[citation][nom]assasin32[/nom]So let me guess this straight they offer a survey for people to get a free game if they participate. People do the survey and some find out they can exploit the system to steal games without even having to take said survey. So they lock it down to fix the exploit, THAN they shut down the entire program and revoke ALL free game offers which haven't been redeemed, even those obtained legitimately. Than they allow the people who exploit their system to keep said games.I am sorry I don't feel sorry for EA. It is pretty common protocol to reward honest customers and punish unhonest. So I would expect them to revoke the games from the accounts that obviously exploited this at bare minmium and more prefered way (as banning people from their account and games they did buy legally is a good way to lose customers for life), and than still up hold their end of the deal with the free games for the honest people. So it seems like the honest guy here got screwed over big time.And honestly I would have thrown in another cheap free game even if it were a cheap $5 game or some promotional $5 gift card or something as a thanks for not exploiting us and try to entice them to buy more and as a final "screw you" to the people who exploited. Though this last part is purely what I would do if I were in a position of power to do it.[/citation]
how it worked was:
1. There was a survey which asked why people didnt use/purchase on origin alot
2. it gave a promotional code for 20$ off most EA brand titles. it was later found out that the code was the same on every survey, so it was said by users of reddit(on r/gamedeals and r/gaming), which then sparked fire everywhere like on cheapassgamer, overclock net etc.
3. originally, you could have added all the games into your shopping cart, and the code would be applied to all eligible titles and discount them in one go. this was patched quickly.
4. At this point, the only known way to abuse the code thereafter was multiple accounts
5. A user on overclock net found a roundabout method in order to get the promotions working though a series of steps(1. log out, add item to cart, apply code, remove from cart, log in, add game again and its saved as promotional price). This went on for a whole day without EA not responding to it(origin was on heavy site load).
6. EA removes the code earlier than its originally supposed to be removed.
So basically EA is in a predicament with 2 choices:
Choice A: Revoke all the games with the promo that day(doesn't stop users who already downloaded it since the games aren't DRM'd like steam is), This path would cause extreme backlash, especially wouldn't help out the original purpose of the code was to promote users to use origin for purchases. Revoking the titles would just confirm to several thousands of users that Origin isn't worth their time(and really the only game most users play that required origin was ME3 on PC or BF3)
Choice B: Allow everyone to keep the games. bringing a temporary increase of origin users. Keeping a possibility of a more neutral opinion of the public on EA(especially after their worst company fiasco as well as gamers tend to not like EA pushing costly and day 1 DLC in their faces)
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