Delixe: So let me understand. A customer is allowed to threaten, abuse, defame and generally act a dick without any recourse whatsoever?
Valve has done this far more than EA and they ban you from your entire account.
Phc7006: I agree with you.... up to some point.
All digital providers include very hard clauses in their EULA. Clauses that give them almost infinite rights and give very little in return. EA's are catually fairly detailed and could seem reasonable :
Here is an extract
You may violate the Terms of Service if, as determined by EA in its sole discretion, you (...) Transmit or facilitate distribution of Content that is harmful, abusive, hateful, racially, religiously or ethnically offensive, obscene, threatening, bullying, vulgar, sexually explicit, defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, encourages conduct that would violate a law or in a reasonable person's view, objectionable and/or inappropriate (...) However they seem to neglect one principle : punishment should be proportionnate to the trouble caused. Suspending someone from a forum or a multiplayer service because he misbehaved is one thing, effectively preventing him to play games for which he actually paid a licence for something he said on a forum and without breach of the licence is something else entirely.
And the answer to the moderator looks very much like a general threat to all readers...
[i]EA Community bans come down from a different department and are the result of someone hitting the REPORT POST button. These bans can affect access to your game and/or DLC.
Because the BioWare community now operates under the same umbrella as all EA Communities, community members here have all explicitly agreed to abide by and be governed by both sets of rules. Consider it an added incentive to follow the rules you say you're going to follow.
End of the line[/i]
So, well, ok, no Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3 for me...
For me neither. In fact, I haven't bought one Bioware game since their merger w/EA (other than re-purchasing their games on GOG here), even though they've made my favourite games. Like w/every other game company that EA has acquired, you simply know that the quality of the product will be reduced. This has happend, as the more I research it, Dragon Age can't hold a candle to the BG series, and Mass Effect in many people's mind, isn't nearly as good as SW:KOTOR1.
orcishgamer: I deal with unpleasant people from time to time (who are sometimes downright mean, and even verbally inappropriate), overreacting is never the right response and defending a poor response on one's part even bothers me more. I think there's a correct way to say "we don't want you as a customer anymore" and the right thing to do is for DD services to have a way to do this.
Delixe: I fully agree with you there and I think amazingly the only DD to get this right so far is Stardock who have an attitude "Give him his money back then ban him". If someone is acting like a douche then no one has to take that and certainly not any service they should be able to get rid. Trouble is we have never been in this situation before where games are linked to online accounts.
For want of a better word there is a lack of accountability. We have seen ourselves here people who act like such pricks you just know they can't be like that in real life, they are just being the internet tough guy. Similarly DD's don't have a manager you can call to report the lousy counter assistant. Oh you can put in the e-mail to the complaints department but we all know it gets filed in the recycle bin.
*What you have here is a potentially explosive situation where a company has literally no accountability, combined with customers who don't believe they are dealing with human beings. Chances are EA didn't fully understand that suspending his account would also suspend his EA store games. We can only read between the lines here but BioWare don't ban accounts just forum posting, it's somewere higher up that order to ban has come from and that's had a knock on effect. I am in no way saying what EA did was right, it's bloody horrible that they can do this, remember my Steam account was once banned for about a month and it wasn't nice. I just find it funny people are taking this guy at his word all he said was something about "selling their souls to EA", in my experience it takes a LOT worse than that to be suspended.
* Except on the Relic forums of course, now they are real facists.
EA has been known as the evil empire long before they snatched up Bioware, and have gotten away w/it for long enough that they have never felt the need to address the criticisms against them (thus they dont feel the need to be accountable).
It's definately a knock-on effect. I was on the old Bioware forums at the time of the merger (and am not on thenew Bioware Social site, as I want nothing to do w/EA), and NOBODY was happy with it. Even more, b/c there was no warning about it in the days or weeks leading up to the announcement, given what I know of big business, markets, and contract law (not saying I know everything, but I know enough to effectively smell a rat), I don't believe at all that Bioware, specifically Doctors Ray Mzuyaka and Dr. Greg Zechuk, were happy about the merger.
In the same vein, given my experiences on their old forums vs. the subject in this thread, I'm fully inclined to believe that the decision to screw the dude out of his game was done of EA, not Bioware. I specifically remember how viscious all the hatred was on the old Bioware forum vs. EA when the merger was announced, yet those threads went to 50+ pages, continually saying things along the lines of the victim said, but w/much more detail describing how we hate EA.
And as an ode to that old thread, if anyone here had read it, the post I remember the most was when a user quoted what Padme said in SW:Revenge of the Sith, saying "So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."
From my end personally, EA can go fuck themselves. Even before this drama here.
