EA threatens paying customers of Red Alert 3, Spore, and other games

This is from a recent article on Kotaku and my own personal experience in the Spore forums. Visit this link for the article:

http://kotaku.com/5070957/backtalk-in-eas-forums-get-banned-from-your-games

http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=449687&tstart=0&start=0 (slightly over half way down the page)

According to EA community managers, EA has the ability to revoke your ability to play one of their games based on what you say in their forums. Looking to vent your frustrations about a bug? Trying to get support for a product defect but getting the run-around via canned responses from Support? Disappointed with the dumbing down of a franchise? Upset that a parts pack or DLC is being released almost immediately after the game came out? Want to give EA a piece of your mind? Do so and you might just find they retalliate against you, the paying customer, by revoking your ability to play not just one game but ALL the EA games linked to your account!

In other words, not only are you treated as a thief by oppressive DRM such as Securom, but now you're getting into a bait car with every EA game purchase. A bait car is also known as a dummy car that auto thieves steal, drive off in, and the cops come up and remotely turn it off and lock them in so they can't escape. EA games customers are now being treated the same as those committing real grand theft auto and not the video game version of it. You buy the game and you're at EA's mercy because they could shut it down at any time on top of being suspected of piracy.

This sets a new low for the EA and the video game industry. Here's a quote from an EA community manager:

For anyone following EA's new single-account system, you may remember access to Spore was reported to be revoked if you were banned from the forums. While EA and Maxis quickly denied and booted the moderator who made such a claim and repeatedly deny that this is possible with Spore to this day, the functionality for such a system does exist and is completely under EA's control. Who's to say that if you get upset at their support people or call in for another activation that they won't disable all of your EA games? The Spore incidents are linked below, although the original forum post looks to have been deleted. A Maxis staff member insists that the Spore forum is not linked to the EA master account but there is no indication that making the connection is not something for the future or currently under implementation.

http://kotaku.com/5053781/spore-fans-threatened-with-banhammer-over-drm-talk

http://kotaku.com/5054372/ea-responds-to-spore-forum-banning-concerns

You have no recourse if they ban you. You cannot appeal. All decisions are final. You are completely at the mercy of EA and its staff. EA and its staff determines what is and is not acceptable and what does or does not violate policy. All serial keys linked to your account would be banned. Now instead of tolerating real raw feedback from their customers, they can simply hit a button and silence you forever, steal $50 to $80+ from you per game linked to your EA account, and prevent your use of something you lawfully purchased. There is no guarantee of a warning or a temporary action being taken against you. Do something they don't like and they can permanently ban you from the forums and from playing their products. Worse yet, EADM and Spore are known to leave registry information behind after uninstall that could inhibit a reinstallation.

So, RA3, Spore, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Battlefield, and Need for Speed fans...how do you feel about this?

 

that is rediculous, i would understand kicking u from the forums, but the games you own? Whats going with EA? I mean no matter what, they publish so many games, so either way, unless you wanna cut many games out of your library, were stuck with it. I cant believe the manager made a threat like that, there has to be some kind of law against this, especially since this wasnt the agreement at the time people purchased the game.

 

Look, its one thing for them to only give us 3-5 installs of a game, and have to go through all that B.S.

And now they can just up and take away your games whenever they feel like? I smell conspiricy.

 

If this does happen, contacting the company and requesting for either a refund or reinstatement. If that is denied, lawsuit, maybe go class action.

 

You know, Microsoft isnt even that abusive... EA is looking for trouble imo... I just hope they find it...

 

I sure hope these are just false rumors, if not, I am definitely boycotting ALL EA titles.

 

I mean we can all complain about this until we're blue in the face, but unless the market corrects, or some super lawyer looks for stuff like this in his free time, then I'm not sure what will happen. I think the only real thing is to not buy their games until they shape up. I know all of these games are now removed from my X-mas list.

 

They would legally have to reimburse your money in full

 

That's what I was hoping. This subject keeps coming up though. This is the second or third time I've read about EA linking your behavior and opinions to the products you've purchased. There's been no denial that it is possible to ban across different games. The only denial has come from the Spore forums not being integrated enough to allow bans there to carry over, but they are working on that site and EA ID integration may be on the way. Cheating is a pretty clear thing that should be banned. However, words and opinions are so subjective that it's dangerous territory ripe for abuse. I think we've all probably experienced an instance of abuse of power on a forum online somewhere. EA, in my opinion, tends to be abusive to its customers so this looks like a recipe for disaster to me.

According to their Terms of Service and the EULA, there is nothing in there that says they have to reimburse you. Hopefully this would instantly trigger a lawsuit if someone got banned. If they banned me I'd be calling up lawyers and the law school of the university I went to almost immediately after the ban.

 

What cause is this for? How does this help EA in any way?

Surely its going to **** a lot of people off, drastically increase piracy for all EA titles and probably kill themselves in the process.

 

Rofl @ EA.

 

I've hated EA since they started buying into Securom's DRM service and using it to an extreme limit.

If I EVER get locked out of one of my EA purchases and they refuse to solve the problem, I can gaurentee you I would take them to court. Even if I lost I wouldn't care since I'm sure if you got enough people to get into lawsuits with them they would be forced to reimburse them in some way or another. I'm sure the Eula never stated anywhere that they can lock you out of your own purchase whenever they feel like it. Atop that, I think it would be justified to sue for your money back on the basis that it doesn't state anywhere on the game's BOX that they can do this, and therefor you wouldn't know until AFTER you purchase, which is not acceptable.

 

And they wonder why piracy is rampant. Soooo paying customers get screwed *AGAIN*, but pirating dudes get to actually play the game.

 

Kind of like their latest NFS game with no demo...hmm no one is going to pirate that. Why pay $50 for a game you have never played, not everyone has a money tree.

 

thanks EA for giving me even more reasons to pirate your games

 

Piracy is only rampant because people don't want to pay money. That is all. Stop making excuses.

 

You are right, piracy is the act of choices. $50 for some better food or saving it to waste on a game that gives you a different kind of satisfaction. My point i that when these companies take these actions, people are less likely to support a company...

 

Yea , great. Then don't support the company. I have only bought two EA games in my entire life. NHL 97 and CnC3. I promptly sold CnC3 to a friend and ripped it apart on various online forums, hopefully stopping people from buying it. Like I said, if you don't like what they do don't buy from them...just don't make it an excuse to pirate the game.

 

I can garuantee you piracy and DRM are linked, have you not seen what happened to Spore?

Oh wait, it was just a total coinsidence

 

I hate EA for a couple of reasons, one of them is their attitude, another is their use of DRM, but piracy is no answer!

You have two options: either you boycott them because their games are trash (not only because of the DRM) or you buy them, use them, and accept their conditions.

 

No, they definately are linked. I was so close to not buying FC2 and just pirating it because of the install limit DRM, and after dealing with Crysis Warhead's DRM I didn't want to do this again, but thier website assured gamers will never have problems playing this game 10 years down in the future, and that if you just uninstall the game before reinstalling windows, you'll never run out of installs, and if you do, contact them to have them reset. The revoke system is why I ultimately decided to give it a go and buy it, but I definately won't buy any game that includes DRM by EA & securom ever again.

As much as I hate piracy, if mirror's edge has the same DRM as Spore/ Crysis warhead and other EA titles, I will most likely be pirating it. This will be a first for me since I never pirate games. I will still buy every other non EA game that I like just because I love the PC platform for it's open/uniqueness so I'll keep supporting great PC games. Just not this kind of bs from EA.

I do buy all of my games, but I won't stand for this from EA anymore, but then again I don't want it keeping me from playing the cool looking games like Mirror's edge. Piracy is the ONLY choice left when looking at EA.

 

I still say that piracy is not ok, even in this case, its not that you have no choice but to pirate the games. Play with something else, and let EA eat cake.

On a sidenote: don't mark me as some bigot fighting against any form of piracy, but I have seen the other side as project manager for a software company and yes piracy in this case is not right. If their is no other way, like in the case of abandonware (which EA hunts like no other company) piracy is an option.

 

I don't think I could put my own sentiments on paper any better than this on this issue. I'm sure we are not alone..

 

EA can and WILL find a way to screw up ANY game it deals with.

As it stands, EA was already "only if the game is godly" status...

I cannot say this makes me want to be their customer.


Imagine having to go through a complete cavity search every time you walked out of a retail store and being subject to that store sending the police out to your house to reclaim anything you bought from them at any time for any reason.

Would any of you want to go to that store ever again?

 

You know I think this is going to be a trend in the industry because I was suspicious about the Mcafee warning about spyware/maliciousware on the callofduty.com site when I went to register to get a key for cod5 multiplayer beta. I really think they do have my legit info now because upon registration I didn't enter my full last name and now when I go back to the site and look at my account/profile my full last name is noted. Also by coincidence the password they gave me is my daughters name. WTH?! And I still didn't get a frickin key!

 

Definitely not, this is an all time low for EA..

 

***? Thats not even funny, that would sure as hell freak me out, did you tell them her name, or did it just do some "research"?
Thats crossing the line, just a tad...

 

I don't know about privacy laws in your country (US?) but here its punishable!

 

He lied, clearly.

 

This is just ridiculous and so unfair. Not only we have to eat that DRM and securom crap we also get this? I don't what the hell is wrong with them, everyone should just boycott them into oblivion (for a lack of a better world... ops, word).

 

When I registered I waited for the email confirm and didn't get one so I went back and registered again that's when I noticed my full last name, I was shocked, but just kinda brushed it off. So the second time said they sent me an email confirm again I went to check nothing. So I went back to the site and cause I couldn't log in I hit the forgot password/user tab which sent an email with my daughters name. Now I was very suspicious, because I used to use her name as a password on some sites. I know they say your being watched with whatever you do on the net, but now companies and corporations are getting out of hand. I think they know people will just by pass the terms and conditions contract because it's just to dam long to read.

 

You may have some sort of Autofill on.

 

I'm pretty sure what I enterend was just my initial for my last name and I did this each time I registered looking intently at what I was about to submit.

Oh and now I just want to get my info of this callofduty site since I still didn't get a key!

 

They can not include this in their Terms and Conditions, because it would violate laws, for example if you live in an EU state EA is clearly violating EU privacy laws. I suppose the US has similar laws which forbid companies gathering information about you without notification.

 

Maybe so but what can I do? How can I investigate this? And even then can anything be done if you don't have money to fight this? America is turning totalitarian/police state because corrupt corporations are taking over.

 

You can't do much alone, but you can say I don't register on sites which do this. Don't download their stuff, don't buy their games.
After all the entertainment industry is living from us, the customers, its not the other way around.

Of course their will be many, who doesn't care and buy everything, so it would be naive to think that you can hurt them, but this way, they can not hurt you either.

 

Orrr... just don't play the game, period.

 

Let's not be too hasty -- I don't think even EA would be stupid enough to do something like this. Has anyone heard of this actually happening to somebody? It would almost certainly be illegal under consumer protection laws (no matter what the EULA and forum rules say) in several jurisdictions where EA sells its games. It sounds to me like an idle threat from a moderator who is having trouble maintaining control.

 

The huge problem is that EA is the chosen PUBLISHER of alot of great developers. My argument there was of a game made by DICE. Just like Crysis Warhead was developed by Crytek, but they chose EA for some reason to publish the title. Mabe it was because they took less of a commision than some others, I don't know.

Incase you don't know the job of the publisher, it's like this. The developer creates the game, then picks a publisher that looks appealing to them. The publisher puts the game through quality control tests, sends it to other facilities to make the instruction manuals, creates logos, branding, advertisements, does the work for ESRB and other contries rating boards, then has it sent off to a facility for the final disk duplication and packaging.

Part of EA's job as a publisher is to deal with copy protection, and they have decided to use Securom as the protection method.

There are many other publishers they could have chosen however.

To name a few,

Activision
EA
Ubisoft
THQ
Capcom
Microsoft Games studios
Take Two
Etc..

The most likely reason they chose EA is due to thier over the top advertisements that they are often known for. They also have a way of making games highly profitable, and are currently the #1 publisher in the US, probebly because of thier console published titles.

 

Actually that does clear things up a bit for me. But pirating the game still means that you're punishing both the developer and the publisher, not just the publisher.

BTW, I have no fixed opinion on the matter, I'm simply playing a bit of devil's advocate.

 

This is not the worst thing they have done, although it is close.


Remember the EA spouses scandal?

At least EA were sued for that one, and lost $30 million.

 

This is getting ridiculous, looks like I won't be buying any games with EA as the publisher anytime soon. A good thing since most of my recent purchases have been games with a lower profile and with smaller publishers who don't go to such lengths to squash paying customers.

 

Yes, several people going after the "bad baby" achievement in Spore got banned from the game for a week and had their creation removed (that justifies the achievement, but EA discontinued it because they were too lazy to apply it). They were banned from all EA forums using that EA ID. Since EA games going forward are going to be using the same shared EA ID instead of Gamespy ID's or game-specific ID's, now any ban or action taken against you on one location will carry over to all locations using that ID. If you get banned in Spore, you also get banned in RA3 according to EA staff. The opposite is also true. This is not an idle threat from a rouge moderator. This whole discussion was started by a staff member talking, with authorization, about the user account control placed on the EA ID's. I also think it's illegal and would immediately sue if I got banned. EA will likely hide behind the notion that their EULA and TOS is subject to change at any time for any reason without notice.

You have no ability to appeal. Going for support is also futile because your EA ID is already linked to the support pages. The decisions and justifications for a ban are not negotiable, give you no recourse, and do not compensate you for the $50+ you lost per game due to EA deciding to take it away from you. Thus why I used the bait "dummy" car analogy in the original post. This is a brand new idea for EA, probably designed to silence negative feedback and impose harsher DRM restrictions on pre-order and DLC content. The biggest problem is that a system with such overreaching control is ripe for abuse. Murphy's Law cannot be ignored.

EDIT: BTW, this whole debacle showed up originally on the Spore forums until they realized that their jforum software wouldn't integrate nicely with the EA ID system. Thus, that forum is separated and loosely connected. The moderator was telling the truth at that point, but didn't realize the limitations of the forum software.

BTW, EA owes me an amphibious APC still. I haven't forgotten.

There is this line of thinking out there that something is illegal only if a judge tells you it's illegal or you get caught. Comcast and Verizon know this all too well. There's no reason to suspect other companies don't involve themselves in such activities. I do find the story hard to believe, but it is remotely plausible in this day and age of rampant corporate abuse and excess.

 

DICE can't pick a different publisher because EA owns them.

 

I did not know this until now. So EA bought DICE in 2006?

Probebly why BF bad company sucked and was never on PC..

 

you guys are ridiculous, there is 5 pages here of people saying "im going to STEAL a game because EA is trying to protect their investment," then you say how much you hate what EA is doing. How about you look at it from EA's side for a change instead of complaining about how much you hate something you have not yet dealt with. You are basing all of your assumptions here on the few cases where EA maybe screwed up and locked someone out of their game by accident or without a good reason to (these cases may even be made up, you dont know for sure). Nobody documents how they had no problems with EA's protections, so you only see the ones who got screwed/deserved to get screwed.

You have two options:
1) buy the game and suck it up
2) stop complaining because if you were in charge of a large company like EA and millions of whatever you sell is being stolen and this is the only way you can try to stop that stealing, then im sure you would also do the same thing they are.

If you buy their game and behave while using it online, there should be no problems.

 

they can't legally do this.
Granted that nothign will change until a class action law suit happens...
They would have to give you $ for the game, or show a specific place where you acknoweleged that when you buy the game, that they can ud that
which im assumign is in the EULA...


BUT, if you get banned for complaining, a court will be lie "so ea... you banned this dude from $200 of games casue he sais 'this games sucks!!1!'"????

 

If DRMs actually stopped pirates, perhaps more people would be able to understand what would be a necessary sacrifice but the fact is they always get cracked. Can you think of any mainstream titles that have remained protected one month after release?

And people are also complaining because an employee of EA has voiced a threat (apparently) to revoke rights that have nothing to do with the transgression. If you're a dick on a forum, you lose the right to use that forum - you do NOT lose the right to use licenses that you've paid good money for.

Plus, introducing an acheivement for bad behaviour is tantamount to supporting it.

 

I know this will sound petty of me, but the temptation is irresistable.
EA appears determined to directly hurt their customers with this latest event, I can understand that DRM will be in their interest to some degree but this is dispicable, I want to hurt them!!!

 

Its no coincidence, all they did was email you your current password. Hit "forgot" again to test. Maybe your new password should be your own name.