TIGSource Forums

http://dccollection.tumblr.com/post/3773723362/

David Collins posted about this story, and graciously backed the page up incase Bioware ever decides to remove the post.

his summary:

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6459941/1

Gotta love EA. Gotta love DRM.

Taking criticism and insults is for small companies.

Edit: I now feel pretty motivated to never, ever buy an EA-published game again.
Edit 2: He was actually correct in his original remark (which he got super-banned for). Bioware have sold their souls to the EA devil. Looks like they jumped on the chance of proving their worth to the devil.

Banned guy:


Bioware Guy:


Translation:

Hey, Bioware. Fuck you.





I've never bought a Bioware product. What are you gonna do, bitches? ;)

You have been placed on several FBI watch lists. Don't talk shit about Bioware.

« Last Edit: Today at 07:15:53 PM by EA »    

Banning your customers from playing *single player* seems a bit... stupid.  Like, "We clearly don't care what sort of PR this generates"-stupid.

But I guess EA doesn't really care much about their image.  Their marketing kinda tells the whole story.  And I don't really see much reason to make a distinction between Bioware and EA anymore, but that's just me.  :shrug2:

What the hell did I just read?
Guy can't access his games because he criticized the company for doing stupid shit?

First of all, banning people over criticism is what 13 year old DA tartlets do, and two, that's petty, short-sighted, and ultimately suicidal for a company to engage in.  :facepalm:

How does that make any sense at all.

At least the game he's been forbidden to play is just...
Dragon Age II.

wow that is terrible. Almost as terrible as KOTOR.

Has Bioware just done something illegal? I assume not, but I feel sure that there's some legal constraint preventing companies from crippling a single copy of their product in response to criticism.

edit: vvv I'm sorry, I hadn't seen that part! vvv

I'm not sure if I misread something but didn't it say he only lost access to them for 72 hours, and he was complaining mostly because it coincided with his buying of a new game and not being able to play it immediately?

I like how the moderator's response was:

Followed by a signature that read:

So the real problem here right is that getting banned, tempbanned, whatever, from the EA forums means you're locked out of your EA games?

That's... really incredibly stupid, isn't it? The lesson seems to be to never log on to an EA forum at all, it's not worth the risk D:

Although really I'd be inclined to just not buy a game at all if the developer has the ability to  remotely disable my copy for any reason :|

That's why you shouldn't even buy EA games (I don't mean you shouldn't play them)

God, the moderator response at the end of that thread feels so wrong on so many levels  :facepalm:!

It all sounds pretty over-the-top but the way the world is heading, nothing is shocking or surprising anymore.

Dang... :o good thing I haven't been interested in anything bioware's made since KOTOR...

What amazes me is that the EA suit can't see how mind-blowingly ridiculous the rule is. Comments made on the internet mean paying customers can't play the game at home, on there own. So basically if you don't lick EAs proverbial butt all the time they take their ball in and you don't get to play. Is EA run by 12 year olds? No wait, I think that might be insulting to 12 year olds.

Dragon Age is incredibly boring but both Mass Effect games are really, really good. This is some bullshit behaviour to be sure, but it does strike me as EA's bullshit more than BioWare's bullshit, and BioWare do kind of have to do what EA says at the moment, what with EA paying their salaries and everything. It sucks, but it is what it is.

Which brings us back to the original remark:
They have sold their souls to the EA devil.

They have accepted an enormous amount of money to allow them to make the games they want to make, and this enormous amount of money comes with certain stipulations. That's kind of what having a job is like, in my experience, but hey, if reductionist and reactionary shit like "selling out" as a concept gets you through the day.

So they are not responsible for their behavior, because they got lots of money for it?

I'm saying that if the conditions of their contract says that they've got to abide by EA's rules, then that is what it is. It's bullshit behaviour, I don't think anyone's contesting that, but if it affects the player's experience of the game rather than being a 24-hour forum ban then it is categorically EA and not BioWare's bullshit behaviour. You've never had a boss who's made a horrible decision that you quietly let slide because to say otherwise would cost you your job?

BioWare have obviously got the clout to not necessarily have to worry about feeding themselves or paying rent if EA kicks them, but they're also hip-deep in development and promotion of some very expensive projects. I'm not saying they're absolved of responsibility. I'm saying it wasn't their fucking responsibility in the first place.

"I was only following orders" is an understandable explanation but not a valid excuse. EA's bullshit is now Bioware's bullshit. It's a choice they made and there is no reason to not hold them accountable for it.


No, I haven't and I don't think I ever will. How about you?

edit: Firing someone because they make critical remarks is illegal here.

knew it was a matter time before my beloved rock paper shotgun picked the story up:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/11/ea-forum-bans-can-lock-you-out-of-games/

So, EA,
Great evil publisher? Or the Greatest evil publisher?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/11/ea-retracts-game-ban-for-forum-violation/

Seems it's been resolved.

However, considering the press that this received it wouldn't be too far-fetched that they just said it was a glitch to get past the bad publicity. I dunno though.

From the comments on that page:

Now that's just the stupidest move to prevent bad publicity.

Seen the latest?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/03/dragon-age-ii-features-hated-securom-despite-previous-ea-claims.ars

They really don't want people to buy this game, do they?

Then, EA scratched their head and wondered why people are buying their games on consoles instead of PC so much these days.

Bioware should go indie.

lol

That's just sad. Seriously sad.

fix'd

The recent comments on the ars technica story seem to indicate it's not actually securom, but some other software from the same source that looks a bit like securom.  Hmmmmm.

How do you "accidentally" code a forum-access-limiting ban to prevent access to purchased games?  Why is their game system looking up the forum ban flag?

What I'm guessing is that when you log in to the forum or log in to the game it will check your account for access and if they banned you from the forum it would cause a conflict when you tried to log in to the game with the same account.

But then that still doesn't make sense to me either. Which is why I don't believe it was a bug or glitch.

I guess the account is just that - account. To ban them from forums, they probably set a disable flag on the account. Oh, guess what? It works for games as well!

With all due respect sir, but if EA got this big was because they know a thing or two about PR and marketing. I can't really imagine you or anyone else here giving EA PR or marketing lessons.

too lazy to look up right name of logical fallacy

Thing is, no one outside of a comparably small group of nerds even knows about "incidents" like this. I'm pretty sure the average person who buys EA games doesn't know or care about their reputation with a bunch of "hardcore" gamers.

That's not really a logical fallacy aristotle, that's the obvious truth. Unless you think the average forum goer is a better marketing and PR expert than any of the ones EA has ?


This and the fact that it's one of the biggest if not biggest corporation in gaming, so even if they donated half their profits to charity every year they would get a lot of backlash from the so called hardcore gamers for whatever reason. I'm pretty sure that if instead of EA it was introversion for example doing something like this, no one would really care.
When a big company everyone knows does something like this it's immediately blown out of proportion and everyone tries really hard to make said company to look like a bunch of pedos who were just caught in the act.
I'm also confident that, deep down, half of those would give their right arm to do John Riccitiello a rimjob.

Doesn't follow. There are several possible paths to business success.

hmmm... I've learned three things from reading this thread: Bioware sold out to EA, EA will ban gam accounts over forum bullshit until there's backlash, and JackieJay is a moron. How educational!

Success is subjective, but I think it's impossible for a company to get as big as EA is today without knowing what people want and how to market it. Coincidentally, that's what EA does best.
Anyway, they aren't stupid, when you have so much money it would be kind of dumb not to hire some good marketing and PR experts, I think.

This. As long as EA can successfully target the majority with their their PR and marketing campaigns, it doesn't need to spend most of its PR resources on the hardcore audience that will probably find something to get angry at no matter what EA does.

That said, getting banned from a game (especially a single-player game) due to poor conduct on a forum sounds a bit extreme to me.

EA has been in the market for so long, that trying to analyze their success is irrelevant.
At the begining they were indie little guys with a charismatic leader. Now they are more a ubisoft-like.

I thought that was plainly obvious from his postings in other threads. JackieJay is an absolute imbecile.

From my understanding, the reason why the guy on BioWare forums was banned is because "Report Post" leads to EA Community, not BioWare Community. So while getting banned from the forums for making a tasteless post wouldn't affect his game account, getting banned by a separate department (why the fuck Report Post leads to said department) that responded to a "Report Post" call will.

If anything, it seems like needlessly crossed wires which they have hopefully fixed. Still, fucking stupid of them.

Actually that's not entirely true. The company was founded after trip hawkins found an investor who injected huge amounts of money and they made millions in their first year, which was unusual at the time.
But even if they started small, with the huge investments they made in most of their games, if they didn't know they were going to sell they would be bankrupt long ago.
Marketing and even PR always played a huge role in their continuous success, for instance trip hawkins was director of product marketing at apple before he left and created EA.


Hum kind of uncalled for, if you disagree with me just say it and why. Calling me names doesn't really mean you're right and I'm wrong.

Who cares? I sure don't.

Then why call me an absolute imbecile out of the blue ?

Next lesson of the thread:
Blademasterbobo & Dragonmaw can't behave in the face of disagreement.

To me, it would seem that EA is skilled in using PR to manipulate the large masses. But they suffer from big-evil-company syndrome, making them unable to come across as friendly when you address them directly. Knowing how to do successful ad campaigns and knowing how to treat people nicely are two completely different things.

No, see, you're assuming I disagree with JackieJay. I'm not calling him an idiot because I disagree with him in this thread (I don't even know what it's about, really, other than haranguing on EA and BioWare). I'm calling him an idiot because his post history indicates that he is an idiot. I was not agreeing with BlademasterBobo on his other points, I was saying he should expect nonsense from JackieJay at this point.

That being said, going back and looking at JackieJay's post (after you and JackieJay put words in my mouth that were never remotely there), yeah, it's pretty dumb. "They are big and therefore know what they are doing!" is a massively idiotic and fallacious thing to say. It is "too big to fail" in a very literal sense; EA is a large company, therefore it does not do wrong. HURRRRRRRRRRR. Stupid.

(Basically I don't know what you guys are arguing about. BioWare and EA made a shit mistake and are dumb for it. Let's all laugh at how dumb they were. Ha!)

Yeah, arguing with someone who would say this is definitely going to have results. It's pointless arguing with people who say things that are that stupid, so I'll just call him an idiot and move on. (I could just ignore him, but that's no fun. The world must know that he's an idiot!)

No need to get all ad hominem, we got it, you're pissed because of something I said, probably the nicalis thread from like a year ago. Get over it, life moves on.


So EA got huge, and is still at the very top all these years by mere luck ?
If what I said was dumb, what you just said was simply retarded.
If using your brain is asking too much then at least look up EA's history. It's no coincidence their first employee and founder were marketing experts, not designers, programmers or artists like one could assume.
If you'd rather believe that marketing had nothing to do with their success then well, I don't even know what to say.


Sometimes by calling someone idiot you're making yourself looking like a idiot yourself, so perhaps it would have been a good idea to ignore me.
If you disagree just say it and why. "Moron" is not a good argument, sorry.

this isn't true: it's gotten big over the course of about 30 years. most of its size increase took place in the 80s and 90s, and it's just coasted on its wealth since then. it could very well be that the people who knew what they were doing have long since left the company (that's my impression of EA anyway).

once a company is of sufficient size and wealth, it can maintain its power just through that size and wealth, not through being better than its competitors at anything in particular. another well-known example of this is microsoft: IE is not better than firefox or google chrome (most web designers and experienced internet users consider it inferior) but it still has market dominance because of microsoft's size and wealth.

JackieJay

you are literally 401098172095810958 dums

Yeah, Microsoft is the standard for home computer sofware and is pretty much perpetuating itself through that. Even Steve Ballmer has admitted that Microsoft products are always a couple years "behind" in terms of innovation, which wouldn't be viable if they weren't in the position they're in.

Compare that to EA, particularly their sports games. It's the same concept.

http://www.destructoid.com/bioware-dragon-age-ii-does-not-use-securom-196325.phtml


@ securom controversy

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

The release control DRM doesn't appear to be similar to secuROM at all though; according to the description it will just check the date and then delete itself.  I don't see the objection to that.

But what if I want to take my game with me through a time portal? THEN WHAT?

I disagree. With the huge investments EA makes in most of their games all that wealth could be gone in no time if their games didn't sell.
The example you gave isn't very good since the success of IE has little to nothing to do with microsoft directly, more people use it because it comes with windows and not everyone is tech savy enough to know of firefox and download it. In addition a lot of people get used to it and don't feel the need to change once they learn about firefox.

Take the example of atari (the real one). At their peak they were one of the biggest corporations if not the biggest when it came to videogames and consoles. It took them one massive failure (ET) and in no time they were facing bankruptcy. Hell even the new atari (infogrames) could be an example.
They were for in the publishers top 5 for some time, but after a couple of commercial failures they were on the brink of bankruptcy too. Right now they aren't even in the top 30 and are still struggling. Midway could be another example among many others.

Atari's commercial failures were indicative of deeper problems, though; the old joke goes that if Atari's marketing department ran KFC, the chain'd be called "Warm Dead Bird."

And all this is irelevant, because the topic at hand is EA games being able to legally steal back their games if you make offhand remarks about them on a forum.  :-X

Which by the way, is bullshit.

Not really. If you think about it it does make sense. From what I read that system was put into place so that if one person goes to their forum and say their copy is pirated or share pirate copies of their games they can deactivate it. This system was put into place just in case, from what I read it was never used before. Of course, it's easier to claim that EA are a bunch of nazis who use that system to punish whoever goes to their forums and say something bad about them but if you think about it for a second it's just plain ridiculous.

They aren't stupid, they know if they did that the hate trolls would be all over them and the press would pick up the stories which would generate a lot of backlash.

It's easier to think that it was the evil CEO of evil EA who pressed the "ban" button and locked the game of the martyr who went to their forums say shit about them.
EA has employees who take care of that. I don't think they would get that annoyed if someone criticized the company they work for, mostly because they are used to it and also because I don't think they feel all that emotionally connected to EA so as to do something as drastic as lock the dude's game.

That said I do believe it was a mistake. The reason for that could be miscommunication, someone with a twisted sense of humor, lack of sleep whatever. There are a million reasons, half of which no one will never think of because we don't know exactly how that system works.

if kotick steps on ant theres outrage
when gaben eats a babby we dont talk about it
cos he will eat u too

Haha, way to be contrarion.

Awesome.  :lol:

This is probably the dumbest thing you've ever said. How would EA attempt to deactivate (killswitch) a pirated game when pirated games naturally have that shit removed? They can't. "From what you read" is full of shit and whoever wrote it is dumb and you are dumb for believing them. Or maybe nobody wrote it and you are just pretending somebody did to absolve yourself of the blame.

You actually sort of touch on what actually happened in your last paragraph. It was a case of crossed wires. For whatever reason, BioWare's "report post" button does not lead to the forum moderation staff, but the account moderation staff. They then promptly banned him for unbecoming conduct (which is stupid anyway, since "have you sold your souls to the EA devil" is not even remotely that bad). It was stupid of EA and BioWare.

Jeez, you really need to chill out, you're talking to me like I raped your little sister or something.

From the terms of service:
“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.“

As far as I know a crack removes the copy protection but using a cracked game doesn't stop you from creating your EA account and accessing it ingame and therefore doesn't stop EA from locking your game, cracked or not.
"illegal use of your account" includes using your account while running a pirated copy. Since many users use the same crack, by locking the game once they prevent many users at once from playing said game using that crack.

Also, just because you post links to pirated games doesn't necessarily mean you don't have the original.




Do you really think "have you sold your souls to the EA devil" was the worst thing someone said in the bioware forums ?
They get constantly bombed by trolls, but nothing ever happened to those. Why did such a innocent remark get such a punishment ?
Believe in whatever conspiracy theories you want, I don't buy it, it just doesn't make any sense.

y yall mad tho?

No seriously guys, I don't get the outrage. What happened is that someone couldn't play Dragon Age 2 for a day. Yes it was dumb to ban him and I'm not defending EA, but there's really no need to inflate this into some sort of "scandal". I wasn't EA being an Evil Greedy Corporation That Hates Its Customers™, it was a moderator being an idiot.
:shrug2:

Uh oh.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/g3td7/dragon_age_2_conspiracy_highest_rated_metacritic/

Giving forum-moderators the power to ban people from playing games they have bought? That is definitely EA being an Evil Greedy Corporation That Hates Its Customers™

Dragonmaw, seriously cut it out. The Internet is full of people being idiots and right now you are being one of them.

I wasn't trying to stir outrage by posting this thread or pretending like this little fuck up is a huge deal (it is and it isn't at the same time). But people should be more aware of what companies do to their customers. This dreadful fact about EA's forum and many others in this thread convinced me that Dragon Age 2 won't be worth my time, saving me 60 dollars.

But ya people shouldn't get mad, get even. Spend your money elsewhere  :)

This.

I think it's important not to downplay what happened here - an entertainment corporation took money from a customer, and then banned that customer from playing it because they dared to criticise the corporation (and didn't even have the courtesy to offer the customer a refund for their troubles). Bull. Shit. If I buy a game, I own it, and I get to play it when and how I want. You want to monkey with the terms and conditions, claim that I'm just licensing the software? Fine - I'll give you like $5 to "rent" your game, but I won't pay $60.

I think the issue is worth getting angry over, but bottling pent-up anger is unhealthy. Best thing to do is not buy the game, and go spend the money on something which will bring joy into your life and which you want to support.

All this drama because a moderator fucked up ?

Like I said EA's terms of service have a logical reasoning behind them. The fact that people actually believe EA will lock your game for saying something bad about them shows how ridiculous this whole anti-EA attitude has gotten.

It wasn't the sole fault of the moderator. Yes he banned someone but it was EA who explicitly gave him the power to be able to ban someone from the forum and from their account so he could no longer play games. their terms of service are bullshit and only have a logical reasoning if you are a corporate robot.

unless you believe EA when they say it was unintentional behaviour, I really don't give a fuck either way actually. already tired of responding to your stupid ass.

go suck EA's cock elsewhere, you are boring the fuck out of me.

Yeah I do believe it was unintentional behavior. People said shit about them in their forums before and after this debacle, this was the only case someone got his game locked and it's not like what he said was that offensive.
One day later the issue was corrected and they explained it was a mistake/system error/whatever.

What is there to discuss anyway?
If their terms of service bother you so much just stay away from their forums.  
If you really believe they locked the dude's game intentionally because he labeled EA as devils what difference does it really make to you ? Are you thinking about doing the same ?

Also, sorry for saying my opinion and not jumping on the EA hate bandwagon ?

paul: I'm not sure what point you are trying to make but this has never been about how EA treats its customers.
I'd feel worse if I had bought a bad and/or broken game than if I had bought a good game and later learnt that the company can lock my game if I go to their forums and say shit/share warez/criticize obama/whatever, simply because I don't intend to.

Continually calling you an imbecile is not even remotely on that level. You've got some serious issues with inflationary thinking.

(Maybe you like inflation porn?)


I can't believe you are seriously posting this. Really, are you that idiotic? Do you have no concept of what these cracks do? They completely disconnect the game from the EA network, as said EA network is part of the copy protection scheme for their games that use it.

So yes, using a crack does stop you from linking a game to your EA account because it never shows up on your account in the first place. You need a valid key to link EA games to an EA community account, assuming said game uses it (not all EA games do). So you are wrong. So very, very, VERY wrong.

Basically, you were wrong from the beginning, stop being a dumdum.


Did you quote the wrong post? I never said it was the worst thing (in fact, I said the opposite; see bolded statement in my quote). You seem to be addressing a post that was not actually made.

Yeah I do believe it was unintentional behavior. People said shit about them in their forums before and after this debacle, this was the only case someone got his game locked and it's not like what he said was that offensive.
One day later the issue was corrected and they explained it was a mistake/system error/whatever.

What is there to discuss anyway?
If their terms of service bother you so much just stay away from their forums. 
If you really believe they locked the dude's game intentionally because he labeled EA as devils what difference does it really make to you ? Are you thinking about doing the same ?


Opinions can be factually incorrect, btw.

Fuck yes


Hum do you have any idea what a EA account is ?
It has absolutely nothing to do with copy protection. The EA account screen still show in cracked games, and you don't need a valid key for anything. If I'm not mistaken they associate your game with your account when you login in game with your credentials.


Nope, I was addressing your post. I wasn't addressing the bold part (which I think everyone agrees with), my point was that since what he said wasn't that serious why did other users who said much more offensive stuff got away without getting their games locked ?

You are mistaken.


Nope, I was addressing your post. I wasn't addressing the bold part (which I think everyone agrees with), my point was that since what he said wasn't that serious why didn't other users who said much more offensive stuff got away without getting their games locked ?
[/quote]

Probably because they were taken care of by a moderator before the report post function was used. Duh.

it was obviously just an accident (the game ban, not the forum ban)

and its not uncommon for company forums to have strict rules and ban on criticism against the company and its ip's. 100% guarantee to weed out trolls or prevent flamewar

either way
they got u to talk about dragon age 2 intentionally or not. ea marketing mission accomplished??

It may be that the specific incident was caused by a human error. But the fact that it could happen at all clearly shows that there is something structurally wrong with EA's system. Them having the ability to ban you from games you have bought is just wrong.

People who argue against piracy tend to compare software with physical products. Which is a completely inane comparison, obviously. But if you believe in that analogy (which EA probably does), this would be like a car company having the ability to lock the doors of their cars remotely. So if someone said something nasty about the car company, they would have the ability to punish the disobedient customer by locking them out of their car.

Except in the analogy you seem to have forgotten OnStar, in which case they can also stop your car.  :P  (Not that they use it in that fashion, but they do have the ability)

Second, game bans are not actually something new in games, but rather new in a single player game, as it was primiarily an MMO issue.  MMOs have been able to do full on bans, sometimes permanent, for a product you purchased, effectively turning that key to junk.  Although it was ussually an uncommon and extreme, and I honestly hope that moderator got a heavy review for banning someone for such a comment.

Third, it wasn't a game ban.  It was a ban on game registration.  He could still play single player games, he just couldn't sign into the registration stage.  Honestly I see a ban on forums being a ban linked to a registration page as an oversight rather than an intentional lock out.  What kind of punishment is "You can still play our games, but no more purchasing"? 

Please stop calling it a game ban, as it confuses the issue.  It was an issue where his registration was disabled (probably used the authentication as the forums for reuse).  Had he registered his game before(or been banned a day later), there wouldn't have been anyone who noticed the issue, because he wouldn't have tried the registration portal during a ban. 

Considering that when it was first brought to a Bioware employee's attention, he said (paraphrase, not direct quote) "Yes. That's how it's supposed to work. Consider that an incentive." it's not so 'obviously' just an accident.

As I understand the EA ban:

• You can't register new games (and therefore not play them)
• You can't reinstall games
• DLC is disabled
• Saves using DLC will not work (you have to start a new game)
• No multiplayer for any game (even when you haven't misbehaved in-game)

That's quite a bit more than a ban on game registration.

yea but in a single player game (dragon age 2) thats the only one relevant - not being able to register

acutaly forget my respons lets just keep tal k about faceless coproroations!!!!1 yeah1! new gam journalism!!!1 rock on

more evidence that this was known for a long time and was intentional:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/15/biowhere-ea-working-on-fixing-game-bans


and you are seriously saying that this was not intentional?

“As noted last week, we have identified an error in our system which can suspend a user’s entire account when our terms of use policy has been violated. We are working to fix this and expect to have the issue resolved by the end of this week. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience – it is not our policy to prevent customers from playing a single-player game. Any registered player who feels they have been banned inappropriately is urged to contact EA Customer Service.”

the accident is that they didnt think about it affecting single player games and theyll be fixing it. way more believable than... whatever im sucking ea's dick apparently

as for the "game journalist"'s opinion: lol

No, four of the five items apply to Dragon Age 2.

You can't register games and therefore not install it or reinstall it (point 1 & 2). You can't use DLC (downloadable content) in single player (point 3). As you can't use DLC, you can't load your saved games and have to start the game over (point 4).

But the most outrageous thing is that you can't play multiplayer because you said something "bad" on the forums, which are completely separate from the actual games.

Yeah that's pretty dumb.

It's 'new game journalism' to read a thread on the Bioware forum with an official statement by a Bioware employee on it and to suspect that this is, in fact, Bioware's position? What was the old journalism, divination by entrails?

Or is your argument that the employee in question is an idiot who talks out of his ass in an official capacity? We can argue that if you want, I've got my own bones to pick with him over other things. :)

Per the Rock Paper Shotgun post, this has been happening for over a year now, to multiple people:


The only difference between his case and Arno's is that Arno got publicity.