EA Games and Origin quietly bans an entire country - or, why you shouldn't take digital distribution for granted.

[IAEInferno]

I'm not the original poster of this but this is the link to the original post.

 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/5a51e2/ea_games_and_origin_quietly_bans_an_entire/

 

 

EA Games and Origin quietly bans an entire country - or, why you shouldn't take digital distribution for granted. (self.gaming)

submitted 5 hours ago * by trivial_sublime

 

Spoiler

 

This is what the guy has to say in his post

 

I live in Myanmar, and I own about 20 games on Origin, and have spent hundreds of dollars on the platform. I've bought the full editions of all of the Battlefield games up to this point, with their season passes. I was trying to log into Origin a few days ago, and got a bizarre "Access Denied" message. I googled it, and found that "Origin is no longer available in Myanmar."

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Origin/New-Origin-Access-Denied-from-Myanmar/m-p/5572204/highlight/true#M220895

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Origin/ISP-IP-blocked-by-EA/m-p/5588812/highlight/true#M222597

Supposedly EA is blaming this on complying with US sanctions against Myanmar (which is total crap, considering Steam, GOG, and every single other content distribution network is just fine). Additionally, sanctions were lifted on October 7th. Still no access to our games that we bought.

None of us has been offered a refund - just a "sorry, all your games are gone."

Remember, if they do it to me, they can do it to you too. Don't use or buy games from Origin. They will take your content away without offering a refund.

Edit: I feel like this is something that the entire gaming community needs to know about - I don't think that revoking access to an entire country's worth of people's paid content is something that should happen quietly. PLEASE spread the word about this. We in Myanmar need your help to get our games back!

Edit edit: Wow, this blew up to #1 on the frontpage. Although I probably shouldn't be surprised since EA + DRM + getting games pulled is a Reddit recipe for success. Since it's blown up so much, I feel the need to clarify a few things that I now realize are not clear from the comments.

1. I live in Myanmar, but I am not from Myanmar.
2. My account was not started in Myanmar (though several of my friends' accounts were, and they are having the same problem).
3. Origin is kicking an "Access Denied" message to all of us. You can't access ANY games or even see the store. Click the links above for examples. If we use VPNs, we can circumvent this and access our games (although we can't play online due to insane ping - baseline here is 100ms; you use a VPN you go to 350+).
4. Myanmar's sanctions were lifted on October 7th. For those of you that say EA has no choice, they do.
5. We were all able to access Origin in early September. Obama announced that the sanctions were being lifted from Myanmar. Right around the time of the announcement, EA terminates all Myanmar access to Origin.

This is a much, MUCH bigger problem than just a few gamers in Myanmar. This highlights a crucial element of the TOS of big game companies - the money that you pay them gives you essentially nothing in return, except for an empty promise that the game company may let you play their game until they decide you can't.

 

 

 

[BingoFishy]

But why would EA do this? Doesn't seem like they have much to gain.

[IAEInferno]

Just now, BingoFishy said:

But why would EA do this? Doesn't seem like they have much to gain.

That I dunno, was just searching reddit posts for battlefield 1 fps drop fixes and this caught my eye.

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, BingoFishy said:

But why would EA do this? Doesn't seem like they have much to gain.

No longer needing to invest in customer support in what is probably a relatively low profit area without having to refund anything sounds like a gain to me.

[paddy-stone]

This is one of the reasons I don't buy into the whole digital content thing.

[Castdeath97]

9 minutes ago, Sauron said:

No longer needing to invest in customer support in what is probably a relatively low profit area without having to refund anything sounds like a gain to me.

And when you can just blame the "sanctions" it seems like the perfect plan to get away with it. 

[Castdeath97]

Well here what EA_Alex (he is a EA/Origin representative on reddit) says about it:

 

Quote

Alex from Origin here. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

 

I'm not aware of any cases where Origin or EA will remove games from your library. The status of the game's multiplayer services should not impact whether a game appears in your library.

I've escalated the situation internally, and we're actively looking into why and how this is happening.

In the meantime, please make sure you haven't hidden any games that appear to be missing. From the Game Library, choose "Filter" in the upper right corner, then select "Hidden games" from the filters list. This will cause any hidden games to show up in your list of games. You can then unhide any hidden games by right clicking on the game tile and selecting "Unhide".

 

[TetraSky]

I live in Canada, I very much doubt the US would ever put any kind of "sanction" on us. Soooo, Yeah.

Sucks that he lives in a third world country that managed to piss off the US somehow I guess?

I say third world, because his country is literally the first on this list for having the "worst records for political rights and civil liberties".

For all we know it's his country that blocked Origin, not EA.

[Ronda]

6 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

For all we know it's his country that blocked Origin, not EA.

Are you seriously suggesting Myanmar is enforcing US sanctions against themselves?

[IAEInferno]

Sucks to be in Myanmar right now, I can't imagine myself spending a lot on origin games and can't play them at all.

[Castdeath97]

8 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

I live in Canada, I very much doubt the US would ever put any kind of "sanction" on us. Soooo, Yeah.

Sucks that he lives in a third world country that managed to piss off the US somehow I guess?

I say third world, because his country is literally the first on this list for having the "worst records for political rights and civil liberties".

For all we know it's his country that blocked Origin, not EA.

Actually the sanctions were lifted since a month or so. So, it's not a good excuse.

[TetraSky]

4 minutes ago, Ronda said:

Are you seriously suggesting Myanmar is enforcing US sanctions against themselves?

I don't know how you thought I was suggesting they were enforcing a US sanction, over simply censoring Internet access? Like what a repressive regime would do?

I mean, it sucks for the guy, but before accusing EA of something(even if they would likely do it), maybe it would be a good idea to get all the facts here. I'm simply suggesting that it's a possibility.

[Humbug]

11 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

For all we know it's his country that blocked Origin, not EA.

Why would an ISP in Myanmar go out of their way to block Origin? Or why would the govt ask a Myanmar ISP to block Origin? What is there to gain?

It's much more likely that it was blocked from EA's servers.

[Ronda]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

I don't know how you thought I was suggesting they were enforcing a US sanction.

By reading the first sentence of your post where you say you're not afraid of losing access to Origin cause you live in a country which is unlikely to get sanctioned by the US.

[Ronda]

23 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

This is one of the reasons I don't buy into the whole digital content thing.

It's digital content whether you buy it on physical media or not and it's not the distribution method that's not letting the guy play the games he's bought and downloaded, it's DRM and you're not escaping DRM buying your games on disc, are you?

[paddy-stone]

4 minutes ago, Ronda said:

It's digital content whether you buy it on physical media or not and it's not the distribution method that's not letting the guy play the games he's bought and downloaded, it's DRM and you're not escaping DRM buying your games on disc, are you?

Well, to some extent yes. You're talking purely games digital content. I am saying digital content as a whole, so buy blu-ray/dvd instead of digital video, buy music as CDs instead of MP3 etc... you see my point now?

 

[Ronda]

5 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Well, to some extent yes. You're talking purely games digital content. I am saying digital content as a whole, so buy blu-ray/dvd instead of digital video, buy music as CDs instead of MP3 etc... you see my point now?

 

CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays are digital media too. Vinyl, VHS and (some) other magnetic tape formats were the last widely used analog media.

[N3v3r3nding_N3wb]

27 minutes ago, Ronda said:

Are you seriously suggesting Myanmar is enforcing US sanctions against themselves?

Considering Myanmar's bad civil liberties, the government could've decided they don't like games -- too much freedom.  I don't think this is true, though, because only Origin is affected, not Steam (probably a bigger priority), GOG, etc.

[paddy-stone]

Just now, Ronda said:

CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays are digital media too. Vinyl, VHS and (some) other magnetic tape formats were the last widely used analog media.

Yes, but you have a physical thing that you can still use... I'm not arguing about digital vs analogue, I'm sauying that with a physical product you can still make use of it in most cases. Not in this case obviously, but I was saying about physical media vs digital content. BTW digital media and digital content aren't the same thing as you were trying to suggest.

[Ronda]

5 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

BTW digital media and digital content aren't the same thing as you were trying to suggest.

Well, if a piece of content is stored on a piece of digital media, it's digital content, innit?

And I get what you mean, it's just that people associating the word 'digital' with 'not belonging to the user wholly somehow' bothers me.

[paddy-stone]

2 minutes ago, Ronda said:

Well, if a piece of content is stored on a piece of digital media, it's digital content, innit?

And I get what you mean, it's just that people associating the word 'digital' with 'not belonging to the user wholly somehow' bothers me.

No, digital content implies ownership to the company supplying said content as in the case here.. so access is usually thorugh the company supplying the content, so if access gets cut off the user has no access to content.

CD/DVD/blu-ray etc is physical media that is storing digital media, the user has access to that media all the time. The only time this may not be the case is when it is game media maybe, as they sometimes have to have a verification process through a content provider.

[Deletist_Jerk]

FinCEN and the Patriot Act still prohibits U.S. financial institutions from having accounts in Burmese financial institutions. That's a indefinite sanction (not lifted Oct. 7th) until Myanmar can prove they are not a money laundering state.

 

If EA was violating those laws, they've been forced to shut down in Myanmar by the State Department, Treasury, DoD, etc.

 

In that case no way Origin is coming back to Myanmar anytime soon. 

 

 

 

[Centurius]

30 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Yes, but you have a physical thing that you can still use... I'm not arguing about digital vs analogue, I'm sauying that with a physical product you can still make use of it in most cases. Not in this case obviously, but I was saying about physical media vs digital content. BTW digital media and digital content aren't the same thing as you were trying to suggest.

Blu-rays and the like are starting to ship with drm that requires an internet connection as well.

[paddy-stone]

Just now, Centurius said:

Blu-rays and the like are starting to ship with drm that requires an internet connection as well.

Really?  So even the movie that you're buying has to have an internet connection to play it?  That sucks if true, but I'm sure there are going to be ways around it too at some point, which is why I love Anydvd and make a backup of the movie disc, just the movie

I really hope it's not true as that would suck for people that buy them for the kids to watch in the car or other places where an internet connection would not be available/suitable.

[Centurius]

5 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Really?  So even the movie that you're buying has to have an internet connection to play it?  That sucks if true, but I'm sure there are going to be ways around it too at some point, which is why I love Anydvd and make a backup of the movie disc, just the movie

I really hope it's not true as that would suck for people that buy them for the kids to watch in the car or other places where an internet connection would not be available/suitable.

AACS 2.0, which is used on 4K blu-rays, uses decryption via the internet and it is as of yet(nearly a year now) uncracked.