Forum Ban Locks Player Out Of Dragon Age 2
One forum member commented about gamers selling their souls to the EA devil and promptly received the mighty ban-hammer, locking him out of the forum and his Dragon Age 2 game for 72 hours.
To our dear Tom's readers who just purchased the PC version of Dragon Age 2 this week, watch what you say on the BioWare and EA forums. Seriously, you'll regret it.
As one gamer has revealed over on the BioWare forums, a comment made in a post brought on the mighty ban-hammer for 72 hours. The problem is that the ban isn't just focused on his forum activities, it's also locked him out of the actual Dragon Age 2 Signature Edition bundle--which he purchased and installed on his rig--during the 72-hour duration.
According to the post, EA sent forum user "Vware" an email stating that his account was suspended for inappropriate content. Vware contacted EA via Live Chat to understand what exactly it was he did to earn the 72-hour ban. An EA representative quoted one of his forum comments, repeating his "have you sold your souls to the EA devil?" post. While the comment is most definitely hilarious, EA apparently thought otherwise.
"Now, those are the words I said, you can't argue with that," Vware admitted.
"I'm not going to try and sugar coat that, let me just say in my defense, I have always been a pretty reasonable person on this forum. So I agree that you guys suspended my account from the forums for 72 hours. What I don't agree with is that I can't activate my new DA2 game."
BioWare's Stanley Woo followed up to Vware's forum complaint by pointing to EA's online terms and conditions.
"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," Woo said. "Consider it an added incentive to follow the rules you say you're going to follow."
Woo seems to suggest that someone on the forum didn't like Vware's comment and pressed the REPORT POST button. Once evaluated and deemed in violation, EA has the right to lock customers out of their installed games and/or DLC according to the Terms and Conditions.
Section 11 of EA's Terms and Conditions, "Rules of Conduct," clearly states that forum users are in violation when they "harass, threaten, embarrass, or do anything else to another player that is unwanted, such as repeatedly sending unwanted messages or making personal attacks or statements about race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc."
So much for freedom of speech.
I was considering purchasing this game and think I now will not. I cant support a company that would take your money and then stop you for using there product because of something you said. If that were common practice Microsoft would have broken into my house and taken my XBOX360 for all the crap i said when i got my RROD
Clever girl....
I hope that the people rise up and work hard to keep this from happening. Unfortunately politics is funded by big business and not by the people and money always wins.
Another thing is that several gaming companies especially in the MMO niche set absurd and clearly abusive/unlegit contract clauses. Or perhaps it's time to teach Law to teenagers, I wonder...
I'll never buy one of their games again, I know that much. This just reiterates that.
Can a software company revoke your license to use the software after you've already purchased, now own, and installed that software? I can see preventing you from logging into an MMO which requires you have access to their servers. But a game that runs in a single player mode on your own PC? That's ridiculous and overreaching if you ask me.
Oh and so much for paying legitimately for a game and STILL getting banned from it just because they don't like your sarcastic comment. Are they going to start locking you out for off topic posts next?
What's interesting, is that with the vanilla install I have no issues. Once I downloaded and installed the "High Resolution Textures" update it always pops up and fails to read the DVD in my drive on the FIRST attempt. Every single time. If I hit retry it always works.
Doesn't happen on my wife's PC which does NOT have the High Res Texture update. And again, no problem until I installed the update. It's quite annoying, because the game opens and gets to the main menu before it pops up to tell me it couldn't read or validate the DVD.
I used to respect EA. No longer.