Update: The Crazy EA Forum Policy Was a Misunderstanding of an EA Moderator

[Kavadas]

Update: See Drac's post below!

Electronic Arts is apparently planning a revamp of their forums next week for the Command and Conquer franchise (along with a new C&C web site). However it looks like EA is planning to do something a little extreme in order to keep the sometimes bloody retoric down. According to EA community manger "APOC", "Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you'd actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account."

That means a comment on the Red Alert 3 forums that gets you banned will not only ban you from the Red Alert 3 game but if you own and have registered games like Dead Space, Spore, Crysis Warhead and others you are banned from playing those games as well. As "APOC" states, "Those banned will stay banned, but like most other internet services, its not that hard to create a new fake e-mail account. However, its a lot harder to get a new serial key =)."
Original Link (http://news.bigdownload.com/2008/10/30/eas-new-forum-rules-could-ban-users-from-both-forums-and-games/)

That's fucked up.

[Knox]

Well, as long as they are very conservitive with the ban button this won't be too bad. I never ever met anyone playing SWG who said they were banned from the forums and I thought "Thats too bad, this guy seems like a mature person that could help other people." So I think tieing banned forum accounts to banned game accounts is good. I just hope they have some type of appeal process incase some gets banned who DOESN'T desrve it.

[Kavadas]

You're joking, right? They can ban you from a forum for C&C and then all of the sudden you can't play Crysis, Spore, or BF2142.

I can't even put into words how obtrusive and "Big Brother-ish" that is. EA is fucked in the head.

[Cooke]

This is not good policy. Can you imagine if SOE pulled this crap? Oh... never mind.

[Draconis]

I think this is a misrepresentation of the proposed policy.

See EA Not Banning Game Access for Forum Hijinks (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55656)

Not that I would put it past EA to wish they could get away with it :)

[Knox]

You're joking, right? They can ban you from a forum for C&C and then all of the sudden you can't play Crysis, Spore, or BF2142.

I can't even put into words how obtrusive and "Big Brother-ish" that is. EA is fucked in the head.

No. I stick to my original statement that people who I have met in SWG who were banned from the forums were generally people I wished were banned from the game. I would think that such a policy would considerably limit the amount of BS on the official forums. As a matter of fact with SWG I rarely ever visit the official forums because of the rhetoric there.

And EA is a publicly traded company, not the government, if they think its in their best interest to apply such a strategy, costomers and commerce will tell them if it is good or bad. Big Brother is like the Gov't getting involved in regulations as what tags you can remove from a matress.... oh wait.

[Kavadas]

No. I stick to my original statement that people who I have met in SWG who were banned from the forums were generally people I wished were banned from the game. I would think that such a policy would considerably limit the amount of BS on the official forums. As a matter of fact with SWG I rarely ever visit the official forums because of the rhetoric there.

And EA is a publicly traded company, not the government, if they think its in their best interest to apply such a strategy, costomers and commerce will tell them if it is good or bad. Big Brother is like the Gov't getting involved in regulations as what tags you can remove from a matress.... oh wait.

1. SWG and SOE deserve every bit of criticism they get (don't even get me started);
2. And yeah, EA is a public company. If they actually develop absurd forum rules like what was originally stated I have every right not to buy their crap. Not that it matters because with their SecuRom B.S. I already don't buy EA products; and
3. Yes, I'm quite aware of what Big Brother means, thanks.

[Valdin]

SOE and SWG is a subject that is better left alone in my opinion. I could spend all day sitting here discussing what they do wrong.

In my opinion this whole forum bans linked to game accounts is taking things a little too far. I understand what your saying Knox and i ahve met some of those people as well. But on the flip side most of the people i have met in the forums that have been banned it was a misunderstanding between them and the moderators. i was a moderator for Codemasters and SOE for a while and if moderators arent careful you can see accounts banned for no real reason.

I just think that banning someone from a game for what they say in forums is wrong. I am not saying flamming is right cause its not but just because they say things in the forums does not mean that they are bad players.

Maybe instead of a banned forum account it bans the game account. Maybe instead of being that extreme they should take a different approach. A system that generated an account flag on any account that is banned in the forums is one example. It would be easy to prgoram and implement and its a way to watch an account closer but still giving that player a chance. 40%-60% of most GM and CSR staff is dedicated to anti-griefers anyways so a few more accounts for them to watch is nothing.