EA: Banned From Forums? Can't Play Single-Player Game Either
from the overkill dept
Tom Landry was the first of a bunch of you to send in the news that EA has taken forum banning to a new level. Obviously forums ban people all the time for whatever reason, but it appears that EA went way beyond just a forum banning in this case. First, the guy was banned for saying in the comments: "Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?" Seems pretty tame compared to some of the stuff that goes on in plenty of forums. But, whatever. If EA wants to be thin-skinned like that, that's its own insecure decision. Where it goes overboard is that not only did the company ban him from the forums, but it also blocked him from activating a single-player game that he had purchased, Dragon Age II, from BioWare. In the thread where this is discussed, a company rep notes that this is EA's policy, and since BioWare is a part of EA, this was done at a higher level:EA Community bans come down from a different department and are the result of someone hitting the REPORT POST button. These bans can affect access to your game and/or DLCThat seems ripe for a lawsuit. Selling someone a video game for 50 euros (what the guy says he paid for it), and then telling him he can't play it, even as a single player game on his own computer, because he said something mildly anti-EA in a forum? Honestly, all that really seems to say is that you should never "buy" (yeah, right, you didn't "buy" anything) from EA since they can vindictively make whatever you bought stop working if someone who works there doesn't like you. That seems like a much worse message than some forum person talking about "selling your soul." Update: And of course, once the publicity came out on the story, EA is now claiming it was a glitch and has been fixed. Doesn't change that this appears to be part of EA's official policy, though (also, corrected the name of the game).
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Filed Under: bans, bioware, forums, video games
Companies: ea
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Stopped buying EA a long time ago.
When did the publishers of games get so much control over the actual game creators? These large companies have assimilated everything they can and are now treating the customers poorly. I am quite happy that thanks to the internet there is competition still popping up from new companies all the time. Gotta love the indie games.
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Re: Stopped buying EA a long time ago.
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Re: Re: Stopped buying EA a long time ago.
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Re: Stopped buying EA a long time ago.
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Re: Re: Stopped buying EA a long time ago.
of course it helps that they are not actually a corporation. (nor american/multi-national.)
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Re: Re: Re: Stopped buying EA a long time ago.
@Jess I believe your analysis is spot on and I certainly hope it comes to pass.
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Maybe he can crack it? Not every country has nutty anti-circumvention rules, do they?
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Not being able to activate it = not being able to play it.
He could not activate his game because his account was banned and it requires activation prior to first launch(I still don't understand why he was hating on the devs on a forum for a game he hadn't even bought and played yet, but whatever). He also could not play any games he already owned that had DLC attached to them because those require activation anytime you start (technically he could start a new save on those games, but he can not access the dlc and can not load any saved games that had been saved with the dlc loaded).
"It was just a glitch and they've already said they are fixing it."
Now this news, if my foggy brain recalls correctly, is a few days old and I haven't looked since I first heard of it but....
On the forum post were the guy was asking if this was intended the forum mod just said something along the lines of I can not comment on reasons behind bans blah blah blah this is EA policy blah blah blah.
Point being I saw no mention of oops that is an unintended consequence and we will fix it. They were basically saying hey I work for bioware, EA did this just wait out your 72 hours and you can play.
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time for massive 'Report Post' campaign?
Sounds like people need to start reporting *every* post on the forums. See what sort of 'scale' they have in place ;-)
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Re: time for massive 'Report Post' campaign?
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Re: time for massive 'Report Post' campaign?
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Small clarification
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Re: Small clarification
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They Claim
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Sorry, dude, but you got this one wrong.
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A customer makes a comment that EA disliked.
A customer was denied access to his lawfully purchased items.
If it was a booboo or not there should have been no reason for someone responsible for moderating forums to have the ability to do more than block them from the forums.
People are angry about this because EA has created a system that allows them to decide if you can play your game or not based on their mood.
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http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/15/biowhere-ea-working-on-fixing-game-bans /#more-53782
As an AC stated above, this isn't a new thing (though rare). I'd have to dig up links, but this 'mouth off too much - lose access to your games' thing happened in *I think* a Red Faction forum and also in the Spore forum well over a year ago. Both statements came from forum moderators, both were retracted after some outrage from the fanbase, but true clarification never really happened that I can recall.
I'm all for kicking a-holes from a private forum, but to deny them use of a single player game they paid for is just plain theft. I doubt that's their intent, but EA should straighten that out for once and for good in their own documentation and procedures.
I haven't bought from EA for going on 5 years now due to this kind of fanti-paying customer crap and their rather flippant way of dealing with those issues. It was a cumulative effect after many years of being a faithful purchaser. They may be too large to actually learn, I dunno.
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Just a shame that people think it was intentional before asking questions.
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The real shame is that EA uses DRM at all, which makes situations like this inevitable.
When you build a system like this you intentionally accept the risk that things like this will happen. Personally, I don't see a big difference between "we built a system which allows us to ban you but we don't intend to" and "we built a system which allows us to ban you and we did so accidentally."
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similar concept here, i think.
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The fact that the user was not able to play the game due to being banned on the forums was not the correct system behavior. It upset a lot of people in EA and there was a huge rush to fix it.
The issue is resolved at this point.
From what I can tell there is no conspiracy at EA to screw users. Although it looks really bad this issue was by no means intentional.
Everybody I know at EA is very dedicated to getting the user a good experience... but like everything things are complicated and rarely easy.
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Which part wasn't intentional? The forum ban to stifle criticism or the game ban. Because if you ask me, banning him from the forums for the comment "selling your soul to the EA devil" is actually worse than stopping him from playing the game. If he had posted some 300 word diatribe against the company I could see them censoring it from their own forums but this was a pretty mild comment and they didn't moderate the comment they "moderated" the user.
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It could be the user did something worth banning in another forum topic.
I also happen to know there are a lot of posters to EA Forums saying bad stuff about EA and they don't get banished. I know a few people who read and moderate the forums everyday.
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Private forums aren't democracies nor run by the gubmint, so it's their way or the highway. We can discuss the pros and cons of taking a hardline vs. giving leeway, but in the end it's EA's forum, their rules of the road. I can support that, but not denying use of a purchased single-player product by remote control.
Glitch or goof, it was addressed. However, there are definitely communication issues amongst EA employees or reps that need serious attention. When a Bioware dev quotes EA's TOS *in support* of forum ban = no game on that game's public forum, you've got a very mixed message going out.
It's true or it isn't, pick one and put out a damn memo.
An aside: I absolutely believe that an overwhelming number of EA employees are looking out for the customers and are dedicated to good experiences for them. Much like Comcast employees I've dealt with over the years. They want to do right by me and their jobs. Yet I still feel ill having to call Comcast for anything, based on past awful experience, and I'm no longer an EA customer based on the same. I'd dump Comcast if I had anything like a choice of providers around here.
With both there are systemic problems that create situations that drive customers up a wall or right over it, situations that could or can be avoided with a bit more foresight or communication, and I wager, like most giant companies, those on the front lines take the brunt of decisions made by those who aren't as close to the customer as they should be.
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Knowing a lot of the American, Romanian, Indian and UK staff, I'd say this was definitely a coding bug that wasn't found in time. Most staff are passionate gamers who 'get it' and tend to have a fairly tolerant view on file-sharing and restrictive DRM, the trouble seems to mostly comes from the higher execs and share-holders. I can think of one such exec, that has ruined companies before EA and is now continuing his efforts at EA. Once they're in a high position, it's difficult to get rid of them.
But saying that, even some of the execs 'get it', as they are implementing some of the newer business models by using the power of free with such things as free online games, skill based prize gaming, free trials and other models.
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Not as bad as steam...
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/03/steam-user-violates-subscriber-agreement-lose s-1800-in-games.ars
Admittedly - they have reactivated the account now, but still way overboard!
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Re: Not as bad as steam...
If Steam was really smart they'd open a resellers market inside the Steam store. Allow, hell facilitate, users ability to resell digital games would make Steam that much more popular. Pay users in some sort of Steam credits or something and it would just get plugged back into Steam.
Not being able to lend or resell games from Steam is my #1 pet peeve about the service, otherwise it's great.
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The Bigger Issue
What you "buy" you really don't "own".
eBooks, Computer software, games, your Sony products.
If I buy a hammer (A tool) I own it until I die, sell it or give away and I can modify it anyway I want to suit my needs. If I buy Photoshop (A tool) I don't own it, I can't sell it or give it away and I can not modify it in any way.
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Dragon Age II
Should actually read, Where it goes overboard is that not only did the company ban him from the forums, but it also blocked him from activating a single-player game that he had purchased, Dragon Age II.
Bioware is the developer, Dragon Age II is the game.
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http://uk.kotaku.com/5781198/player-banned-from-dragon-age-ii-for-calling-ea-the-devil-a-gl itch
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I don't mind at all paying for a game. There are some howevers in that. One is that if I pay for a game, I am not going to up with all sorts of BS like having to register to play what I bought, or having to have internet to play the game, or a ton of the other things that game makers seem to want to include to ensure their profit line.
If they are going to do that it makes it a hardship on the buyer. I won't deal with that with the prices being as high as they are for games, it isn't worth the hassle. If they go that route, I'll try their game for free and see if it lives up to its hype (which they usually don't). It looks as if piracy has a better model as it is more friendly to the user. Too many hoops to jump through equals no sale.
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Updated
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Re: Updated
It appears that EA had their systems tied together a little too closely, and now that they have been made aware of the issue, have taken care of it. Kudos for a company having the nuts to admit when they had a problem and have addressed it.
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which i doubt they fixed, given that they didn't fix it the last time it came up (spore had similar issues. if you got forum banned your copy of the game became no more, possibly less, functional than pirate versions, at at best.)
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HA!
DRM servers shutting down on music, locking out of games, no resale of games, license but not own, the reasons to pirate are endless compared to the risks involved.
Want to end pirates? Give them what they want at a good price and it's game over for them..... but bah... we all know that will never happen....
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Service
Say you pay $60 for this game and the usefulness of a game is about 10 years. You've paid $60 "up front" for a service to be rendered. When that service is removed for any amount of time, the developers should be responsible to refund back some of your money equal to the percentage of time lost off of your service against the amount you paid.
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Justly deserved...
We have slowly and steadily bowed down and kissed the feet of these game companies while they take away our rights.
We no longer buy a game, but give our 30 pieces of silver to ALLOW them to steal our rights and enter into a one-sided contract that would look Faust's deal with the devil look benevolent.
The sheep are now reaping the rewards of debasing themselves and allowing corporate shepherds to lead us into the Valley of the Shadow of Death... death of our rights as consumers.
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Not being able to use a product you bought - the use of which has no relation to the forum - due to that bounce is a pretty big deal, because that's how it was presented by certain EA personnel and EA's own TOS.
They fixed it, and that's good. EA should still clarify it for all, from their mouthpieces to their devs to their TOS. It would only help.
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I think any game you pay for you should be able to play on a PC that is not connected to the internet regardless of how much of a jerk you are. I just wasn't impress with the way Mike handled the story. Sometimes the implied injustice in Mike's articles is a little overblown.
Mistakes can be made by anyone. EA fixed their mistake in a timely fashion then that should be good enough. It's a non-story.
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Really EA took away his access to the free DLC, not his access to the entire game.
Not that I agree with what they did, I just haven't seen anyone else mention that.
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I'm not familiar with this game and could be mistaken, but wasn't it a requirement that you go online to autheticate before you could play? I might be thinking of something else.
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I'd been considering getting DAII for my PS3, but now I'm not so sure.
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It was not an intentional to have a forum ban prevent game use. It was due to the use of the same user account system and some data flags were not surfaced for use in a other system.
When it was discovered EA worked really quickly to fix it.
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Time to start a revolution
So I say this....
Since they don't want to listen to use. Since they are so focused on trying to pick our pocket, sell us crap that doesn't work, then not take responsibility for it. Since they have gotten so greedy that they will not only rip off their customers, but the inspiration and Development teams, that make these games... WE SHALL BUY NO MORE!!!!! BOYCOTT, BAN, IGNORE ALL EA GAMES AND PRODUCTS!!!!
MAKE SURE THE WORLD KNOWS EA STANDS FOR
EVERYONE'S ANGRY
AND WE'RE NOT GONNA PUT UP WITH IT ANYMORE!!!!
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Can't not be!
Its long time ago :)
I like single player games.
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