How did he log in to the EA store to buy it then? Something aint right with that logic.

Also.. if you read his original post he says "This is the deal. I just got my Bioware Signature Edition from the store".. if he just got it from the store it seems to imply a boxed copy. He states he can't activate it because it requires you to log into an EA account. (of course he could create a hotmail email address or something and make a new account to by pass this)

To be honest i don't agree with EAs practices.. in general and in this instance in particular.. but if people would actually read EULAs and TOS issues like this may not crop up.(or atleast people wouldn't be suprised when they did)

“EA may also terminate your Account(s) (and access to all related Entitlements) for violation of this Terms of Service, illegal or improper use of your Account, or illegal or improper use of EA Services, Content, Entitlement, products, or EA’s Intellectual Property as determined by EA in its sole discretion. You may lose your user name and persona as a result of Account termination. If you have more than one (1) Account, EA may terminate all of your Accounts and all related Entitlements. In response to a violation of these Terms of Service or any other agreement applicable to EA Services accessed by you, EA may issue you a warning, suspend your Account, selectively remove, revoke or garnish Entitlements associated with your Account or immediately terminate any and all Accounts that you have established. You acknowledge that EA is not required to provide you notice before suspending or terminating your Account or selectively removing, revoking or garnishing Entitlements associated with your Account. If EA terminates your Account, you may not participate in an EA Service again without EA’s express permission. EA reserves the right to refuse to keep Accounts for, and provide EA Services to, any individual. You may not allow individuals whose Accounts have been terminated by EA to use your Account.

If your Account, or a particular subscription for an EA Service associated with your Account, is terminated, suspended and/or if any Entitlements are selectively removed, revoked or garnished from your Account, no refund will be granted, no Entitlements will be credited to you or converted to cash or other forms of reimbursement, and you will have no further access to your Account or Entitlements associated with your Account or the particular EA Service. If you believe that any action has been taken against your Account in error, please contact Customer Support at support.ea.com.“

 

Since DA2 only needs an initial authorization online and nothing after that...once it's installed and registered with EA and the DLC's downloaded and installed then you can be banned forever from the EA forums and it won't effect your ability to play DA2 at all other then you couldn't buy/install any more DLC's or expansions tied that account.

Then again, don't be an arss on their forums and you won't have a problem.  LOL

But I agree, it's a bad policy and will make me think twice about EA games in the future.

EA has done it before.

Personally I rather like it when being an asshat is a punishable offense, but I'm sure there are occasions when it's not done right.  And I'd definately prefer it if they decouple the forum accounts from the store.

If that is the case its even worse. EA takes his money knowing they don't intend to let him activate it...

The perfect solution is to provide a troll/griefer sandbox where when you get banned you end up only being able to post on the banned players forums and allowed to play afterwards on dedicated servers where other rude and obnoxious banned people like yourself were exiled.  I'd call it a near-perfect gamer's hell.

Openly banning people from your forum for critizing your company and/or products is terrible PR, but not outside of reason.  Banning people from installing a game they legally purchased for the same reason is catastrophic PR, and heads into questionable legality territory.  People who were on the fence about buying it will definitely walk away after seeing proof of nonsense like this.

The moderators who decided to handle the negative posts on their forum by flaming back and banning everyone really need to be sacked.  Had they done nothing, the fanboys would have defended things for them.  By trying to hammer everything they didn't like, it just looks like an admission of guilt.  The only good that will come of this for anyone is that other companies will hopefully take this as a lesson of how NOT to do business.

Look, an entire thread summarizing all the reasons not to buy from a digital distribution platform, but rather insist on physical media with no internetwork connection required.

These are the same people that bemoan piracy.

Actually physical media is no help these days.  In the case of DA2 or any EA game you still have to create and account with EA and register the game so buying digital or physical media is no different and thus even with your physical media getting banned by EA means you lost your game.

Same for buying a game that requires Steamworks (and thus Steam).  Even if you buy the physical media for say Civ 5 or Fallout NV you still must install and register with Steam to play.  Thus if Valve bans you, you can no longer play your game even with your physical media.

It's not insane, just a doddering antiquarian from the mercantilist era. Creative people deserve good compensation for their work and meaningful rights of attribution. Modern (c) does a very poor job of that because its roots are firmly planted in the era of divine-right monarchs. The wost problem is that corporations can own copyrights currently. Fair use is also under pretty serious attack from the likes of the MPAA and RIAA.

We need reform focused on connecting 'intellectual property' rights to the people who create new art, not people who own organizations that employ people who manage people who supervise staff who work on brutal, artless things like monetization and 'branding.'

This is one of the laundry list of numerous reasons why I don't like EA, between their suspected nefarious involvement in double dealing at Infinity Ward over Call of Duty (I so want to see how this plays out), their inablility to do a good job with The Battle for Middile-earth series (don't think they ever added the coming soon content to the BfME sites, and they didn't pay enough attention to the lore in general), and their destruction of Pandemic Studios with LotR Conquest when Star Wars: Battlefront II using the same engine was excellent (BF2 wasn't perfect but Conquest was terrible which is why I didn't buy it, and I love The Lord of the Rings).