EA Blocks 'Origin' Access In Six Countries, Citing US Embargoes (pcgamer.com) 121
An anonymous reader writes: "In compliance with US embargoes and sanctions laws, Origin is not available in Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine (Crimea region)," a community manager from EA posted in September. Engadget calls it "a reminder of the risks you take when buying copy-protected game downloads... Even if you started your account elsewhere, you aren't allowed to either visit the Origin store or use any of your purchased games."
Sunday an employee at EA's Origin game store commented "This isn't an EA-specific issue -- it's an issue that impacts all companies offering services that are covered by trade embargoes." But since the U.S. lifted sanctions on Myanmar in September, EA "is internally reviewing the situation... It's unclear to me whether we can do anything for residents of other countries that are still similarly embargoed, but I'll bring the topic up for discussion internally."
Sunday an employee at EA's Origin game store commented "This isn't an EA-specific issue -- it's an issue that impacts all companies offering services that are covered by trade embargoes." But since the U.S. lifted sanctions on Myanmar in September, EA "is internally reviewing the situation... It's unclear to me whether we can do anything for residents of other countries that are still similarly embargoed, but I'll bring the topic up for discussion internally."
Bizarre list (Score:2)
Looking at the countries in the list just makes me laugh.
Cuba & Iran: Didn't the recent moved by Obama really make this outdated? The Iran deal has been signed, and so has the Cuban embargo been lifted. So what stops EA from selling in these 2 countries?
Sudan - haven't they let non-Muslim South Sudan secede, and hasn't the war on Darfur ended?
North Korea & Syria - the only ones in this list that make sense
Crimea - how does this even make sense? Either they sanction Russia (in which case, prepare
US Cuban embargo (Score:1)
What's the status of the Cuban embargo? I know you can get Cuban rum in the US now, and there are travel commercials heavily promoting flights from Fort Lauderdale to Cuba on Radionomy internet stations (like almost every commercial break).
Re:US Cuban embargo (Score:5, Informative)
The embargo remains in place, only congress can end it and the republican party at least has no intention of doing so. Obama has stretched the rules about as much as presidential discretion allows.
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The embargo remains in place, only congress can end it and the republican party at least has no intention of doing so.
Of course not. Cuban exiles and their families are pretty much the only Latino support the Republicans draw.
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Anecdotal evidence, as a Chrome Web Store developer I was notified on Oct 17 that free CWS items are now available in Cuba. I assume paid items aren't because there is no payment processing yet.
So at least Google is lifting sanctions-induced embargo.
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They haven't changed the reasons you're allowed to visit at all, they have simply switched to assuming your visit is legitimate, and only investigating if they are suspicious you are lying (no pre clearance necissary like their used to be)
There are companies that sell packages that meet the cultural exchange requirement, and you can basically just buy one and fly there with minimal effort now.
Re:US Cuban embargo (Score:5, Insightful)
You probably weren't alive during the Cuban revolution, but the reason the US enacted an embargo against Cuba was not for ideological reasons, but for economic reasons. The revolution seized *billions* of US capital and have claimed it as state property ever since. As proof the embargo is not ideological, reference US relations with Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam, Qatar, and any number of *highly* oppressive regimes.
The US doesn't care about the human condition -- it cares about money, and that's why the embargo is being lifted.
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Vietnam is the only example of yours above that is germane here. The US has always had a policy of looking the other way wrt the Middle East, since they wanted their support against the Soviets during the Cold War, and now, against Iran. Vietnam, like Cuba, was Communist, but after they embraced at least economic, if not political pluralism, the US resumed relations w/ them. Vietnam is more humane than China, and so there is no reason US sanctions there should remain.
Regarding the Middle East, it's a
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You are amusing that the game was purchased in the country with the embargo.
Here is a little clue ... people travel and buy stuff all over the world .
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Indeed. Thing is...EA made it look like it was purchased.
The comment about "embargoed" from EA is specious. I initially "rented" elsewhere- and you assured me I'd have access to it.
Now...I can't have access to it because I'm off in the Ukraine? Riiight.
EA was down yesterday (Score:4, Informative)
EA's game servers were down several hours yesterday, affecting dozens of games (I play Simpsons Tapped Out lol). I wonder if this was a DDOS response attack against EA, or if they totally screwed up their access block and ended up blocking everyone?
https://twitter.com/AskEASuppo... [twitter.com]
And the moral is... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're not in a first world country. Pirate all your games just in case.
Actually that's true for first world countries too. Never know when ea will fuck you.
EA GAMES - we fuckup everything
reminds me of UMass (Score:3, Interesting)
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What you buy is not yours to use (Score:5, Interesting)
A sad reminder of how the first sale doctrine is now a long forgotten memory.
Are users even getting a refund?
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Not saying it's not bullshit, but it is what it is.
US are bullies, terrorists, invaders, interfere wi (Score:3, Interesting)
.. with foreign elections, ..
Whatever one has a problem with that is up to each and everyone I guess. I have absolutely nothing against American citizens or the American life-style but it's food for thought it the situation was the other way around:
* Sanctions against the USA.
* Pakistan and Afghans drones which bombed in the other direction (you see, I can't even write the sentence as it should be written because if I did I'm sure some US filter would catch that and flag me as suspicious and super-dangerous.)
* Got invaded to have the ruling government replaced by something else, possibly nothing.
* Other nations trying to influence the election outcome (we really have a bit of that with Russia and Trump, how much does Russia care beyond just being somewhat amused? I don't know!
Is the purpose that the citizens in those nations will wake up and riot and demand a change of their leaders? How likely is that result? Has it been the result anywhere so far?
Of course here in Sweden I would just be happy if someone helped us remove our ruling elite but in most scenarios I can understand if people get pissed.
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Fuck off with that. You fancy Russian rule?
Sovereign nations and peoples isn't a choice?
It's one super-power/bully or the other?
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Do you really think Afghanistan wouldn't have been happier if the Russian occupation in the early 80s had been unopposed by the USA and had successfully prevented their government from collapsing?
If Russians had conquered Afghanistan (Score:2)
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Afghanistan of the 1970s wasn't that different from those countries, Islamic extremism was a result of the war.
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Fuck off with that. You fancy Russian rule?
Our ass-hole of unelected primary minister here in Sweden can't even say that Saudi-Arabia is an undemocratic unequal inhumane non-free terrorist-supporting unprogressive barbaric hell-hole of a dictatorship, or even just ONE of those words because he's so afraid to stuck a label onto someone else at-least as long as they are Muslim because this i Sweden of political correctness and Marxist extremism including feminism and anti-white anti-racism, if it were Russia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, GB or Denmark an
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* Sanctions against the USA.
So... no more H1-Bs, outsourcing and the price of oil would increase? DO WANT!
* Pakistan and Afghans drones which bombed in the other direction
I hope they would go after the evil execs of companies or maybe the KKK. Getting it wrong sucks but thems the breaks.
* Got invaded to have the ruling government replaced by something else, possibly nothing.
Sounds like that would finally be enough to get people to fight for their rights instead of accepting the status quo!
* Other nations trying to influence the election outcome
So far all they have done is exposed wrongdoing within our government. That's something I like!
I gotta say, it seems like it could be worse.
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So... no more H1-Bs, outsourcing and the price of oil would increase? DO WANT!
Not being allowed to export or import goods kinda suck. Though it's less of a problem for the US since it's so large and in the front-end right now you can be very self-reliable.
I guess eventually you'd lose your edge if you didn't have access to the global market though. And for something like North Korea which doesn't have shit or even Iran considering how little those nations produce beyond pumping up the oil ..
I hope they would go after the evil execs of companies or maybe the KKK. Getting it wrong sucks but thems the breaks.
KKK is just fine but I get your point, getting rid of trash may be nice. Out in reality chance
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it's less of a problem for the US since it's so large and in the front-end right now you can be very self-reliable.
that's something i would like to see and would pay for instead of global exploitation and unnecessary dependency that props up nations like syria.
KKK is just fine
i'm certain that people from pakistan and afghanistan would disagree.
I get your point, getting rid of trash may be nice. Out in reality chances are their families and friends and so on risk being bombed too I guess. Fair?
absolutely. there should be a price to associate with evil and some people might actually start shunning these bastards like they should have been doing already.
you need to preserve your negative freedoms, you're one of the very few nations which actually kinda have them
and here i thought you didn't like us. ;)
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that's something i would like to see and would pay for instead of global exploitation and unnecessary dependency that props up nations like Syria.
Personally I think that it make sense to make things where's it's most efficient and from those who are best at it. Swedish trucks for Spanish tomatoes, or would you had wanted it the other way around? =P. ..
It's very unlikely that I'll be able to get a Swedish-made processor and even if I did
Also it brings the world closer which is retarded when people like our prime-minister have to keep a good relation with Saudi-Arabia even though the rule there is terrible simply because he likely don't want to ruin ex
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Personally I think that it make sense to make things where's it's most efficient and from those who are best at it.
It does but I also think all nations should strive to be self-sustaining.
Why is Syria and Iran worse than Iraq and Saudi-Arabia? Isn't it simply because they aren't US allies strategically?
oh this is embarrassing, I wrote Syria when I means Saudi-Arabia. Anyway, I think any nation that's being propped up by simply extracting oil should be cut off because they aren't doing the world any favors by extracting it at all! We need to move to electric cars charged using solar/wind/nuclear/etc and use bioplastics instead of garbage plastic that cakes our oceans.
How would our own leaders deal with it if we tried to force them out?
by "them" do you mean our own leader? we try to force them out on
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It does but I also think all nations should strive to be self-sustaining.
It's of course safer that way.
Then again just one more reason the globalists wouldn't want to have that =P
oh this is embarrassing, I wrote Syria when I means Saudi-Arabia. Anyway, I think any nation that's being propped up by simply extracting oil should be cut off because they aren't doing the world any favors by extracting it at all! We need to move to electric cars charged using solar/wind/nuclear/etc and use bioplastics instead of garbage plastic that cakes our oceans.
True true. I said I liked / loved Americans and your society and that's one thing I don't like about it though. The kinda disrespectful behavior against the environment. People just shooting bullet after bullet into something, blowing things up, shooting things into pieces, less recycling, land-fills, oil fracking, .. Sweden is likely more messy now than it used to be, or at-least than what it could ha
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As for any sort of military action against us, especially from nations like Pakistan and Afghanistan, well good luck with that. Not like we have responded with massive amounts of force or anything in the past, to such at
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I'm not denying the capability of the USA. :)
The question is just whatever it should be done
"With great power comes great responsibility"? ;D
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Not Ukraine. Historically it was never part of Ukraine.
Except for the fact that Russia gave it to Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/p... [wilsoncenter.org]
Re: Crimea is part of Russia (Score:1)
They licensed it, Crimea is just like software. I'm guessing that Ukraine didn't read even read the EULA.
Next time they should just pirate a region.
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Uh, if by Russia, you mean the RSFSR, then no, it wasn't them who made that decision. From the article you cited:
On 19 February 1954 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued a decree transferring the Crimean Oblast from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian SSR. According to the Soviet Constitution (article 18), the borders of a republic within the Soviet Union could not be re-drawn without the agreement of the republic in question. The transfer was approved by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union; however, according to article 33 of the constitution, the Presidium did not have the authority to do so. The constitutional change (articles 22 and 23) to accommodate the transfer was made several days after the decree issued by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet
Translation of the above article: The Soviet Union took Crimea out of Russia (without the consent of the latter) and gave it to Ukraine. Of course, since it was part of one part of the USSR going to another, it made for no international controversy.
However, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there were a lot of Soviet citizens who were natives of one country but found themselves
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All true with the exception of the cultural relations, Crimea even when part of Ukraine was still more culturally associated with Russia. My Wife used to live in Crimea for a couple of years in the mid 2000's and even then it seemed pretty bizarre that it was part of the Ukraine instead of Russia as most people their saw themselves culturally as Russians.
Ukraine & Russia (Score:2)
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Historically it wasn't part of Russia until the last time they aggressively took it over [wikipedia.org]. It was also made part of Ukraine (by the Soviets) before most people in Crimea were born because "the commonality of the economy, the proximity, and close economic and cultural relations between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR".
The Crimean Tatars, who were the target of the Russians, were not a peaceful people just wanting to live in their own country. They ran their own slave trade of Russians and other Slavic slaves [wikipedia.org], and on one occasion, burnt down Moscow [wikipedia.org]. So they were a real threat to Russia, even aside from the fact that they were vassals of the Ottoman Turks. So Russia conquered their territory (which incidentally, wasn't just the Crimean peninsula, but the entire Russian/Ukrainian Black Sea coast) and resettled it w/ Coss
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1954:
"Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet transferring the Crimea Province from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
Taking into account the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity and the close economic and cultural ties between the Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet decrees:
To approve the joint presentation of the Presidium of the Russian SFSR Supreme Soviet and the Presidium of the Ukrainian SSR Supreme Soviet on the transf
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Not quite - historically the entire area was almost in confederation with Polish-Lithuania against Russia.
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Not quite - historically the entire area was almost in confederation with Polish-Lithuania against Russia.
The name "Polish-Lithuania" is wrong, the country was named "Rzeczypospolita Obojga Narodów" ("The Republic/Commonweath of Both Nations"), which consisted of two parts in an union: "Lithuania" (hardly any connection with present-day "Lithuania" that's Samogitia with a sliver of old Lithuania's territory (which was mostly Belarus) and speaks renamed Samogitian instead of old Lithuanian) and "Korona" which the "Russian" voivodship (aka Ukraine -- barbarians from the east later stolen even the name) was i
EA Need To Do The Right Thing (Score:5, Interesting)
EA took these people's money. When they did that EA violated the US embargo. So that ship has sailed. EA broke US sanctions.
Now EA has removed access to the games people in these countries bought and won't refund them. That doesn't undo EA's sanction breaking, it just heaps upon it the act of fleecing the customers from these countries who paid money for the games in good faith. EA is punishing innocent people for an illegal act by EA.
EA needs to refund these people's money and talk to the US government about what fines EA will have to pay for THEIR misdeeds.
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I'm pretty sure that any attempt by EA to send money to embargoed countries is going to be seen as illegal and is even more likely to attract the attention of the authorities than processing the original purchases. For one thing, they won't be able to claim ignorance; any refund attempt would be clearly corporate-sanctioned embargo breaking. If you must blame someone, let it be the US Government; their law punishing presumably innocent citizens of selected countries is the root cause of this injustice. EA's
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"EA's only contribution has been some incompetence from which they are unable to recover."
How fortunate for their bottom line.
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EA may have broken those sanctions because they weren't paying attention. That's probably grounds for getting a pass with only a fine or scolding.
But any further interaction would be knowingly violating the sanctions. That's spend-time-in-jail territory. Sorry, but it's stupid to expect anyone at EA to risk jail over such a thing.
When you've found out that you've made a mistake, the first thing you should do is to stop making the mistake worse.
Since the government put the ban in place. Its resolution shou
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Perhaps EA could do something nice (yeah right) and talk to the US government to perhaps get an exception to return money to these accounts, perhaps under orders that no single account can get more than X dollars back.
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Crimea democratically voted to cede back to "Mother Russia"
For anybody who believes that, I've got some prime beachfront property in Izhevsk you might be interested in...
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So can you tell us what happened in Crimea? Because I live in Canada and although my good government insists that Russia "invaded" Crimea, that's not what I saw in the news. The news reported a referendum and the referendum was won overwhelmingly by the people who wanted to leave Ukraine. I know the Western narrative is that the referendum was a fraud, but considering there was no revolt or even any significant protest in Crimea after that referendum, it seems obvious to me this Western narrative is false.
A
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The news reported a referendum and the referendum was won overwhelmingly by the people who wanted to leave Ukraine.
Under the watchful eye of Russian troops who conveniently forgot their proper uniforms, yes.
Re: Bollocks (Score:2)
Origin also embargoed by gamers world wide (Score:2)
Who wants to purchase DRMd spyware shit from EA in the first place? Give them your money only to be treated like shit? This makes no sense.
If it isn't on GOG or available directly without DRM strings it might as well not exist.
This is why DRM must die (Score:2)
Steam probably blocks... (Score:2)
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Apparently, not, since Steam seems to be based off EU regulations.
Political ends (Score:2)
Stargate (Score:2)
I think Stargate Command blocked it.