Spore Players Threatened with Ban for Discussing DRM
After inquiring about the DRM situation on the official Spore board, jpfrostfox's thread was locked, with the following added by a forum moderator:
SecuROM as been discussed and discussed so much and it causes arguments in threads. If you want to talk about DRM SecuROM then please use another fansite forum. If there is any change you will be able to read it on the official Spore site.Please do not continue to post theses thread or you account may be at risk of banning which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore.
In order to post on the forum, posters must sign in with the Spore account tied to their game, with players only allowed one account for each copy of the game they purchase.
Following the initial posting, moderator sporemasterladym stepped in, claiming that the above was representative of "a mis-communication issue somewhere."
"You are not going to lose your game for posting a comment," the moderator wrote in a separate thread found by Kotaku. "It is okay to discuss issues on this forum as long as it's done in a respectful manner and there are no personal attacks. This includes the DRM and other controversial issues. Just keep it civil."
Faylor's Take: As a former forum moderator, I certainly sympathize with the plight of those that have been tasked with watching over the official Spore forums.
I'm also familiar with the practice of empty threats, such as this. The implications of preventing a Spore owner from playing the game they legitimately bought because of something they posted on the forums are mind boggling, especially with a controversial subject like DRM, and there's no way that would fly once the higher-ups learned of it.
Should push come to shove, I can understand removing a user's posting privileges. In fact, I'm sure this has already happened multiple times. But apart from causing even more controversy, I can't think of one reason to even bring up the idea of removing a consumer's ability to play their $50 game because of a questionable forum violation.
Thanks to Leviathan41 for the heads up
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I could understand a temp ban from the site.
A permanent ban is unacceptable and so is a ban on the game. After all DRM is part of the game so it's fair to discuss it. Especially if potential customers come in to see what the game is like. This is important information (which really should be on the box as well).
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A permanent ban is acceptable when people come in and keep posting the same things over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, like I'm sure most of the most vocal whiners about the DRM are doing. That being said, banning them from actually playing the game is a whole different subject and isn't acceptable for any reason.
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How many times is it allowed to post something, that one is angry about then?
3 times? 5 times? Are you allowed to criticize the game 3 times before you get banned? If I criticized the DRM 3 times, can I still talk about the one account per game thing? Or may I even post 3 times about the DRM and 3 times about the one game one account thing?
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Well hopefully they'll give you an "uncriticize" tool to take back some of the things you said so you can criticize it more later
Otherwise you'd have to call EA directly to criticize them about the game, which is just tedious ;)
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i highly doubt one person posting once is going to get banned. i can't say how their moderation works but i would be shocked if that happened. at worst a one-time post would get a warning before a ban. you are talking about the people that are spamming and shitting up the threads. i'm sure if you go browse there you'll get a feeling of the horror. i'm sure if you use the internet and forums at all semi regularly you already know the crap that's going on there. so don't pretend that if you signed up and posted a polite question about DRM you'd be banned, because most likely you would not.
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