EA Forum Ban Will Now Mean EA Game Ban

An anonymous reader writes "A post on the EA Support Forums from APOC, online community manager for Electronic Arts, outlines a new policy for their new forums, saying users who earn a ban based on their behavior in the forums will be locked out of all of the EA games tied to that account: 'Well, its actually going to be a bit nastier for those who get banned. Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you'd actually be banned from your other EA games as well since it's all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It's all one in the same, so I strongly recommend people play nice and act mature. All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but it's what we have to do.'" Update: 10/31 12:36 GMT by T : Not so! Pandanapper writes "After a flood of complaints the EA community moderator APOC corrects his statement about how banning you from the forums bans you from your game access as well:"That said, the previous statement I made recently (that's being quoted on the blogs) was inaccurate and a mistake on my part. I had a misunderstanding with regards to our new upcoming forums and website and never meant to infer that if we ban or suspend you on the forums, you would be banned in-game as well. This is not correct, my mistake, my bad."

Comments

Awwww

[The Bungi]

Fo'shure I'm looking forward to shelling out my hard-earned money (especially in this wonderful economy) for EA titles in the future after seeing this.

I enjoyed EA games in the past. Being a military buff I especially enjoyed their flight simulators. They were mostly stable and fun to play. I cringed when they bought out Westwood because I thought they were going to screw up the C&C franchise, but (mostly) they didn't.

But being banned from online play because I let out a "fuck" on their forums? Or for any reason whatsoever unrelated to behavior within the game? Never mind the insane DRM on their latest output.

Fuck that. No more EA games for me. I'm getting old anyway. Time to switch to online Scrabble or something. Flash DigDug and Galaga FTW.

Re:Awwww

[Moryath]

Won't it be fun finding out you just bought a "banned" copy then? I'm sure they will start tying the bans to the game's activation serial number as well.

And of course, they'll ban anyone who complains about the constant bugs and shoddy coding in their games and wants to see a patch to make the game usable. Why should they care? They already got what they wanted (your money), you got screwed because they sold a crappy product that doesn't work and can't be returned to the store... they're happy, you're not, but they don't give a crap about the customer.

Welcome to soviet russ....er EA-Land, Where Game Plays You.

Re:Awwww

[Faylone]

Wait, what? You don't want your children exposed to such conduct while they're shooting up people in CoD4?

Re:Awwww

[westlake]

Fo'shure I'm looking forward to shelling out my hard-earned money (especially in this wonderful economy) for EA titles in the future after seeing this.

I am betting that they can live without you.

The Sims 3 is #36 on the Amazon PC seller list and it won't be released until February.

Red Alert 3 is #3 - and the geek's negative reviews of the EA product and DRM are being ignored across the board.

2,500 1-star reviews for Spore, currently #6 on the charts.

Re:Awwww

[Forrest Kyle]

"titty fucking arse bandits with their gay dick up an elephants cunt" = +5 Insightful

I submit this as an example of why Slashdot is the greatest website on earth.

Re:Awwww

[MattW]

Consider that +5 a big fat middle finger to anyone who thinks they get to decide what appropriate speech is.

wow

[Dark_Matter88]

FIRST the DRM, now this? They really hate players

Re:Wow

[martinw89]

Here's the way I see it:

• The forums are free and voluntary. EA is being gracious by giving gamers a place to talk (take this sentence lightly). So, they can ban you here. It's a privilege to use the forum (take this sentence lightly as well).
• You payed for the game. It's your goddamned right to play the thing, you gave them money in order for it to become your property. They can't ban you from this, that action is worse than DRM.

It was EA's privilege to get my money. Well fuck that, they just lost that privilege out of principle. While people like us stop giving them money, time and time again we have seen boycotts like that don't work. Some one needs to sue EA, badly. That's the kind of action that speaks out.

Re:NEW From EA!

[cjb658]

Linking games to gamer's internet forum accounts?

Yeah, don't you love that? They've completely eliminated the ability to sell your old games.

Re:heh

[Shakrai]

The point is, they're not going to continue getting money if they keep screwing over, on a continuing basis, the people who give them the money.

Then how do you explain the fact that the cable and cellular companies are still in business? ;)

Re:Guess who cares about your anti-EA opinions?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

EA makes great games, most of which I have played through and through.

I'll always buy their games, if it interests me, as most of their titles have.

Most of you are silver spoon fed arrogant bastards who think EA owes you something.

They don't. They owe you NOTHING.

If I pay them for a game, then they owe me a functional game.

Re:Misunderstanding...

[geekboy642]

That's not a correction or a misunderstanding.

That's a hasty back-peddling move. Expect to see this repeated in about a year. We are the frog in the slowly boiling water, and EA just tried to turn up the heat.