Epic Games Store banned entire ProtonMail e-mail domain

[RejZoR]

It has recently come to my attention that Epic Games Store is yet again doing another major screw up with very questionable motives and decisions. This time around by banning ENTIRE e-mail service domain pretty much "coz reasons". Specifically ProtonMail's domain "protonmail.com". So, if you have a ProtonMail e-mail address, you cannot use it to create account at Epic Games Store anymore. Neither you can change your existing e-mail to ProtonMail one. If you already have ProtonMail address used from some time ago, they will let you keep it. Which further proves the absurdity of their decision...

 

Epic's response to user inquiry on the situation:

 

Quote

For internal security reasons, we can’t change your email to an email with the domain you requested. Please provide us with another email address.

Upon further inquiry, user got this response:

Quote

I understand your concern about changing the email to the same domain, however, our system does not accept that type of domain anymore. I will gladly change it to a different email but it has to be a different type of domain.

And final response from Epic:

Quote

For internal security reasons, we can’t change your email to an email with the domain you requested. As player support we are unable to accommodate your request as they do not fulfil our security measures.

 

Specifically the last response is highly questionable. They claim ProtonMail, the e-mail service with highest levels of encryption, security and privacy that goes magnitudes above anything anyone else offers, somehow doesn't fulfill Epic's "security measures". Yeah sure Epic, you're gonna preach us about security when you just added 2FA to your own service after everyone was outraged of not providing one, where everyone else like Steam, Origin and even ProtonMail had it for ages.

 

This excuse also doesn't fly if they only do this because somehow free accounts are being abused. Because GMail, Outlook, GMX, one of worlds largest e-mail providers totally do not provide free accounts that can obviously be abused just the same as ProtonMail. Yet Epic is not just banning entire gmail.com, outlook.com or gmx.com domains. I wonder why?

 

Original thread on Reddit:

 

Such behavior needs to be criticized because it's simply unacceptable and shouldn't happen to any e-mail service provider, no matter their size or number of users they have. Banning entire e-mail domain of a service provider just makes them look incompetent and lazy. And another reason they dropped chances of me ever buying anything on their store dead on to zero. Not that it was particularly high before anyways thanks to all the nonsense they've been doing through the past months...

[5x5]

Guess the encryption was too strong for the Chinese government to crack so they banned it

[Sakkura]

Have they even started using email verification yet? Someone had set up an account with my email address, so I had to contact their support to even be able to make an account.

[RejZoR]

13 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Have they even started using email verification yet? Someone had set up an account with my email address, so I had to contact their support to even be able to make an account.

They offer different methods of verification, including e-mail address or SMS.

What happened to you is that someone used your e-mail as a recovery e-mail. Not that anyone can abuse it to hijack your account, but it probably complicates things when you want to use it. I'm guessing that was the case.

[CTR640]

Protonmail reminds me of the other thread about selling Hackintosh with only BTC and untraceable emails and Protonmail is one of them if I remember it correctly.

[RejZoR]

26 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

Protonmail reminds me of the other thread about selling Hackintosh with only BTC and untraceable emails and Protonmail is one of them if I remember it correctly.

I also know GMail was used several times for scams. I guess we should just ban entire gmail.com then? That's not how things are done in a sane world. And people have this idea that ProtonMail just doesn't care. They do assist authorities within their power and within capabilities, given it's encrypted service (metadata however isn't and they can still see certain things). They just don't have an insight into mailboxes the way Google has with GMail. They can basically read ANY e-mail letter by letter if they decide to. It's why people go to ProtonMail, because they don't like that weird definition of "privacy" Google has (They are not suppose to read your mail, but they can)...

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Why are people still using epic store i can't fathom. 

[TetraSky]

2 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

Why are people still using epic store i can't fathom. 

Free games. 

[Nayr438]

1 minute ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

Why are people still using epic store i can't fathom. 

The Free Games, Discounts, and some exclusives. At least that's why I use it.

Picked up Anno 1800 the complete collection a few weeks ago for $40 vs $100, granted its on sale on Uplay at the moment for $55

[justpoet]

Epic is trash.  Protonmail is one of the better security, encryption, and privacy e-mail companies.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time something like this has happened against protonmail, since they won't hand over (or sell) their user data to other companies.

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

They claim ProtonMail, the e-mail service with highest levels of encryption, security and privacy that goes magnitudes above anything anyone else offers, somehow doesn't fulfill Epic's "security measures".

Probably because it makes it much easier to make bot or dummy accounts. That's a valid security concern for a platform like this. It's completely irrelevant what protection it offers to its users in this case.

10 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

Why are people still using epic store i can't fathom. 

DRM.

14 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I also know GMail was used several times for scams. I guess we should just ban entire gmail.com then?

I imagine the numbers they see from gmail are lower. I doubt they have any interest in excluding potential paying customers based on what email service they use.

[Taf the Ghost]

Hilariously enough I use a ProtonMail account for my EGS account, even if I haven't actually downloaded any of the games. I somehow feel personally attacked by this. 

 

On the net, really not sure why Epic would do this. Gmail and Hotmail/Outlook are generally the popular scammer email hosting services, from what I've seen.

[CTR640]

59 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I also know GMail was used several times for scams. I guess we should just ban entire gmail.com then? That's not how things are done in a sane world. And people have this idea that ProtonMail just doesn't care. They do assist authorities within their power and within capabilities, given it's encrypted service (metadata however isn't and they can still see certain things). They just don't have an insight into mailboxes the way Google has with GMail. They can basically read ANY e-mail letter by letter if they decide to. It's why people go to ProtonMail, because they don't like that weird definition of "privacy" Google has (They are not suppose to read your mail, but they can)...

That confirms my memories back when some company or when I tried to register on a forum, they were not accepting certain email provider eg banned them. They even accepted ONLY paid email providers.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, _DeXTeR_ said:

For me epic is great, am glad for banning those PM accounts.

Tim Sweeney, is that you?

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

Why are people still using epic store i can't fathom. 

Free games pretty much. It's unlikely I'll actually ever play them on their platform, but I just can't kill the hamster in me. Must hoard moar gamez!

[Guest]

Epic is really just here because of Fortnite. Can’t think of another reason why they exist. 

[RejZoR]

4 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Epic is really just here because of Fortnite. Can’t think of another reason why they exist. 

I mean, I was their biggest fan back when they released Unreal and Unreal Tournament 99. I spent like a decade playing UT99 against bots because at first I didn't have internet connection and then I had a crappy one. I never tried Fortnite and probably never will. The shooting and building thing feels retarded. And I never really liked the whole "battle royale" thing. Tried Apex Legends for one round and uninstalled it after 1 match. I like a more direct approach of battle royale. Like Last man Standing. Basically UT99 popularized it even though it was probably invented in something like Quake 1 or something...

[Guest]

35 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I mean, I was their biggest fan back when they released Unreal and Unreal Tournament 99. I spent like a decade playing UT99 against bots because at first I didn't have internet connection and then I had a crappy one. I never tried Fortnite and probably never will. The shooting and building thing feels retarded. And I never really liked the whole "battle royale" thing. Tried Apex Legends for one round and uninstalled it after 1 match. I like a more direct approach of battle royale. Like Last man Standing. Basically UT99 popularized it even though it was probably invented in something like Quake 1 or something...

Yeah UT99 was pretty amazing I definitely agree there. I thought Epic was a newer company I guess? Silly me. 

[StDragon]

ProtonMail? What's that??

*looking at website*

Ooohhhh! I like! Thank's for bringing this to my attention Epic Games!

*goes to create an account now*

 

#Streisandeffect

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Epic is really just here because of Fortnite. Can’t think of another reason why they exist. 

I mean unreal engine is one I could think of. 

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, Sakkura said:

Have they even started using email verification yet? Someone had set up an account with my email address, so I had to contact their support to even be able to make an account.

They switched to a 2FA process in order to get "free" content. 

 

As for banning any specific email domain, chances are it's because of the disposability of the email account. Most forums know the futility of banning one email provider, and most non-english free email account systems get banned just by virtue of the scale of abuse.

 

[Vode]

This is basically an advert and appeal to use Protonmail. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

13 hours ago, Sauron said:

Probably because it makes it much easier to make bot or dummy accounts.

How? You can create dummy accounts in any non-corporate domain. Aside from literal burner-mail providers. I've met websites that won't allow any non-institutional email (like a university or a company), and therefore reject all gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. But any of the latter would be the same in terms of dummy accounts.

 

13 hours ago, Sauron said:

DRM.

Isn't that a reason to not use it?

 

 

12 hours ago, CTR640 said:

That confirms my memories back when some company or when I tried to register on a forum, they were not accepting certain email provider eg banned them. They even accepted ONLY paid email providers.

Just what I was talking about  I may have found cases where only hotmail was banned, though...

[CTR640]

3 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

How? You can create dummy accounts in any non-corporate domain. Aside from literal burner-mail providers. I've met websites that won't allow any non-institutional email (like a university or a company), and therefore reject all gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. But any of the latter would be the same in terms of dummy accounts.

 

Isn't that a reason to not use it?

 

 

Just what I was talking about  I may have found cases where only hotmail was banned, though...

Yes, it was waaay back, I couldn't believe Hotmail was banned hahaha. Anyway, I never registered on that site.

 

At some point it's a good idea to use carrier pidgeons to have better privacy lol

[paddy-stone]

I only use my protonmail account for personal mails anyway, so doesn't affect me. I use one of several gmail accounts, or even throwaway accounts for sites that may spam me.

Still, can see why this would be frustrating for some.