Electronic Arts says they’re working to fix Origin in Myanmar in the wake of recent news that players could not access their EA PC games in the Southeast Asian country.
The ban, widely reported on Reddit (and emailed quite a bit to Kotaku‘s tips line today), prevents Origin users in Myanmar from playing any of the games they have purchased on EA’s digital service, including the recently released shooters Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2. When trying to log onto Origin, players reported getting a message that read “Access Denied.” One player said a customer service representative had blamed U.S. law for the regional ban.
When reached by Kotaku this afternoon, an EA spokesperson said: “We are working to restore access to Origin for our players in Myanmar. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused, and we’ll share updates on timing as soon as possible.”
The United States removed economic sanctions against Myanmar in early October, which raises questions about the timing of this ban.
Comments
6 responses to “EA Blocks Entire Country From Playing Games On Origin, Says They Plan To Fix It”
Trust me Myanmar, you were BETTER OFF.
Most likely with the origin server issues yesterday they rolled back to a previous version or server that had the block on it.
Apparently not. Some of the more interesting comments in those Reddit threads are from affected users who were not – and had never been – affected by region blocks until the ‘Origin 10 Update’ rolled out a couple weeks ago. Apparently this is AFTER the US lifted its sanctions on Myanmar and Iran (Iran has also been blocked).
Could be that EA always intended to take part in the sanctions and had simply taken bloody forever to do it so that by the time they actually were able to implement it, the sanctions were no longer in effect… but who knows.
Apparently Iran as well https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/5a5rta/ea_and_origin_has_also_recently_banned_another/
Why do we need internet based DRM again?
Because FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS in LOST SALES!!11oneoneeleven!!