I would first like to say that Bethesda has always been incredibly good to it's paying customers in the past. I think that as Beth fans, we've been INCREDIBLY fortunate that gamesas and it's publishers don't indulge in this nonsense. I can't tell you how many people I know, myself included, that will just go out and buy another copy of a Bethesda game when we want to reinstall and we can't find the disc. People used to have AOL CDs lying around in weird places they'd forget about; we have old copies of TES games we couldn't find until we'd caved and bought new ones.

In stark contrast, it seems EA sets a new standard for inconveniencing the consumer every step of the reinstall/game start process. Not only has it unsuccessfully deterred the pirates they've laid these traps out for, but they seem perfectly fine with screwing over people like http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/9813/1299810943239.jpg [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6459941/1]. Game developers and publishers shouldn't be allowed to get away with this kind of thing, especially when PC games are so difficult [read: nearly impossible] to return. If he bought this game digitally or from the vast majority of retailers, he just got completely screwed out of the money he paid for this game. Bioware and EA have the right to ban people from their forums, but to enforce the EULA in such a twisted way is completely beyond redemption.

I don't know about you guys, but if this stuff doesn't stop I certainly don't plan on buying any more games published by EA.

Awesome.... Always find it very convenient to be forced to register at a website just to play a game that I will never really visit again.

And companies wonder why people don't buy games anymore. If you are treated like a criminal, people start to act like criminals.

I didn't know EA could do this, but there is a reason why I don't get thier games. I don't buy games with the Ubisoft as well. I don't like thier DRM. So far, I have not missed playing any of thier games they put out.

His account got suspended for 72 hours... How does that translate to "completely screwed out of the money he paid for the game"?
When his ban ends he should be fine.

Not that I agree with this as a procedure, but it seems more an argument for not using Biowares forums than anything else.

I'm already ahead of you on the not buying anything with an EA stamp on it. As if buying their game wasn't enough, I need to pay to play mutli-player now? Not that one guy not buying their games is going to do anything, but I refuse to feed their machine with my money. Hopefully other people'll do the same, and show them that we don't appreciate it.

There's a simple way to ensure companies don't "get away" with this kind of stuff- do your homework on games before buying them, and if you find that the DRM on the game, or the history of how a publisher or developer treats their customer gives you pause about whether the game is worth the money, then don't buy it. If enough people do so then companies will feel the results, and even if not enough people do so for companies to take notice you've still protected yourself from getting burned by this kind of thing.

What if he had been permanently banned? If there even exists the potential for there to be someone that paid money for a game and not be allowed to play it for a reason as twisted as that, it's too much, and it is absolutely ridiculous that he can't play his game immediately when he wants. He should be allowed to get his money back provided he return the game disc and uninstall (not that he could play without the disc without further violating the eula anyway); I certainly would have lost interest after all of this if I were him and the game certainly is worthless to him presently.

In the end it's the hard working developers that get punished the most. Even if they make a great game, the publisher makes dumb decisions like DRM and stuff that makes people not buy it on principle.

I do believe it's unwise to go this far with DRM, but they have every right to do it as much as they want.

Are you the Knots?

Anyway, yeah, saw this earlier on /v/. I really don't care if it was only for 72 hours. No one should take away your right to play a single player game that you bought. And what's worse is that some people defend this stuff.

Okay, wow. I usually am a fan of BW but this is pretty pathetic. I read this guys story, and just because his EA account is banned he cant play his games? Thats the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I swear BW, you need to straighten up. Don't turn into Activision, for the love of god don't.

Edit: Well, I guess its really EA's fault. Never been a huge fan of EA besides The Sims. Still, BW has to take some of the blame.

The individual devs doing the hard work get paid regardless of whether the game sells well or not (I'd expect very few are granted any kind of significant equity in their companies). Worst case scenario they have to go looking for their next job a few years earlier than they'd otherwise have to, provided they're not already so burnt out that they never want to be involved with the game industry again. And the people leading the dev shops are the ones with the choice in which publisher to partner with and what kind of deal they're willing to strike, so they don't get much sympathy from me.

I don't think so. Any court that would uphold practices like this is fundamentally wrong and make no mistake; the validity of EULAs like the one that allows EA to do this sort of thing is shaky at best.

If someone purchases content, they should have a right to install and play it at their leisure with absolutely no regard to current forum bans of all things. EA/Bioware has every right to ban someone from their forums. I would not object to them barring specific people from purchasing their software, either. But barring someone who has already bought their software from playing it when he wants is insidious and downright evil.

Nothing short of text ON THE BOX that reads "NON-SUSPENDED EA ACCOUNT REQUIRED TO PLAY" would make this practice OK.

I am !Knots.0HnU and a moderator over at EDF, yes. I am that Knots.

"REQUIRED TO PLAY THE EXTRA DOWNLOAD CONTENT", in this case.

I always complain when community and purchase accounts are mixed this way, and I always will. That's a big, big NO for digital rights. Hope that the FTC might put a stop on that, as they did with the very rigid Spore DRM a few years back. But who knows what they will think of next, since this is what they came up with after it happened.

Are you prepared to put in the time and money necessary to take a huge company like EA to court? Is the person who had this happen to them prepared to do so? Until someone actually does take them to court and win then as far as EA is concerned they do have the right to do it (as far as the corporate world is concerned if you can do something without being punished for it then you have the right to do it). Lousy situation, but that's pretty much the reality of it.

A potential way to fight back is to simply return the game (could be easier or harder depending on your country and whether you bought a physical copy or a digital copy), and then if the return is denied dispute the charge with your credit card company. However, this could cause the likes of EA to retaliate by pulling access to any and all games you bought from them that require activation (despite this kind of retaliation being prohibited by most credit card merchant agreements), so you'd need to take that into consideration.

Ultimately the best course of action is still to do your homework ahead of time so you don't get put into such a situation to begin with, because once you're in such a situation there aren't all that many good ways out of it.

Nobody's forcing them to buy EA products. They have every right to make an unplayable game; look at ET. It's a terrible market strategy, but ideally it'll dig its own grave. Caveat emptor.

I suspect there is another side to this story. What made them ban him? Just how bad was he trolling? It can get pretty nasty over there, if he brought this upon himself he can go svck on a lemon. I'll remain non-committal to choosing a side right now. The whole ordeal is a little suspicious.

No, but I have the time and energy to raise awareness about it so that other people are compelled to do their homework and/or boycott EA games.


Companies have every right to make terrible games and advertise them as "good" because terms like "terrible" and "good" are subjective. They should not have the right to sell games and then revoke access to that game after they've sold it UNLESS that person has abused the game itself somehow. For a single player game like Dragon Age 2, this should never be an issue. Certainly, just because someone has said something they shouldn't have on the company's forum, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to play the games they paid for.

Completely irrelevant. He could be an obnoxious jerk, that doesn't mean EA has a right to revoke access to a game he payed for. The only thing that truly gives them a right to do that is if he abuses the game itself, just like they have the right to ban him from their forums if he abuses their forums.

Woo's post at the end makes it clear there is nothing more to this. Anyone who gets banned from the forum will not have access to their EA games for the duration of the ban. This guy wasn't reverse engineering the game or sharing his copy illegally over the internet or something, both things that would constitute abuse of the game itself.

Technically the entire EULA needs to be printed on the box for it to even be valid. As it is the customer doesn't know what they have to agree to prior to purchasing the software.

Indeed! This fact has been exploited by the opposed in dozens of cases where the validity of EULAs has been called into question.

His ban on the forum didn't affect him. Holy [censored]. It was people complaining about him using the report feature which uses a separate situation. Please read and understand.

Nobody is forcing them to pay for it either. If they have every right to make the game unplayable, then the person has every right to make the game playable for him. Again, treat someone like a criminal they will become a criminal eventually.

I do not advocate piracy, but why should a legitamate purchaser have to go through all this trouble? It's one thing to be banned but with no option to re-peal thier decission if it was done in error, that is not fair at all.

Why he was banned is still completely irrelevant. Unless he was banned for abusing Dragon Age 2, he should be allowed to play Dragon Age 2. Examples of abusing his copy of the game: reverse engineering, sharing his copy of the game illegally.

I have no idea what warranted apparently a large group of users unanimously rising up and getting this guy banned. It probably wasn't pretty and he shouldn't have been doing that. EA has been blocking and deleting comments about DA2 this entire time. Why start banning people just to spite them now? It doesn't make any sense. There's no way to tell who's being truthful or not.

I was thinking of eventually getting DA:O now that I stay up all nite while the kids sleep. EA just lost a sale from me now. I will not support the way the company runs thier buisness.