Buy the game. Download patches, mods and cracks. Make a personal installer.

Have fun. ;)

I see why you think this is a solution, you've done it, it works, and it's no biggie to you.

I don't know how you are with cars but what if I said: "Buy the car, grab some aftermarket parts, install them, use a dremel to remove the limiter so it goes over 10 mph and is street legal. Have fun:)"

I just don't feel like letting companies get away with this kind of stuff. The only industry that is this abusive towards their customers outside of companies that release IP protected entertainment is banking. And maybe I'm getting more cynical as I get older, I'm completely willing to accept that as a possibility, but it seems to get worse year after year.

Usual rules apply. You have to ask for a refund. But many of the J-gamers ordering the game aren't aware of that as there's no Japanese language support. But that's not the entire problem. It's the fact that any gifts sent (which probably can't be refunded) are "bricks" and retail copies still require VPNs for activation.

Not to mention that constantly stringing people along with ever changing release dates is false advertising at best and fradulent at worst, if there's no real intent to release, and it doesn't matter if you can get a refund a week later. They still get to keep the interest from that.

And lets face it, this is probably exactly what will happen with all future games by said publisher.

Anyhow, back to Bioware and those EA devils...

Doesn't matter what he said, being banned should never lock you out of a game you've purchased (unless it's an mmo I guess ...)

This is exactly why I refuse to buy anything with online activations. I don't feel bad for the guy though, he asked for this when he agreed to pay for the game.

GOG is different because once you've downloaded your games, GOG can't do anything to lock you out of installing and playing them. Even if GOG were to ban me right now, I'd still be able to play all the games I've purchased from them as long as I have my backups of the installers.

I understand what you're trying to say, but what can one do? Boycotting obviously doesn't work.
Piracy sometimes works, sometimes it doesn't.

I vote with my money, but I doubt I alone will ever be able to change anything (or a few thousand people).
And what about the games you didn't download?

What do you mean it doesn't matter what he said? For all you know he fired personal abuse at some faceless shmoe working for EA customer support. How do you know he wasn't one of the people who organised the DDos attack and emailed EA to tell them he did it for teh lulz? Steam, Impulse, EAStore, GOG. Doesn't matter who, they all have the right based on terms we agreed to to suspend someone's account.

Golden rule: Don't act like a dick on a forum your account is connected to.
That's the crucial point. If your backups fail and you are banned from GOG where will you get the installers from?
Seems you do need to be told as you are saying THEY crossed the line when you don't know what line he crossed. For all you know he could have faxed a picture of his wedding tackle to EA.

GOG, afaik, has refused to ban people because of this. So it's a problem, but in the other direction.

You know I've heard of the "Golden Rule" before, I'm pretty sure this wasn't it.

Look, what may seem "obvious" to you is not necessarily obvious. Again, if he's acting like a dick to their support they have every right to take away his forum privileges and refuse to offer him customer support anymore. There's no world where it's "okay" to take his money and his games, even supposing he faxed a picture of his junk to them, no matter how much we might like a developer or their games.

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. But yes it's EA and they are teh evil. No one likes this online crap we have to deal with these days but I have zero sympathy for some guy who goes and pisses in his drinking water.
This isn't about what is ok. It's not ok for my government to cut welfare so they can pay bank bond owners €750 million but they still do it. This guy bought his games from the EA Store, not retail and then proceded to do something bad enough that warranted a suspension NOT a ban. It would be exactly the same deal with Steam, Impulse and indeed GOG. It's not ok but they are the rules we agree to.

Well, I don't have a good solution to this problem (obviously) or I would have shared it long ago. I just know the first step in me "cracking" a game, should I do so (and as stated, I haven't done that since I was a kid) wouldn't be to pay for it, giving them a pat on the head for their good product that they wrapped up in poisonous offal.

I download all my games as soon as I'm able to

Sorry, guess I should have explained what I meant more clearly. I'm not questioning the decision of banning him from the community. What I meant was that something like this should never result in someone being locked out of their games. DD sites can say they have the right to do this all they want, I don't agree with it.

But if that happens, it'll be my fault for losing the backups. If I buy a retail game, and lose the disc, I'm not going to ask the publisher to send me another disc for free.

I agree that it is an issue, but due to the DRM free nature of GOG games, it's far from being as bad as other DD services.

We both know refunds are almost impossible with the way direct download stores work. I agree he shouldn't be locked out of his single player games and TBH I don't see how he can be. Sure he wont have access to his DLC that's tied to his account but his single player games are fine. He can't authorise his DA2 well fine, crack it then. The only thing he has been suspended from is his EA account and they have the right to do that.

I should also point out that person also appeared on GameFAQs soon after posting that and admitted to being a member of 4chan's /v/ board who have been behind the Metacritic ratings and the DDos attacks. I'm not saying he is guilty of that but saying he doesn't know how to crack games? Do me a fucking favour.

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...

He warranted suspension... from his forum account. That's the difference.

It didn't sound like he was crying that his ban was unjustified, he was just complaining that it extended to something that it most surely shouldn't have.

For the record:
- I download everything off GOG and make physical backups (I'm a little behind the last few weeks on a few of my physical backups), storage is cheap, I can dupe these on a big disc and stick it in a safe deposit box along with other crap I would rather not lose
- I don't deal with Steam
- I have dealt with Impulse exactly once, as I had credits left over from Stardock's old TotalGaming.net store, it left a bad taste in my mouth when I realized that I had to activate my backup, therefor I don't buy from Impulse, though I have used the client to activate some of my old, Stardock games on CD/DVD to easily patch and grab free, bonus content.

I'm curious, does EA still sell DLC on disc or do they force you to plug in an activation code (like I hear Borderlands GOTY does) for all the DLC and download it? They seem to make it harder year after year to avoid their DD store, even by buying a physical copy.

Like I said above EA have no way of stopping him playing his offline games. Don't tell me a member of 4chan doesn't know how to crack a game. Not that a lot of his games would even require cracking.
I'm doing what now?