Usually, taking a verbal swipe at a company on their official forums only nets the offender the swift justice of a ban hammer. But EA Bioware has taken the fight further than that by banning a complaining customer from playing the games he bought from the company.
EA Bioware’s forums have been flooded with unhappy gamers and trolls griping about their disappointment with the recently released Dragon Age II. Moderators and even writers for the company have fought against the constant hatred by making direct responses in forum post and banning accounts. But EA has gone a step further in the battle against the negativity.
Long time Bioware fan v_ware has played every game from the company since Knights Of The Old Republic, but now he can’t access any of the games he’s bought. What angered EA Bioware to take such an extreme action? In one of his posts, he questioned if EA had sold their souls to the devil. The company responded by banning the account holding all of his games including Dragon Age II Signature Edition and all of the content he bought along with it.
Now, he is frantically trying to find a way to bypass the ban, but EA Bioware isn’t budging.
This ban is a bit different from a common forum ban. It’s called a Community Ban, and affects the access of any video game under the EA banner according to their response to the offender. This is cited in their EA Community Terms and Services of #9 and #11.
These are the rules that users have to follow. By joining up and signing the Terms of Service agreement, something many people skim over and don’t read, you agree to follow whatever rules the company has laid out. The offending user doesn’t have much to combat EA Bioware with, since he did agree to this upon signing up, so a lawsuit is probably groundless and a waste of time. But still, the response is extreme for a line that isn’t even that insulting, unless he’s exposed the identify of a fiery hell demon working at EA Bioware.
Moral of the story: If you’ve got something negative to say about a company, don’t say it on their official forums.
Updated: The user has his games back, and it was a supposed 72 hour ban. Chris Priestly said, “EA strictly enforces the code of conduct at Social.BioWare.com. If a player violates the rules by using profanity, they will be temporarily banned. Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user’s entire account. Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA restored the user’s macro account and apologized for the inconvenience.”
But this is after the news hit here and other websites. Beyond that, EA Bioware still can ban you from playing your games should you speak out against them like this user did. The end result is still here, and it’s just as scary.
[Source: NeoGaf]
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