Questions Still Swirl Around EA's Origin Bans

[Versuvius]

Or. Give Origin the old "Piss-off" and buy physical copies of EA games. and, of course, those gamers w/o access to a local game store can always order a copy over the internet.



captcha: lpsedata cording

Origin is required to play BF3 on PC, there's no way around it without pirating.

OT: Apparently the folks at Origin haven't ventured around Steam's forums recently. A pit of hate and whining, but they are separate from the actual games, as they should be. It's not like messages are popping up in the middle of Skyrim how your friend Steve things MP4s are overpowered in Red Orchestra.

And this is precisely what they're encouraging with these douche systems. How many times did spore get downloaded due to EA's DRM on that, and it wasn't even a good game.

Spore is the most heavily pirated game in existance as i recall due to the 3-install limit. Much of the pirating was done on principle to show EA that this bullshit is intolerable. It was a mass protest gamers apparently have lost the will to do. Look at that joke of a modern warfare boycott. If people were That unhappy with it, protest. Don't buy it or make do with a cracked single player version. Now obviously i don't condone piracy for the sake of a freebie. But i do condone forms of non violent protest; which this falls under. Now to wait for a suspsnesion due being on probation and talking about piracy in a non negative way. Oh well.

 

[weirdee]

All this means is that you should stay off the message boards of places where they can actually affect your ingame access, largely because they're usually too sensitive to what you might be posting. Hell, sometimes just being NEAR a violation is enough to set them off.

 

[Exocet]

Wait,we can get locked out of the games we bought,because someone pissed in a forum moderator's coffee somewhere,and he banhammered you unjustly?

Fortunately,I live in Europe so signing the EULA doesn't mean I sold every single one of my rights and my soul away.If this shit were to happen to me,they would be in for a hell of a surprise.

 

[weirdee]

Isn't what EA doing illegial? Seriously, we need a lawyer up in here.

If it says in their terms of service something like "your games are at our discretion, *****" it's kind of hard to make a case unless you can attack the language somehow.

 

[kebab4you]

Don't buy games from EA. They hate you and will screw you at every opportunity.

I feel old. I remember when EA was a quality publisher that put out nothing but quality products. What the damn happened?

You know 2k! Even if no computer went apeshit EA sure did(Okey, it was a bit later then this, but still).

Can't wait for that day a user get banned for being impolite to an EA employ they meet on the street.

 

[Nurb]

What's that, EA? You say you didn't have enough reasons for people to pirate your games already?

Oh and bioware did sell it's soul to the EA devil. Proof is with Dragon Age 2; the first game was in development before they let themselves be bought out, but EA had enough time to place in-game advertizing for day-one DLC, and with DA2 they made bioware turn it into a "streamlined, accessable" hack and slash to milk the IP as fast as possible.

It's a shame really, I supported bioware until they threw themselves into the mouth of the monster, now I just don't care.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I smell a huge amount of hypocrisy in this thread, also did anyone here give a thought that the people being banned were in fact "cheaters" and we all know how we hate those and i think they deserve to have their game locked from them since cheaters never ever seem to learn given they will just go hack the game and play on another server to just "cheat" again.

And if i remember correctly there were a lot of people complimenting Origin around the time it came about and a lot of people here telling others to "give it a try" nd now look at where we are.

I knew from the very start that Origin was going to be a bad idea and now a lot of you notice this now?.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

It's quite fortunate timing that GOG is going to start selling newer games next year, because they are the only way I'm going to legitimately play ME3.

 

[TokenRupee]

Does anyone remember when buying a game meant ownership of that game? Where publishers couldn't take away your ability to play the game, where they couldn't dictate how many times you could install your game, where they didn't force you to be connected to their (short lived) server to play single player and where they didn't moan that you sold your property on to someone else? I hope this trend of games becoming a service by the publisher isn't here to stay but of course it is. Publishers wont give up this level of control, especially when consumers seem happy to accept it.

Quoted for truth. Now watch me use this as a jumping-off point for a ridiculous rant:

Y'see all you Conservative gamers out there? This is why corporations need MORE regulation. We don't need a "free" market, we need a chained up market where the CEO gets whipped and stepped on so he's made to behave like a good little boy. Corporations will always try to work around the system to cut corners, or install bad practices and policies that screw the customer base even if the company is making a perfectly decent profit before those changes are made. Therefore, every time that happens, we need to make a new law that forces them to undo those changes if the changes can't be reasonably defended. Actually, I'm of the belief that we should pass one blanket law giving the government unlimited power to veto any private business decision that the government deems "unfair" or "bad practice", at their discretion. This may sound like an infringement of people's rights, but corporations aren't people and anybody who tells you otherwise is a frickin' liar, and probably out to get you.

I assume CEOs like Gabe Newell and Tim Schafer will be excluded?

OT: Yet more ammunition for my reasoning of never, ever, ever installing Origin. EA can just jump off a bridge for all I care.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

good god I thought the mods on 4chan where bad "you are banned for liking naruto lol". Well you gotta love companies that have full control of DRM then smack your face saying NO you can no play it after you buy their product for voicing your opinion. Video below is not related in any way just there for the lul

 

[Username Redacted]

Goddamn this makes me wish Mass Effect 3 wasn't on Origin. I guess it doesn't really matter what we think, EA and Origin smashed sales records with BF3, so where is there incentive to change their ways?

I'm in the same boat. ME3 will be the last EA published title I ever buy. Which is really shame because Bioware is a really good developer. It's just that they work for the gaming equivalent of Satan's asshole. I am however thankful that I have a lot of techie friends as I will be doing everything in my power to kneecap Origins when it forces its way onto my computer.

 

[JET1971]

So EA customer service is either grossly inept or deliberately vindictive.

Not surprised the executives want things dealt with quietly.

The first option. I run an NFS community and read frequent rant threads from users trying to get stuff done through EA Support and in short its a frickin nightmare. To test the complaints out, I raised a support ticket regarding playing NFS Carbon on Windows 7 (It had worked previously but when I went to reinstall it awhile back it wouldn't load).

I gave the support team my full system specs, every resolution I had tried so far including the various ones I found on the EA KB and forum suppor threads, tried reinstalling it and everything. The response I got was, "Sorry to hear you're having these problems..." then went on to list the first three things I had already said I tried. After a few back and forths with the support (with their time to respond getting longer and longer) they eventually asked me to try the same stuff they had already asked in the first email! The flow chart they follow had presumably looped around.

Now, back to the case of the accounts getting banned completely.

The following is theory and has not been confirmed by EA staff but instead based on facts Ive seen and from info gained. When you sign up to EA, it creates an account called EA.Global on their systems. Then every game that you register after that generates a new alt for that game so EA.NFSTheRun, EA.TheSims3 etc. When you first sign up to the forums it creates a forum alt too. You can check this by logging into the EA forums and going to options then checking the "Personas" area.

You can change your persona in the forums and actually use the alt for different sections with different customisations. For example, you may have your NFS alts set up with a suitably car based avatar. The problem Im willing to bet with the people who've been banned from the forum and the game however is that they've set their EA.Global persona as their active profile.
This means that when they then ***** at a forum mod (who are not official EA employees most of the time), the forum mod swings the ban hammer and ends up banning the whole tree of accounts.

According to a moderator friend at EA thats one way a forum ban can net you a global account ban, and why i use my BF heroes persona at EA. didnt like the game, it was free so no worries if they ban the persona. but then again having a moderator friend helps if they did ban as all i need to do is send her a message stating they did and the ban is lifted. but for everyone else simply contact customer service explain the ban and they can look at the offending post to see if it was legitimate. some bans are the persona only but others that were more of a severe violation such as posting links to cheat sites can net a global ban, but that is always done by a comunity manager.


Allot of people here are thinking this is some new policy for EA... Its not new! they have been doing it for years. and I side with the moderators and comunity managers on this issue. I would need to see the offending post before ever taking the word of someone that recieved a ban since I have seen way too many trolls deserve a global ban then the next day come back with a new account and claim they did not deserve it. and many of those are assholes not only in the forums but ingame too so having them lose the ability to play online is good for everyone.

 

[jFr[e]ak93]

Right when I think EA has hit the apex of their stupidity with this service, I get proven wrong.

I don't get why they can't just kiss and make up with Valve. Please EA, please!

 

[Adultism]

Does anyone remember when buying a game meant ownership of that game? Where publishers couldn't take away your ability to play the game, where they couldn't dictate how many times you could install your game, where they didn't force you to be connected to their (short lived) server to play single player and where they didn't moan that you sold your property on to someone else? I hope this trend of games becoming a service by the publisher isn't here to stay but of course it is. Publishers wont give up this level of control, especially when consumers seem happy to accept it.

Ah yes, I remember those days.

For those who don't know, it was like this.

I went to the store. I bought the game. I installed the game. I played the game.

It was that simple. What's so different now?

I go to the store. I buy the game. I start up Steam. I input the CD code. Game connects to the internet to make sure I'm not a pirate even though I proved that when I bought the game. Game installs whatever service it needs to install(Steam, Origin, GFWL, ect.). Game updates. Start game (provided the servers are working). Get told to register the game. Finally get to the game menu. Play game.

Oh, and god help you if one of those things ends up not working.

I can top this. I have to go for awhile after this post though.

Buy game from gamestop + Guide that comes with a code.
Get home
Put CD in
Use CD code with steam
Installs core files
STEAM INSTALLS THE REST - 5 hours later.
Game is installed
Servers are to busy to activate the extra content that I got for pre ordering
Gotta wait 24 hours for the servers to be able to install my DLC
Finally install my DLC
Try to get my code from prima games
Prima tells me that they are out of codes and I must email their support team
Email
Wait 24 hours
Get new code
Get all my DLC installed.
Get all my extra content installed
Play game.

Yeah, I wasted like 3 days trying to get all the content that I pre ordered, however prima was really cool about it and gave me the code outright, despite how rude I was.

one part of your tale is at least due to your hardware, a 5 hour setup means either your hard drive is terrible, or your internet connection (or possible their bandwidth, but only on high profile weeks is their bandwidth really an isue.

I could post my specs, but I have already proven in other threads that I have a monster rig, and I only get 1MBPS on steam. I usually don't keep track of how long it takes, I just go to sleep when it starts installing, because it takes too long for me to even care.

 

[Spud of Doom]

When a company bans you from playing offline single-player retail games because you said "e-peen" then something is horribly, horribly wrong.

 

[Toeys]

CLEARLY Electronic Arts doesnt want our cash.

I reckon it was quite silent for a time, where Kotick was starting to rise on top of his pile of money, but lately EA has done ANYTHING in their power to stop us from wanting anything to do with them

Forcing on us a fanboy war with Medal of Honor vs COD
Forcing on us a fanboy war with Battlefield 3 vs COD
Using god damn gangster rap to promote wargames
Forcing us to use Origin, instead of letting us choose
Screening reviewers before sending out early copies
Scaring a whole army of mass effect fans with plans of making ME3 more accessible(generally a good idea, but come on... what the fuck is so complicated with ME2 as a rpg...)
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And now this...