Regarding a rumor: We will not ban players for requesting refunds. Please review our returns & cancellations policy: help.ea.com/article/return…— Origin (@OriginInsider) March 7, 2013
Electronic Arts denies reports that SimCity owners pushing for refunds will be banned from Origin, but now Amazon is refusing to sell it anyway.
Update: It appears that, for the moment anyway, Amazon has put the digital version of SimCity up for sale once again.
Original story: Reports began circulating earlier today that Electronic Arts is refusing to offer refunds to owners of SimCity because despite the unmitigated debacle of the game’s launch, the situation does not constitute “exceptional circumstances” and thus does not qualify. That’s bad enough, but worse were reports that customers were being threatened with Origin account bans for pushing for refunds.
EA has just stated through the Origin Twitter account that those reports are false, however. “Regarding a rumor: We will not ban players for requesting refunds. Please review our returns & cancellations policy,” the company wrote, providing a link to the policy that you can check out here.
Based on screens of the conversation that apparently started the rumor, the customer in question was threatened with a ban not for requesting a refund but for suggesting that he would stop payment to Origin through his bank. It’s unfortunate that someone would find himself in a position where that course of action feels necessary and the right and wrong of EA’s refusal to issue SimCity refunds is certainly open to debate, but it’s not unreasonable of the company to cancel accounts belonging to people who refuse to pay.
The good news, sort of, is that Amazon is doing its part to spare other gamers from getting caught up in the SimCity train wreck by pulling the game from distribution. “Many customers are having issues connecting to the SimCity servers. EA is actively working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue will be fixed,” it wrote in a warning to customers. The game is now listed as “currently unavailable,” and Amazon says it doesn’t know “when or if this item will be available again.”
