EA will not be banning people from games because of message board conduct

Yesterday, we ran a rumor about the possibility of EA message board bans leading to in-game bans. According to the same person who started the rumor, Command & Conquer community manager Aaron Kaufman, this isn’t true. In a recent topic started by Kaufman in the C&C section of the boards, he admitted that he misspoke and that no action other than a message board ban will be given to unruly members.

From the posting:

If we suspend or ban you from the forums, that does not affect your in-game account and certainly it does not impact your in-game account for other games. Quite often we usually warn you before taking any type of action, suspend you before considering any type of ban, etc...

There is certainly reassuring news. I would like to think I live in a world where posting up an animated picture of a phallic object would only net me ostracism from the community instead of every publisher related game I own. Despite the fact that EA is doing the right thing in this scenario, one should still consider how much control EA has over their users with these Master EA accounts that are tied to online game access.