EA/Maxis Permanently terminates Urizenus Account
by Alphaville Herald on 10/12/03 at 12:04 pm
EA has permanently terminated my Urizenus account, 11 hours after issuing a 72 hour warning/suspension. In the termination letter (below) EA falsely claims that I have “continue to list alphvilleherald.com” in my profiles. In fact I immediately removed all references to the Alphaville Herald from my user bio. One presumes that this action is in no small measure part of the continuing campaign of EA/Maxis against urizenus and the Alphaville Herald for breaking the stories of child cyber-prostitution in alphaville.
following is the termination letter:
Dear Urizenus,
Your “The Sims Online” login account ( 578372615 ) has been permanently closed for severe and/or repeated Terms of Service or Rules of Conduct violations. Most recently, on 12-10-2003 at 16:25 GMT a cheating complaint was filed against you. You have continued to list alphavilleherald.com in your profiles after a warning and suspension for this. Your previous account record has also been considered in this action. While we regret it, we feel it is necessary for the good of the game and its community.
To understand our rights and privileges concerning this action, please review:
http://www.ea.com/global/legal/tos.jsp
https://player.thesimsonline.ea.com/user_agreement.jsp
Contact EA Account Admin for further information on this action and/or to file an appeal:
http://accountadmin.custhelp.com
Thank you for your attention.
Carbonprtx
EA Player Relations
Deft Touch
Dec 10th, 2003
Urizenus,
I hope you will not be bullied by Maxis! Keep up the good work and might I suggest reporting The underage cybersex story to the Associated Press and FBI. Only widespread condemnation and legal pressure will make EA/Maxis do the right thing.
RB
Dec 10th, 2003
Rubbish, Absoloute rubbish. GG EA/Maxis on another gay stuff up and attempts to squash bad PR.
Michele
Dec 11th, 2003
WTF is going on with Maxis? They sit up high on their thrones, with certain people (Evangeline) licking their sorry… uh, feet, making our Sims’ lives miserable all because it makes them feel powerful. Guess it goes to show how completely pathetic their lives are in RL. Would serve them right if people started closing accounts over this. Maybe with the maze cheat gone, those who had 2 accounts to do that will close one of theirs. Sounds to me that Maxis doesn’t really need the money though. Sorry bastards.
Kitty
Dec 13th, 2003
They never stop amazing me, do they not know this is realy bad for business. I am starting to wonder if they are trying to close tso down. Piss the ppl off enough and they will all leave and we can call it a loss.
Stupid pricks!
Yes I did close my account they can kiss my ass. Fat chance I will purchase their crap again.
Gaspah
Dec 14th, 2003
Damn Maxis is being lame I hope everyone takes acion.
Val
Dec 14th, 2003
I never really knew about the cyber prostitution on tso – actually I just thought sims would get into love beds together and that was the sex and ‘prostitution’. Guess I was very naive
I am shocked and disgusted – something needs to be done, but what?
Gouf Custom
Dec 15th, 2003
Oy. I mean, really, what more can you say? Prostitution is bad enough. Doing your prostitution through a computer game is worse. But child prostitution being run through a computer game? Guh.
Yoshiko Washima
Dec 16th, 2003
Well at least you got a “nice” mail, before they disabled your account. And if you want to complain about real nasty censorship, have a look at bioware forums and whats happening there.
Anyone who even remotely accuses Bioware and their employees, especially Mr. Derek French of censorship, is immediatley banned with their CD-Key from the bioware forums. Even discussion of such events by other persons is a reason for another ban.
yours,
Yoshiko Washima
Tim
Dec 21st, 2003
I dunno…
Semantically, Carbonprtx has a point, even if it is badly written. :/
He states that “[your] count ( 578372615 ) has been permanently closed for severe and/or repeated Terms of Service or Rules of Conduct violations”.
In that form, it would only take one gross infraction of the rules to ban you, and the deliberation may have taken less than the full 72 hours they alloted with the preliminary suspension.
Censorship or no, the Right to Free Speech is checked at the door once you are on corporate turf. Fairness aside, rights like that are there to protect you fro the Government, not Corporate Entities.
I am really sorry to hear that they were less than eloquent in your dismissal though, as that can really cause more problems than the dismissal itself.
Any comment (from you or EA/Maxis) on the cheating complaint?
urizenus
Dec 21st, 2003
Tigger, it would be nice if you EA employees would identify yourselves as such when you post, but that having been said, no…
The “gross enfraction” of the rules consisted of of having alphavilleherald.com in my property description. And, by the way, I had thought that over on the Stratics board you clarified the situation, saying that in-game links to “illegal sites” was against the TOS, but that in game links to sites that link to illegal sites was not in violation. (In which case in-game links to tha alphaville herald should be fine.) Or did I misread your explanation of the rules?
Finally, and frighteningly, you say:
“Censorship or no, the Right to Free Speech is checked at the door once you are on corporate turf. Fairness aside, rights like that are there to protect you fro the Government, not Corporate Entities.”
This claim is utterly false from a legal perspective, but I’m not surprised to find that an EA employee believes it to be the case.
urizenus
Dec 21st, 2003
Oh and to answer your question, despite repeated requests from me and various media reporters (most recently from the BBC) there has been no explanation or even a one word communication from EA since the termination.