Poll: Who is in the right here?

[BloatedGuppy]

So let me get it straight, someone was banned for voicing their opinion? Well EA, I guess you've earned another fuck you.

I'm afraid you failed to get it straight. He was banned for harassment.

 

[Tufty94]

So let me get it straight, someone was banned for voicing their opinion? Well EA, I guess you've earned another fuck you.

It wasn't someone voicing their opinion, it was essentially a CoD vs. BF flame war. If you read the synopsis you'll see this wasn't the first time he had been in trouble for misconduct on the forums.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. If he's stupid enough to do it again after being previously punished the fuck him.

 

[LITE992]

A forum ban would be enough. And that's probably what they attempted to do, until they realized that linking accounts can screw up some times.

 

[Therumancer]

I was skulking around the Battlefield 3 forums today and found an interesting little story on there. Basically this guy was surprised when he was unable to play BF3 one day and called customer support only to find out his EA account was banned for "multiple harassment complaints" from a rather heated discussion about MW3 and BF3 on the EA forums, and since his EA account was connected to his Xbox Live gamertag, he is now not only unable to play Battlefield 3, but also other EA and Bioware games that have online components or require you to be online to play.

Now this obviously turned into a VERY hot button issue there from people defending the customer's right to use the product he purchased and EA's right to moderate and respond to issues from their community services. I can honestly say I haven't been able to form an opinion over who's wrong in this instance and was wondering what others thought.

Here's the synopsis of the customer video chatting with an EA customer service employee

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/621026-battlefield-3/60892092

The problem I have with this kind of thing is that there is no proof involved. If there are a lot of complaints about a given player, most companies will just ban them, and do so rather permanantly to avoid having to keep a dedicated infrastructure going. This doesn't mean that the complaints were in any way valid, since it's not likely that they actually investigated the player, and even if they did there would be no way of knowing if they just caught the guy at a bad moment if he was apprehended for only one offense.

In competitive games and such, a lot of people use the "complain about player" thing to avoid running into someone who gives them a problem during match making. With "Soul Calibur IV" I kind of retired from playing much on XBOX LIVE because I found that like 90% of the people I beat or broke the killing spree of were reporting me for "unsportsmanlike conduct" so they wouldn't have to run into me again and risk seeing their competitive scores lowered. I've also noticed since then that I've had a much harder time getting connections to other players with other games, though I have rarely attempted it. As it affected my gamerscore for a while, I can't help but think I'm carrying around a virtual blackmark simply from playing fighting games.

If this guy happened to beat like 50 dudes in random matchups, and all of them decided to do the same thing for the same reason, I can see where he might have run into a problem. Especially if it was more people than that because he was persistant. "Harassment" is probably a general complaint for this kind of thing since it requires little in the way of proof, sort of like "unsportsmanlike conduct" in a fighting game.

When it comes to harassment, it's noteworthy that there is nothing forcing other people to play with him, and it's very doubtful he kept running into the same guys by chance that much. It's probably the result of a lot of scattered complaints due to the rating/complaint system and the way how such systems prevent matchmaking between people known to hate each other.

Basically I think game companies need to moderate things, but need a better system for doing it, involving real people, even if that's expensive to run. Before something like this causes a ban there should be multiple hardcopy complaints (requiring the sending of snailmail helps keep bogus complaints to a minimum). What's more companies banning someone from ALL their product because of complaints by one gaming community is going too far, and is just a sign of laziness on the part of the companies.

 

[Kingsnake661]

EA was right to ban this person from Battlefield, banning him from all the other games seems a bit harsh tho

How were they right to ban him from a game if he only "harassed" people in the forum?

Basically this, they just needed to block his forum privliges, they have no right to steal his games.

Should of read the EULA, gosh people are retarded. You pay for the privilege to be provided the service of playing the game, under the agreed conditions. You never own a game.

You dont own the game but you do own the right to PLAY said game unless its a subscription game that you haven't paid the months bill for, EULA also is only as legally binding as the laws in your country allow (so here in Australia EA would have their ass handed to them for theft as they'd have taken away a product he'd paid for)

Plainly incorrect. Unless I've read something wrong, they haven't come into his house and physically taken the game from him. That would be theft. What they have done here is refuse to continue to provide a service to him. And it appears that they have done so within the terms of the service agreemnt. If what they have done is outside of the contract, then that would be a breach of contract, but still not a crime, and it absolutely would not be theft.

Anyway, I wouldnt' be surprised if he's being light on the details. For example, it was said that he was banned for multiple harrasments, so I'd probably bet that he's said something a bit worse than he has let on.

They've taken payment for games then at a later stage taken away ability to play said games, so they either owe him a refund (or part refund) or they ripped him off. EULA as stated is still questionable in its weight in court, and if challenged in a case like this he could plausibly win.
That's not to say what he did was right, but they should have only taken his forum privliges away, not suspended account thus taking away access to his games that he paid for.

Well the thing is, whether he read the Terms of Use or not, he still AGREED to them and is responsible for his actions and the resulting consequences, right?

For now. ELUA's are being challanged in different courts around the world i think, and will eventually be here, if not already. What with ELUA's becoming more and more common for more and more things, people are starting to come into conflict with them more and more often, and eventually the whole legality of the process will be tested i think.

And it should. Some of the stuff some companies are doing are, IMO, wrong. But at the moment, in the US, yeah, they got the right to do it for now. Time will tell if they don't lose that ability.

 

[walrusaurus]

I am always skeptical when i read things like this. We only ever hear 1 side of the story. Banning someone from the EA servers for life is an extremely severe action. One that it seems very unlikely to have resulted from a one time thing. Odds are this guy has an extensive history of abusing other forums users/ has received warnings before. Does it suck for him? Sure. But more likely than not he had it coming.
And its not like they've taken the game away, he can still play through LAN, and single player so EA is in no way violating his writes as a purchaser.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I was skulking around the Battlefield 3 forums today and found an interesting little story on there. Basically this guy was surprised when he was unable to play BF3 one day and called customer support only to find out his EA account was banned for "multiple harassment complaints" from a rather heated discussion about MW3 and BF3 on the EA forums, and since his EA account was connected to his Xbox Live gamertag, he is now not only unable to play Battlefield 3, but also other EA and Bioware games that have online components or require you to be online to play.

Now this obviously turned into a VERY hot button issue there from people defending the customer's right to use the product he purchased and EA's right to moderate and respond to issues from their community services. I can honestly say I haven't been able to form an opinion over who's wrong in this instance and was wondering what others thought.

Here's the synopsis of the customer video chatting with an EA customer service employee

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/621026-battlefield-3/60892092

The problem I have with this kind of thing is that there is no proof involved. If there are a lot of complaints about a given player, most companies will just ban them, and do so rather permanantly to avoid having to keep a dedicated infrastructure going. This doesn't mean that the complaints were in any way valid, since it's not likely that they actually investigated the player, and even if they did there would be no way of knowing if they just caught the guy at a bad moment if he was apprehended for only one offense.

In competitive games and such, a lot of people use the "complain about player" thing to avoid running into someone who gives them a problem during match making. With "Soul Calibur IV" I kind of retired from playing much on XBOX LIVE because I found that like 90% of the people I beat or broke the killing spree of were reporting me for "unsportsmanlike conduct" so they wouldn't have to run into me again and risk seeing their competitive scores lowered. I've also noticed since then that I've had a much harder time getting connections to other players with other games, though I have rarely attempted it. As it affected my gamerscore for a while, I can't help but think I'm carrying around a virtual blackmark simply from playing fighting games.

If this guy happened to beat like 50 dudes in random matchups, and all of them decided to do the same thing for the same reason, I can see where he might have run into a problem. Especially if it was more people than that because he was persistant. "Harassment" is probably a general complaint for this kind of thing since it requires little in the way of proof, sort of like "unsportsmanlike conduct" in a fighting game.

When it comes to harassment, it's noteworthy that there is nothing forcing other people to play with him, and it's very doubtful he kept running into the same guys by chance that much. It's probably the result of a lot of scattered complaints due to the rating/complaint system and the way how such systems prevent matchmaking between people known to hate each other.

Basically I think game companies need to moderate things, but need a better system for doing it, involving real people, even if that's expensive to run. Before something like this causes a ban there should be multiple hardcopy complaints (requiring the sending of snailmail helps keep bogus complaints to a minimum). What's more companies banning someone from ALL their product because of complaints by one gaming community is going too far, and is just a sign of laziness on the part of the companies.

Well the issue was comments made by the person on the EA forums, not his conduct in game, which has been a big part of the discussion.

 

[JCBFGD]

Wow...that guy's grammar was atrocious.

OT: Customer's in the right, being an asshat on a forum shouldn't take away the ability to play 100s of dollars worth of games. If that's not illegal, it should be.

EA's right for banning his forum account, but not for stealing his money (which is what I think this amounts to).

 

[Jonluw]

I believe EA is in the right so long as they offer the player a refund for the game.
i.e. they have the right to not let him buy the game, but they don't have the right to sell him the game and then refuse him to play.

 

[Jitters Caffeine]

I believe EA is in the right so long as they offer the player a refund for the game.
i.e. they have the right to not let him buy the game, but they don't have the right to sell him the game and then refuse him to play.

They don't need to offer a refund since they aren't taking away his ability to play the game. He just can't play online. There IS a single player, which he can play to his heart's content.

 

[DracoSuave]

Whether or not he was a dick in game or on the forums isn't the real point:

He was being a dick to EA's customers.

Your 60$ does not give you the right to be a dick to multitudes of others who paid THEIR 60$.

He used EA property to be a dick to EA customers, now he cannot use EA property, only his own. That's pretty damn fair, actually.

It's really that simple.

 

[Savagezion]

You can't file charges against someone for saying "I am gonna kick your ass" or even "I will kill you" for "Harassment by way of threatening physical harm.... 'for real'". You can get a restraining order, you can file a report. But you can't file charges.

Tell me have you ever heard of something called assault? Ya it is illegal and you can be charged for it.

Sorry guys, it was lunch time and I had to burn out for a minute and get something to eat. Some of these posts have me facepalming at where society is heading. For this to be even remotely considered assault, he would either have to own a jet, or have access to being able to carry this out. This is not assault. Verbal assault, yeah - but verbal assault isn't assault and chargeable. In order for verbal assault to be a chargable offense, it has to fall under the conduct of "disturbing the peace".
EDIT: Hell, even if you shout "I will kill you!" at someone and they wind up dead, you can't be charged for that. You can be detained as a primary suspect but not charged.

This all also ignores the fact this happened online across foreign borders to which there is no jurisdiction precedent for civilian disputes. It is EA's jurisdiction to become that authority as it happened on their "turf". However, they have a separate agreement with that user that in no way coincides with this offense. They can claim license all they want but no court has backed them on it yet and their good is a product in the consumer market not a license. The box says that product does "X" and as soon as that product ceases to do "X" it is false advertising. They owe him a refund or the game.
The EULA is bogus because you purchase a product that before you are made aware of it to be able to disagree you have opened the package thus deeming the game ineligible for return. So the contract is signed under duress, thus void. Your options are sign it and play the game you bought or don't agree and don't get to play your game you can't return and get your money back for. Publishers did that to themselves trying to have their cake and eat it too.

 

[Jonluw]

I believe EA is in the right so long as they offer the player a refund for the game.
i.e. they have the right to not let him buy the game, but they don't have the right to sell him the game and then refuse him to play.

They don't need to offer a refund since they aren't taking away his ability to play the game. He just can't play online. There IS a single player, which he can play to his heart's content.

Ah.
I took the OP to mean they blocked his single player as well.

Then it's harder to try to make a judgement. On one hand, he still gets to play the game. On the other, it's commonly accepted that the single player in battlefield is pretty much just a practice run for the multiplayer.
If they wanted to be decent people, I think they should refund perhaps half of the retail price or something; but I don't know if I'm okay with obliging them to pay him back in this case.

 

[Leoofmoon]

Yeah EA was in the wrong. If you are bad in the forum you should get banned from the forums not the game. Just because you do something bad in that don't mean you shouldn't be able to play the game. Hell iv been banned from Epic forums for calling cliffey B a idiot for increasing stats for a gun being used a lot.

But still just because he sed something bad on a forum should never be translated into the main game. We play $60 and i don't know how much it is in British pounds, We pay for the game AND the online code we have a right to play that game even if we speak bad words on the Forums.

Heck even the Escapist don't destroy your account on this site when you get banned.

 

[agentorange98]

this is bullshit we are completely entitled to our opinions however negative they may be, it's EAs job to prove us wrong by making great games not bull this taking my ball and going home shit

Yes, we are entitled to our own opinions. I agree. Harassing someone because they have a different opinion is something else entirely. I may not totally agree with him being banned from the game (unless there is proof he did harass people in the game as well) but I do agree with him being banned from using the forum.

Mmm I agree there harassment on forums needs to be cut down, I was refering more to him being banned from the game for dissing it which seems like EA trying to punish people for disliking their products

 

[Leoofmoon]

I believe EA is in the right so long as they offer the player a refund for the game.
i.e. they have the right to not let him buy the game, but they don't have the right to sell him the game and then refuse him to play.

They don't need to offer a refund since they aren't taking away his ability to play the game. He just can't play online. There IS a single player, which he can play to his heart's content.

Will there Is single player thats not the main meat of the game Battle field was made as a MP game just like COD. Also to add they have the only way to play coop is for you to play online so its struck down INTO a single player game takeing out Online capastey.

 

[badgersprite]

Legally, the company is in the right. That's the contract you agreed to, and, in legal terms, signed to, and it's your fault if you didn't read it.

Non-legally, well, harassment is something I take seriously, and I think it's something that needs to be taken a lot more seriously, particularly online and in gaming communities. So, on that front, I do support EA for taking it seriously, but I am against it in respect to the whole "you have to be online to play" thing (I'm assuming this is one of those games, but I might be wrong.). Locking out access to all games that will ever require this service is quite harsh, and, although the law says that the onus is on the consumer to read the contract, realistically we know that doesn't happen, and EA should ensure people know those consequences exist and warn them about them before cutting them off completely.

 

[TheGreatAndPowerfulZOG]

I think people are getting a little too caught up on the legality. Sure, the Terms of Use no doubt spelled this out, making it totally legal. That doesn't make it a fair or reasonable thing to do. It baffles me the lengths people will go to to defend corporations after they screw their consumers.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I think people are getting a little too caught up on the legality. Sure, the Terms of Use no doubt spelled this out, making it totally legal. That doesn't make it a fair or reasonable thing to do. It baffles me the lengths people will go to to defend corporations after they screw their consumers.

It has nothing to do with defending corporations. It's 'Don't be a asshole and life is much easier for you.'

Edit: Clarification. It's defending other consumers from the one asshole consumer.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I think people are getting a little too caught up on the legality. Sure, the Terms of Use no doubt spelled this out, making it totally legal. That doesn't make it a fair or reasonable thing to do. It baffles me the lengths people will go to to defend corporations after they screw their consumers.

I don't see anyone defending "the corporation". I see people not having an issue with some harassing idiot getting his comeuppance. Big difference.

Also, "the lengths people will go to"? You've seen a few people make a forum post. Oh my stars! A forum post! The lengths that people will go to!