I have items that where downloaded prior to WA and they work fine in my game and I reinstalled maybe 5 times since...

Are you banned and your accounts wiped of your purchases? Do you have illegally obtained store Sims3Packs? I am talking about that, if you fully read what I wrote.

Well, that's great. If I had any sim-friends I would sure like to be able to afford gifts for them too, on occasion. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with gifting or being nice like that.

I'm just saying that E.A. can ban people for whatever they want. If they think someone is gifting too much, they can ban them even if they're just good people doing good deeds. If they don't like what someone says, they can ban them too. By creating an account we have all agreed to this in their terms of service. We explicitly gave E.A. the right to do things like that to our accounts. If any of these people who were banned disagreed with that, then they shouldn't have signed up. Throwing a fit about something that they agreed to in the first place is ridiculous.

They agreed to the terms of service. End of story.

Very well said. I use MTS all the time. I love the CC offered her. Alexurt has been nothing but kind to me. She has become a good friend and is deeply upset by all this. If you read back to page 3 post 59 I belive i was banned for sticking up for her. I no long have access to my sims 3 account and the things i was gifted/payed for. I understand why people whold not understand kindness its becomeing more and more rare in this world. But Lex and the others are the most kind and giving people I have even been blessed to meet.
I can not tell you how many wondreful people I have meet because of sims. I will not lose fath EA is a big comnany and yes maybe a boycott is a waste of time, but it makes us feel better anyway

Yes they can and it´s scary if good and honest people can get banned and lost all they paid for...it´s like you bought a shirt and the tailor cames out and takes the shirt back and keeps the money. Virtual things are still worth money as any other stuff. That is completely differend situation if someone is actually doing something illegal...

Maybe but there is little to no legislation about it, it ends up falling under services.

Why you think there is such a bend towards digital distribution, DLC and the like? because its a black hole were the publisher have all the rights and the user have little to none and thanks to the so called "democracies" we have more and more protection to "intellectual property", that is virtual.

The good news is that courts are starting to crack down the wall that divides the "virtual", eventually the spirit of the law and the rule of the law will end this void ...

It's not scary at all.

I get what you're saying. Yes, people pay real money for that stuff, and it sucks that they can take it away without notice or refunding it.

But even though it sucks, it's completely fair and just, considering the fact we all clicked on that little box that says "I have read and accept the EA Online Terms & Conditions." By doing so we have given them every right to ban us and take away our purchased items. There's nothing wrong with them doing it, or not giving us a reason for it. We should be completely prepared for this to happen.

Just the same, if you were in an agreement with a tailor that stated that he could come and take away your real clothing purchases without a refund there would be nothing wrong with that either. It's completely legitimate, given the agreement.

E.A.'s Terms (which Alexis and Kerby, and all other E.A. online members have agreed to.) state, in section 8. "Termination of EA Services and Accounts" that:

"EA may terminate any EA Service at any time by giving you notice of such termination within the time period specified when you joined the particular EA Service, or if no time period for notice of termination was specified, then within thirty (30) days of the date such notice is posted on the applicable EA Service.

EA may also terminate your Account(s) (and access to all related entitlements) for violation of this Terms of Service, illegal or improper use of your Account, or illegal or improper use of EA Services, products, or EA's Intellectual Property. You may lose your user names and personas as a result of Account termination. If you have more than one Account, EA may terminate all of your Accounts and all related entitlements. EA may issue you a warning, or EA may immediately terminate any and all Accounts that you have established. You acknowledge that EA is not required to provide you notice before terminating your Account(s). If EA terminates your Account, you may not participate in an EA Service again without EA's express permission. To participate in an EA Service, contact support.ea.com EA reserves the right to refuse to keep Accounts for, and provide EA Services to, any individual. You may not allow individuals whose Accounts have been terminated by EA to use your Account.

If your Account, or a particular subscription for an EA Service associated with your Account, is terminated, no refund will be granted; no online time or other credits (e.g., points in an online game) will be credited to you or converted to cash or other form of reimbursement, and you will have no further access to your Account or entitlements associated with your Account or the particular EA Service (such as points, tokens or other digital items)."


So there's nothing wrong with what E.A. is doing.

If in fact those who have had their accounts terminated believe they have done nothing in violation to the terms of service and have been banned unlawfully, they should hire a lawyer. If they're buying all of those thousands of dollars worth of points legitimately then they surely appear to have the funds to do so.

ok 1 more time then.....

if your game is purchased legally....and you have registered properally.....and you downloaded store items...and SAVED those items somewhere out of the game...be it the computer...a disk...whatever....and then...

all the sudden you don't have Internet access...your items will still work....

if then sometime down the road....on that same computer with no internet access...you have to reinstall.....your items from your disk should still work.....

if all this don't make sence its because i am hungry and dinner ain't ready yet....!!

Let me clarify my post, since it has provoked a lot of direct response. It was admittedly critical of people I don't know, and indeed, I don't have any special standing to judge anybody. And these thoughts aren't related to the ban, which is a separate issue altogether, but to the behavior that allegedly caused it.

If somebody wants to spend some money to make a gift to a friend, that's great. That's perfectly normal. It strengthens relationships, particularly when it's reciprocal, which it usually is. I buy you lunch, you buy me lunch, and we exchange birthday and holiday gifts -- great.

And if somebody wants to give somebody who is in need something that they couldn't otherwise have, that makes them happy, that's great too. I agree that there are lots of people with all kinds of disabilities who use Internet communities as therapy because of the kindness and support they find there, and I don't belittle that at all.

Giving thousands of dollars worth of stuff to people you don't know, whose circumstances you're unaware of, who may have just as much money as you do, who may gain only marginal benefit (or none) from your gift, is not in either of those categories. And that is what I am given to understand was going on here.

There are of course precedents in our culture. I also find it puzzling when Oprah gives everybody in her audience a car. Most of them probably HAVE cars. If they were to buy a car, they may well not have bought the same one Oprah picked out for them. The last thing Southern California needs is more cars on the road, not to mention the carbon impact. I can't think of any way at all in which this is admirable behavior. But Oprah's a professional celebrity -- she literally lives on the kind of attention she got from doing this.

Maybe this is the Oprahization of our culture?

If a school kid with wealthy parents hands around cupcakes... or takes the whole class to Disneyland... that sounds like an attempt to buy friendship. And it might work: that person might wind up more "popular" than the other kids in the class. But to the adults in the room, does that seem right? Shouldn't social esteem be based on a person's qualities, not their wealth?

I would like the playing field on the Internet to be even. It's why I stay away from microtransaction-funded "free to play" online games, because there's always a gotcha for people who actually want to play for free, whether it's in terms of power or time or even "cosmetic" goods. I expressed that view in a roomful of game developers once, and was pretty much told that makes me a socialist... which might not be that far from true These are my personal values, though, and I certainly don't expect others to live by them.

There is another issue, though. I've been told that on the EA forums, a forum ban is a site ban. That means no more access to tech support or patches from the company whose product you legally bought. (Yes, you can get both those things elsewhere, but that doesn't mean EA isn't responsible for providing them.) Is that correct?

THAT seems to me like a significant problem. I don't think EA should deprive any of their customers of those services. They can ban who they want from their forums for forum behavior, and they can enforce their rules as arbitrarily as they want (and yes there is plenty of evidence that their forum mods are arbitrary, both in who they ban -- and, which actually bothers me more, the people that flagrantly violate the "rules" and don't get banned). But that needs to be decoupled from their responsibility to support their software product.

You make sense to me... I have my downloaded items from maybe a year ago and they still work when I reinstall... I don't know what the problem is....

but not new news.

im shocked that so many are shocked by such events.

Do you all remember when Aaron was banned? She was an extremely helpful member of the forum who was banned for a given reason (forget what) and people went totally berserk about it sort of like now, any posts relating to the matter were deleted, the same thing happened with other incidents. EA doesn't want people criticizing them on their forum

Did she ever get un-banned? (Is that a word?)

not to my knowledge, she was perma-banned so I don't know why should would be unbanned

Is that a fact, is it?

Somehow, I don't agree with that statement.

Not every clause is necessarily legitimate. If EA granted its representatives in the "Terms&Conditions" the right to come to your house and cut out your liver, that clause probably wouldn't be legally binding, right? There is such a thing as "undue disadvantage" (not sure how exactly it's called in English) of one of the contracting parties that will lead to the related clause being illegitimate (sometimes even all the clauses of the contract or the contract itself). So, the "fair and just" stuff can still be questioned even if you did click on that little Accept box. I certainly didn't BTW; and it still eludes me how anyone could ever agree to such terms.

I thought of that, too. What's with the whining in intarweb communities that nobody cares about when you could file a lawsuit that probably won't be successful in court, but will almost definitely create the kind of publicity that companies like EA like the least?

I'm not sure why this is such a problem. At least those people won't be foolishly throwing money at EA anymore. EA doesn't need more money.

Well, usually I'd say whining is free and bringing a suit against EA is expensive and most simmers don't have thousands and thousands to spend on a lawsuit like EA's lawyers do.

But if folks were gifting $3000/month (not sure where that figure came from, just saw it quoted here) then actually, I'm pretty sure they DO have money to burn on whatever. Though I'm not sure legal action is the best way to resolve this....

Probably not, as it's EA's site, and they hold the right to terminate any account they wish, likely without the necessity of reason (so basically, cause they feel like it).

It would be a failed case, and while they may get a spat of bad publicity for a little bit, it'll be no more than a few days worth.

Y'know, I think this might actually be a pretty good story for The Consumerist. It's a pretty popular site, and they've usually got some great suggestions on what to do to resolve it. They often have followups where the company made things right as a result of the emails, contact, etc., that is done by the wronged folks at the site's recommendation. And they do cover stuff like XBox Live and whatnot pretty regularly too, so a gaming type thing would be okay there...

That's what I had in mind when I wrote the post. I'm not sure on the best way thing, though. The drones at EA almost definitely consider the case closed. The folks who got banned over this can either swallow it and go on, or they can try to get EA budge. The latter one probably requires to get nasty enough to get EA's lawyers emerge from their coffins.

If I had the money to do so, I would definitely file lawsuits against all this digital distribution crap (after bringing myself into the position to do so, i.e. signing up, buying something and then get myself banned) and all this Big Brother shit, too. Since the old school press has been reduced to a extensions of big companies' PR divisions, that's probably the only way to bring it to the people's attention that their "I never had any problems." or even worse "I've got nothing to hide." thinking won't get them anywhere.

I agree. This is just plain wrong.

The whole thing and how it's being handled at the moment is just plain wrong.

Who cares if someone gets banned from an online message board? The huge deal being made from it is unbelievably retarded, and so were the children who were spending thousands of their parents money to buy ugly, useless, glitched out crap.

If people are THAT mad and concerned about being banned from somewhere, then it sounds like those people need to get outside and have a life.

starved4pizza, I wonder if you have read this entire thread? You may have missed the fact that the ban affects their access to all the online services, not just the message board. This in turn will affect their ability to use the product.

So? EA isn't anything special, neither are their sub-par "products". If they were that concerned about it, they shouldn't have been breaking the law.