One Dragon Age II player recently found himself unable to play the game he'd purchased from EA for an unusual reason. He'd called publisher Electronic Arts "the devil" on the game's official forum, leading to a ban from that message board and his copy of Dragon Age II. BioWare says that was an "error."
Responding to criticism from players that a 72-hour ban from the BioWare social network also restricted that player from registering and playing his copy of Dragon Age II, BioWare reps offered the following explanation.
"EA strictly enforces the code of conduct at Social.BioWare.com," writes Chris Priestly, community manager for Dragon Age at BioWare. "If a player violates the rules by using profanity, they will be temporarily banned. Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user's entire account. Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA restored the user's macro account and apologized for the inconvenience."
BioWare forum mods had previously chalked up the ban due to another member of the board reporting the offending post. "EA Community bans come down from a different department and are the result of someone hitting the REPORT POST button. These bans can affect access to your game and/or DLC," read an official response to the questionable nature of that ban.
According to the original complaint from user "v_ware," his EA user account was suspended for three days for allegedly saying "Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?" Not exactly profanity, making this situation potentially stickier.
Dragon Age II player v_ware's situation was an unusual—and unsettling—circumstance of EA accounts having an overreaching effect. We hope that BioWare's explanation is an accurate one and that the situation is fully resolved.