Banned Origin Players Can Now Play Their Games

Rightly or wrongly, there are a lot of criticisms levelled at EA’s Origin service. One of the biggest sticking points, however, is that if you get banned from Origin you are denied access to the games you have paid for – not a great selling point.

EA promised to have a look at the controversial policy last year, after complaints from banned users about not being able to access their games, and has now decided to reverse the clause to allow gamers to access the single player component of their games.

The new ‘Go Offline’ option can be accessed according to EA’s Account Suspension policy.

“If you find yourself with a disabled account, please note that you can still play EA games in single-player mode. For PC games you will need to enable Origin’s offline mode to play games with a disabled account. Go to the settings tab in Origin (the gear icon) and select Go Offline. “

Source: Eurogamer

16 Comments

  1. Disgusting that this is even a thing.

  2. People should really put their money where their mouth is with this service, although I know it may be hard for users who enjoy the games that EA release. I’m surprised this service seems worse than Games for Windows.

    • Unfortunately they don’t really give you to much of a choice, with games like battlefield and a few others require origin to play them.

      • Dont buy them. I havent bought an EA game since Dead Space 2 and I am having a great time.

      • Battlefield 3 was my personal goty and probably my favorite FPS ever, EA could do just about anything and i’d still buy it, I expect everyone feels that way about at least one game.

      • Dead or Alive: Extreme Beachvolleyball! :P

  3. Erm… Just don’t get banned?!

    • Getting banned – for rules that seem to fit at the whim of the publisher occasionally – should never stop you playing offline. It’s remarkable that EA have only just turned about face on this.

  4. If you get banned from a forum, it shouldn’t result in your access to the games you’ve paid for is now revoked. I remeber Bioware issuing a ton of bans within a week after DA2 came out and i think it was down to people bringing up how rushed it was etc..

    There is nothing to prevent EA from abusing it. So i am surprised that they’ve done a uturn on this. Although, i wonder if their lawyers told them that they risked having a ton of lawsuits on their hands thus resulting in this?

    I will refuse to get Origin even at the expense of the ME trilogy on PC. :(

  5. Steam says hello and thanks for the new customers.

  6. I’ve tried to stick to Steam since I built my new PC. But, unfortunately, Battlefield 3 made me use Origin. It tears me up inside and I cry a little each night… :P

    Yeah, but seriously, I don’t like Origin at all. Too controlling.

    • Same here, only it was Mass Effect 3 for me. Only Origin Game I have and if I had been given a choice it would be residing on Steam.

  7. I only use it for Fifa but yeah its silly that they do this.

  8. I have FIFA and BF3 on it Steam is obviously the king its great no problems with it at all (apart from having to initially go online to then play offline). Origin is okay at best but its better than GFWL. I think its good though that Steam has competition.

  9. the article i read about this said that people who got forum bans still can’t play their games.

    i don’t know if that’s true, but either way, ea are an example of everything that’s wrong with this industry.

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