Apparently, EA forum account bans are linked to your Origin account as well.

Yup, that means if you decide you want to maliciously slander EA on their forums, you probably shouldn’t plan on playing any games on Origin linked to that forum account. Apparently, back in March, when EA forum user ‘Arno’ earned an EA forum ban after a facetious bash on the company, he was locked out being able to play online with any of his EA games. EA stated that the ban was a mistake, as:

“Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended your entire EA account. Immediately upon learning of the glitch, we have restored the entire account and apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused while accessing other areas of the EA service.”

When the issue came up again, EA promised to “fix” the account glitch. However, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has heard stories from EA customers that prove otherwise. EA customers are still being locked out of their account despite their only issues with EA on the forums. In fact, an individual who was banned from the EA forums ended up having his account terminated without much of an explanation, besides the false accusation that he was a repeat offender.

Considering the amount of flak that EA has already gotten about how bad its customer service is for Origin and the amount of support that EA gives Origin, hoping it’ll succeed, it’s probably a good idea to get this EA forum/Origin account thing fixed.  Sure, Origin’s probably not expected to be any type of Steam killer, but it’s certainly quite similar to the Steam client in terms of functionality and intrusiveness in the gaming experience. If you want to smoothly integrate Origin and maybe have people willing to use it, it’s probably a good idea to have people think you’re not the scum of the Earth. Really, it’s a simple fix. Have a separate log in for the EA forums and the Origin account like Steam does with the Steam forums. Problem solved.

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Well well well, what we have here is a failure to communicate — or so it seems. You decide. We reported late last night that an EA community staff member on the Command and Conquer forum advised posters of a policy change that would allow them to ban individuals banned from forum access from their line of games as well.

The comment has apparently been contradicted by an unnamed EA rep. I say “apparently” because the word “automatically” is used in the statement given, and in my opinion, it does not completely deny what the community staff member warned gamers.

Here is the statement:

“Players who have been banned from EA Forums are not automatically banned from online access to their other EA games … “

The EA rep then added:

“Players can be banned if they breach the Terms of Service or Code of Conduct in a forum, game or service. Each forum, game and service is managed independently by customer support representatives responsible for that specific forum, game or service.”

So is this simply a case of corporate double talk? Is the EA rep uninformed or was the community staff member talking out of his/her ass? Saying that it won’t be “automatic” doesn’t mean that EA isn’t giving community staff members the power to ban your game access if they so choose — at least not in my eyes.

My gut tells me that the EA community staff member spoke the truth not knowing how far his words would spread, and that this is nothing more than an effort to clean up the mess.

I’m curious to hear what you think. Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Source: Gamecyte

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

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