That's because the PCG staff that were WoW players aren't on RPS, really. It was mostly Tim Edwards and Ross Atherton that pushed the Blizzard fanboyism and they don't write for RPS.

And Valve is great at "bribing" the press - they give the proverbial blowjob to journalists. Press accounts are just one example, but they also give away a lot of gimmicks and freebies and will bend over backwards to please the press.

An example of this, was when a guy got VAC banned after his account got hacked, wrote PCGamer who acted as if it was all a misunderstanding and said that Valve were so nice to unban his account after a simple phone call. Yes, this is how biased and fanboyish PCG is - everyone knows that VAC banning is permanent in nearly every case and that the only reason that lucky guy had his account unbanned, is because Valve are great at PR.

A proper reliable magazine, would have called them out on that but PC Gamer gave Valve a pat on the back instead. Utterly disgusting and a great example of how the modern press is a shambles and again, when I mentioned it on their forums, it was met with silence.

This is when I stopped my subscription - such biased journalism is not worth paying for.
Valve give press accounts with all their games to the press. Every release of their will automatically get added - it doesn't work for every Steam game, but it works for every Valve game.

And valve is the publisher of how high percentage of steam games? 0.1%? 1%? Clearly that's the same thing as getting every game on steam for free...

Yes, you can lose your Steam account permanently if you violate the ToS or take part in anything Valve deem questionable. A simple billing error will mark you as committing fraud, and everything is shut down until you rectify the problem, which often involves some overly complex steps that they will not waiver from no matter what. Other times, accounts are simply gone for good.

There are quite a few documented cases out there and blogs about Steam account issues. However, nobody cares, especially blogs like RPS where Steam is the best thing in the world, and anything remotely related to EA is as evil as it gets.

This kind of bias in gaming media is really starting to bug me. It still frustrates me people won't push Microsoft harder about the immense amount of hacked LIVE accounts, but gladly ripped Sony apart when their account data was compromised.

I'm afraid the one remaining defense against EULA's is broken by Origin. Until then you were making the contract with the distributor, not the publisher, creating a legal issue of who really was liable / in control. Origin has changed that. They release it, publish it, sell it to you, under their terms. With Origin you are totally, legally, their bitch. There is no third party, you agree to terms direct with the producer, I can't see any (legal, not moral) defense.

I bought a game, I am not a retard, and my way out of this situation is to stay away from their forums.

Are you being an asshole on purpose or were you just born that way? I simply stated the truth which was neither yours nor his. Giving out press accounts that basically give every game they ever made is still dubious if you ask me.

Because Steam is so awesome bro! Valve run it and they are my best friends!

The LIVE accounts weren't hacked, though. They were phished-into. If LIVE on XBOX gets hacked, so will Zune, MSDN, Office 365, Windows Live, and nearly every other service that Microsoft has, and it will be all over the news, at every tech site possible.

There hasn't been much discussion because the service hasn't been hacked into, just accounts that were using same credentials as with other services.
:) Whether it is awesome or not, is irrelevant. RPS haz teh 'best' double standards evar!

I can only say that I've had several billing issues with steam over the years, ranging from mistyped credit card numbers to broken communication between credit card company and steam, but my account was never blocked because of these. Not even for a second.

Blantant credit card frauds, I'm sure, will get punished.
Is that how you normally argue? Attack the other person when you run out of stuff to say?

That's a huge assumption. I'd hope, and assume that a corporation like MS, which has published numerous papers on security standards (and despite the detractors, have actually led the way in a lot of the security 'fightback', partially to restore their wounded image I admit), would have separated such services. I doubt you have any proof / indication that they store LIVE information next to the rest of the account information, and my experience of them is that they wouldn't.

The Steam hate on these forums astound me even after so long.

This is a story about EA Forum bans connecting to their games. In no way is that comparable to being locked out of your Steam account for breaking the terms of contract or hacking games for online play. It's not even in the same realm.

It'd be like if you were an asshat on these forums and GOG locked you out of your entire library and account. But where as GOG will work with you, and Steam probably will if you try hard enough, EA has layers and layers of corporate BS to keep you from getting anything done by them ever.

Fist bump, yo.

The main difference (imho) is that EA and Steam _can_ remove the games from you, and explicitly reserve the right to do so, whenever they please, in their licenses. It does happen from time, on Steam as on Origin - though it's of course debatable how truthful the circumstances are being reported in each case, but again: the main difference is that it can, and does, happen.

GOG, however, may ban your account, but can never prevent you from playing any game you downloaded from them.

Were not hating Steam, just RPS' double standards. ;)

I think there's a clear difference between Steam locking your account because your credit card bounced, and EA locking your account because someone swore at you.

I worked in retail for a long time, and 99.8% of the time if there was a payment issue with a credit card it was because of the customer, not the technology, even if they insisted that "there's totally enough money on there!!!" If Valve locked your account because Paypal didn't go through, it's your responsibility to go through the proper channels to sort it out, not pop onto your forum of choice and complain.

Sounds like the guy in the article went through the proper channels to sort it out, and EA support gave him the electronic finger. That's shoddy customer service, and very sketchy.

How is it different from giving out advance review copies? I don't find anything dubious about that.