Arise, thread, arise! (Necro thread revival!)
Another example of why it's better to pirate when DRM is concerned:
When it comes to EA games, you really should watch what you say.
That's what one BioWare forum-goer learned after possibly being banned by asking BioWare, an EA studio, "Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?" The comment resulted in a temporary 72 hour ban, but more importantly meant that the user couldn't play a brand-new copy of Dragon Age II during that time.
-Deozaan
Update: We just received word from EA's Andrew Wong that the situation was actually an error. "Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user's entire account," he told Ars. "Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA took steps to restore the user's macro account and apologized for the inconvenience."
Hmmm... Maybe. Not sure if I believe that or not, but whatever. Could be true. Could be back-peddling.
Still, what happened there happens regularly elsewhere.
In one game that I paid for, I complained and then been banned with in-game punishments. I got pretty pissed at that and turned it into a game to screw with them while I was banned. What was really fun was letting them know that they'd broken some laws and could face prosecution (which was true, but I'd never pursue it).
In another game that I paid for, there was an extended service outage. After a while (and a fair amount of booze), I wrote in to support with an extremely blunt email about their incompetence. I received a snarly letter back. As far as I'm concerned, if you're the one dropping the ball, you should brace yourself to get what you deserve -- lambasted for your incompetence. Ahem... Who's the one that f***ed up?
Getting banned, ignored, or marginalized is common in the game industry.
But you can't really pirate an online service. (In one sense anyways.)
