity shloud be grounds for jail time.
this guy got it easy,as far as I'm concerned.
On a different note, although that was not proved, since he could not access the forum or download the game, there is a chance he would not be able to login if he had it installed.
this kind of online authentication for a single player game is just wrong, regardless of anything else.
Really don't like this trend (Score:3, Interesting)
I was also banned from my steam account because paypal choose a transaction I've made with Valve to check my identity. Their system was faulty and after confirmation(Phone calls to land line and CC verification), It took several phone calls & more than a week of back & forth to get everything in order.
Mean while, I lost access to all the games under my Steam account because Paypal stopped 1 payment & I had this account for 4 years. I had almost 20 games in my Library & couldn't play them until paypal released my money. Sure, I understand they wanted to be paid, but having total control over 20 of my games is really frightful.
It took me almost 2 years before I bought another steam games & honestly, if I can avoid using this kind of system, I will. I rather have a boxed DVD than letting someone have total control over something I paid for... I mean it's not like I don't know how to get the games for free...but I don't pirate because I feel it's wrong, and this is how they thank you... Anyhow