A BioWare Forum Ban Locks You Out of Their Games

Despite what you think of Dragon Age II and how passionate you are about its shortcomings, I’d have to advise you not to go over to BioWare’s forums and say anything in the heat of the moment. That’s because getting banned from their forum locks you out of any game you’ve purchased that requires logging in – including Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 2, and, most likely, Mass Effect 3. Rock, Paper, Shotgun breaks down the troubling news:

Be careful what you say. That’s the lesson BioWare forum user Arno has learned in the last 24 hours, after an ill-advised comment on the BioWare forums has led to his EA account being locked, such that he cannot play his purchased copy of Dragon Age 2 for 72 hours.

It reveals a clause in the terms of service that accompany buying an EA game that will surprise the vast majority who do not read the microprint. Misbehave in the forum (as Arno fully admits he did), and you can have your right to play a legitimately purchased game taken away from you. Forever, if they want to.

Arno made a mistake. He posted a comment in which he said,

(Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?)

In the world of forums, it’s a relatively innocuous remark. But if you’re EA, and someone’s come into your front room, you may not want to put up with such insults. Sure, go say them somewhere else, but not in our house. Constructive criticism it was not.

A response we might expect would be well, here we’d just mock you in our comment thread, or edit your comment. Keep doing things we’ve asked you not to and we’d block your account. Which is essentially what happened. Arno received a 72 hour ban. But not only from the forum, but it seems his entire EA account.

In the last few years EA have tied an increasing number of their games to one universal user account. The same login is used for Burnout Paradise as for Mass Effect 2. It’s pretty convenient as a gamer. But it turns out it offers them a greater power than you might think. Because now Arno, despite wanting a copy of Dragon Age II that unlocked at midnight last night, is unable to authenticate the game with the account it’s tied to (by pre-release DLC), and thus cannot play.