Electronic Arts has loosened its banning policy in order to keep customers happy

Apr 17, 2012 08:25 GMT  ·  By

Electronic Arts has modified its infamous banning policy and will now allow those who have banned EA accounts to play the games they’ve actually purchased, albeit only offline, without support for multiplayer or other functions.

EA, like many videogame companies, resort to bans and account suspensions when users go out of line, either while playing games or on its various forums.

Unfortunately, having your EA account banned meant that you couldn’t even access the games you purchased until the ban expired. As such, people were effectively locked out of the experience they had paid for.

EA has now changed this policy and announced that those with banned EA accounts would be able to access their games in an offline mode via the Origin digital distribution service on the PC.

“If you find yourself with a disabled account, please note that you can still play EA games in single-player mode,” the company said. “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.”

EA notes, however, that most bans are only temporary, so people will regain access to their games once the punishment expires.

“The majority of banned or suspended accounts are only suspended temporarily. Find more information about the length of your suspension by checking the email address associated with your account.”

The videogame publisher also emphasized that it always wants to reward customers with a top-notch service and this includes punishing those that want to disrupt the experience.

“With every game and service EA offers, we take the satisfaction of our customers very seriously. We discourage cheating and strive to maintain a high level of integrity in both our games and our forums. To this end, we will hide inappropriate content, and we will take action on EA/Origin accounts that violate the Terms of Service (TOS) based on the severity of the offense.”

Are you happy with this change or do you still think bans from EA shouldn’t prevent you from accessing games?