You just HAD to win, didn't you? :3

This!

Actually that's the second biggest thing they care about. Only thing they care about more is people actually paying them back. Chargeback shitlists you, don't even think otherwise. No credit card company wants people who want their money back.

That seems like the most logical explanation. I can't think of a good reason to impose such draconian measures against forum trolls :P. It's more likely to lose them customers than anything.

EDIT: 4 minutes gone by? GOG just banned everyone in this thread except me: confirmed

:P yeah. couldn't help myself.

So, why is it that when people claim to be banned from their Origin games because of a forum ban you don't question it, yet when someone claims to be banned from their Steam games because of some payment issue you think we need to question rather we can trust them?

I wasn't meaning to imply that, but looking back over my post I can see why you'd get that idea. I meant it to be a theoretical discussion of why they might do such a thing.

Then again, why discuss their theoretical motives at all, if it's not certain that it is true? Sounds like I do have some inconsistencies there.

Oh sorry my mistake, I thought I was coming into a thread to talk about Origin. You know that other digital distributor that’s being shit right now. Apparently Steam also has a near monopoly on these sorts of discussions and not just digital distribution.

:P

And this is the shit I don't understand people not seeing about Valve. If you want to buy Steam games, knowing the drawbacks, fine. But actively preaching that Steam/Valve is the greatest and they've never had a problem (duh, anecdote alert!) is just weird. Clearly people have had problems and it's been quite a few of them. And those mass bans that were in error, those people got treated like shit on the forums even by Steam staff until it became so blindingly obvious that VAC had fucked up that even Valve had to eat crow.

So has EA fucked up with Origin? Maybe, probably even. Given the outright venom the Steam fanboys have spit at it I'm actually more skeptical of a report of a problem with Origin than with Steam, if only by a hair.

No they're not always watermarked and aren't always unfinished review code either - but they often are. My point was how far Valve pushed it by giving a press account.

And how I know about it? Three ways - Valve gave away two press accounts to Qbix from DOSBox after they uploaded the id Software collection (Doom, Heretic, Hexen, etc.) using DOSBox without the legal files - as compensation (I know this because it was me who warned him about them using a cut down DOSBox version). When I mentioned this to some journalists I know, they said "yeah, we have such accounts as well, you get those as a journalist" and I've seen a few mentions of them on review sites by other journalists (although, oddly enough, they don't mention it very often - maybe because they feel something is not quite right about it?).

ninja-ed

Journalists on Twitter make no secret about Steam press accounts. Richard Cobbet just mentioned them today actually.

I don't see it as a big deal though, really. If anything it spurs PC versions being reviewed when journalists have access to them, since the boxed copies publishers send out are ALWAYS the 360 version.

It's not a HUGE deal and from a certain point of view, it's indeed handy for the journalists.

The thing is, magazines cycle journalists according to dev or publisher to prevent too much bias from happening so usually one journalist will only review one game for the same source so unless they swap accounts around (which, from what I've hard, isn't true - journalists even get accounts when they're not even reviewing Valve stuff) it's pretty overkill.

If I wrote a single review for a publisher, and they went "here, have our entire back catalogue and every game we'll release in the future next to your review copy" I'd be pretty happy I must admit but it's still a dubious move. You can't deny that it's the proverbial massage with happy ending.

This is why i never post on either Steam or Origin forums. Total bullshit to be sure.

What, besides the power-mad moderators, irritating fanboys, overbearing and Nazi publishers owning the forums banning left and right - why would you not post there? *sarcasm* :p

During the first year after the Steam forums were made, I got temp-banned 3 times and got several warnings from the ***** moderators. Biggest load of assholes I've ever seen on a forum - especially if you consider WHY I got the warnings and temp bans:

- I "circumvented" the forum's censoring by censoring my own words. I wrote f**k instead of fuck and so I got a warning AND a temp ban because I had done it a few times (it was a habit).

- I then sent a reply to the warning (in PM) saying that they were being ridiculous for giving me a temp ban for censoring my own words and that it's not circumventing when you do it out of a habit because some forums don't censor. This got me another warning that I was being disrespectful towards moderators - they didn't even bother giving me a decent reply - I had been very polite considering.

- This sparked me to tell them that I was baffled that a forum that was the extension of a store & company was so impolite and downright rude to its customers. Result? Another ban and a preach about me having not read the forum rules, bla bla bla.

After this I got several more warnings for the most ridiculous of things. I once called someone an idiot after he had a massive attack at me in the $ =/= € topic and called me far worse while defending Valve. My post got deleted, his remained and I got another warning.

Seriously, the Nazis over at the Steam forum can go to hell for all I care - I've never been banned from a forum nor even got temp bans except on that forum. I know I can be very vocal about things I'm passionate about, but when you get temp bans for the tiniest of things ... I know why they did it though - I've always been critical of the shit Valve pulled. My first temp ban happened in a topic about the time Valve preloaded Condition Zero onto everyone's hard drive without permission. Seems the fanboy mods didn't like me making a fair point so decided harass me until I left. Well I guess they succeeded.