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Valve Accidentally Bans 12,000 Players

Brandon Fenty — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:15:11 +0000

Steam is an amazing idea, and shows that the concept of the digital download can work and work well. However, with that success comes the danger of a glitch causing problems; and that’s exactly what happened over the last two weeks with Modern Warfare 2. Players were banned from Steam when their accounts were erroneously identified as cheating. The glitch occurred due to a “combination of conditions” that occurred while Steam was updating the disk image of Modern Warfare 2. Gabe Newell, Valve founder, issued a formal apology to the 12,000 players accidentally banned.

Players banned in this manner have been given a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 as compensation.

Not-So-Live: Microsoft Bans Estimated 600k User Accounts From 360 Xbox LIVE Service

Chad Lakkis — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:54:15 +0000

In an on going effort to eliminate modded consoles from accessing their Xbox LIVE service, Microsoft has reportedly banned an estimated 600,000 accounts — a tad over one-fortieth of their LIVE subscribing customer base.

Banned users will likely still be able to use their console offline, assuming they don’t throw it into a wall or drive over it upon receiving the news.

EA Forcing Good Behavior: Get Banned on their Forum and You’re Banned from their Games

Chad Lakkis — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:32:42 +0000

A recent post by an EA Community Staff member on the company’s Command and Conquer message board outlines changes to their policy, stating their intent to link a gamer’s forum account to their EA gaming account. Why does this matter? Because EA is planning on banning those who get banned on their forum from their games as well.

The post by the EA Community Staff member can be seen below:

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. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It’s all one in the same, so I strongly [recommend] people play nice and act mature.

All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but its what we have to do.

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 =)

While I am not a fan of fanboy or over the top argumentative banter, this still seems like it is a bit much. Is it just me, or is there a hint of corporate greed in this disciplinary action? Maybe it’s the smiley face after the “harder to get a new serial key” comment that is getting under my skin, but I am not agreeing with this move.

They are essentially saying that if you have the financial means to be an asshole (i.e. you’re rich bitch), you can be as nasty as you want as long as you keep feeding their corporate machine. I have a bad feeling about this.

Aterthought: What do you think of EA’s policy change? Are you happy to see them lay the smack down, or do you think they are going about this all wrong?

Source: forums.ea.com

UPDATE: The community staff member comment has apparently been contradicted by an anonymous EA rep. I’m not sure if I buy it though. Read More…

UPDATE 2: C&C Community Manager has issued an apology for his previous statement, stating that it was all just a misunderstanding. Read more…