By John Walker on March 11th, 2011 at 12:50 pm.
UPDATE: EA are now saying this was a mistake, and Arno has access to his games during the ban.
Original story: Be careful what you say. That’s the lesson BioWare forum user Arno has learned in the last 24 hours, after an ill-advised comment on the BioWare forums has led to his EA account being locked, such that he cannot play his purchased copy of Dragon Age 2 for 72 hours.
It reveals a clause in the terms of service that accompany buying an EA game that will surprise the vast majority who do not read the microprint. Misbehave in the forum (as Arno fully admits he did), and you can have your right to play a legitimately purchased game taken away from you. Forever, if they want to.
Arno made a mistake. He posted a comment in which he said,
“Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?”
In the world of forums, it’s a relatively innocuous remark. But if you’re EA, and someone’s come into your front room, you may not want to put up with such insults. Sure, go say them somewhere else, but not in our house. Constructive criticism it was not.
A response we might expect would be – well, here we’d just mock you in our comment thread, or edit your comment. Keep doing things we’ve asked you not to and we’d block your account. Which is essentially what happened. Arno received a 72 hour ban. But not only from the forum, but it seems his entire EA account.
In the last few years EA have tied an increasing number of their games to one universal user account. The same login is used for Burnout Paradise as for Mass Effect 2. It’s pretty convenient as a gamer. But it turns out it offers them a greater power than you might think. Because now Arno, despite wanting a copy of Dragon Age II that unlocked at midnight last night, is unable to authenticate the game with the account it’s tied to (by pre-release DLC), and thus cannot play.
He’s also locked out of an enormous amount of other gaming content. For instance, Arno tells us, if he wanted to play Dragon Age: Origins, he’d now have to start a new game since all his save positions are tied to DLC. Try to play those without being logged in an EA assumes it’s pirated DLC and refuses to run. And his second forum account has been locked because he suggested that bans like this could lead people to piracy – something he’s stated he does not intend to do.
We’ve seen Arno’s correspondence with BioWare, and it’s fair to say that he’s not been as controlled as he could have been. While there’s been no abuse or inappropriate language, he’s certainly cocky. BioWare’s response so far has been to repeatedly state the rules to Arno, with a moderator explaining to him,
“It’s not like you get to pick and choose your own punishment when you break the rules. The various punishments, up to and including permanent bans, EA account termination, and loss of access to entitlements, is very clearly laid out and is part of the rules you agreed to follow and be governed by.”
They’ve also locked threads discussing the matter.
During Arno’s attempt to find out what he’d done wrong, the EA live chat told him,
“You have been banned due to some inappropriate content posting on forums and we can not reveal it due to some security polices.”
Perhaps most confusingly is the moderator comment in the locked thread, in which he attempts to explain the crossover between BioWare and EA rules:
“1. BioWare community bans are forum-only and can be for as little as 24 hours. These bans should have no effect on your game, only your ability to use all the features of this website/community. these bans are handed out by BioWare Moderators as the result of our travels around the forum and/or issues reported by fellow community members.
2. 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 DLC.
Because the BioWare community now operates under the same umbrella as all EA Communities, community members here have all explicitly agreed to abide by and be governed by both sets of rules. Consider it an added incentive to follow the rules you say you’re going to follow.”
And there’s no doubt that they can do this. It certainly does state this in the EA terms. They, without question, reserve the right to take away your access to games you’ve bought at their discretion, and no refund will be offered. It says so here:
“EA may also terminate your Account(s) (and access to all related Entitlements) for violation of this Terms of Service, illegal or improper use of your Account, or illegal or improper use of EA Services, Content, Entitlement, products, or EA’s Intellectual Property as determined by EA in its sole discretion. You may lose your user name and persona as a result of Account termination. If you have more than one (1) Account, EA may terminate all of your Accounts and all related Entitlements. In response to a violation of these Terms of Service or any other agreement applicable to EA Services accessed by you, EA may issue you a warning, suspend your Account, selectively remove, revoke or garnish Entitlements associated with your Account or immediately terminate any and all Accounts that you have established. You acknowledge that EA is not required to provide you notice before suspending or terminating your Account or selectively removing, revoking or garnishing Entitlements associated with your Account. If EA terminates your Account, you may not participate in an EA Service again without EA’s express permission. EA reserves the right to refuse to keep Accounts for, and provide EA Services to, any individual. You may not allow individuals whose Accounts have been terminated by EA to use your Account.
If your Account, or a particular subscription for an EA Service associated with your Account, is terminated, suspended and/or if any Entitlements are selectively removed, revoked or garnished from your Account, no refund will be granted, no Entitlements will be credited to you or converted to cash or other forms of reimbursement, and you will have no further access to your Account or Entitlements associated with your Account or the particular EA Service. If you believe that any action has been taken against your Account in error, please contact Customer Support at support.ea.com.“
To summarise, EA can take away your access to your purchased games at their sole discretion, and not offer any refund. That’s what you agree to when you buy an EA game. And of course this is not unique to EA. We are very aware of other services with similarly draconian bans, and are actively investigating them.
So be warned. There’s no legal recourse here. The EA terms are clearly laid out, and you are required to agree to them before you can install a game they provide. And their rules are ambiguous enough that they can choose to ban you at their own discretion. Oh, and of course it can all be avoided by just not posting on their forums. Or at least not being rude if you do.
EDIT: All this makes it a bit strange that three years ago EA told Shack News that they’d certainly not allow forum bans to affect game playing.
“Posting in EA Forums is enabled by an EA Nucleus account — but access to the forums and access to the games are separate. Players who have been banned from EA Forums are not automatically banned from online access to their other EA games. Players can be banned if they breach the Terms of Service or Code of Conduct in a forum, game or service. Each forum, game and service is managed independently by customer support representatives responsible for that specific forum, game or service.”
So, er. Thanks to kyrieee for the tip.
EDIT EDIT: The moderator responsible for dealing with this incident has got back to us. I asked him to explain why this happens, and for how long a ban could potentially last. His reply, quite bizarrely, was:
“Sorry, but I have no comment for you.”
So there you go.
11/03/2011 at 12:59 poop says:
note that bioware is blaming the lukewarm reception of DA2 on 4chan and is basically banning the shit out of everyone with a negative opinion on the social forums
11/03/2011 at 13:24 Orija says:
Is that 4chan-trolling allegation true?
Also, the last the time I checked the forums, there were several active threads denouncing the game. Seems EA has gone into damage control mode after realizing that the detractors weren’t a minority.
11/03/2011 at 13:57 Lobotomist says:
I said this before regarding Bioware (and I used to LOVE THEM)
“Stick a fork in it , its finished”
………
But now i can only gasp
And say “Do not buy games made by Bioware”
11/03/2011 at 13:57 Hoaxfish says:
A “business” the size of EA/Bioware shouldn’t really be too troubled by massed internet trolls, they apparently have enough moderators (both EA and Bioware staff) to hand out kneejerk bans like this. It shouldn’t be too hard to “weather the storm” of a fresh release.
11/03/2011 at 13:59 Calneon says:
To be fair, to me it does seem like an attack on the game and Bioware by fanbois and people following the hive mind. I would bet not 50% of the people posting negative reviews on Metacritic have actually even played the game, at least not enough to give a good account of it.
If I was Bioware/EA, I would be pissed off too. Sure, the game may have many faults (I haven’t played it), but I’m sure it doesn’t deserve the beating it’s getting.
11/03/2011 at 14:14 abhishek says:
Yes, 4chan is indeed ‘trolling’ (if you can call it that) the game’s user review score on Metacritic en masse, as you can see here
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
Just yesterday or the day before, 500+ user reviews showed up which all rated the game around 0 to 2 and dragged the user rating down to 2 or 3.
11/03/2011 at 14:18 Longrat says:
Anyone who seriously buys the “4chan troll” allegation seriously needs to get his internet facts together. If this were a real 4chan invasion, you’d be seeing thousands of low rankings, complete DoSing of all EA servers (See: mastercard and american express, post wikileaks) and a total invasion of the servers.
They’re just using 4chan as a pathetic miserable excuse for the mediocre responses their mediocre game is getting.
11/03/2011 at 14:59 kharnevil says:
I agree with Longrat
11/03/2011 at 15:00 Valvarexart says:
Being a /v/ (part of 4chan, if you didn’t know) lurker, I have not got the impression that the bad impressions are “trolling”. What I can say, though, is that 90% or more of the /v/ regulars had terrible impressions of DA2, and they then started hating and posting hate threads etc, and of course, even people who HADN’T played DA2 joined in on the DA2 hate. There was no collected attempt to down the Metacritic ratings, but what we did have was a big part of the elite gaming community hating on the game, thus the bad ratings. There is no 4chan “conspiracy”, it’s just that it’s a place where hate for a game can brew up…
11/03/2011 at 15:00 Rinox says:
Yeah, no way it would be this ‘mild’. Only a few hundred reviews, that’s a joke for 4chan.
I think the more probable explanation is that in fact, the vast majority of people who loved DA:O didn’t want DA2 to take the direction it took. This would have been clear to ANYONE except for the moneymaking machine, and almost everyone I personally know/read about went ‘huh…’ when they saw the DA2 announcements and said worse things still after playing the demo.
But, they went ahead and did it anyway. You reap what you sow.
(and I’m sure the game isn’t nearly as bad as a 3/10, but as a statement it works)
11/03/2011 at 15:06 bagga says:
It may or may not be down to 4chan action (I personally think the game deserves the 3.9 rating) but it’s just not accurate to say ‘They’re not DDOSing EA, so it can’t be 4chan’. 4chan isn’t ruled by a Galactic Council and the group trolling can range from a few dozen afro’d avatars blocking the entrance to a virtual swimming pool to getting thousands of people to trend swastikas by googling them.
It’s not all servers, servers, servers.
11/03/2011 at 15:34 Orija says:
I think you guys’ overestimate 4chan. The DDOS’ing is carried out by Anonymous which sometimes makes its intentions known at the site. It’s totally possible that someone made a thread asking people to score DA2 low on Metacritic.
I don’t think anyone should be surprised the direction DA is heading in, Bioware/EA would prefer having the game sell on the consoles if that means shunning the pc minority which salivated all over DA:O.
11/03/2011 at 16:40 Lukasz says:
EULAs are NOT contracts.
They are not enforceable at all. They exist just in case. Just to give a company a bit of power in case they are legally challenged.
Brilliant part is the one contained in all, which can be summarized.: “we are not responsible for anything unless we are”
That thing is quite illegal to put in contract but as eula are not contracts they can contain that clause. Anyone actually trying to enforce that would probably make judge, other lawyers a janitor, a son of janitor laugh out loud.
on topic
EA is f–ing this up. ban from forum? sure. watch your mouth next time. ban from gaming? bad bad bad decision. Valve is walking very thin line with their ban for cheating but since its cheating and SP games are not harmed then people are in my opinion more forgiving to this kind of power valve has over our purchases.
what EA did basically means: if you are mean to us we take your games from you.
that;s wrong on many levels.
11/03/2011 at 18:43 Wulf says:
Heh. Those user reviews confirmed my worst fears. Fantasy unchanged since Wizardry I, with awkwardly nerdy ‘sexiness’ thrown in that’s handled by someone who’s never actually engaged in anything even mildly sexy, along with edginess and darkness that comes across more as emo and goth than any actual ethical greyness. I kind of got that vibe from the first game, too, but it’s interesting to see people saying it about the second one.
Roll on Neverwinter, I suppose. Actually looking forward to that.
11/03/2011 at 18:57 Acristoff says:
As a regular over at /v/ I can without a doubt say that there is no raid, 2 were attempted by people trying to validate their fears of a raid out of spite and were shot down.
Though I do have evidence of accounts created to give the game a 10/10 and no other review and vice versa, Bioware however is actually attempting for their fanboys to raid the metacritic score.
11/03/2011 at 19:27 Chaz says:
What is this 4chan? I was always under the impression it was where Manga fan nerds hung out, but now I get the impression it’s also a home for angry script kiddies.
11/03/2011 at 20:16 Acristoff says:
Depends on which section you go to.
11/03/2011 at 21:25 Fronk says:
There wasn’t a formal raid and there’s more to 4chan than just /b/. /v/ (the video game board on 4chan for those that are fortunate enough to not have visited that cesspool) has been whining about DA2 for months so it’s not surprising that there are a lot of newly created accounts that give the game on all 3 platforms a 0. Also they aren’t all “WE ARE LEGION!!!!!” like /b/ so there’s not going to be tens of thousands of people. There are legitimate low scores, legitimate high scores, some fanboys that just made accounts to give it a 10, but there’s a lot more trolls that are giving it 0′s. It’s not a particularly great game, but it’s obvious that there’s trolling going on. I’m guessing 90% of those 0′s and 1′s haven’t played the game, and certainly not on all platforms. Most of the 4′s and 5′s do seem like legitimately disappointed gamers. About 75% of the 9′s and 10′s seem to be fanboys.
12/03/2011 at 00:12 Commissar says:
I was in the original thread on /v/ when this all went down. Some dickheads wanted to raid but they were shut down pretty hard for being retards since Bioware would just use the excuse that it’s ‘just a raid’ and sweep it under the carpet. All we did was tell every one we could like Reddit, Kotaku and RPS.
Just so everyone is clear, 4chan is not just /b/. Every other board hates /b/ with a passion.
11/03/2011 at 13:00 Astalano says:
Who reads the terms of service? This is rubbish. If I buy the game, it’s MINE. FOREVER. I can download/install it whenever I like and have access to all its features at any point in time. No matter what anyone said on a forum, he BOUGHT your game, so you respect his right to play HIS game.
What is gaming coming to…
11/03/2011 at 13:02 poop says:
I’m fairly certain that if he lost his games forever he could probably go to small claims and win, bizzare grey area EULAS dont actually hold up in court that well
11/03/2011 at 13:03 John Walker says:
I’m afraid you’re absolutely wrong, Astalano. When you spend money on a game agreeing to the T&Cs that come with it, at best you’re renting it. And worst you’re paying for the right to let them let you play it for as long as they feel like.
11/03/2011 at 13:06 Sarlix says:
Apparently we just rent games these days, we don’t actually own them.
edit: Beaten to it *shakes fist*
11/03/2011 at 13:09 Perkelnik says:
I hate to admit that, but shit like this will only lead to piracy. I mean, what do you do, if you pay for a game and then are not allowed to play it, for whatever reason? Youre going to download a crack. And next time, you dont bother to pay…
It is wrong, but thats how it is.
11/03/2011 at 13:13 Mark says:
I wouldn’t mind seeing an RPS article in the near future regarding the legality of EULAs and whether we actually own the games we buy. *nudge nudge* ;)
11/03/2011 at 13:18 Kefren says:
The whole EULA thing is impossible. Between 6th August and 30 December 2010 I copied and pasted the text from all EULA’s into one document (which I still have). In less than six months it came to 331,993 words, or 592 pages of dense single-spaced legalese. If I had done something like reinstalling Windows and all my software during that time, it would have doubled.
EULA’s and T&Cs are ridiculous nowadays, and the only people who could read and agree to them (as opposed to just clicking the proceed button) would be insane lawyers.
11/03/2011 at 13:26 Catastrophe says:
EULA’s don’t hold up well in court and the fact you buy your game before signing any EULA also causes more issues with EULA’s.
Also Trading Standards > EULA.
As does Country Law.
11/03/2011 at 13:31 BaronWR says:
John, I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not sure about this, but I think quite a lot of EULAs would fall foul of the unfair terms in consumer contracts acts and similar. I’d also be interested in how well the “you’re not buying it you’re purchasing a subscription” argument would hold up in court, given that it seems to be an explicit arrangement to reduce people’s statutory rights.
11/03/2011 at 13:32 Jolly Teaparty says:
I reckon it’s clear any court would rule in the gamer’s favour, but wouldn’t that mean going to court over a game? It’d be totally awesome if someone did it but are you going to do it? I ain’t.
11/03/2011 at 13:34 John Walker says:
My comment was regarding our perceived ownership of games, not whether someone would win in court of not. According to their rules, we no more own games than we do music.
11/03/2011 at 13:34 vanilla bear says:
There are a number of ways in which a term of this sort might be attacked – for instance, under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, if a term “contrary to the requirements of good faith, causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer” then it is deemed unfair and therefore unenforceable against the consumer.
The Director General of the Office of Fair Trading has a duty to consider any complaint made to him alleging that a term is unfair, unless he considers the complaint to be frivolous or vexatious.
11/03/2011 at 13:35 Masked Dave says:
What you buy when you pay for software is a license to use that software (and also the hardware it came on, you can do what you want with the disc and box).
Licenses can be revoked and those EULA you agree too are, whether you read them or not, contracts.
This is not just about games but how the entire software industry functions.
11/03/2011 at 13:43 Bluebreaker says:
He could aways use a crack and screw them and their greedy dlcs.
Anyway he should be gratefull. He has been spared of playing the crappiest game released this year.
11/03/2011 at 13:43 Avenger says:
I am not very well informed in legal issues as much as you guys are, but may I ask: Is there no hard limit to what a license agreement can cover?
I mean, what happens if it explicitly says “you are bound to sacrifice your first-born to the producer gods EA and Bioware in under a period of 3 weeks” and you click “I agree” ?
Aren’t there bigger laws that prevent companies from literally scamming you into paying for stuff that they don’t actually GIVE to you? I understand the company reserves the right to quit giving you the SERVICE if it doesn’t suit them but aren’t games PROPERTY ?
They call them “Intellectual property” when talking about piracy, anyway…
11/03/2011 at 14:15 CMaster says:
What you buy isn’t the game or software itself (as that would give you rights to copy it and sell on as much as you want). What you buy is a license for software. The question really is what rights you get with that license and under what causes that license could be revoked. EULAs are very dodgy ground in a lot of ways. As pointed out above, you only see and agree to them after purchase, not during. They often contain unreasonable or illegal clauses (eg a EULA demanding you report to Activision for labour at their request would fall foul of slavery laws). They don’t make any effort to actually explain to people what they contain and in fact are often so long and legalese as to activley discourage it. Etc.
Although, the way I read it, if he’d already activate the game, he could play it offline?
11/03/2011 at 14:50 mda says:
Imagine no posession…
THANKS EA U JUST MADE US ALL ENLIGHTENED :D
Btw b happy you have ANYTHING to experience you selfish gutless (i just thought that word sounded good there) morons, it’ll all be gone one day.
11/03/2011 at 15:04 Butler says:
@CMaster “What you buy is a license for software.”
Correct. People refuse to admit this. I’ve said it time and time again in endless forums and it always causes people problems.
My source: a lecture from the head of the BCS & a lawyer that specialises in gaming law.
And yes, the fact that EULAs are largely a complete joke and would get laughed out of court is a seperate issue entirely.
11/03/2011 at 15:09 trjp says:
EU consumer law would be in your side if this were almost any other form of goods but when it comes to software it just cops-out completely.
It’s 2011 and this should really have been sorted-out by now – we need consumer protection for ‘virtual’ goods just as we have for physical goods (and indeed we need protection for physical software purchases which simply do not work properly).
As it stands tho – Trading Standards etc. will just raise their hands and go “huh?” if you mention software to them – it’s just not in their realm of understanding.
Sooner or later tho – when a game requires online access to work and that access can be revoked (whether here, or XBL or PSN or whatever) someone will test this shit in court – sooner the better I think.
11/03/2011 at 16:23 ScubaMonster says:
But does the EULA and ToS say anything about posting inappropriately on forums suspending your privileges to play all of your games? That has to be specifically spelled out for this situation to hold up. Even then a judge could still rule against it.
11/03/2011 at 19:52 Metonymy says:
Would it be trolling to say that pirates are on the moral bleeding edge here?
The transferal of money doesn’t not expedite the transfer of computer code. It’s merely a formality to pay for entertainment. Wandering bards played for tips, for millennia.
We don’t ‘own’ music or games? I certainly do, not sure what your opinion is. If I don’t own all music, games, and video on earth, just by virtue of being a human being, then it’s time to aggressively change the laws.
11/03/2011 at 13:00 MrThingy says:
One of EA’s better ideas?
11/03/2011 at 13:58 Lobotomist says:
BTW
Eula’s are not legally binding.
It was ruled by USA court of law. Check it
11/03/2011 at 13:03 MrMud says:
There is no way in hell this behaviour from EA would stand up in a european court.
11/03/2011 at 13:11 Perkelnik says:
Its hard to tell. Also, who is willing to go (and pay) against the army of EA lawyers because of some 30€ game? Nobody, thats who.
11/03/2011 at 15:36 Rinox says:
Many European law systems aren’t heavily skewed towards the richer party. In many cases, the losing party has to pay all court costs and a substantial % of the lawyer costs of the the winning party. So if you have something that is a blatant violation of customer rights, you’ll probably win and recuperate most of your money even as a single private person – instead of just winning a moral victory and coming out financially bankrupt after months of proceedings.
This also works the other way, in scaring off people who file one frivolous or far-fetched lawsuit after the other, obviously.
11/03/2011 at 17:05 iniudan says:
Actually I would for a small case like this, since it would cost them more to just have a lawyer present himself at court (since claim is less then 7000$ dollars I can pursuit in small claim where I live, which also kind of limit the army of lawyer they can bring for they will have to chose one to act has a legal person), while a amiable agreement would cost them less and be without risk of setting precedent.
Also all judgment of that court is final so they cannot lock me in interminable appeal.
11/03/2011 at 13:03 alphager says:
I don’t know about the legal situation in the UK, but EULAs have no legal standing in Germany. THen again, who sues because of a $50 game?
11/03/2011 at 14:12 SuperNashwan says:
In the UK EULAs, last time I checked at least, were simply governed by ordinary principles of contract. Quite often you will have apparently completed the purchase of the software before ever getting access to the EULA so there is no agreement to its terms. The alternative view is no sale takes place until you agree to the EULA but this is difficult to square with how retail works, what a shop would do if you came back for your money saying you didn’t like the EULA. Again, last time I checked this had never actually been tested in court, which means because of the way English law works we don’t really know and can only guess.
In any case as people have said above, in the EU this kind of banning almost certainly falls foul of an EU directive on consumer contracts preventing ‘unfair’ terms. It’s quicker to crack the damn thing than going to court of course…
11/03/2011 at 15:46 Archonsod says:
You don’t have any rights on the license. The entire point of a license is to protect the rights of the license owner, not the licensee. As far as the law goes, EA can at any time revoke a license to use their services for any reason, up to and including “the lulz”.
11/03/2011 at 16:28 Dao Jones says:
“Then again, who sues because of a $50 game?”
Amercians.
It’s cool, I’m American. =p
11/03/2011 at 13:03 Mengtzu says:
If your EA account is banned, doesn’t that just stop you from associating your game with that EA account? If he hadn’t registered, he should be able to just make a new account with a new email address to register the game. If he had, he’d just be stuck without his DLC and achievement uploads until the ban expired.. The game should still work in offline mode once it’s been activated, banned account or no.
11/03/2011 at 13:07 Schadenfreude says:
I believe he bought it through the EA Online Store, hence why it’s tied to his account before he’s even activated it.
11/03/2011 at 14:27 Gundato says:
I can’t speak for his specific case, but when I installed DA2 (a bit of a letdown, but still a great game. At least, for the first few hours :p), it had me log-in to my account and provide the serial number (that I had already entered on the social site, but whatever…).
So if he just makes a new account, he loses a lot of the DLC he probably already registered to his account. And he will forever have two accounts, which turns a lot of people off.
11/03/2011 at 13:04 misterk says:
Those kind of user agreements seem pretty broad to me. I’m no lawyer, but it seems like holding someone to such a contract is difficult- effectively they represent people surrendering their stautory rights, which normally shops are simply not allowed to do.
11/03/2011 at 13:04 McCool says:
Wow, this really is pathetic treatment of a customer from Bioware.
Though I do like the irony of the moderator’s actions – I myself had no inkling that Bioware might have sold their souls to EA, nor would reading that comment in its original post had persuaded me. But this…
Ha ha. Thats real irony.
11/03/2011 at 14:07 Hallgrim says:
If they haven’t lost their souls, they’ve certainly lost their minds.
Temp (and thus potentially perma) banning people from playing games they own because they said something mean on the forums? Grow up EA/Bioware. Or at least grow some thicker skin… looks like you guys are going to need it.
11/03/2011 at 19:11 Wulf says:
I think this is just EA being terrified of Bioware turning into America’s greatest flops. Dragon Age II is apparently pretty crap, and people who’re coming down off the hype are beginning to realise that about the whole franchise (welcome back to reality!) too.
Consider that the response to The Old Republic has been ‘lukewarm’ (and I’m being generous here) across just about every gaming community, and it all adds up to EA doing damage control until they finally dissolve Bioware into other studios. Keeping the good talent but getting rid of the management that’s making poor decisions.
It really does seem like a plea.
“Remember Bioware when they were awesome? We do! Please remember Bioware when they were awesome and don’t say bad things about them. For just a little while longer… please? At least until the release of The Old Republic. Then have at it. But please, please, won’t somebody please think of the shareholders?”
That’s the vibe I’m getting from this, to be honest.
11/03/2011 at 13:04 kyrieee says:
So much for this:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/55656/ea-not-banning-game-access
11/03/2011 at 13:08 poop says:
woah that is a pretty good pr intervention
still doesnt really excuse the bioware moderator for being such a cock but atleast they are owning up to a mistake :)
EDIT: wait hold on I checked the date, 2008? something is weird here or those EA dudes are just really poor informed on company policy.
11/03/2011 at 17:55 fuggles says:
He means that they promised not to do this back in 2008, and now they are. Current situation is still current.
11/03/2011 at 13:06 ChaosSmurf says:
So I agree entirely with the idea of if you act like a cunt you get your toys taken away. I don’t like that EA could go “well we don’t really like you so no games for you”, but if you deserve a forum ban I’m all for a little probation time as well. Might make a few people think before spewing their vomit all over the internet.
11/03/2011 at 13:09 poop says:
a really obviously sarcastic comment is reason enough to remove hundreds of dollars of stuff from a person?
and you use the C word?
you must be great fun to be around
11/03/2011 at 13:13 ChaosSmurf says:
Notice I didn’t say I approved of this particular case. His comment seems pretty mild compared to some of the trash out there. For that trash, I’d be all in favour of short-term restriction of access though. It’s just not a concept I can completely disagree with.
11/03/2011 at 14:31 Axyl says:
Note: He may be from the UK.
I am, and here, the “C” word as you put it really isn’t a big deal.
Get over it, it’s just a word.
11/03/2011 at 15:26 Neut says:
I know what you mean, but given the choice between having to deal with dicks on the internet versus companies able to remove my access to games/services I’ve paid for with no refund at it its sole discretion, I think I’ll deal with the dicks.
11/03/2011 at 13:07 President Weasel says:
What a (mild) Shame.
He’s going to have to wait 3 days to play Dragon Age 2, which considering everyone in Europe has already coped with waiting a bit longer than the Americans doesn’t seem to be the end of the world.
That EA can ban you from all their games forever, or at least lock you out of your DLC and your saves and make you restart all your games if you want to play them, is something people should probably be more aware of. It’s definitely worth keeping in mind before going to the Bioware forums.
Blizzard can ban your account from World of Warcraft and “your” characters that you might have played for 5 years will suddenly be lost to you.
Steam can also remove access to all the games you’ve ‘bought’ from them, more permanently than EA can, based on something as simple as a PayPal glitch. On the other hand, getting a scratch on a DVD or losing a CD key could easily do the same to one or more of your games on physical media.
11/03/2011 at 13:41 capn.lee says:
I think where the difference lies is valve CAN do this, Blizzard CAN do this, EA does it
11/03/2011 at 13:46 Hoaxfish says:
An MMO is a different kettle of fish… a forum troll might easily be an in-game troll/scammer/hacker/etc (and banning a stolen account can be used as damage limitation until the rightful owner reclaims it).
A wholesale ban of every game you’ve purchased from a company for something as minor as “sold your soul” is completely ridiculous, especially when talking about offline single-player games (who are you going to abuse/troll except yourself and NPCs?)
11/03/2011 at 13:50 Lilliput King says:
On the contrary, Valve does this all the time. Which is obviously more disturbing, as there’s a hell of a lot of cash tied up in those accounts.
I dunno about Blizzard. Still, if I google banned WoW accounts I think it’s a safe bet that I’ll find a fair number, don’t you?
11/03/2011 at 14:00 Hallgrim says:
@Lilliput King: I think you have to be pretty outrageous to get perma-banned from WoW for activity on the forums. I’m not even sure its possible. You can certainly get a temp ban for using naughty language tho.
11/03/2011 at 14:10 Lilliput King says:
Hallgrim: Fair enough. In their defence, EA/Bioware haven’t perma-banned anyone either.
Not saying they won’t, of course. Just that weasel has a good point – this had been going on for a good while before EA joined the party, and even if it hadn’t EA are hardly the worst offenders. Valve probably hold that dubious honour currently – the rps forum was recently visited by an individual who was perma-banned for a fairly innocuous (if slightly stupid) attempt at a joke in a steam chat room.
11/03/2011 at 15:00 President Weasel says:
Valve does do this all the time – or at least, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of people losing their Steam account because of problems in the interface between Steam and Paypal. Best advice is don’t use Paypal to pay for Steam. (edit: oh, and there’s LilliputKing’s example of that guy who got himself banned for, I think it was jokingly referring to torrent sites or something?)
I’ll continue to use Steam despite knowing they can remove my access to all of the games I “bought” from them, but people should be aware of the possibility and make their own minds up.
@Hoaxfish: it’s actually “being unable to register the game he bought for three days” rather than “a wholesale ban of every game”, although I think everyone here would agree calling EA “the devil” is pretty minor league trolling.
Even his being unable to play the game is down to how he bought it – apparently he bought it direct from their store, which pre-associated it with his account or something. Buying it a different way would have let him make a new account and just miss out on the DLC.
Very few people responding to the stories about this seem to have noticed the “for 72 hours” part of “banned for 72 hours”. What it comes down to is that, because of arguable overreaction by an EA forum admin, and because of the way the forums tie in to the social network, and because of the specific way this one guy bought the game, he can’t play DA2 until Monday or Tuesday.
hardly the end of the world.
However, I do think more people should be aware that we’re basically “renting” Steam games, and that EA and others seem to be moving towards that too. You kind of expect that from MMOs (although there are regularly outraged posts from people who have been banned from their accounts about losing “their” stuff) but you don’t expect it in single player titles.
11/03/2011 at 15:03 Starky says:
Care to cite some evidence for that claim Lilliput? Otherwise I’m going to call bullshit.
I’ve never heard or read anywhere (from a reliable source – there are a few forum threads, which honestly seem like trolling) that valve has ever banned or even suspended a steam account for rude behaviour on their forum/community sites – in fact their forum uses an utterly separate account anyway.
I’ve never heard of anyone permanently losing their Steam account for any reason – except for selling/buying them, I have read of a few accounts that got banned when it was discovered they were sold on.
The only thing I’ve ever read (and had happen to me) is a temporary suspension in suspected cases of fraudulent activity (usually because paypal is shit), or they detect the account been used from multiple locations within short times (like someone logging into the account from London, and then 3 hours later from China – which means your account is hacked or you are sharing it.
At worst it takes a few days and a email to Valve customer support (which is pretty shit it has to be said – valve really need to expand/improve their customer support) to fix.
I know of people who’ve been VAC banned from source games, but that has zero effect on their ability to play games on steam, multiplayer or otherwise (except for the specific titles/engines they were banned on).
11/03/2011 at 15:13 President Weasel says:
I don’t know if we ever got proof of his assertions, but the assertions themselves are here: http://rockpapershotgun.com/rpsforum/topic.php?id=4177
Also iirc there was another case of Steam banning someone due to Paypal problems and him being unable to get himself unbanned, and then someone rom the RPS staff helped him, but frankly I might be making that up.
11/03/2011 at 15:16 dfk789 says:
I don’t recall blizz banning/suspending the playing account for mishaps on the forum?
Never worked like that in my case anyway. Had a forum account that was perma banned, from spamming or some other such thing, not sure how it happened, but anyway, point being, I was able to log in and play my characters as I pleased still.
11/03/2011 at 15:24 Starky says:
@Pres
I read that case but frankly that guy brought it on himself, he didn’t get banned for swearing, or been a prat, or making a joke (as he tried to claim) he got banned for linking a Steam hack site, in a steam chat, with steam admin in the chat room at the time.
So if it is true, he’s monumentally retarded, and fully earned his ban. Or it’s bullshit and he’s just making up a story for the attention (I suspect the latter).
11/03/2011 at 18:03 Lilliput King says:
Starky: “I read that case but frankly that guy brought it on himself, he didn’t get banned for swearing, or been a prat, or making a joke (as he tried to claim) he got banned for linking a Steam hack site, in a steam chat, with steam admin in the chat room at the time.”
So when you said this: “I’ve never heard of anyone permanently losing their Steam account for any reason – except for selling/buying them, I have read of a few accounts that got banned when it was discovered they were sold on.”
You were lying? Most like (and I hope) you’re just covering your tracks with this ‘deserved it’ shite. If you really think someone’s access to potentially thousands of pounds worth of games can and should be removed because of a careless remark you’re in no uncertain terms a bit of a dickbag. He broke the rules, yeah, but then, so did this fella on the Bioware forums. The rules aren’t always fair.
And to be honest, other related shit also involving perma account bans through steam comes up all the time and is just as bad. I’m not going to give you a comprehensive list, you can do your own frickin research, but here’s a few:
http://www.reddit.com/tb/d79n8
http://rockpapershotgun.com/rpsforum/topic.php?id=4140
11/03/2011 at 18:10 Deano2099 says:
Because anyone that is ‘monumentally retarded’ deserves whatever they get right?
Just because someone is a dick and deserves to be twatted in the face doesn’t make it okay for me to twat him in the face.
11/03/2011 at 19:00 Starky says:
@Lilliput, did I need to again put the caveat “from a reliable source” from the previous paragraph?
FYI it wasn’t a “careless” remark, it was a link to a website that provides Steam hacks, a piracy website.
So yes, I do think that is a situation he brought on himself, he earned that ban.
How much do you want to bet that if I head over to Blizzards forums/B.net chat and start linking to Starcraft 2 hacks or World of Warcraft private servers they’ll ban my account too?
Hell ANY company would do the same, from the smallest indie to the biggest publisher – you start linking to piracy on their official channels and they’ll ban you (and your CD key) faster than you can blink.
He broke the rules, and this is a fair rule “link to piracy sites and we’ll ban your steam account” is pretty fucking fair in my mind – while “say bad things about us” isn’t. So I’d defend this EA guy (if what he says is true) but I’d not defend the guy who linked to a steam hacking website on a steam chat with steam admins watching.
The reddit link you provided is an unusual and unfortunate situation, but hardly unique to steam – because paypal is fucking awful, no one should use it if they have a choice – it is constantly doing stupid things that causes all kinds of trouble – disabling accounts, cancelling payments and that kind of thing (just look at what happened with notch and Minecraft), it is massively open to fraud, theft, and other spurious activity, and many many retailers/E-tailers are highly dubious of it and a bit harsh with paypal issues.
I’ll agree though steam is more stupid that most when it comes to paypal issues, and it is something they need to sort out – and their customer service when it happens is pretty bad (I speak from experience) but it’s not entirely their fault, they are harsh because it happens ALL the sodding time with paypal, and it will be a headache for them to deal with every time.
I’m moderate [when it comes to steam] – they can improve, and need to improve given their size and importance in a lot of areas customer service above all – but they’re not the evil corporate bastards you try and make them out to be.
11/03/2011 at 19:22 Wulf says:
I don’t find that it’s done half as interesting as why it’s done.
Valve: Promoting piracy, and PayPal fraud.
Blizzard: Cheating, and forum hate crimes.
EA: Saying that you don’t like Bioware’s games.
Now that’s a chin-stroker for me. Methinks Bioware are proving to be not a good earner for EA, to levels that even I hadn’t suspected.
11/03/2011 at 20:26 DJ Phantoon says:
Blizzard can and will do the same thing if they feel like it. My friends that still play it say whatever GMs are on their realm forums have gone nuts and are banning a certain group of people while others who regularly use racial epithets and constantly troll get off scot free.
Also, you can’t appeal a Blizzard ban either. You can send something in, but as you only recieve a canned response, it’s unlikely it’s even read.
11/03/2011 at 20:55 Lilliput King says:
Starky, Wulf: Yeah, you’ve both got a point there concerning the reasons given for removing access to games catalogues. I still think it’s a dramatic overreaction in all the cases I’ve linked to, and I don’t think any of those people deserved what they got. I reckon I’m not likely to convince anyone on that front, though, and it’s clear that this EA debacle is taking things to another level.
“Though I don’t know why I’m bothering arguing with you, you’ve made it more than clear in this thread and others that your opinions are hardline Anti-steam.”
This comes as a bit of a surprise, to be honest. Are you sure you haven’t got me confused with someone else?
11/03/2011 at 21:18 Starky says:
@Lil
Hmm, I might have – I may be mixing you up with comments made by others – I’ll edit that bit out of my above comment, and I apologise for it.
11/03/2011 at 13:07 weego says:
The legality of that in almost every region would be very unlikely to be upheld if tested. Just because a contract has a clause it doesn’t mean it can be binding if it conflicts with local laws, which I’m pretty sure this would (consumer laws).
11/03/2011 at 13:12 Roi Danton says:
This. EA can write whatever they want in their contracts. That does not mean that it will be upheld in court.
11/03/2011 at 13:51 Vayl says:
On most European countries EULA’s are not legally binding and you can’t even begin to try to enforce a EULA on a court of law.
11/03/2011 at 14:11 Jolly Teaparty says:
They’re probably banking on it never going to court. Which is probably a good bet.
11/03/2011 at 15:56 Archonsod says:
If the game is dependent on EA online services they don’t even need a contract to remove access to that service, unless you have a contract with them where they are guaranteeing access. Buying a game doesn’t cover that.
11/03/2011 at 13:09 screeg says:
Wow, indeed that was an inappropriate comment! Talk about selling souls to a devil is serious business, perhaps he should be excommunicated as well? And he was also inappropriate in his email correspondence, nothing abusive mind you, but the pure cheek of it!
I don’t really think there’s two sides to this story. EA are being pricks. Block him from the forums for disliking your product, whatever. But blocking his access to his paid “account” (since no one apparently owns games these days), in addition to being completely unreasonable* is setting a very dangerous precedent.
*Who gives a toss what the EULA says? It’s just bad business and just because it’s in writing doesn’t mean it would stand up in court.
11/03/2011 at 21:10 MattM says:
I agree, I really don’t care how rude he was on the forums. EA took his money and he is entitled to his game.
11/03/2011 at 13:10 OdysseusB says:
IANAL, but this came up in my business law class:
Even if the EULA is considered legally binding (a whole complicated issue in and of itself in the States), such an agreement would likely be considered unconscionable. Now managing to survive the costs a lawsuit with EA requires to get to court to argue that is a whole separate matter. There could likely be a class action, or we could all just boycott EA titles.
11/03/2011 at 13:18 Mister_Bubbles says:
I’ve seen a lot of responses around the net saying ‘That’s it – I’m not buying another EA game… after Mass Effect 3′. Heh. Which says pretty much all you need to know.
11/03/2011 at 13:27 telpscorei says:
Yeah, see, that’s the moral dilemma I’m facing. It’s far worse than the time I murdered the last of the rachni…
11/03/2011 at 13:56 Mister_Bubbles says:
Maybe this is all part of some grand meta-marketing scheme for Mass Effect 3 – REAL LIFE DECISIONS! CHOOSE YOUR LOYALTIES!
EA is a lot like Cerberus, come to think of it. Insanely rich, of highly dubious moral character, continually betraying your expectations and infiltrating all echelons of society, yet all the while stating they want THE BEST FOR pc gaming MANKIND, and building big shiny ships, saying ‘Here; go on. We built this for you, Shep.’
11/03/2011 at 15:15 Mattressi says:
Yep, yet another company added to my boycott list. Soon I’m only going to be able to buy indie games…though I’m not sure if that’s really such a bad thing
11/03/2011 at 13:14 V. Profane says:
The whole EA/Bioware web account thing is a nightmare. The amount of hassle I had to go through to get access to the Cerberus Network in ME2 because the printed code in my boxed copy didn’t work was enormous. And I will NEVER buy any Mickey Mouse money for DLC. Any future EA/Bioware purchases I might make will be heavily discounted Goatee editions.
11/03/2011 at 13:15 Medo says:
It’s at least dubious if this clause is valid under European law. When you buy something, you have certain rights to it no matter what any EULA says. It helps the situation al lot though if you bought the game as an actual DVD, apparently the situation is not quite as simple when it comes to digital downloads. From my understanding though, you should even be able to sell games from your Steam account off to other people. Whether you could win a case in court over this is a different matter though.
11/03/2011 at 13:15 juandemarco says:
Maybe, probably, I’m wrong, but this is one of the reasons why piracy is a good thing. I may retain the rights to something, but I don’t have to be a dick about it, and that’s exactly what EA is doing. It’s bulling its customers and arbitrarily deciding what they can and cannot say. I won’t go as far as saying that their kicking freedom of speech in the ass, because EA is not government, but they are indeed approaching a dangerous behaviour and since in the end I, as a customer, am BUYING their product, they should have no right whatsoever to prevent me from using it. If I piss them of on the forum, why should I be prevented to play a game that I have paid? Flip off EA, I consider that playing dirty, and thus I’ll do the same next time I’ll have the occasion.
Sorry about my rant, I hope you get my point anyways.
11/03/2011 at 13:16 Tei says:
This another reason why “permanent connection” or “remote activation requiered” are evil.
It give power to the wrong people. Anyone but you, the owner of the game, the dude that has paid for the box, must have power about playing or not with such box.
11/03/2011 at 13:16 Lilliput King says:
“And there’s no doubt that they can’t do this.”
Hella confusin’. Tentatively suggesting this could be a typography error John.
11/03/2011 at 13:17 Memph says:
That is bloody frightening. It was nothing more than an innocuous remark. A throwaway joke at EA’s expense. Boo-hoo for them. Delete/edit the post, move on.
Put this into real-world terms and it’s like calling Comet sellouts to Sony and having Sony turn up at your door all butt-hurt to snatch up your TV and PS3 to punish you for having an opinion.
Honestly the seemingly limitless completely one-sided ‘rules’ that get into license agreements these days is nowt short of utterly preposterous when they can effectively remove and steal back bought and paid for goods from your posession ‘at their discretion’, which is basically for whatever the hell they feel like at the time, be it right or completely over-reactively wrong.
Seriously, does any kind of trading standard law apply to this in any way? They’re literally ending up with money for nothing from the consumer’s perspective.
Somewhat humerously all this control freak behaviour has accomplished here is make it painfully aware to a vast number of other folk and the watchful eyes of communities like RPS, what exactly the very real risks are of purchasing a game and simply having something bad to say about it. Bioware’s forums sound like Silent sodding Hill with some delusional people’s thinking making nightmares a reality for the normal folk by desperately burning anyone not conforming for solidarity. Or something. Scary shit nonetheless.
11/03/2011 at 14:15 Acorino says:
I agree.
11/03/2011 at 14:38 Axyl says:
This truly disgusting action by EA/Bioware has done only one thing in my mind…
Guarantee that i will pirate any and all EA/Bioware titles i feel like, until one comes along that, AFTER PLAYING IT, i feel is worth my money.
Congratz, Corporate soul sellers…you have just pushed me (and i’m sure many others) even further away from paying for your PoSs. Yeah that’s right, i’m gonna pirate them ON PRINCIPAL because of this until it’s corrected.
If they can be petty and spiteful, then so can we, and EA/Bioware need us a LOT more than we need them.
11/03/2011 at 18:35 katinkabot says:
I agree. Also, the Bioware moderators are some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Not only do I see a lot of people getting banned on those forums for seemingly bizarre reasons, they always leave the shittiest/vagueest/most un-professional responses. Even the guys on the WoW forums – who take a ridiculous amount of abuse – are surprisingly patient and even-handed(most of the time). My suggestion: Stay away from the Bioware forums. They’re terrible. Go to reddit and join the community there.
11/03/2011 at 19:08 Davie says:
Memph, you hit the nail on the head there. I guess companies think they can do whatever they damn well please–technically, they’re not forcing you to agree to anything, and they can easily say it’s your own fault for not reading the fine print. It’s immoral to say the least.
And honestly? This will lead to even more piracy than the most awful DRM. When a wayward comment can get your $60 purchase instantly revoked, people are going to prefer products with no strings attached. This is going to come around and bite EA in the ass.
11/03/2011 at 23:15 Vagrant Zero says:
Axly I’d love to see you pirate TOR.
No really. Go for it genius.
11/03/2011 at 13:17 node says:
This would be an entirely fair move, but it puts even more pressure on the community team to be consistent, fair, and clear on what will earn you a ban.
In this case, that hasn’t happened.
11/03/2011 at 13:18 georgemoshington says:
you approached the subject of ubi-drm with considerable ire, willing to throw the full weight of your indignant rage behind your principles of the rights of the consumer.
this, an undoubtedly greater offence, has been greeted by you with a measured, neutral tone. stating the facts as known but unwilling to let your personal convictions seep into the editorial, despite there being far more call for it. infact, the whole article is so passive and robotic that i’ve had to keep checking the url every other paragraph to be sure i’m on the right website.
it was then that i noticed the beautiful design that ea have so kindly lacquered the background of your site with.
11/03/2011 at 13:29 poop says:
you think thats bad
” IGN: After the game is finished, do you go back through a play it again with all of the music in place?
Zur: Sure thing. I’m actually really anxious for the game right now, so I can pop it in and start playing. I’m really looking forward to see it. I know there are a few bugs that still need to be fixed. Unlike other titles from Bioware, this [score] was kind of a rush job. EA really wanted to capitalize on the success of Origins, so the game was really being pushed hard to be released now. So I’d like to know if there are bugs, or if there’s anything we could patch or fix. [Editor's note: Zur is speaking about bugs in the score only; he had no involvement with the rest of the game's development.]“
11/03/2011 at 13:37 Memph says:
Neutral maybe, but the news was delivered, even if EA are paying to have DA2 plastered on the site, that makes it more respectworthy whether John resorted to toe-stamping white-knighting for the guy or not. That it is undeniably outragous didn’t really need to be hammered home by the article, we are warned, the measures are labelled ‘draconian’ and it’s now a topic being discussed further. Job done tbh.
11/03/2011 at 13:38 georgemoshington says:
i don’t want to live in a world where there are comparisons to be made between rps and ign, however favourable.
although omitting such a story would have been considerably more damning, i understand it’s a victory of sorts to have this piece posted atall. but the gears of conflicted interest are visibly churning away here, unavoidably so, and it’s always an ugly thing.
it’s the perpetual curse of gaming journalism that the only hand that will ever feed them is the one they so frequently have both cause and obligation to bite.
given john’s character and prior moral convictions (i’ve no doubt he was the one pushing hardest to produce this article), you can almost hear the gritting teeth as your eyes pass over his leashed words.
11/03/2011 at 16:36 Quine says:
“We were going to give you a Wot I Think on DA:2 but due to our harsh tone in a previous article our accounts were banned before we got play the game…”
11/03/2011 at 13:21 Makariel says:
Way to go EA.
11/03/2011 at 13:21 The Rust Belt says:
Whatever you say, I think he has a moral right to pirate the game and all the content he has bought access to, to have it available the same way he would have before the ban. Just for the sake of showing these guys how ridiculous they behave only because they have been pressured by EA to release a mediocre sequel earlier. ToS do not matter in light of the simple fact that he is temporarily unable to access the game he has paid for only because he criticized Bioware.
11/03/2011 at 13:23 John P says:
This feels like it should be illegal, really, licence agreement or not. If you pay money for a game, the company shouldn’t be able to take it away. Sort of justifies the ‘EA devil’ accusation, funnily.
I guess the takeaway from today’s class is to never be an active part of Bioware’s/EA’s community. The small target approach. Or don’t play their games at all, o’course.
11/03/2011 at 14:41 Axyl says:
yeah..
“Have you sold your soul to the EA Devil?”
“We’re banning you from the forums, and removing your access to your games.”
“So…that’ll be a yes, then”
*facepalm*
11/03/2011 at 16:01 Archonsod says:
Nah, the take away lesson is “don’t be a dick to someone holding you by the balls”. You’d think it’d be common sense, but then I’ve always thought the modern education system was crap.
11/03/2011 at 17:29 Joshua says:
He appernetly also posted an image containing the word Douchebag, and Fucking Asshole. Which is quite strong language.
11/03/2011 at 13:23 Freud says:
But imagine what customer satisfaction rates they will get when they poll their forum users in the future.
11/03/2011 at 13:30 John P says:
True enough. Can you imagine being part of their forum now, always ever so careful not to say a bad word about Bioware or their games for fear of being locked out of playing them? Ugh. What an icky way to build a community.
11/03/2011 at 14:45 oceanclub says:
Exactly. Saying “sold your soul to the devils” is criticism, but it’s certainly not abuse. There’s no way I would now post anything even approaching criticism of EA, Bioware or their games in their forums – even asking for technical advice – for being afraid that a moderator considers my post “abuse” and I’m locked out of games. This is utterly reprehensible.
P.
11/03/2011 at 16:44 Zenicetus says:
Yeah, I think this will have major lasting consequences for EA/Bioware. There is an enormous amount of “social networking” bullshit when you log into your account to check on, or purchase DLC through their web site. They’ve been making a big push for “community” as a marketing tool.
I had other reasons not to participate in the forums there — basically just not enough time to post in every forum out there, and with Bioware games you don’t usually need a lot of user hints or technical help. But this really slams the door. I now have a solid reason to never participate in a Bioware forum.
11/03/2011 at 13:24 G says:
It would be interesting to see how well these t&c’s hold up. I remember listening to something on radio 4 about someone breaking the t&c’s on a rail ticket and I seem to remember something along the lines of if the t&c’s are completely unreasonable they would not stand up in court. It would be interesting to see an expert in consumer rights law look into them.
Also of note in that program was the suggestion that the best way to get the t&c’s simplified for rail tickets would buy your ticket at the desk and ask the person to read them to you in full.
11/03/2011 at 17:19 Aldehyde says:
It would be interesting to know if there is some way to read the terms of service pre-purchase.
I can imagine there is no way to do that and if I’m right then it really is ridiculous.
“Give us the money first THEN we can tell you what you’re allowed to do with what you just paid for.”
11/03/2011 at 13:26 Marshall Stele says:
Have you sold your souls to the RPS devil?
11/03/2011 at 13:34 Lilliput King says:
You ever dance with the EA devil in the pale moonlight?
11/03/2011 at 13:35 Firkragg says:
I didn’t know Jim, Alec, John and Quintin were one Entity, this explains alot.
11/03/2011 at 13:53 diebroken says:
“You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses on would you?”
11/03/2011 at 14:40 hjd_uk says:
“If you dance with the Devil you wait for the music to stop, y’know what I mean?”
11/03/2011 at 19:02 Kaira- says:
Dort wo der Tanz ist, ist der Teufel nicht weit.
11/03/2011 at 13:31 bokkiedog says:
“To summarise, EA can take away your access to your purchased games at their sole discretion, and not offer any refund. That’s what you agree to when you buy an EA game”.
If this is challenged in the UK courts, it’ll be kicked into the dustbin by even the most senile of judges. It’s so obviously an unfair and unbalanced term under consumer contract legislation that even my 15 month old daughter can tell.
11/03/2011 at 13:32 Recidivist says:
Well, looks like I’m pirating EA’s games from now on. Cya EA, you money grabbing, soul stealing whores!
11/03/2011 at 13:33 poop says:
I think millions of dollars in collective assets would vanish if valve did this with people being too critical on the steam forums
11/03/2011 at 13:34 Furius says:
The can’t get EA (away) with this. no, doesn’t work.
11/03/2011 at 13:35 ceebux says:
I’m confused – was he permanently banned from accessing all of his games, or after the 72 hours is up, can he play them all again?
11/03/2011 at 13:42 Lilliput King says:
The latter. Although I guess all the brouhaha is about the notion of permanent bans, which seem to be well within EA’s power.
11/03/2011 at 13:50 phlebas says:
He can play them all again after the 72 hours is up – that’s this specific case. The fact remains that there’s nothing in the terms guaranteeing they won’t lock someone out permanently for reasons they won’t even be obliged to disclose.
11/03/2011 at 13:39 Mephisto says:
Having read the Bioware forums for a while leading up to the DA2 release, it seems the mod in that thread gets paid per lock. A clown.
11/03/2011 at 13:41 TheApologist says:
I feel like this article is being pretty generous to EA in saying that the user behaved inappropriately. He is their customer, a regular customer who they should value, and he is giving them feedback that they should value. He was clearly not being abusive but is expressing a view – I would infer a view about the percieved direction of Bioware’s game design or similar.
That EA/Bioware can do this is not surprising, it seems to me. Rather I’d say the issue here is simply that EA are treating a paying customer apallingly badly. My response will be to never post on their forums, and to consider carefully whether or not to buy a game from a company that would behave like this.
Having said the article feels generous to EA, I am glad to hear RPS gearing up to tackle this whole issue of bans and the restrictions companies can place on users access to services they have already paid for.
11/03/2011 at 13:44 Lilliput King says:
Well, the user was saying he had behaved inappropriately. In that context, RPS reproducing his statement doesn’t seem out of order.
11/03/2011 at 15:43 TheApologist says:
Except that the user in order to say anything at all may have felt the need to appear contrite so as to avoid getting banned again and his comment removed.
Moreover, the users feelings about their own words subsequent to their punishment, though important, don’t necessarily effect our judgment about how he should have been treated
11/03/2011 at 13:43 Kdansky says:
Unrelated: Apparently Switzerland is part of the USA. I bought DA2 yesterday (sick at home, you could call it an impulse buy) and have been playing for quite a while now. It’s decent, though I am bothered by my party being all just, righteous and friendly when they wade through literally hundreds of human enemies which they gruesomely hack to pieces over small disagreements.
And why are there forty guards in the cellar, and why can the teleport behind me during cutscenes?
11/03/2011 at 16:52 Zenicetus says:
“And why are there forty guards in the cellar, and why can they teleport behind me during cutscenes?”
It’s only fair. If the Rogue in your party gets to teleport for every backstab, then they get to teleport too.
11/03/2011 at 13:43 vinhnt says:
what is this ???
EA can’t do this shit , it’s unbareable &unbelieveable
i’ll never buy any games from EA and bioware
i’ll play crack
11/03/2011 at 18:03 CrazyBaldhead says:
Yeah I bet you play with crack often.
11/03/2011 at 13:44 vinhnt says:
what is this ???
EA can’t do this sh*t , it’s unbareable &unbelieveable
i’ll never buy any games from EA and bioware
i’ll play crack
11/03/2011 at 13:45 StingingVelvet says:
Pretty heinous.
Still, on an open platform like the PC I don’t worry much about DRM or this kind of thing. Try and take my games away and I will just find DRM-free versions to run, no sweat off my back. I would never support DRM on a closed platform though, like Onlive or even Xbox Live.
11/03/2011 at 13:53 Diziet Sma says:
You don’t really need to, XBox & XBox Live are DRM. A form of DRM I have no problem with, I own the game and I can play it. I don’t own the game and well…. I can’t.
11/03/2011 at 15:45 StingingVelvet says:
There are ways to get screwed out of Xbox content though, from a ban of your account to them shutting the service down someday. They already shut down the service for the original Xbox. Even patches require signing-in to an Xbox Live account, meaning even disc games might suffer from an eventual shutdown.
Say what you will about PC DRM but at least the nature of the platform makes all of it completely irrelevant.
11/03/2011 at 19:47 Wulf says:
Replies like the one above (about the 360) surprise me, quite a lot, to be honest.
There are a few facts that I think are often glazed over by people.
1.) It’s fairly easy to get your 360 cracked, not Wii easy, but still easy.
2.) It’s easier to pirate 360 games than it is PC games (no cracks).
3.) It’s a completely risk-free sin, in that there aren’t any dodgy torrents/cracks you have to watch out for.
It seems though that the 360 piracy scene has been successful in convincing people that the 360 is an impenetrable fortress. Good job, chaps, I suppose.
Sarcasm, yes, as this really annoys me. My 360 is packed away and I have no interest in the bloody thing, but a bit of reading shows me that the above three points are entirely true. Do the research for yourself. So you can easily play games that you don’t own on a 360. Far, far, far more easily than on a PC once you’re past the first and only hurdle.
11/03/2011 at 13:50 db1331 says:
What would happen to this kid if he called his credit card company (assuming he didn’t pay cash) and had them cancel the DA2 charge?
11/03/2011 at 14:04 Memph says:
If you do that with Steam it’ll earn you an account ban, forever.
If he bought it from the EA store i’d assume pretty much the same would happen to his EA account.
11/03/2011 at 13:58 mmalove says:
I want to see people start winning piracy/copyright suits based on events like this. I couldn’t find a better example of someone who I think has every right to download EAs game so that he can continue to play with the game he purchased.
11/03/2011 at 14:03 Iskariot says:
I agree completely. In his shoes, I would immediately download a DRM free copy of the game. And I would never pay for EA/ Bioware software again.
11/03/2011 at 16:07 Archonsod says:
Assuming he already has the game on his system it’s questionable whether they could sue him solely for downloading a crack in the first place.
The law gets a bit fuzzy with it. Technically, what you do with data on your system is your own concern, so long as you don’t infringe any IP laws while doing so. He could in fact reverse engineer the game himself, port it to Linux and remove the online components; unless he tries to distribute it he’s not breaking any laws.
11/03/2011 at 13:59 Nikolaj says:
This is disgusting. Let’s chalk up another win for the pirates.
11/03/2011 at 13:59 Iskariot says:
If someone misbehaves on a forum, EA/Bioware should act on it with regards to privileges on that forum. It is ridiculous to prevent someone from playing a game he owns and paid for.
This is a disconcerting view into EA/Bioware’s mindset as a company. In my mind this is even worse than the Ubisoft DRM debacle.
I won’t be buying Dragon Age 2 anyway. I was very disappointed by the first one. And I was also very disappointed by Bioware’s abuse of DLC for Mass Effect 2. So I won’t be buying Mass Effect 3 until they release it in its complete form either.
11/03/2011 at 13:59 Daiv says:
Challenge everything.
11/03/2011 at 14:25 Oak says:
Best post.
11/03/2011 at 13:59 Acefrog says:
Ha, and you wonder why people pirate games?
If I wanted to express my opinion on a game forum which would causes me to get locked out of a game I purchased I would be pissed.
A multiplayer game where you can interact with others like a MMO and you are outright trolling and being a dick fine, but for a singleplayer game? Hell no.
Just watch the torrents, the amount of leechers is going to double lol
11/03/2011 at 14:01 Dubbill says:
Seems more likely that the user in question was banned for posting this: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/P/12#6429619 which is a nice, clear breach of the TOS.
11/03/2011 at 14:14 mondomau says:
Ok, but what the fuck has that got to do with his right to play a game he purchased? Ban him from the forum, ban him from every EA/Bioware forum from now until the end of time, being an obnoxious troll does not justify revoking his access to a service/product/whatever that is utterly seperate from the boards and that he paid for. End of.
11/03/2011 at 14:30 Dubbill says:
I’m more interested in how accurate the article is and why it’s deserving of a RPS’s attention. It’s a pretty good post when it sounds like Arno has been stepped on for expressing a pretty benign opinion in the form of a question. It’s less attention grabbing in the form of “Dick acts like a dick. Just desserts ensue”. What about all the users who lose access to their games for racism, homophobia, etc? Will they get their own article? Will the comments thread be full of sympathy?
11/03/2011 at 14:51 Hoaxfish says:
what ToS does that break?
On EA Live Chat they told me that that I said: “Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?” is what he said he was told was the reason. I would assume an accumulation of bad behaviour might get him a ban… but that it would be explained as such, rather than an apparent single instance.
Without context that picture looks like a joke about MA/DA’s dialog/alignment system.. and the 1st page of that thread has two huge spambot adverts. Bit of a mess really.
11/03/2011 at 14:51 Axyl says:
What about all the users who lose access to their games for racism, homophobia, etc? Will they get their own article? Will the comments thread be full of sympathy?
No. Fuck those people.
In fact, fuck you too.
Did you REALLY just compare someone (rightly so) accusing EA or Bioware of being corporate shills doing wrong by their customers… to racism and homophobia?
So..Hitler should have sympathy for the entire world wanting him dead at one point? Cos that’s what you’re basically getting at.
EA are a massive corporation with a rather heafy history of being Dicks about it.
Racism and Homophobia are wrong on every moral and social level.
There’s a MASSIVE difference. Racism and Homophobia have caused world wars.
Calling a dick a dick, does not. Hence, no…Racists and Homophobes would not and should not get sympathy. They should be set on fire.
11/03/2011 at 15:04 Dubbill says:
@ Hoaxfish: the TOS linked on the Bioware forums. The aggrieved party says was banned for that comment. Meanwhile on the forum there is an image macro he posted including the words “fucking asshole”: a much more credible reason for him being banned. Maybe either Arno is lying (!) or the EA bod got it wrong.
11/03/2011 at 15:36 Hoaxfish says:
Sorry, I meant which specific rule in the ToS, not which ToS in general.
The nearest I can see is “Disrupt the flow of chat in chat rooms with vulgar language”… but the image doesn’t seem to be disrupting anything, even if it does contain vulgar language.
And the game itself contains such words too (an expectation that “mature” language might appear on the forums for a game which is “mature”)… though, of course, many companies separate “their language” from those of their games, and those of their customers.
11/03/2011 at 16:51 neolith says:
Homophobia caused world wars?
11/03/2011 at 18:26 Deano2099 says:
“What about all the users who lose access to their games for racism, homophobia, etc? Will they get their own article? Will the comments thread be full of sympathy?”
I’d hope so.
Racists and homophobes should be able to play games too. Sorry if that’s not a popular position but I support the rights of dicks just as much as I do those of lovely people.
By al means, ban them from the forums for saying that sort of thing, but don’t stop them playing games that they bought. It’s got nothing to do with it.
And on a wider note, where do we end this? I mean we can do it with games now, but what about in 20 years when TV, film, books and so on are all delivered digitally in the same way. Yeah, what we need to do is cut off racists and homophobes from all of culture, that’ll show them how wrong they are. Dragon Age has gay characters in it, we should be encouraging homophobes to play it!
11/03/2011 at 14:02 Eightball says:
These kind of shenanigans are why I hate tying games I purchased to an email-based account. Well that and I usually forget the account password and which email I used to create the account with.
I really don’t want to make any new accounts because I have a steam account. And say what you will about it, it gives me a lot more service than an EA forum account. With less orwellian forum moderation to boot.
11/03/2011 at 14:02 Spliter says:
Well I guess it just means I won’t be buying their games doesn’t it?
Freedom of speech and opinion aside, I think that a company having total and absolute power over something you bought is a complete bullshit.
11/03/2011 at 14:03 pkt-zer0 says:
Doesn’t Ubisoft’s DRM do the same thing? I remember being a bit surprised that my forum account worked for the Settlers 7 demo as well, so the accounts are indeed linked. The question is if the bans are separate.
11/03/2011 at 14:04 thebluemonkey says:
Well there’s a reason to avoid developer hosted communities.
Nice one EA.
11/03/2011 at 14:05 NukeLord says:
So EA are taking a leaf out of Valve’s book now?
11/03/2011 at 15:03 kharnevil says:
Wait, wait, do Valve have precedent on this?
*starts thinking about all the complaints initiated about King Arthur & Battlestations”
11/03/2011 at 15:21 NukeLord says:
Steam subscription T&C say Valve can ban you any time for any reason they like.
11/03/2011 at 16:24 cyberninja says:
Yes, but at least the steam forums are separate from the client.
11/03/2011 at 14:06 obvioustroll says:
Has anyone answered the question… have they sold their souls to the EA devil?
11/03/2011 at 14:09 georgemoshington says:
they sold their souls to make baldur’s gate II the masterpiece it was. now the devil has come back to pick up the tab.
11/03/2011 at 14:07 x25killa says:
Not going on the forums then. Problem solved.
11/03/2011 at 14:08 Anyxxi says:
Tweeted this:
@ea @dragonage #ea #dragonage #dragonageII #bioware “Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?” Ban me too — cspeters@gmail.com
I’m curious if they will. At this point, I don’t care. I’ve been trying to ignore how they’ve been pissing in my pocket because I liked the Dragon Age mythos THAT MUCH, but this is too much. Screw Dragon Age II, screw Bioware, screw EA.
11/03/2011 at 14:09 bwion says:
Whether it’s legal or not (and I can’t even begin to speculate), this is terrible, terrible business. If I were in EA’s or Bioware’s customer service department, particularly in any kind of management capacity, I’d be dreading work today.I literally cannot see any advantages for EA here.
Sure, they have the guy’s money whether he can play his new shiny game or not, but they almost certainly won’t have his repeat business. And customer retention is the holy grail of just about any business.
11/03/2011 at 14:11 Hatsworth says:
I think I’ll just avoid this issue by not buying EA games. Congrats EA!
11/03/2011 at 14:12 Duffin says:
Valve have been doing this forever but I don’t remember seeing a front page post about that.
11/03/2011 at 14:16 Lilliput King says:
Exactly. Like I said above, Valve actually dish out perma-bans for this shit, which isn’t something EA/Bioware have done yet.
11/03/2011 at 15:02 JB says:
From the article: “And of course this is not unique to EA. We are very aware of other services with similarly draconian bans, and are actively investigating them.”
11/03/2011 at 15:20 suibhne says:
Wait, you’re saying that Valve bans people’s Steam accounts for objectionable forum posts? I thought Steam bans and forum bans were two totally different critters for Valve.
The complaint here isn’t that EA’s banning accounts. It’s that EA is conflating forum bans with account bans.
11/03/2011 at 16:21 TheApologist says:
Yeah what suibnhe said – there are two related issues here and the article and comments tend to conflate them.
One issue is should a games service provider such as EA or Valve be able to prevent a user from using the services they have purchased.
The other is, on what basis might a service provider be generally regarded as justified in taking such action.
Valve certainly do ban people, but the instances I have heard publicised in the games media have been in relation to cheating in online multiplayer games. So they are certainly relevant to discussion on the first basis. But most people wouldn’t equate a forum post criticizing the provider with cheating in online games.
11/03/2011 at 16:52 Duffin says:
Two people on the forums in the last couple of weeks. One had a problem with his paypal account stopping a payment to Steam. The other put a link on the Steam forums to a Steam hacking website. Both had their WHOLE accounts banned, allegedly thousands of pounds worth of games locked from their owners.
The guy who EA banned got just his EA published games locked for 72 hours for a slightly provocative forum post.
Yet the EA example is front page news immediately after it happened. Whilst the cases concerning Valve haven’t received any coverage at all despite the injured parties involved emailing the hivemind. Why not? It reeks of favouritism.
11/03/2011 at 17:29 dux says:
@Duffin – The second example I have no problem with. If someone is stupid enough to link to a Steam hacking website on the Steam forums then they deserve to get their account banned, so I’m not surprised it didn’t make front page news.
As for the first example, I’ve also heard of a few people having problems with Paypal stopping payments, but TBH that’s more a problem with Paypal itself than it is to do with Valve. I do agree that banning access to a whole account is harsh and only access to the game(s) in question should be restricted and/or removed from the account, but in each of the examples I’ve seen the issue has been resolved through Steam support and access to the accounts reinstated once Paypal has got its act together and sorted it out. Moral of the story – don’t use Paypal if at all possible.
11/03/2011 at 21:32 wengart says:
How did Valve manage to ban them for what they did on the forum? Last time I checked my forum account and my Steam account are not connected.;
11/03/2011 at 14:13 mandrill says:
Pirate it and you don’t have to put up with any of that shit.
When are games publishers (not developers but the suits in charge of the money) going to realise that every time they screw legitimate customers over with behaviour like this that its just going to drive more and more people to pirate games?
Lets look at their track record so far:
Over-priced products: Pirates 1 Publishers 0
Draconian DRM: Pirates 1 Publishers 0
No Extra Crap (GFWL, Steam, etc): Pirates 1 Publishers 0
EULA which strips you of your rights as a consumer: Pirates 1 Publishers 0
Denying you access to a product which you have legitimately paid for: Pirates 1 Publishers 0
If there is a war on piracy then it is being lost very dramatically by the Publishers and the legitimate customers that they’re scamming out of their cash.
11/03/2011 at 14:18 Kadayi says:
Yeah let’s pirate EVERYTHING!!!
/s
11/03/2011 at 14:42 mandrill says:
That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that if the games industry seriously wants to minimize piracy then it is going about it in entirely the wrong way. Instead of adding value to their products that the pirates can’t (though this is changing slowly) they are making the legitimate versions of their products less and less appealing.
From the customer’s point of view there is no good reason not to pirate in an awful lot of cases (apart from the moral/legal/ethical one, but when have moral considerations ever trumped individual comfort and convenience lets be honest?)
When you have no more rights to use the product that you have legitimately paid for than those laid down by those you buy it from, and these rights can be withdrawn seemingly on a whim, then an alternative which bypasses the whole hassle of having to deal with an unreasonable amount of guff from publishers begins to look more and more appealing.
Publishers should be offering carrots rather than trying to use sticks of balsa wood against people wearing plate armour.
11/03/2011 at 18:41 Kadayi says:
@mandrill
Whose paying the developers? Think about it.
11/03/2011 at 14:16 Kadayi says:
Call me cynical, but before reaching for the Torches & Pitchforks I’d like to see something that supports this Arno’s assertions regarding what he did in order to breach EAs policy. So far it just seems to be a case of taking him at his word. How about some investigative journalism on the matter?
Nice to see the calls to piracy popping up btw…classy as always people.
11/03/2011 at 14:30 GenBanks says:
There’s NO possible reason to ban someone from playing a SINGLE PLAYER game they bought imo. No matter what you’re doing in it it won’t affect anyone else.
11/03/2011 at 15:07 Kadayi says:
I want to see the evidence he was actually banned. So far we’ve just one side of the story.
11/03/2011 at 15:38 Crimsoneer says:
Bioware provides a SERVICE.
You walk into a barber, and telling him he’s shit at cutting hair, expect him to tell you to jog on.
Same thing goes for games. Seems perfectly rational.
11/03/2011 at 15:58 Harlander says:
More like, a barber cuts your hair, and when he’s done you regard the creation and let him know your unfavourable opinion: “It looks like you went at it with the hedge trimmer.”
Suddenly, your hair is no longer cut.
Actually, scratch that, that’s much better than the current situation.
11/03/2011 at 16:03 Memph says:
@Crimsoneer
not so much. the difference being your barber doesn’t then take all their haircuts back, they can’t, at least without doc brown ricing their car.
you can’t analogize a single use service that’s paid for and completed on the spot with purchasing a product, or subscription service (that you can’t even use yet in this instance) and then being denied it’s use further down the line.
‘Service’ i feel is a misnomer anyway when applied to T&Cs and especially for a single player game that only requires said ‘service’ in the first place because of mandatory DRM.
11/03/2011 at 16:08 dux says:
It’s not rational at all. When I go into GAME or HMV to buy the latest piece of EA shovelware, I don’t get interrogated at the counter and forced to promise to only ever say nice things about EA and its business practises.
At the end of the day, you’re buying a companies product, and you should not have to encounter difficulties in using said product just because you made a single off-the-cuff remark intended for comedic effect. Entering a store and insulting the proprietor has no comparative value whatsoever.
In these tough economic times, companies should not be going out of their way to ostracise and alienate their customer base. That’s just plain stupid.
11/03/2011 at 16:59 Kadayi says:
@dux
The guy is a troll nothing more. If he were getting squashed over a legitimate complaint then that would be something (the truth being suppressed), but this (if it is to be believed) is just a case of an overbearing mod.
11/03/2011 at 18:25 GenBanks says:
@Crimsoneer it’s not a service at all. It’s a self-contained product. World of Warcraft is maybe a service because you’re provided access to lots of other players in the world whose enjoyment could be affected by your actions, and they need to run servers and a moderation team to enable and protect that.
In DA2, you bought the product, and it wouldn’t matter at all if your game and the computer it’s running on were forever disconnected from the outside world. Whatever you do in the game affects only your own enjoyment of it.
And anyway, however much you want to defend the right of this company to remove YOUR consumer rights, it still boils down to the fact that there is NO POINT in banning someone’s game account because of being a dick in the forum. You’ve already stopped him in his tracks by banning his forum account, why the need for a disproportionate response? I hate trolls as much as anyone, but this is a matter that shapes our rights as gamers/consumers in the long term.
11/03/2011 at 19:12 Kadayi says:
@GenBanks
So far I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest the guy was even suspended, or if it was actually for simply saying “Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?”. For all anyone knows the reality is he got suspended for using hacks in BC2, or posting up pornography links. There is merely so far a general assumption that his account was suspended for saying what he said, because that’s his version of events.
If he felt he’d been mistreated in some way I’m fairly sure EA have a support system in place to deal with those kind of issues and reach a resolution. Those are the people he should be contacting, not game journalists.
I’m fairly disappointed that RPS even ran this non – story tbh. It’s Friday, loads of people got wasted in Japan by a Tsunami, but let’s all get indignant over the ‘alleged’ 3 day suspension of some pointless ‘EA are evil’ troll. Quality. Still I guess when baby needs some new shoes, page hits are more important than standards.
11/03/2011 at 14:20 LennyLeonardo says:
Seems to me that stories like this do more damage to publishers than any ‘Wah wah company x sux” forum post ever can.
That’s what makes this so unbelievable: that, whatever your moral perspective, this is just seriously bad PR, generated by a moderator who was ostensibly trying to limit bad PR on the forum.
Does not compute.
11/03/2011 at 14:20 laddyman says:
I did not watch my buddies die face down in the muck so that this fucking strumpet…
11/03/2011 at 14:23 mondomau says:
I feel a few people are missing the point here –
1.) Valve never, to the best of my knowledge, banned anyone from their entire steam account for being a prat on the message boards
2.) The whole argument about whether this guy deserved it is irrelevant – If companies are allowed to ban people from access to bought games for something unrelated to the game itself, how long before they begin (seriously) abusing that privilege?
11/03/2011 at 14:28 Lilliput King says:
1) They have before and I dare say they will again.
http://www.pcgamer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6846
11/03/2011 at 14:33 Astalano says:
Voicing an opinion and linking to a pirate site and 2 totally different things.
11/03/2011 at 14:35 TeraTelnet says:
Well, your counter-example was of a chap that posted a link to a flipping Steam hack site in a Steam chatroom. Not quite the same as ‘being mean on the internet’.
11/03/2011 at 14:36 mondomau says:
Ok, but:
a.) One example.
b.) How do we know that’s all there is to the story, or that the guy’s being totally honest?
c.) Linking to crack/warez sites is different to being a prat.
Try again Y/N ?
:P
11/03/2011 at 15:10 Axyl says:
a) Irrelevant and unconnected example
b) We don’t, but that’s not what we’re discussing. We’re discuss the fact that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
c) Yes they’re different you moron. Legally different as well. Plus, one was actively enabling and promoting the use of illegal steam hacks, and the other was calling EA/Bioware a mean name.
I called you a Moron. Does this mean that I’m breaking the law? Does this mean that if my house was raided by police, this would be taken into account along with any pirated software i may have? No. It doesn’t.
You’re a fool, and EA/Bioware have crossed a fucking line. End of.
11/03/2011 at 15:19 Starky says:
That PC gamer link is a nice example of digital selection – anyone stupid enough to link to a steam hack site, on a steam forum with STEAM MODERATORS in the chat is so beyond retarded that they deserve to lose their account.
11/03/2011 at 16:39 mondomau says:
Axyl,
Whoops!
I fear you may have misunderstood – my response was to Lilliputking, who gave me a single paper thin example of Valve apparently doing the same shit as EA.
In fact, all the replies here are to my original comment where I express more or less same sentiment as you :p
11/03/2011 at 17:36 Deano2099 says:
Err, while the Steam guy arguable ‘deserved’ it far more than this one the point is that it’s the EXACT SAME terms and conditions in the EULA that allowed Valve to ban that guy as allow EA to ban this guy. We can all draw the line wherever we want, but there’s no legal line here. EA can ban people for whatever reason they want, so can Steam.
In the Steam case, the guy eventually got his account back, but Steam made it quite clear that it was a goodwill gesture and they could do whatever they liked.
Personally I’d argue that it’s not Valve’s job to directly punish consumers, even if they do something illegal. That’s why we have the law and legal process. I mean, take for example a guy that posts a link to child pornography on EA’s forums. Clearly he’s a dick. A grade A arsehole that deserves everything he gets. He should be locked up. But even then, should EA take his games away? I mean, it’s got nothing to do with them has it?
11/03/2011 at 21:42 wengart says:
The guy Valve banned was in a Steam chat thats different than the forum and I suspect that if he had posted that link in the Steam forum his forum account would be banned, but his Steam Account would remain operational because they are not connected.
11/03/2011 at 14:25 GenBanks says:
Wow, that’s fucking disgraceful.
I don’t care if they were right to ban him from the forum, it shouldn’t affect his ability to play a bloody SINGLE PLAYER GAME…
11/03/2011 at 14:25 Talorc says:
Quite frankly, it is like they are pretty much daring and /or trolling their loyal, paying customers to pirate their flipping game.
Want to play our brand new hot game at the same time as all your other mates around the world on internet gaming forum XYZ? Too bad little man, you have to wait a couple of days to suit our arbitrary retail crap! Even if you want to buy it digitally – hahaha!!
Played along with our BS pre release marketing hoopla and earned some of our 19 pre release “entitlements”? (YES NINETEEN FOR CHRIS SAKES!!) Loyally bought our game at retail and waited for the unlock time?
BETTER NOT SAY ANYTHING NASTY TO US OR YOU ARE GONE PUNK!!
They might as well just put a bloody hyperlink in the EULA / Terms of Service to somewhere to download the game crack / pirate version so you don’t have to deal with their stupid shit.
11/03/2011 at 14:28 Big Murray says:
The guy was obviously a bit of a Richard-head. But if you start taking your customers products that they’ve purchased away from them because you don’t like the way your customers talk, you’re pretty soon going to find out that you don’t have any customers.
11/03/2011 at 14:28 Delusibeta says:
Old news. There was a similar case involving the Battlefield forums a couple of years back. Except that case was a permaban. Not to mention the dozens of similar cases involving Steam (and other digital distributors, but usually Steam).
11/03/2011 at 14:30 Unaco says:
Wow. Seems like Bioware have sold their soul to the EA Devil.
11/03/2011 at 14:32 SRSavior says:
Fuck EA. Seriously. I am not trying to flame, but I am really angry that EA owns Bioware. EA represents all of the bureaucratic nonsense in the gaming industry. EA represents what happens when stupid people who know nothing about games get a master’s degree in Business Administration, and then go on to buy and sell companies.
I would advocate for piracy in this instance. I think Dragon Age 2 is an alright game so far, but I will never pay for it, or any other product from EA. I have pirated copies of many of their games that I do enjoy, but, as a consumer, I do not support their business practices and release history.
Even Dragon Age 2, a game that was pretty well hyped up, was released with bugs, a certain lack of polish, because EA wanted it released ahead of schedule. Fuck them.
Hopefully, gamers who have a conscience will actually make a difference by refusing to pay for shoddy products, or from companies that never cared about the people who bought their games, just that they buy them.
11/03/2011 at 14:34 Deano2099 says:
No need to resort to piracy.
As long as you buy from a shop and not direct download, your contract with the retailer is different to one you agree with EA when you install the game. If you get home, find you can’t play the game as your account is banned, you take it back to the shop, say it’s unfit for purpose and get a refund. That’s legally allowed.
If the game then starts working again in 72 hours when the temp ban expires, well lucky you.
Yes, that’s clearly fraud. So is what Bioware is doing. But the laws to sort all this don’t exist yet, so EA are exploiting what currently exists. I suggest everyone else does the same.
If EA want to make access to their games entirely account-based rather than based on the project or disc, then they’ll have to deal with the consequences of people exploiting that as long as games are still sold as physical products.
11/03/2011 at 14:51 mandrill says:
Good luck with that. Most retailers operate on a policy of once the seal on the cellophane is broken, you can’t take it back. Right or wrong you will have to go through endless amounts of hassle to get a refund or even an exchange on a PC game. I know this because I used to work at GAME and we were told never to refund a PC title, no matter what laws were quoted at us. We were to refer the customer to our customer service department, from where it would go to legal and be dealt with from there. I’m sure that in the majority of cases people got their money back if they could be bothered with the bureacracy, but I doubt many people did.
They do this at the behest of publishers who are trying to combat piracy (once you’ve broken the seal what’s stopping you from taking an image of the disc.)
11/03/2011 at 15:25 oceanclub says:
Has anyone tried the equivalent of the small claims court (*) after attempting to get a refund for a PC game for a valid reason and being refused?
(*) Irish one described here: http://www.courts.ie/courts.ie/Library3.nsf/PageCurrentWebLookUpTopNav/Small%20Claims%20Procedure
11/03/2011 at 16:18 Archonsod says:
Funnily enough I’ve found Game tend to back down on that policy as soon as the words court, solicitor or trading standards are mentioned.
11/03/2011 at 17:41 Deano2099 says:
@mandrill
Just out of interest, what happened when you got a stubborn bastard like me in there? I mean I’d be polite, but I’d damn well stay there until I got my refund or you called the police to remove me from the store. And be sure to tell everyone else in the store why I was there. You want me to talk to legal you damn well call up legal and get one of them down here to talk to me. It’s not my job to chase.
Alternatively, buy it on a credit card and if the retailer does refuse a refund just do a chargeback.
It’s obviously hugely open to abuse as DA2 has no disc check, so once I’ve registered the code the game is effectively worthless. But then, GAME are the one selling service contracts without getting anyone to sign anything and selling them as goods. If they’re being taken for a ride that’s for them to sort with the publishers.
11/03/2011 at 20:25 7rigger says:
@Deano2099
I’ve worked in GAME and GameStation, and in both cases if you stood and kicked up a stink they’d just ask you to leave. PC customers aren’t worth anything to them and they wouldn’t really worry about losing you to another retailer.
I know that after my store got ripped off by PC gamers (When they still had a ten day return policy) the company lost a ton of money and the policy got stopped (What’s a few customer complaints? There’s nowhere else to go for games) and the PC section started to shrink from one whole wall to barely one metre of wall space.
True that this is really a disagreement between the publishers and the retailers (GAME weren’t informed about online registration, and took back copies of mmo’s opened and redeemed in the early days) that has simply caught customers in the middle.
In my experience, getting on the phone to their customer services will usually solve the problem
11/03/2011 at 14:38 Xiyng says:
And here I thought EA’s been getting a lot better for the last few years. Guess I was wrong, I don’t think I’m buying too many EA games from now on. Luckily the only loss, I think, will be Battlefield 3.
11/03/2011 at 14:53 MiniMatt says:
Interesting split at moment between reviewer scores and user scores on Metacritic – currently 84/100 reviewer score and 3.9/10 user score. Doesn’t seem to be internet shenanigans either but a genuine split between reviewer’s opinions and end users. A split not really seen in other games (eg Bulletstorm reviewer = 83, user = 7.8.
(tinfoil) Out of main review sites and end users, only one of these groups are currently plastered in (presumably paid for) EA advertising
11/03/2011 at 15:01 Baka says:
So, when’s the Wot I Think coming?
Reaaaally curious what one of you has to say about this game.
11/03/2011 at 15:01 jti says:
Yet another reason to pirate the game. They are making it really hard for us to want to be a paying customer, that is for sure.
11/03/2011 at 15:02 StreetCleaner says:
So, in short, the answer is Yes, they have sold their souls to the EA devil.
11/03/2011 at 15:04 cjlr says:
The capability to do this has been around for a long time; not just EA, but anything on Steam, or Impulse, etc… Some of us called it years ago, if you’ll recall.
If you try to return a game by saying, “I don’t agree to the licence agreement” you’ll get laughed at. That’s illegal, on one or both ends, but shit, nobody I know who would care has anything near the money or time necessary to get a firm legal precedent set.
11/03/2011 at 15:04 blackmane says:
So, you buy a car, get the keys to it.
You troll the car company´s forums, get banned from the forums and they take the key for the car from you?
Yeah… right… *facepalm*
Where is this going to end? Unavailable DRM-servers? D´oh!!
11/03/2011 at 16:23 Archonsod says:
Nah, it’s more like you park your car in a company car park, act like a dick to the company manager so they kick you off the premises and don’t let you in to pick up your car.
Of course, when that happens in the real world they even have the cheek to charge you for parking and then clamping and towing services.
11/03/2011 at 15:05 Grey_Ghost says:
Absolutely ridiculous! Banning someone from their single player games over a damn forum comment? It’s no wonder the whole EA = EVIL thing continues to propagate.
11/03/2011 at 17:03 Kadayi says:
Suspended, not banned.
11/03/2011 at 17:29 Grey_Ghost says:
Technically yes, but look at the post itself, mentions Bans quite a bit so I guess that is why I used banned. My post still stands however.
11/03/2011 at 15:06 frenz0rz says:
In a comment thread consisting almost entirely of both Steam and EA bashing, I feel it my duty as a faithful RPS reader to have a go at Games for Windows Live for being shit. Just throwing that one out there.
11/03/2011 at 15:27 Ravenger says:
You forgot to mention DRM, especially UbiDRM. :-)
11/03/2011 at 17:44 Deano2099 says:
Isn’t that like the one thing GfWL does well though? Wasn’t this in the Sunday Papers this week? That for its many, many flaws, GfWL downloads will still play without the client or the single player works without being logged in or something?
11/03/2011 at 15:09 hjd_uk says:
I’m already boycotting Activision, if I keep the Moral high-ground I’m not going to get to play any games at all – stop being such self-centered bullying pricks, mega-publishers!
11/03/2011 at 15:10 Binman88 says:
After reading about this, I briefly thought to myself: “well, people should just not be dicks and they won’t have to worry about being banned”. Then I realised how inconsequential such a remark is, and how petty EA are being by doing this to their own paying customers. If anything, Bioware/EA should be the bigger man and ignore or simply delete the comment. There’s nothing big about preventing a frustrated customer from playing their game.
11/03/2011 at 15:11 Vinraith says:
More games-as-service bullshit. When you allow publishers to treat something you bought for $50 as a revokable-for-any-reason-at-any-time service, this is the kind of thing that happens. Expect more of it, and take precautions where possible.
11/03/2011 at 15:32 mcnostril says:
Didn’t you hear? The new trend is $60 now.
Wooo.
11/03/2011 at 17:58 TillEulenspiegel says:
Support your local indie. It’s the only way. As indie studios grow, they’ll be capable of creating more ambitious games. Just hope they stay small enough so they’re not sucked into the vortex of evil.
Every year, it’s becoming easier to resist the temptation of buying AAA games. No shooters with big single-player campaigns, no RPGs with deep gameplay, etc. There’s literally nobody making most of the games I want to play – I fully expect Deus Ex 3, Thief 4, and Skyrim to be mainstream-ified piles of shit.
I’m down to Football Manager and a big pile of indies. And some quality time with DOSBox, replaying a bunch of games I was a bit too young to appreciate the first time around.
11/03/2011 at 15:15 Robert says:
People disgust me.
Both the pact of the devil you must make to play EA games, (referring not the incident, but the absolute power you give them) and the people that use this to validate their criminal behaviour : piracy.
Disgusting, the lot of you.
11/03/2011 at 15:37 jti says:
Would you steal a child?
11/03/2011 at 16:06 Oak says:
You wouldn’t download a baby.
11/03/2011 at 17:15 Duality says:
Careful, your horse appears to be a little high there.
11/03/2011 at 18:18 Matt says:
He’s got a problem, okay? I tried to feed him the methadone oats but he just wouldn’t take them.
11/03/2011 at 18:36 Edgar the Peaceful says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9_hWoGrxWg
11/03/2011 at 15:29 v_ware says:
Hey, I am the suspended guy.
I like the article John. ;) Thanks for bringing these kind of practices in the spotlight.
For all you cynics: John contacted me and I sent him screenscaps of emails, forumthreads, pm’ing with Stanley Woo…. He did his job thorough.
You’ll also see something on reclaimyourgame.com, they too have contacted me, and have asked for proof, which I provided.
Too bad, this is reality.
Arno
x
11/03/2011 at 16:22 Kadayi says:
Post them up somewhere for us to view then.
11/03/2011 at 15:31 Rinox says:
On the bright side, the 50 € I save on not buying DA2 will in part be spent on a new graphics card for when The Witcher 2 comes out.
11/03/2011 at 15:33 Pemptus says:
Wow, it’s like they’re terrified of my money. That’s ok, I’ll stop scaring them.
11/03/2011 at 15:36 heretic says:
This really isn’t good news for EA or Bioware, a lot of people will be thrown by this, regardless of whether the dude is a troll or not :-/ this is just not good for business…
Bioware used to be a legendary company, I will never pay for any of their games again.
11/03/2011 at 15:36 ChromeBallz says:
Actually, there is a pretty solid legal recourse to be taken. Clickwrap agreements usually come only after the game code has been used on your account (and therefore made impossible to return to the store). Essentially you’re buying something and only offered the terms of usage AFTER you spend money up to the point where it’s non-returnable.
I fail to see how any (not absolutely corrupted) judge would ever validate this. I added the corruption disclaimer because i already heard of some precedents set here >_>
EA would save them a LOT of trouble in the future if their bans would only apply to the online part of games.
11/03/2011 at 16:09 Valvarexart says:
So, the best way to actually “own” a game is to pirate it? Hah, sure thing! Be right back, downloading DA2. Might pay for it later if it’s any good. Oh wait, it’s not. No big deal, huh, not my loss, right?
11/03/2011 at 16:13 Turbobutts says:
End of line.
11/03/2011 at 16:18 colinmarc says:
RAGE RAGE RAGE. I’ll be mad when they start banning people left and right for no reason. I quite like the game and I’m going to go play it.
11/03/2011 at 16:25 Duckmeister says:
I have registered just to say this:
THIS IS NOT NEW.
VALVE HAS BEEN DOING THIS FOR A VERY LONG TIME.
If any of you ever bothered to read the fine print on Valve’s “Steam Subscriber Agreement”, you would see that you do not own any of the games you purchase, and Valve reserves the right to take away your access to them at any time, for no reason whatsoever.
This isn’t just for cheaters that VAC detects. It is for everyone.
This is why I cannot stand all of the praise that Valve is being given, seeing as these kinds of draconian measures are being used against both cheaters and innocent people every day.
Remember the “you owe me sixty dollars” debacle with the Modern Warfare 2 VAC false positives? That wasn’t the first time that had happened. There are many documented cases of false positives happening in other games, and the only reason why Valve reversed the bans (which is against their stated policy) is because the story actually got to the press.
As with any online service (excluding very few), when you purchase a game, it functions only as a semi-permanent rental, you will never own that game.
If this kind of hate is to be directed at Bioware and EA, I suggest that you look at the forerunner of these types of schemes.
11/03/2011 at 17:09 Stupoider says:
Or perhaps we’ll focus on the subject at hand. Do people usually get their Steam accounts and games banned for unruly forum posts?
Regarding the article, I did enjoy the irony of the comment made and the retaliation.
11/03/2011 at 17:20 Memph says:
To my knowledge at least, you cannot have your Steam account banned by doing whatever they deem to be misbehaving on the forums, only your forum account (although i’m inclined to believe it possible if you really, really try for it). Whereas it may be easy to land a forum ban from a tetchy mod on occasion, that said Steam’s forums are rather liberal with how much off-the-cuff ranting and raving (against valve and their games in particular) one can get away with, without it being deleted on the spot, at least compared to other dev/publisher hosted sites. I have never heard of a full Steam account ban of any length for simply posting opinions, however troll-flavoured and dickish.
Generally your forum and steam accounts are completely seperate (so if you do use the same logins for both – change them, stat). You have a 3rd account seperate entirely for tech support so being locked from one does not knacker any hopes of at least requestiing help.
Yes, i see where you’re coming from though. Steam is as dodgy a ground as any other license agreement for those who think they own every title bought on there forever, regardless of anything and i do very strongly feel it’s something consumers must openly identify as a massive problem and be very loud about our concerns regarding where we will in fact stand when/if a service eventually goes down / is taken away and we instantly lose a grand’s worth of games just because said services tie-in launcher UI no longer works. It’s a very uncomfortable thought for those who deem games today to be the same value as those purchased on cartridge. I can still plug in a NES and play the Megaman & Final Fantasy games i bought, or even get 16bit PC games going with a bit of technical fiddlery, but can i really say the same for playing Mass Effect or Portal, 10 – 15 years down the line? They may compare games to music with regard to a user not ‘owning’ it, but i can still put a knackered old Beatles LP on my stereo and it won’t spit out 3 pages of legalese bollocks explaining in nonsensical made-up terms why i can’t listen to it anymore.
In this particular instance though, without clear citation Valve can’t be directly linked to this truely draconian brand of banning users willy-nilly merely for the posting of disparaging remarks on their forums, of which there are squillions (blimey, just look at the L4D forums when more L4D2 DLC is announced).
11/03/2011 at 17:24 Duckmeister says:
Does it matter? The point is that these companies don’t have to have a reason to deactivate your account and take away games that you have purchased. False accusations of cheating, unruly forum posts, etc. are all justifications for a much more potentially (and sometimes realized) sinister thing. Theft.
11/03/2011 at 17:50 Deano2099 says:
Err, if you read the article a bit more carefully, you’ll see John basically says that they’re investigating Steam AS WE SPEAK:
“And of course this is not unique to EA. We are very aware of other services with similarly draconian bans, and are actively investigating them.”
There’s also a good chunk of discussion on Steam doing this over on the RPS forums (see the thread entitled ‘Disabled’)
11/03/2011 at 19:16 Duckmeister says:
I am aware of that “investigation” line you mention, but I think something as widely used as Steam requires at least a namecheck, not just a “we’ll be looking at other services” line. That’s not specific enough. Steam has always had this from the very beginning, back when CGW was getting letters from military men about not being able to play Half-Life 2 while on deployment (and people think Ubisoft was the first in always-online DRM).
I think people overlook too many problems that Steam has, simply because Valve is the company who makes it, and there’s some unwritten agreement that Valve is incapable of doing wrong. I guess any company who runs “outrageous” sales on
gameslicenses to access games can get away with a lot. Reminds me of a saying, “Sell it at 50% off, then make ‘em buy it twice”.11/03/2011 at 19:31 Deano2099 says:
Fair enough, but this is part of Walker’s brilliant RIGHTEOUS Games Journalism and investigative reporting stuff. And one of the key aspects of that is the way he is ‘doing proper journalism’ which means fully investigating all sides, getting rights to reply and all that stuff.
If he offhandedly mentioned “oh Steam do this as well” then he’d have to go to Steam and ask them for their position and it’s an entire other article. Which I don’t doubt it will be. But not actually naming Steam works nicely around that.
11/03/2011 at 16:36 mouj says:
When i was a kid and did not know better, i’d play pirated games; eversince i’ve been able to, i’ve been very happy to pay for the games i want to play : even if it’s a minor pebble i’m adding, it feels like i’m supporting an industry i love. I don’t mean that paying for it implies they owe something to me other than the ability to play it, and if a problem shows up, some kind of customer service.
But if i can’t express my opinion or frustration about something, especially something i paid for happily, it feels like i’m being muzzled. One surely needs to be reasonnable in their comments, in the ways to express frustration or discontent, but this sounds more like a general rule of behaviour to me.. and it so happens that people may get over their heads too.
EA / Bioware’s reaction here seems a wee bit out of proportion, i guess if it were to happen to me, even if i had been silly in my behaviour, i’d feel upset and i’d want my money back.
They make games, and as any other product, it can be flawed, or not correspond to what i was expecting when buying it, but should the fact that i bought it bind me to not being able to say something about it, in the fear that by doing so, i may be unable of using it ? Or am i being idealistic here ?
For all it’s worth, it’s at least good to know how far it can go and how far their “power” over use of their products extends, be it ‘legal’ or not in the way it would stand up in court.
11/03/2011 at 16:44 Beardface says:
God, I hope they use this more often. Would get rid of some of the mind-numbing idiocy found amongst their forum users.
11/03/2011 at 16:44 bhlaab says:
The lesson? Always read the EULA! It will include vital information about the product except when it doesn’t:
http://vividgamer.com/2011/03/10/ea-fails-to-disclose-securom-in-dragon-age-ii/
“After losing the lawsuits over the mishandling of DRM in Spore and The Sims 2, EA was compelled to make full disclosure whenever SecuROM was included in one of their products,”
“We have CONFIRMED from testing that it DOES contain SecuROM, and that it DOES leave files behind. We can also confirm that nowhere on the package, in the EULA or on the Website for the game is thee ANY mention of the inclusion of SecuROM. EA had been ordered by the courts to disclose the use of SecuROM on any game that uses it. And it is contradictory of what Bioware has been saying for the last 3 weeks.”
11/03/2011 at 19:24 Kaira- says:
Oh wow, it’s as if they don’t think their customers deserve any kind of truth and respect.
Wasn’t DA2 promoted to take timeframe of 10 years, but only seven were included? (because I haven’t played the game and I really don’t know, it’s just a hearsay)
Also, forgetting to include auto-attack on console-versions and telling about it some 12 hours before unlocking [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6395493/4 BioWare's answer on page 3]
11/03/2011 at 17:17 HeavyStorm says:
What I really would want is for someone (read RPS) talk to some legal experts — layers and whatnot, and check if this kind of T&C is legal.
First thing to note is that a citizen cannot abdicate from a right or “privilege” granted by law. Meaning that if the T&C goes against whatever consumer code the country in which it was signed, then the T&C is illegal. Otherwise it would be possible, for example, to agree on being killed and it would be murder.
So, that said, it doesn’t see to me that all those EULAs are legal. Even though they make it seems like you are hiring a service when buying a game, you are not. The reason I think makes this clear is that, if it was a service, then there should be a service level agreement (SLA) between the provider and the customer. But they also state that the software comes with no guarantees, may have bugs and other issues, etc., and are sold “as is”. Besides, when hiring a service, I expect that, once I suspend it, I would no longer be charged. But if I bought it “for life”, then I’ve already paid. So there should be a refund.
Moreover, the EULA is single-sided (is that the correct term?), because the publisher (provider) can suspend the service at any time, by a non-stated number of rules, but you can’t (of course, since there would be no benefits).
Finally, I think that the user’s freedom of speech was compromised at that particular event. He was banned to express his feelings over a game. Of course, that is a forum rule, but again I return to the previous topic: a Forum cannot have a rule that goes against a country laws. So maybe EA wanted to shut someone up, and are trying to make it legal by a bunch of legal terms that are “automagically” singed if you push a button in a screen (bullshit, in my opinion — has no validity — what if I can’t read?).
11/03/2011 at 17:56 Deano2099 says:
I imagine these things are just about on the right side of the law, but only because the law hasn’t caught up yet. They trample all over the spirit of consumer protection legislation, and in 10 years time I’m confident this sort of thing will be illegal.
The problem is getting the legislation passed when most of the lawmakers don’t use the service in question.
The second problem is the sheer amount of apologists amongst gamers who defend practices like this, or those who have got so used to this stuff creeping up on us that they just roll over. Just for fun, try explaining this, or the people who got Steam accounts banned to a non-gamer friend. They’ll be genuinely shocked and astounded that this stuff goes on. Because frankly it’s the biggest trampling of consumer rights I’ve ever seen in my life.
11/03/2011 at 17:22 Delusibeta says:
Did I mention this is old news? http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/1075227.page http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/446573.page
It’s not really news, since it’s enshrined in the Terms of Service. (See also the following Reddit comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamernews/comments/g1y4u/ea_forum_bans_can_lock_you_out_of_games/c1kc1te?context=3 )
I look forward to JOHN WALKER JOURNALISM on EULAs and companies finally being able to follow through with them.
11/03/2011 at 17:36 Carra says:
Haven’t seen any EA hating posts lately. Activision seems to be the bad guy these days.
Glad to see that EA is still evil.
11/03/2011 at 17:37 My2CENTS says:
Haha guess why EA uses Persona’s everywhere, they just want the customers to hate them, pretty much like VALVE – they fuck up their legit users too. What’s the morale of the story – don’t use EA forums for any reason, 99% of the time they are not helpful at all.
11/03/2011 at 17:39 Resin says:
This is why I stay far away from any game account related forums. EA can shoot themselves in the PR foot as much as they like because their foot is huge and cloven hoofed, they do not need their customers to like them to avoid pirating they just need more draconian DRM. They are big business and frankly I like some of the products they make. At the end of the day this is one more why I support Indie developers. I’ll still play big budget games, they can do somethings that the little guys can’t – I just won’t participate on their forums or have any sense of brand/company loyalty.
11/03/2011 at 17:53 hamster says:
Erm constitutional rights only apply to government agencies from what i recall…they don’t govern individuals.
11/03/2011 at 18:00 Real Horrorshow says:
Wait, what did Valve do? Is it the currency thing? I’m missing something because I thought Valve was an honorable company.
11/03/2011 at 18:02 Deano2099 says:
The piracy argument is actually kind of interesting. It almost does justify piracy. Not morally but… well:
What it basically boils down to is that when you buy a digital download, or an account-restricted game from a shop, you’re basically buying thin air. You’re paying for nothing.
Because you’re not buying a product, says the publisher, you’re buying a service. Which is perfectly reasonable. It requires a change in thinking, but basically the box I buy is just a service agreement.
The problem lies in that the same EULA will then tell you that the publishers offers no guarantee of the service, it can be shut down any time, the product is sold as is, bugs and all, and they can remove your access whenever they want.
So on the one hand, they’re selling a service. On the other hand, they make no guarantee that this service will work or even exists. They are literally selling thin air. They’re selling nothing. They’re not selling a product, and they’re not selling a service.
And if they’re selling nothing, then the thing they’re selling is inherently worthless, and so why would you pay for it? Well obviously you do so to reward and feed the people that made something you enjoy. But that’s practically voluntary at this point.
11/03/2011 at 18:27 GenBanks says:
Interesting, well said.
11/03/2011 at 18:33 Khymus says:
Buy the game, crack the game, own the game. Especially for something like this, a strictly offline single-player affair. I’m one of those weirdos that doesn’t care much for achievements, gamer scores, or what have you, so this option works well for me.
11/03/2011 at 19:09 Memph says:
@ Deano2099
Brilliantly put. If they can’t even specify what it is, how long it will last or even if it will work, how can they set a price for it at all?
Makes the sheer obnoxious cheek of having the buyers then ‘agree’ to all these terms and rules for the whatever it may be, a total bloody joke.
11/03/2011 at 18:35 Memph says:
Originally responding to some of the steam haters, but as ‘reply’ keeps eating my posts then telling me i can’t post again it’s now all here in a big sloppy mess, bare with me if it seems i rail off on tangents a bit…. :)
Steam and it’s ilk are as dodgy a ground as any other license agreement for those who think they own every title bought on there forever, regardless of anything and i do very strongly feel it’s something gamers as consumers should openly identify as a massive concern, regarding where we will in fact stand when or if a service eventually goes down or is taken away and we instantly lose a grand’s worth of our collected games, just because said service’s tie-in launcher UI has them ‘locked’ and no longer works with them.
It’s a very uncomfortable thought for those who deem games today to be the same value as those purchased on media like cartridges and discs. I can still plug in a NES and play the Megaman & Final Fantasy games i bought, or even get 16bit PC games going with a bit of technical fiddlery, but can i really say the same for playing Mass Effect or Portal, 10 – 15 years down the line?
I think too many folk see Steam and such merely as platforms to buy games on, whereas we’re actually only being sold unspecified, limited access to play the games on that specific platform, yet still at full price (and often even more) of a physical product, so when the ban hammer does come down on our entire games collection for any number of arbitrary or even legit reasons, it’s a sodding great backhanded blow to take. All those games, more to the point all of that money….. just gone.
I admittedly do like what Steam does aside from this, in fact thanks to Steam sales i own, sorry, have bought, uh…. am renting…i think…. many games that I wouldn’t have otherwise even bothered to sniff at. However being a long-time gamer i like having MY games collection. I have sought out and collected these games to purchase, to play and to stand proud in my catalogue of games aquired over the years involved in the pastime. Like a music buff loves, collects and shelves all their favourite band’s albums, LPs and singles for future enjoyment and I remain very wary of the garnered fruits of my hobby being threatened with an undisclosed expiration date.
They may compare games to music with regard to a user not ‘owning’ it, but i can still put a knackered old Beatles LP on my stereo and it won’t spit out 3 pages of legalese gibberish, explaining in nonsensical made-up terms why i can’t listen to it anymore.
My blabber aside though; In this article’s particular instance, without clear citation Valve can’t be directly linked to this truely draconian brand of banning users willy-nilly merely for the posting of disparaging remarks on their forums, of which there are squillions (blimey, just look at the L4D forums when more L4D2 DLC is announced).
11/03/2011 at 19:01 somini says:
Definitively rushed! My only concern is Mass Effect 3 getting this kind of treatment
11/03/2011 at 19:17 Kadayi says:
Dragon Age 2 score was ‘kind of a rush job’
So because the music guy was under pressure, we assume everyone else was?
“We should emphasise that Zur is referring to the game’s musical score only – he didn’t have any involvement in other development.”
Disinformation FTW
11/03/2011 at 19:03 demogamer says:
What’s next? Selling the rights to audition to play games?
11/03/2011 at 19:26 Hoaxfish says:
reminds me of Dara O Brian’s gaming routine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WOAte_M7yw
11/03/2011 at 19:57 demogamer says:
That’s some naughty/funny stuff right there, yes it is! Thanks for sharing!!!
11/03/2011 at 19:21 Lifebleeder says:
Let me preface this by saying, I make enough money that I can keep myself reasonably well stocked up on video games, as my Steam Collection can attest. I’m also pretty unsympathetic to just about every reason a pirate has given me so far as to why they do what they do, but this? You want to ban me for life from a forum because you don’t like what I have to say? Hey, it’s you’re forum, I don’t pay for the upkeep. Banning me from a Singe Player game because I said “Omigosh u r suxx0r!11!”. From a Single Player game that I paid $60 + Whatever DLC I decided to buy? Not only would I not think twice about pirating said game, I would barely think about it at all, and not feel a tiny bit of remorse. I’m not sure I’d even consider it pirating at all, after all, I paid for the game, I’m just getting back what I paid for.
The EULA’s for games are getting out of control, could you imagine if other business’s acted this way? You didn’t like some product so the Wal-Mart Police, or the Amazon.com Gestappo come knocking on your door, dropkick your wife in the face and take her new breadmaker. You went on rottentomatoes.com and posted a bad review for “IronSpider Hulkman 17″, and lament that the MPAA sucks so Paramount Pictures bans you from every movie theatre in the country. Ridiculous.
11/03/2011 at 19:26 Bilbo Fraggins says:
“we can not reveal it due to some security polices.”
That seems like utter rubbish to me.
11/03/2011 at 20:08 Anyxxi says:
I can’t help but notice the giant Dragon Age II advertisement you guys have all over the site.
11/03/2011 at 21:42 Hoaxfish says:
Thank journalistic integrity I guess
11/03/2011 at 20:41 geldonyetich says:
Even though “Freedom Of Speech” isn’t exactly the issue of being thrown out of an establishment after you’ve been mouthing off, it is nonetheless a concept that reverberates very strongly through Americans and consequently, I expect EA’s going to get a lot of negative backlash.
Outside of that, there’s a clear violation of customer trust when they entertain the idea they can shut down your ability to play an offline game, that you paid for, in the privacy of your own home, just because you mouthed off to them. Any merchant who pretends to be the least bit professional would at least give you back your $60 instead of pickpocketing you because they don’t like you anymore.
I imagine interested lawyers are already knocking on this EA forumite’s door.
11/03/2011 at 21:33 Scandalon says:
Thanks EA, for helping clarify that I won’t be buying any of your games in the foreseeable future.
11/03/2011 at 21:33 Hoaxfish says:
“Sorry, but I have no comment for you.”
That kinda seems their whole attitude (often without the “sorry” part)
11/03/2011 at 23:32 Kadayi says:
It’s called data protection.
11/03/2011 at 22:18 Veracity says:
Thanks for flagging this. I admit I’m pessimistic about the chances of EA (or Valve, or whoever) acknowledging that their right to revoke your licence because they feel like it is maybe not ok, or (more importantly?) enough consumers ever deciding it isn’t really to have an impact But I think a newsy site treating it as newsworthy at least elevates it a bit out of the permanent background buzz of angry internet people.
12/03/2011 at 05:13 joshualwilliams1981 says:
The only good troll is a dead troll.
This kid votes with his dollar and buys all of the Bioware products he can, talks smack, then whines about the consequences?
He deserves everything he gets. Maybe if EA/Bioware would have had the balls to see it through, they could set a standard for the rest of the forums out there.
12/03/2011 at 23:10 arfaboulius2 says:
EA DEVIL STATUS:
NOT TOLD[ ]
TOLD [ ]
KNIGHTS OF THE TOLD REPUBLIC [X]
13/03/2011 at 02:07 instant0 says:
Guess I should have played the Reloaded version instead after all… combined with the effin console camera on the PC version and this they can go stuff themselves. At least I wont make that mistake next time.
13/03/2011 at 11:03 Kadayi says:
“They’ve also locked threads discussing the matter.”
Sensationalise much John? I only see the one thread that you’ve linked to twice.
13/03/2011 at 12:56 rocketman71 says:
Aaaaaaaaaaand that’s why you don’t buy games from EA anymore.
The “it was an accident” damage control bullshit took a bit longer this time. Probably because of the weekend.
BTW, Kadayi must have REALLY liked Dragon Age 2.
16/03/2011 at 10:54 Kadayi says:
Nothing to do with DA2, but everything to do with misrepresenting the facts (ironic given john’s tirades against ‘fair and balanced’ Fox News tbh). Truth of that matter is, the guy never contacted account support itself (they have a ticket system) instead he went bleating to live chat, which is from what I can determine is for installer/technical issues (there’s not even a button at ea.support.com to take you to it). Perhaps if the guy had gone to the right site and followed the account support procedure it would of been sorted out quicker (the ToS refers you to that site)
Sure I’m all for rallying against the ‘man’ (and the idea that your account can be suspended in such a manner is abhorrent and needs to be addressed), however I think it’s important that the presentation is correct. For example the banner reads Bioware antisocial network. All very droll tapping into the Zeitgeist of the recent David Fincher film, but the reality is the ban was an EA account ban administered by someone EA accounts, not a Bioware forum administered ban. Still that’s not stopped loads of people getting up in arms at Bioware (such as Anduin1 below) when really they have nothing to do with it. See I think it’s fundamentally important if you are going to point the finger at someone publicly, you point it at the right people, and you do so without embellishing the truth. Anything else is disinformation and spreading that does no one any favours.
15/03/2011 at 04:02 anduin1 says:
Thats it, Im never buying a Bioware game again….unless its some crazy sale on Steam.
26/03/2012 at 04:17 Darcangelo says:
tui xach thoi trang
I don’t want to see anybody get into trouble over something that “could” get reported as supporting piracy, or the use of illegal methods with the game, so PLEASE exercise caution when posting. I know that this is a subject that is really going to get us riled up. But please post with caution. Why didn’t they do that for people caught cheating online? But maybe this will teach people to stop being a overly rude in their MP game forums, I can see trash talk but lude, constant swear, and racial remarks about people that whooped their butt or those that whooped.