BioWare will ban you from a Single Player product.

[Trollsbane]

Watch this thread get 19 pages also.

Oh you know it will. lol

[Xpace]

Electronic Arts got BioWare. Activision got Blizzard. It sucks, but what can you do? Game developers want a living like the rest of us. I watched the Blizzard 20th anniversary video, and what I saw was probably a better workplace than what the famous Google offers, it was pure beauty. D&D lunch break? Jawa-wall? Company SF/MK competitions?

Gone are the days of developers making great games for gamers. Real gamers. Now, it's about pleasing the big parent company whose goal is to squeeze out every ounce of the gamer culture out of the developers, turning them into cash cows. It's about attracting and pleasing people who don't even care about the games they play, who just want to play for the sake of having something to do on a lonely Friday evening, the type of player who goes on the WoW forums raging about a change he or she didn't know about because the changelogs are too long to read, the type of player who doesn't understand that an MMO doesn't revolve around them.

It's no different with Bioware. I pray to God that EA doesn't pull a Westwood on them. Both Blizzard and Bioware have gone a long way from creating the best video games any gamer can hope to play for years now. Gamers are more serious about the games they play because of you. Gamers are dedicating more time and energy on their games because of you. It's about time to give something back to those of us who kept making threads on your forums when they had less than ten thousand users, to those of us who played the beta stages of your early games and spent countless hours on it despite the risk of it not being successful, to those of us who understood every little bug, glitch and mistake you had in your games and not whine and complain about it.

[Krolikn]

Why would he want to play a game that he openly does not like? Nothing to see here, move along.

[BTF777]

wow...................

[SHT]

The only thing that DRM does is make it difficult for paying customers to use the software. So far, there has no DRM that has been effective against pirates for longer than ~a week. People who are going to pirate, will pirate and with little difficulty. DRM only hurts the end consumer.

There was actually a study done where a struggling company released their future product without DRM and within a week saw their sales triple compared to previous titles (was on /.).

OT: This really is an example where these companies are only hurting themselves. I can tell you now that they probably lost the customer who was banned and won't see another penny out of him. Their loss, no one's gain.

[Penatar]

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/to...9941/1#6460241

Check this shit out. Some dude said something bad on a forum about Dragon Age 2. BioWare respond by negating his access to his own copy of Dragon Age 2, a single player game he recently bought for 50 euros.

I cannot believe that shit even flys in a court of law. It's somewhat understandable in online games where your behaviour can affect other people around you, but to be banned from a single player game only you will play, alone, in your own time offline and have purchased with your own money, for a negative comment on a forum, wow. It's pathetic in my opinion.

Your guys thoughts on this ? Imagine being banned from Starcraft 2 OFFLINE mode for a negative comment about it on wow forums. Shit's crazy imo.

so we hear one side of the story... we shoudl make hasty generlizations.

[Mourning]

This isn't 4chan. Why are you spamming that crap here too?

The guy was banned from his EA account temporarily. These bans occur when a post is reported. In this case the guy was trolling, not posting his opinion. An opinion is "I don't like ____ because ____". What he said was something along the lines of "The EA devil controls you". It is not an opinion that EA, the parent company of bioware, is a/the devil. It was an inflammatory statement and against the rules of the forum. He violated the terms of service and had his service denied as a result. You can't expect to go to an official forum full of fan bois and flame/troll and not get banned. Doing so with your EA account that is tied to games you bought is a really dumb idea.

This wasn't bioware banning discontents. This wasn't EA taking games he paid for. It was a single person doing something incredibly stupid and suffering the legal consequences of it, which were temporary. Given the state of the attacks on their forums this is pretty understandable. Its hard to find sympathy for someone who thinks name calling is reasonable discourse. Just because you disagree with a company's policies or decisions in services or products doesn't mean they are the devil, and certainly doesn't give you the right to call them the devil on official forums. This guy isn't a martyr for a cause. Hes the face behind the reason that forums are flamewars and trolls.

If he was *that* upset with the game then why did he buy it? If he hated it so much then why does it matter if he can't play it. The facts are that he went out and purchased the game *after* making his troll post. He actually could have made a 2nd EA account, and did to post a complaint (also against the forum's rules). He could have just registered the game to that account, but he wanted the DLC items from playing the demo that were on his main account that was banned. He went on their forums to cause grief by trolling, yet feels entitled to the DLC items that he *earned* by playing the demo. Do you see the problem now?

I wrote 4 paragraphs and then deleted them because this summed it up infinitely better.

Also, READ THE TOS/EULA FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, SERIOUSLY. I KNOW IT'S LONG BUT IF YOU DON'T READ IT AND SIGN IT YOU DON'T GET TO COMPLAIN ABOUT IT.

[Arteous]

If you read the thread last post from Bioware:

Please review the EA Community Terms of Service, particularly sections #9 and #11. There are two levels of enforcement here:

1. BioWare community bans are forum-only and can be for as little as 24 hours. These bans should have no effect on your game, only your ability to use all the features of this website/community. these bans are handed out by BioWare Moderators as the result of our travels around the forum and/or issues reported by fellow community members.

2. 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.

If there are further questions or concerns, please send them to me via private message. Thank you.

End of line.

basically someone at EA got butthurt and banned him from his offline game.. basically imagine buying a single player offline game to find out you don't own it .. you are leasing it .. just like wow client. They can ban you from your paid for game offline and or downloadable content for any reason and you can't say anything about it.

before you post about op being stupid be very carefull about the president this sets.

so let's say i decide to use this for a movie i sell. i can sell it . everyone loves it .. everyone buys the dvd and one day i stub my toe and decide that no one should be able to see the movie so now they can't. and i keep all the money i made because by opening the package they agree that I own the movie and they are just paying to be able to watch it, and i can take away the right to watch that movie anytime i want to for any reason.

definetly never playing another EA game again.

[Lightfist]

Being a douchebag has consequences? OUTRAGEOUS!

---------- Post added 2011-03-10 at 09:33 PM ----------

basically someone at EA got butthurt and banned him from his offline game.. basically imagine buying a single player offline game to find out you don't own it .. you are leasing it .. just like wow client. They can ban you from your paid for game offline and or downloadable content for any reason and you can't say anything about it.

before you post about op being stupid be very carefull about the president this sets.

so let's say i decide to use this for a movie i sell. i can sell it . everyone loves it .. everyone buys the dvd and one day i stub my toe and decide that no one should be able to see the movie so now they can't. and i keep all the money i made because by opening the package they agree that I own the movie and they are just paying to be able to watch it, and i can take away the right to watch that movie anytime i want to for any reason.

definetly never playing another EA game again.

Congratulations. You have managed to push my expectations of the human race even further into the mud than they already are. Mother would be proud.

They weren't 'butthurt' (the universal buzz word of imbeciles, by the way), the poster in question broke a rule. Your analogy was beyond childish and irrelevant, so let me try to relate it in simple terms.

You have a toy car. You sell your toy car to your friend. You tell your friend he can only have it on the condition that he doesn't say the word 'pie'. Two seconds later, he says 'pie'. You punch him in the face and take the toy car back for a little while to punish him.

He goes on the forums and cries about it like a little bitch. The end.

[Mourning]

before you post about op being stupid be very carefull about the president this sets.

so let's say i decide to use this for a movie i sell. i can sell it . everyone loves it .. everyone buys the dvd and one day i stub my toe and decide that no one should be able to see the movie so now they can't. and i keep all the money i made because by opening the package they agree that I own the movie and they are just paying to be able to watch it, and i can take away the right to watch that movie anytime i want to for any reason.

definetly never playing another EA game again.

A. It's precedent, not president.
B. That analogy's ignoring the fact the user agreed to the ToS and EULA. If the consumer was presented with a document stating "Arteous is allowed to deny access to this DVD at any time" and they still bought it, it's on them. If they agreed to that document without reading it, it's still on them. Bioware didn't arbitrarily decide "Hey, fuck this guy, he shouldn't get to play!". He violated rules set by the community that he agreed to, and he paid the price for it.

[deneweth]

If you read the thread last post from Bioware:



basically someone at EA got butthurt and banned him from his offline game.. basically imagine buying a single player offline game to find out you don't own it .. you are leasing it .. just like wow client. They can ban you from your paid for game offline and or downloadable content for any reason and you can't say anything about it.

before you post about op being stupid be very carefull about the president this sets.

so let's say i decide to use this for a movie i sell. i can sell it . everyone loves it .. everyone buys the dvd and one day i stub my toe and decide that no one should be able to see the movie so now they can't. and i keep all the money i made because by opening the package they agree that I own the movie and they are just paying to be able to watch it, and i can take away the right to watch that movie anytime i want to for any reason.

definetly never playing another EA game again.

The OP is outright lying, and you are buying into it. Please read this entire thread, or at least page 2, to understand why you are wrong and your post is helping to further the goals of a group that is purposefully spreading misinformation to incite attacks on bioware like your post.

It is a lie that anyone was denied products they paid for. Someone was temporarily denied access to an account that they used to troll. That account had their free DLC from the demo on it. They can still get the free DLC on their 2nd account that they made to complain about the ban (which is also against the rules). They received a minor inconvenience as penalty for contributing to the flamewars ruining any chance of civil discourse. It wouldn't even be inconvenient at all if he had bought the game and played it before he made his troll post about how aweful the game is.

[Marath]

Please review the EA Community Terms of Service, particularly sections #9 and #11. There are two levels of enforcement here:

1. BioWare community bans are forum-only and can be for as little as 24 hours. These bans should have no effect on your game, only your ability to use all the features of this website/community. these bans are handed out by BioWare Moderators as the result of our travels around the forum and/or issues reported by fellow community members.

2. 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.

If there are further questions or concerns, please send them to me via private message. Thank you.

End of line.

Basically he was banned because people who read the forrum reported him, NOT by a moderator... so, it was his own fault. The community voted to ban him, not the mods.

[Goosebump]

This just highlights one of the many bad side effects of increasing online integration with the single player experience of games these days.

The fact that he was unable to activate his game may well be an unforeseen issue with this sort of behaviour from Bioware but it's a moronic side effect nonetheless to brick (even temporarily) a legitimatelly purchased game from allowing the customer to play the single player mode due to being unable to activate it. Activation is already an inconvenience to legitimate customers but it should at least be a seperate process to their main game profile activation.

Bad enough they ruined DA with a horrible new yawnfest combat system but stories like this just adds salt to the wound.

[Arteous]

The OP is outright lying, and you are buying into it. Please read this entire thread, or at least page 2, to understand why you are wrong and your post is helping to further the goals of a group that is purposefully spreading misinformation to incite attacks on bioware like your post.

It is a lie that anyone was denied products they paid for. Someone was temporarily denied access to an account that they used to troll. That account had their free DLC from the demo on it. They can still get the free DLC on their 2nd account that they made to complain about the ban (which is also against the rules). They received a minor inconvenience as penalty for contributing to the flamewars ruining any chance of civil discourse. It wouldn't even be inconvenient at all if he had bought the game and played it before he made his troll post about how aweful the game is.

first off thanks for pointing out my mistake on word presidence not president

next:

what's going to keep other game companies in the future of using the same system and banning people from single player offline games just because they were critical about a product they paid for. Think about it carefully. This could easly be applied across to other products as well. Like that gps system in your car? well imagine you posted in some forum about how much of a lemon you got stuck with because of how often something breaks go outside and find out that you can't start your car and the car company has decided since you were going to give them bad press they won't let you use the vehicle anymore. (you signed the paperwork for it). and you have no option because now everyone easle does it too because 1 company did it and it worked out for them.

see where i'm going with this?

[Eharenda]

Guys, I have an idea! Here it comes...

"Don't post shit that will get you banned!"

I know it's crazy, but it just might work.

[Herecius]

Hurray for misleading titles and blowing everything out of proportion.

[Trollsbane]

He did not get banned from the game. He can play the game. His account (the one with his dlc) got a 72 hour ban. HE CAN STILL PLAY THE DAMNED GAME. He's being a child and you are all buying him candy while he throws his fit in the Wal-Mart.

He CAN play the game. He can NOT use the banned account (for 72 hours) which has his preorder extra content. Call it unfair, but I simply call him stupid.

[niki]

i already beat the game through my hacked copy lol

[Groot]

Pretty easy to solve this problem. Don't post bad shit about their games on their forums.

[Thallidomaniac]

Games like Panzers had something called Starforce (i believe), and this single "cd check" really put me off of what was a VERY good game.

Electronic Arts did this too by using SecuROM with Spore and The Sims series. The SecuROM debacle got so bad to the point that The Sims and Spore became the #1 and #2 most pirated games at that time, respectively.

StarForce was also a very big hassle as a form of DRM as well.