I sure don't think it was a mistake. I think the pressure of public opinion got to EA and they retreated from this position. The forum mod/admin is being used to cover EA's butt. But the cat is out of the bag. They will try this again when this blows over, a little more quietly though.
EA doesn't want to hurt sales by having negative feedback on their own forums.

well they've reported quite a huge loss and they are firing somewhere's around 600 employees over it.
Thanks Game Daily!

Wow, maybe this will tell them they need to quit fiddling around with DRM that doesn't work? Nah, it's EA we're talking about here.
If they're that strict on their forums I think I may not buy another EA product again. Last game I bought from them was Dead Space, though I didn't realize it was an EA product when I bought it (bought from Direct2Drive and didn't pay attention to publisher).
Anyway... in relation to making Spore's forums private, Flagship Studios did the opposite approach with Hellgate:London. They started off private and switched to public. I doubt it will help EA though. They can threaten all they want, but if they deactivate people's games for expressing their opinions I predict some hefty lawsuits.

EA certainly does have it's hands in the pot, they're involved with Rockband even.. it's a good thing I bought it used.

Good Lordy, seems the share holders don't like the layoffs. EA's stock is down.
thanks reuters uk!

No argument from me on that. EA will get nary a dime from me either.

Not to derail the thread here buuuuut BanHammer sounds like an awesome band name LOL

Same, I think I'm honestly done buying EA games from now on.

I'm still going to buy some EA games, mostly just The Sims which doesn't use DRM (and actually, I'll aim for used if possible), and maybe some console stuff (when looking for a microphone for Rockband, I had to buy Boogie because no place else had a USB microphone and it was only $20 as opposed to $50 for singstar). But otherwise I'm going to stay away.

I think the market will sort this issue out. And by that I hope EA doesn't take it to mean that they should stop producing PC games due to lack of sales, but rather, obviously, minimise their DRM to increase sales - EA: Please find a correllation between the two! Hopefully the strictest of their DRM will only be on the internal studios (which sucks re: Red Alert 3), and that anyone in the Partners Program will have a more flexible solution.

I'll continue to buy EA games, just they will be on the Xbox 360. I'm tired of all of the threats, bs DRM and namecalling (I'm not a pirate!) coming out of them for their pc games. It is really sad, because they have been releasing some pretty interesting games lately.

EA can bite me. Sad thing is, they have made some pretty good games. However, its stuff like this that makes me refuse to buy anything they make.

EA gives wonderful Customer service
Just another reason to go out and buy any game Branded with EA.. or rather, not.
Can you believe that? they actually want you to just go ahead and guess the character? While, it is actually a rather simple and easy fix, the extra hoops to go through here to just play the game is getting ridiculous. I admit errors happen, but their official response is to just guess? I mean, it is the easiest way, I recognize that, but c'mon EA get it together.

Yea, I read that this morning. Just another example of how DRM messes with us paying customers and hinders piracy not at all.