Once again, EA showed us why they are constantly in the top ten hated corporations in America by doing one of the strangest things I have heard in a long time, banning an entire country. Now saying those words is not strange at all, games have been banned in countries before, and game companies have refused to publish their games (for whatever reason) in other countries. This time however, the twist is more hilarious but scary at the same time: EA banned the entire country of Myanmar from accessing their Origin service, thus blocking gamers from playing games…they already paid for.
Peter Glagowki from Destructoid reached out to EA for comment- this is the response he got in return:
“The short answer here is that this occurred due to the US government trade embargo on Myanmar,” says Kashif A., a customer experience representative for EA. “EA is internally reviewing the situation and looking into whether and when service can be restored to Myanmar residents. It’s unclear to me whether we can do anything for residents of other countries that are still similarly embargoed, but I’ll bring the topic up for discussion internally.”
It was the Reddit user trivial_sublime (great name btw) who first brought this strange bit of news to the attention of us all, since he himself noticed he could not access his account and did some light research.
New US laws have banned Origin in some countries but not only have those sanctions being lifted long before EA went on a banning spree, there are no available lists online documenting which other countries are no longer affect. The face EA blocked all of these users without warning or any signs of refunds should worry those who frequently purchase games with some form of DRM in place. These companies can block you from your own games at any given time, and it seems there is nothing concrete we could do to stop that situation if it ever arose.
This week in better news, Steam announced this week that it will now require publishers to post in-game screenshots of their games. This is to better cut down on rampant practice of false advertising that is currently hard to avoid in the steam store. Valve who is known to have a poor track record when it comes to customer service, has seemingly made this decision in light of games like No Man’s Sky, which have been strongly criticized for advertising features of a product that never came to fruition.
It remains to be seen if this change to the rules will affect the problems Steam is currently facing with false marketing- after all its clear to anyone that Steam Greenlight is now a place filled with asset flips and poorly executed attempted of game developing, which of course they did not intend for.
And finally we bring you another ongoing sale this week, this time GOG has brought us a Halloween sale, with some great discounts, and to remind those of us who do not already know, all games on GOG are free of DRM, so get going and find the sale which is just for you.
For those who never heard of the service, on the website you can find this statement:
GOG.com is a digital distribution platform serving fantastic computer games and movies at kick-ass prices. And no, it’s not “just a store” – it’s the site that’s all about the greatest games ever and the people who play them. We’ve got critically acclaimed games, with tons of all-time classics for just $5.99 and $9.99, along with modern games from AAA to Indie, bundled with heaps of free downloadable content and exclusive add-ons, no DRM or intrusive copy protection and full compatibility with Windows XP & Vista. Most of our games are compatible with Windows 7 as well, and many work natively on Mac OS X 10.6+ and Linux – it’s all right there on every product page.While games form the bulk and core of our offering, we’ve also recently introduced movies on top of that. Make sure to check that out, too!
You can find the sale here at this link.
Join us next week for more Gaming news, and as always, stay locked to this space
