Slashdot Mirror
Gamer Banned From Dragon Age II Over Forum Post
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."
>>If it is an accident, and EA agrees that it is wrong, and fixes it... then there is no reason to attribute malice to EA.
Except it does sound like working-as-intended.
But then again, this is the same company that jumped onto the social media bandwagon, merged their accounts with EA, corrupting them in the process so that I both couldn't log on and couldn't reset the password (it would fall into an infinite loop). And did things like tying their server uptime during the demo into getting exclusive items in DA2, which promptly killed their servers and forced (well, if that's the right word) people to play the demo over and over until the damn servers stayed up long enough to get credit for it. If it dropped even once during the demo, you wouldn't get credit at the end.
And so forth. I believe they're both incompetent *and* filled with hate and malice.
Probably a new thing Bioware got from the EA merger.
I think a more relevant analogy would be buying a Ford, you hurling abuse on the forecourt of the only Ford dealer in town and then that Ford dealer not allowing you on their property to pickup the car when it's ready.
You aren't banned from the car, rather banned from the only available means of getting hold of the car.
In both the real and analogous cases, the common sense solution would be for either a workaround or a refund. But no-one likes common sense in the land of media and blogosphere hyperbole.