What is the name of your state? Illinois
The week on the online game The Sims ONline (TSO), many players were permanantly banned from the game, many of these players had paid for months of service in advance. None were directly informed as to why they were suspended even when they questioned the company, Maxis, directly. There is a place where it is posted for all to read that they were banned for 'game exploit'. (which may or maynot be a problem with privacy policy).
The supposed exploit was this: If u did certain ingame allowed behaviours, ie buying land and emptying tip jars, you could get in-game cash, called simolians. These players were not using 3rd party programs nor were they doing within the game any behavior not expected of the players(called sims). The sims gained no advantage outside the game.
Maxis has declaired gaining money by combining these allowed behaviors was a bug and therefore anyone who gained simolians in this manner had broken the terms of service. They banned all the sims that bought waht they concidered too much land.
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TERMS OF SERVICE (APPROPRIATE PART)
Report bugs to us via the appropriate forums on the Game's website. Don't exploit any bug in the Game or EA.com Service to gain unfair advantage in the Game, or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through public posting) to any other user of the Game so that it can be abused.
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Apparantly Maxis thought that surely everyone knew this was a bug and not a game feature.
Not all banned sims took advantage of this 'bug'. Those that did not are clueless as to why they were banned. There is some question as to whether or not those that did take advantage of this knew it was a bug.
So the question is: what recourse to the players of this game have against the company. Most of them just want their game account unbanned, the sims they lost represent months of game play.
The week on the online game The Sims ONline (TSO), many players were permanantly banned from the game, many of these players had paid for months of service in advance. None were directly informed as to why they were suspended even when they questioned the company, Maxis, directly. There is a place where it is posted for all to read that they were banned for 'game exploit'. (which may or maynot be a problem with privacy policy).
The supposed exploit was this: If u did certain ingame allowed behaviours, ie buying land and emptying tip jars, you could get in-game cash, called simolians. These players were not using 3rd party programs nor were they doing within the game any behavior not expected of the players(called sims). The sims gained no advantage outside the game.
Maxis has declaired gaining money by combining these allowed behaviors was a bug and therefore anyone who gained simolians in this manner had broken the terms of service. They banned all the sims that bought waht they concidered too much land.
-----------
TERMS OF SERVICE (APPROPRIATE PART)
Report bugs to us via the appropriate forums on the Game's website. Don't exploit any bug in the Game or EA.com Service to gain unfair advantage in the Game, or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through public posting) to any other user of the Game so that it can be abused.
--------------
Apparantly Maxis thought that surely everyone knew this was a bug and not a game feature.
Not all banned sims took advantage of this 'bug'. Those that did not are clueless as to why they were banned. There is some question as to whether or not those that did take advantage of this knew it was a bug.
So the question is: what recourse to the players of this game have against the company. Most of them just want their game account unbanned, the sims they lost represent months of game play.