Well, i'm certainly not blind to the out in the open campaign for a certain platform to the detriment of all other platforms out there carried out by the pro establishmet subservient web 'media', but...
The BSN boards follow the same guidelines as the EA boards, meaning, a temp/perma forum ban cuts you off from your content, and even though there was a clear "in-you-face" justification for most of the bans that were handed down during the BSN Dark Ages upon the release of that notoriously shitty Bioware game (no, not Sonic Chronicles), when it comes to others that justification was hard to find or not there at all, and some of them were in fact reversed which just made the ban look that much more arbitary.
Considering the ammount of shit (and flatout abuse at times) the folks monitoring those kind of boards have to put up with (and the ammount of stupid little children around that will report anything and everything under the sun either because they're fucking braths or souless drones or both) it doesn't surprise me one bit that at times their judgement when assigning a ban in not as reasonable as it should be - and that's why forum bans shoulddn't be tied to cut off's, not to mention that after the fact is hard to backpaddle, even if they wanted to, as it sends out the wrong kind of message.
Many folks on the BSN simply have two accounts now ( or had when i still borheterd lurkin' over there), one tied to their stuff and another one just to post as a means of protection from unfair cut off's brought about by unfair bans - which means that they are more or less locked out from posting in the boards that require game registration to post in, which in itself is ludicrous beyond belief and another 'feature' courtesy of that shitty game i mentioned before (no, not Shattered Steel), since said feature was implemented on its release aftermath to try to keep criticism contained.
So yeah, the shortcommings of that other platform should be pointed out, this pitfall should be pointed out as well, and to RPS credit they do state in the' article' that the main point is that bans and cut off's have no business being tied togheter, which is nothing but good ol' common sense really. Perma bans from the boards when justified? Absolutely. Perma cut off's from content you paid money for as a bonus ? Fuck, no.
"The thing to stress at this point is, no matter the reason – nor how valid the reason – someone may have been locked out of their forum accounts, on no circumstances should this affect their ability to play games. There are a whole separate set of rules that might see someone locked out of their EA account (and the legality of these, and EA’s rights to prevent someone from playing a game they’ve paid for without offering a refund, are another matter entirely), and one should not affect the other."