Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Gamer Banned From Dragon Age II Over Forum Post

Posted by Soulskill on from the flexible-boundaries dept.

RogueyWon writes "Kotaku is reporting that a Dragon Age II gamer banned from BioWare's forums for an allegedly inflammatory post has been locked out of the (singleplayer only) game for the duration of the ban. This is a consequence of EA's backend systems, which link forum accounts to the accounts that players use to access their games. This would appear to be a worrying new development; while trolling forums has led to bans from massively multiplayer games in the past (arguably with some justification), the extension of the principle to singleplayer games, where an abusive player cannot affect the enjoyment of others, must surely be a step too far."

7 of 469 comments (clear)

  1. Bad summary by devxo · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ah, in true slashdot spirit the summary "forgets" a few things from the story. First of all, he wasn't banned from playing the game. He bought the game from EA online store and because he was banned, the installer didn't work. And to be honest, for me that sounds more like a bug than EA trying to ban him from a single player game.

    1. Re:Bad summary by RogueyWon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Submitter here - thought I ought to make a quick reply:

      On your first point - the effect of the ban was to prevent the user from installing (and hence playing) the game. It wasn't that they prevented the user from buying the game (which would have been stupid, but arguably less evil) but rather that money had changed hands and the user wasn't able to access the game due to the ban. Given the space limitations on story titles and summaries, this felt like a fair summing up to me.

      On the second point, I had first hoped, when I read TFA, that this was due to a backend bug. However, the response from Bioware makes it fairly clear that from their point of view, this is "working as intended".

    2. Re:Bad summary by FileNotFound · · Score: 4, Informative

      Your ignorance and know it all attitude is appalling.

      Digital purchases offer many advantages that physical media does not have.

      I own over 200 games on Steam. I can play any one of them anytime. I have purchased well over 1000 games over the course of my life - except I can't find majority of them, the rest have scratched up disks, lost CDkeys, lost manuals and hard to find patches.

      I can go on travel bring nothing but my laptop and play any game I own from the hotel room.

      I have reached the point where I REFUSE to buy physical media because of the inconvenience of actually using it. Need the disk to play, need to carry disks with me for every game I may wish to play, need to manually patch everything.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
    3. Re:Bad summary by stjobe · · Score: 5, Informative

      Except that you're wrong. Follow the first link in the summary, scroll down to the last post:

      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.

      Item 2 kinda says it all, doesn't it?

      --
      "Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
    4. Re:Bad summary by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Informative

      I bet five will get you ten they were using shitty Ring 0 DRM that was written for x86. You actually got lucky as I have seen Ring 0 x86 crap install into x64 and the the uninstaller WILL NOT UNINSTALL no matter what you do and the Ring 0 crap since it can't read 64 bit code will cause the whole system to become as unstable as Win9x as it assumes you're a pirate and tries to constantly rescan.

      For a perfect example that you can point to when someone says "the DRM isn't obtrusive, it doesn't hurt legit customers, blah blah blah" I'd suggest you watch this video (warning language NSFW, but when you see why he is POed you'll understand) and bookmark it to answer the pro DRM crowd. Also take note and point out the literally dozens of games boxed behind him lining the shelves which he points out many no longer work thanks to DRM.

      So consider yourself lucky Jitterman, as you'd be amazed how many customers CD/DVD burners I've had to throw away thanks to DRM throwing them into PIO mode and burning the motors, or how many times a customer has had to pay me because "I think I have a virus" which turns out to be shitty DRM that is as nasty as any badly written malware and can take a rock solid XP or Windows 7 system and bring it to its knees. I'd also suggest frequent backups as well as system restore points before any game install if you are running x64, since as I said many x86 Ring 0 DRM crap WILL install itself onto x64 without warning or user interaction and proceed to make an unholy mess of your system.

      But yet again the legit customer gets burned, the pirate has a game that "just works" and runs better than the legit version with fewer bugs and errors as well as needing fewer resources. Sad isn't it?

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    From TFA:

    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.

    Damn, all I have to do to ruin someone's day is report their posts? Harsh.

    As will be parrotted and echoed a dozen times, they really should divorce the game from community connectivity when doing these punishments and not deprive you what you paid for.

  3. Re:entitled to a refund? by rtrifts · · Score: 3, Informative

    In a consumer contract of unequal bargaining power, the stronger party to the contract cannot deny to the weaker party the whole of the benefits under the contract and then rely upon a limitation or exclusion clause in the contract to justify that breach and denial of the very benefits to the other party which goes to the root of the contract.

    In the old days, we called this a fundamental breach (Suisse Atlantique) . Now, we just call it a breach, followed by a refusal to apply the exclusion clause for reasons of unconscionability in a consumer contractual setting (Tercon Contractors v. B.C.; Hunter v. Syncrude).

    Either way, EA's conduct as described in the article appears to me to be, beyond much doubt, plainly unlawful -- and the suggestion it is "legal" because of a provision in a EULA that they could never rely upon in court is wholly misguided.

    This is an academic discussion unless and until somebody was to sue EA over a matter like this, but to excuse the conduct of a bully by suggesting it is "legal" is both morally -- and legally -- wrong.

    End result: a software company cannot fundamentally breach a contract and then rely upon the terms of the EULA to get them off the hook and avoid a claim for rescission of the contract. The law doesn't work that way. Not for huge transportation companies with a global reach, not for monstrously large insurers upon which all modern commerce depends, and not for a comparatively small, "chump change", consumer products corporation like EA, either.

    --
    .Robert