EA now issuing permanent Origin bans through content filter

[gmergurl]

The problem is, the TOS are very similar, and you brought them up. Valve reserves the right to do the same, so saying "this is why steam rules; read the TOS" is pretty ridiculous.

Okay, should I edit my first post to make it clearer? I did not say "Steam rules, read the ToS." I didn't even say "steam rules; read the ToS" I said "Steam rules, but that sucks that happened to you. However you should read the ToS to make sure you have a case."

Valve might reserve the right to do the same, but they don't. It's the technical equivalent to "walk silently but carry a big stick." They have the right/means to smack you, but they don't unless you need to, and based on the amount of Steam complaints I've seen (which is none btw, I mean they might be out there, haven't seen them myself).

Like I said, Steam and Origin (well maybe not Origin if it only deals in EA games which since I've never been interested in Origin no idea) but Steam probably needs that clause so they don't get sued over "aiding piracy" or something like that should one of their users abuse them and someone steal games/copies/etc. Are they ever going to ban you over forum issues even though they have the "right?" Highly depends on the severity of the situation but my money will be on "no" for most of the time in small cases. Has Steam ever had dodgey practices? Not that I'm aware of. Has Steam ever had a huge player outrage over policies? Again, not that I'm aware of. Now I'll admit that I'm a pc gamer newbie, only been on the scene for about a year or so now so I can easily not be aware of something. As a general practice I only buy from companies that I trust, since I no longer trust EA, I no longer purchase their products or services.

However, I stand by the fact that my "Steam rules" comment and my "read the ToS" comment were meant to be taken separately and one did not cause the other in any sort of way.

 

[jthwilliams]

The problem is, the TOS are very similar, and you brought them up. Valve reserves the right to do the same, so saying "this is why steam rules; read the TOS" is pretty ridiculous.

Okay, should I edit my first post to make it clearer? I did not say "Steam rules, read the ToS." I didn't even say "steam rules; read the ToS" I said "Steam rules, but that sucks that happened to you. However you should read the ToS to make sure you have a case."

Valve might reserve the right to do the same, but they don't. It's the technical equivalent to "walk silently but carry a big stick." They have the right/means to smack you, but they don't unless you need to based on the amount of Steam complaints I've seen (which is none btw, I mean they might be out there, haven't seen them myself).

Like I said, Steam and Origin (well maybe not Origin if it only deals in EA games which since I've never been interested in Origin no idea) but Steam probably needs that clause so they don't get sued over "aiding piracy" or something like that should one of their users abuse them and someone steal games/copies/etc. Are they ever going to ban you over forum issues even though they have the "right?" Highly depends on the severity of the situation but my money will be on "no" for most of the time in small cases. Has Steam ever had dodgey practices? Not that I'm aware of. Has Steam ever had a huge player outrage over policies? Again, not that I'm aware of. Now I'll admit that I'm a pc gamer newbie, only been on the scene for about a year or so now so I can easily not be aware of something. As a general practice I only buy from companies that I trust, since I no longer trust EA, I no longer purchase their products or services.

However, I stand by the fact that my "Steam rules" comment and my "read the ToS" comment were meant to be taken separately and one did not cause the other in any sort of way.

Actually the TOS may not matter. You can't waive your right to fraud protection. Also electronic signing of Terms and Conditions is open to debate.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Seriously, do you think EA cares if they lose 1 customer? That's what? $60 a year to them? It'll take about 100 thousand or more for people to stop buying, be able to tell EA why they aren't buying for any real changes to be made.

You do have a point there...

...BUT...

...the thing is that it's rapidly getting to be an old way of thinking. With mass communication as easy as it is today, that one person can fairly easily reach 100 thousand or more other people. Hell, this topic alone as of the time I'm writing this has 7343 views, and I don't think the person who started it had the specific intention of spreading the word far and wide. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that, MaximumTacos, but I imagine that if you had the intention to you could get this seen by a whole lot more people without too much difficulty.

If even a fraction of the people who see the story decide to stop supporting EA, that's still a reasonable hit to EA's business from just one person's experience. And that experience could potentially be spread even further by the people who read it. And that's just one person's experience, multiply it by the number of people EA is screwing over, and it adds up pretty quickly.

Now - whether or not people actually ACT on their claims to boycott EA Origin is a different story. Just saying that the potential actually does exist, and isn't that outlandish for this kind of bad publicity to not only get EA's attention, but also damage their profits.

 

[MaximumTacos]

Now at 7.5k views and climbing.. I still have roughly $50 in google adwords credit.

Should I start buying links to this thread for searches on BF3?

 

[Starke]

Now at 7.5k views and climbing.. I still have roughly $50 in google adwords credit.

Should I start buying links to this thread for searches on BF3?

That would be amusing, though potentially problematic.

 

[FlorianLang]

Well, after all this crap, EA has lost my business. I was gonna buy BF3 after getting my pay today, but I'll just wait for ARMA 3 instead.

Seriously, is anyone at EA not a profit-driven, gamer-hating maniac?

 

[Ragnarok185]

This is why I didn't get Battlefield 3. YOU SUCK ORIGIN! GO TO HELL!!!!!!.

 

[brainslurper]

wow...

couple things wrong here:
1) why are they banning you for something someone else said?
2) why are they giving a permanent ban for what looks like 2 swear words??
3) why are they permanently removing all access to games that you paid for because of said forum ban...

That's fucked up.



Never using origin.

4) Why is OP using origin?

 

[brainslurper]

and this is why im a console gamer...
OT:honestly that's total bullshit...but hey...it's EA they only want your money

Plenty of PC gamers like me simply avoid anything published by EA in the last couple of years.

 

[brainslurper]

and this is why im a console gamer...
OT:honestly that's total bullshit...but hey...it's EA they only want your money

Plenty of PC gamers like me simply avoid anything published by EA in the last couple of years.

Feh, I would, but I really want to see how the ME trilogy ends. I really hope SOMETHING gets sorted out by then...

And yeah, I honestly don't care how much the OP is stretching the truth - even if he did send a horrifically offensive post to the forums, EA SHOULD NOT DO THIS.

Grah.

The whole Liara thing made me give up on mass effect. And I swear if the new bioware game is a mercenaries game I am going to throw something heavy at someone.

 

[JET1971]

and this is why im a console gamer...
OT:honestly that's total bullshit...but hey...it's EA they only want your money

They can and will ban console players just as well and its worse for them. they ban the live account or the psn account access to EA so all EA games that require your account info to play will be banned and any future titles.

@OP

Check your PM, I hope that helps.

 

[DecoyBeacon]

and this is why im a console gamer...
OT:honestly that's total bullshit...but hey...it's EA they only want your money

Plenty of PC gamers like me simply avoid anything published by EA in the last couple of years.

Feh, I would, but I really want to see how the ME trilogy ends. I really hope SOMETHING gets sorted out by then...

And yeah, I honestly don't care how much the OP is stretching the truth - even if he did send a horrifically offensive post to the forums, EA SHOULD NOT DO THIS.

Grah.

The whole Liara thing made me give up on mass effect. And I swear if the new bioware game is a mercenaries game I am going to throw something heavy at someone.

Liara thing? Huh?

I haven't read anything on the ME3 story, but am already disappointed with the copy/pasted gameplay.

Without any spoilers pretty much everything you did to get to the end the end is the same no matter what (give or take a few outside elements), thats what I got from the plot leak, I dont think it'll change either, the fact theyre using ME2 gameplay which was cut to bulk it up has me concerned too. I think i'll be sitting it out.

People asking why others bother with Origin will probably find the single reason is BF3. Personally I like BF3, I do enjoy it, however I don't play it that much. Why not? Simple, battlelog and origin. Call me lazy but there are times when I just want to kick back and play, if it where BC2/BF2/etc i'd just fire the game up, pick a server and go. BF3 says no. I have to open my browser, log in to battle log, find a server, wait to join it, wait for origin to open (which for some reason takes its sweet time), then without fail Origin will prevent the game running properly so it'll crash it immediately (i'll detail why I believe its origin*). So I have to relaunch the game again, chances are my slot will be gone so i'll have to find a new game, so off I go, next time I launch the game theres a good chance i'll get in fine. If I quit that game to find a new one with a different map, etc, guess what happens first time I try to connect? BAM crash. I look at the battlelog forums to report this, infact I have reported it twice, it just gets buried under idiotic topics with people flaming each other and low and behold the only people getting banned are like the OP who is banned for something they didn't even say. Wow, just wow, I never want to post on an EA board again.

*What makes me think its origin is after each origin patch the crashing becomes more frequent, i've un/re-installed origin/bf3/etc but the crashing remains, there appears to be people suffering the same on the EA boards too, all worsening after origin updates.

Sadly EA is going to continue with this pathetic routine, they're very quickly shifting next to ubisoft in terms of my avoidance of publishers/companies. Ubisoft went all ban happy when you mentioned DRM back when they started with their perma-net or limited activation stuff, no idea how they are now, at least you didn't get banned from all your games with them.

Hope EA sorts this out and compensates you properly OP, not just "oh we're sorry here have an unban".

 

[MaximumTacos]

and this is why im a console gamer...
OT:honestly that's total bullshit...but hey...it's EA they only want your money

Plenty of PC gamers like me simply avoid anything published by EA in the last couple of years.

Feh, I would, but I really want to see how the ME trilogy ends. I really hope SOMETHING gets sorted out by then...

And yeah, I honestly don't care how much the OP is stretching the truth - even if he did send a horrifically offensive post to the forums, EA SHOULD NOT DO THIS.

Grah.

Honestly the only way I can think to stretch the truth on this would be for EA to have shown up in person and shot up my house WACO style.

Here's another guy who got the brunt of their automated filter:

http://imageshack.us/f/233/easupportwarning2facebo.jpg/

That's right. Violation for someone else's post.

 

[MaximumTacos]

Battlefield's community manager just posted a new video.

Everyone who has an issue with origin/ea should go use their comments to ask them why players like me and daish and "badass guy" and "e-peen guy" are being cut off from products we paid for, over forum posts, especially forum posts we didn't make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B2sXWsIMSvM#!

one does not call in anonymous. one becomes the anonymous within you.

 

[DecoyBeacon]

Personally i'd go to rockpapershotgun, they have prior experience with dealing with EA's "support"
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/ea-forum-bans-are-still-affecting-games/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/17/eas-unwieldy-banhammer-ea-responds/

Might want to drop them a line.

BTW i quickly checked your thread about IRNV, couldn't find that reply from the other person, seems a few posts had been "hidden by a battlelog administrator" though.

 

[MaximumTacos]

That's the thing, I remember every page of delicious tears from the IRNV thread and the few others that popped up at that time. I would remember quoting someone who dropped the NBC line, mostly because of how angry they sound and how lame it is as a set of cussin' words. I don't.

This leads me to strongly believe that it's a content violation based on my username in their post.

 

[ResonanceSD]

EA - Stupidly evil. With an evil cherry on top.

 

[The Lugz]

I'm really not looking forward to being forced to use Origin to play Mass Effect 3 or Star Wars: The Old Republic.

then don't, buy the boxed copys they do not sync with the dd server, just the game servers

( im not sure on mass effect, but i don't see why it should be different )


~edit~

ok, this origin thing is just moronic what we need is to rally enough support so we can get everyone on origin to either ticket ea about it, or deliberately get banned

because frankly ea has too big a chunk of the market of cool things under it's sticky grasp that people ( myself included ) would love to use the service if it wasn't a dirty piece of data thieving, mine ridden scum.

they simply cannot ban their entire user-base, nor can they ignore the fact that they are being stupid about forum policy in games where the in-game characters, chat and voice-over commonly have swearing the forum cannot? some consistency please ea.

also, just rewrite your eula and stop data mining people there's no point just have a survey and ask instead.

as for your in-game cheats, simply make an algorithm that calculates if there was any possible control input that could have resulted in killing x dude or capturing x objective
chess programs do this all day, it's really easy to code. it would stop 90% of cheating in one swoop.

lastly STOP reading active programs and probing desktops. that sheet is creepy.
you REALLY don't need to see that I'm batch re-encoding my holiday videos to x264
seriously, stop it.

 

[DecoyBeacon]

That's the thing, I remember every page of delicious tears from the IRNV thread and the few others that popped up at that time. I would remember quoting someone who dropped the NBC line, mostly because of how angry they sound and how lame it is as a set of cussin' words. I don't.

This leads me to strongly believe that it's a content violation based on my username in their post.

If theyre letting a bot coded by some muppet who should probably spend their time fixing the rest of the buggy stuff EA push out handle forum bans to the magnitude of perma's then its even worse. EA desperately needs to abandon this stupid and foolish policy of banning peoples game access for forum violations, they're probably doing it knowing they can hide behind their stupid TOS clause of "harr harr can't sue us".

 

[MaximumTacos]

I am strongly fucking considering take them to small claims court, it'll cost me $160 to file, they WILL need to fly a lawyer in to my area, which will cost them $$$$, just to try to sell the line to the judge that the EULA holds me to binding arbitration.

There would be no financial benefit to me, but I could cost them money for a while.

And that's assuming I don't get squirrely and cherrypick a county for taking them to court, like the RIAA does for abusing the DMCA. You can bend a lot of stuff by picking a judge who will flat out say "yes, this is under my jurisdiction, no, you are not immune."

The only drawback is filing paperwork like that does not have the immediate bang-lols-for-your-buck that forum justice has, and people might lose interest along the way.