EA Deletes Origin Account with Thousands of Dollars’ Worth of Games

This happened over a Thanksgiving Holiday weekend to my girlfriend. After crying on the phone to EA and eventually getting through to someone who wasn't clueless, it turned out that this is EA's default behavior for dealing with hacked accounts. Her account had to be restored from a backup.
 
EA is shoddy and Origin has basically no security or no way to roll anything back.

Years ago, they merged the Playstation and PC account names and someone took my Bad Company 2 name and I couldn't play the game.

Called up support and they guy says "let me try something" - he deleted my BC2 user and wiped the whole account history - all unlocks, all medals, etc.

Completely unrecoverable and unfixable - and it was all done on a "I wonder if this will help".

Sure, it was just stats and by that time, the game was dying, but make no mistake, Origin is fragile and insecure and one adventurous or vengeful rep can permanently wreck your account.
 
It will be a glorious shitshow when Steam goes down and millions cry in despair. But this is what gamers wanted and this is what they get.
 
EA is shoddy and Origin has basically no security or no way to roll anything back.

Years ago, they merged the Playstation and PC account names and someone took my Bad Company 2 name and I couldn't play the game.

Called up support and they guy says "let me try something" - he deleted my BC2 user and wiped the whole account history - all unlocks, all medals, etc.

Completely unrecoverable and unfixable - and it was all done on a "I wonder if this will help".

Sure, it was just stats and by that time, the game was dying, but make no mistake, Origin is fragile and insecure and one adventurous or vengeful rep can permanently wreck your account.

yeah happened to my BC2 account as well.. back when i first started playing you were allowed to have a different name then your login name.. then origin came out and poof you weren't allowed to do that anymore so my original username/play history disappeared when i tried to get them to fix it.
 
Steam emails you about every transaction... Does EA not do this? I don't have an origin account.
 
It will be a glorious shitshow when Steam goes down and millions cry in despair.
Alledgedly, Valve has provisions in place that ensure gamers' continued access to games should this happen.

But this is what gamers wanted and this is what they get.
Indeed. Consumers voted with their feet and overwhelmingly approved the digital future.
Only holdouts were console gamers who still value physical media. But also that is on the decline.
 
My EA account constantly get hacked. As well as Ubisoft. Sure I don't have an AI generated password, but it's a bit more advanced and I use the very same password for Battlenet and Steam as well and those two have NEVER been hacked.
I think both EA and Ubisoft have shitty security.
 
It tickles me when people have a nearly empty inbox and don't create folders to save emails. Yahoo has all my emails since 2001 and stores them for free, occasionally I'll back them up with https://www.mailstore.com/en/products/mailstore-home/
There's no reason to delete anything.

My hotmail account is well over 20 years old and pre-dates the Microsoft acquisition.

But in 2003 or 2004, MS had a major data loss and all my email prior to that time was lost - including some irreplaceable correspondence with friends now deceased.

Sure, my bad for not backing anything up, but cloud services are not perfect...
 
My hotmail account is well over 20 years old and pre-dates the Microsoft acquisition.

But in 2003 or 2004, MS had a major data loss and all my email prior to that time was lost - including some irreplaceable correspondence with friends now deceased.

Sure, my bad for not backing anything up, but cloud services are not perfect...
Was it only some accounts? My msn email still goes back to 2001 when I opened it.
 
Was it only some accounts? My msn email still goes back to 2001 when I opened it.

Yeah, I don't think everyone was affected, just a small percentage of users but you'd think Microsoft would have some backups or redundancies in place - right?

Apparently not for free email accounts...
 
My hotmail account is well over 20 years old and pre-dates the Microsoft acquisition.

But in 2003 or 2004, MS had a major data loss and all my email prior to that time was lost - including some irreplaceable correspondence with friends now deceased.

Sure, my bad for not backing anything up, but cloud services are not perfect...

Oh, crap, I remember that one. I lost over 5 years worth of emails. I was backing up my other POP3 email, but not Hotmail :(
 
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He apparently got all but one preorder back, or at least a new account with everything in it minus the achievements and such. Only because it went viral, of course, and no explanation as far as I saw.
 
This reminds me of what happened when I got Battlefield 4.

Battlelog wiped out my soldier from Battlefield 3. I played BF4 for a while, decided I wanted to play BF3 some more while DICE patched some issues that BF4 had at launch. Went to load up BF3 and my profile and all my 460~ hours of unlock progress was completely gone. The only evidence of my soldier was on third-party sites which you can see here.

I contacted EA about the problem. Had a ticket opened 11/2/13 and besides a couple notifications of escalation emails, they ended up sending me a reply on 5/21/14 (yeah, six months later).

It is worth noting that I've had an EA account of some fashion likely since around 2001, and it has been migrated a number of times into what eventually became Origin.

This is the reply I got. Names removed.

My name is [redacted] and I am a member of the customer experience team here at EA.

Firstly, I would like to thank you for your extended patience whilst we have been working to review and resolve your case for you. I understand you have been waiting a while for a response from us and our studio have now completed reviewing your account for you.

After extensive review and investigation, unfortunately it is not possible for the two Origin ID's issue to be resolved. Our studio have stressed every possible option available to rectify this for you and unfortunately this cannot be resolved.

I appreciate that this may be frustrating to hear and I would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused at all. Whilst we aren't able to resolve this issue for you, I would like to assure you that it is important to us that we provide you with a satisfactory alternative in this case and as such, we would like to provide you with a game free of charge.

To enable us to add a game to your account for you, please select one of the games from the following list:

SimCity
FIFA 13
Medal of Honor Warfighter
The Sims 3
Mass Effect 2
Kingdoms of Amalur
Dead Space 2
Dragon age Origins: Awakening

Once you have made your selection, please respond to this e-mail detailing your choice and we will be more than happy to grant your selection to your account immediately so that you can begin to download and play.

Again, thank you for your patience and cooperation whilst we have been working on your case for you and we look forward to receiving your response.

At time time that I got this reply. I already owned SimCity, The Sims 3, Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2, and Dragon Age Origins: Awakening. I wasn't particularly interested in the other titles on offer...

Basically, my Origin account is broken somehow. I have also had issues where Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 purchased at retail would not allow me to go online if the key was bound to my account. Their technicians were able to bind the key to test accounts and could go online for play without issues, but could not determine the cause or a solution to my account going online with the license key.

Based on this story, and mine. It certainly seems like their account system is somehow broken in ways that have fundamental problems, and whatever logs they are keeping are not sufficient to trace issues back to the cause. Considering it has been a few years since what happened to me, I had hoped they got things in order. Doesn't sound like it.

edit: typo
 
EA is shoddy and Origin has basically no security or no way to roll anything back.

Years ago, they merged the Playstation and PC account names and someone took my Bad Company 2 name and I couldn't play the game.

Called up support and they guy says "let me try something" - he deleted my BC2 user and wiped the whole account history - all unlocks, all medals, etc.

Completely unrecoverable and unfixable - and it was all done on a "I wonder if this will help".

Sure, it was just stats and by that time, the game was dying, but make no mistake, Origin is fragile and insecure and one adventurous or vengeful rep can permanently wreck your account.
Don't worry, steam support is no better either.

I almost lost my account because of an idiot. They did exactly what I specifically asked them not to do with my account. It seemed to me that they weren't actually interpreting my messages, but acting on keywords that were in there. So if you tell them don't reset my password then they'd reset your password.
 
Alledgedly, Valve has provisions in place that ensure gamers' continued access to games should this happen.

Indeed. Consumers voted with their feet and overwhelmingly approved the digital future.
Only holdouts were console gamers who still value physical media. But also that is on the decline.

I game on all platforms though PC is my primary and I have been a hold out as well. I've been extremely vocal over the years about my resistance to the "all digital future". So no it isn't just console gamers.
 
EA Acces Orgin gets a lot of hate — so I’m going to play devils advocate.

If everyone used EA Orgin Access for $30 a year you’d A) have no reason to have your account stolen, B) have no problem getting your games back(because you already have everything and so does everyone else), C) not have spent ‘thousands of dollars’ on your account for 66 years. ($30 annual pass x66 years = ~$2000)
 
Not enough. Print them out and put them in a fireproof box. It's the only way to be sure.
Do that with important account login info, too.

I call it making a [H]ardCopy. :)

I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. :D
 
My EA account constantly get hacked. As well as Ubisoft. Sure I don't have an AI generated password, but it's a bit more advanced and I use the very same password for Battlenet and Steam as well and those two have NEVER been hacked.
I think both EA and Ubisoft have shitty security.
Hacked, or notified of an outside access attempt? Because I get the latter constantly for both Steam and Origin. None of my online accounts have ever been successfully hacked into, though, in more than 20 years, and I also make my own passwords. But I never use the same password on more than one account.
 
Hacked, or notified of an outside access attempt? Because I get the latter constantly for both Steam and Origin. None of my online accounts have ever been successfully hacked into, though, in more than 20 years, and I also make my own passwords. But I never use the same password on more than one account.

They get in the account, change my password and my real name and that's when I get the email notification that it was changed.
Some Russian dude even changed my account to his real name so I looked him up on their social media, thanked him for gearing up my character in The Division and told him to go fuck himself.
I never got an email from Steam about people attempting to get in, although I do get from Battlenet from time to time that someone used an incorrect password but no one got in either account.
 
I worked for them so I have more insight then any of you fuckers :D

This has happened before, even when I worked there. Origin database corruption or some such shit caused this.
When they say they can't find purchase history, someone is just being lazy because the systems themselves are separate, however the way the agents access the info is all through a unified support tool
So if that doesn't have the info, forget about it. The agent or any agent won't be able to find shit
And the teams looking after the actual transaction servers couldn't really give a fuck as this issue would be way down the foodchain of importance.
 
They get in the account, change my password and my real name and that's when I get the email notification that it was changed.
Some Russian dude even changed my account to his real name so I looked him up on their social media, thanked him for gearing up my character in The Division and told him to go fuck himself.
I never got an email from Steam about people attempting to get in, although I do get from Battlenet from time to time that someone used an incorrect password but no one got in either account.

Someone from Russia hacked mine. I quickly called EA and reset everything, they were fast to get it all back.
The dude got a free boxed copy of Crysis. I wasn't able to reroute it to me, I think they canceled the order.
 
It tickles me when people have a nearly empty inbox and don't create folders to save emails. Yahoo has all my emails since 2001 and stores them for free, occasionally I'll back them up with https://www.mailstore.com/en/products/mailstore-home/
There's no reason to delete anything.
Is this a troll? Yahoo has admitted to losing everything, post, personal info, lost password questions and answers.
 
Is this a troll? Yahoo has admitted to losing everything, post, personal info, lost password questions and answers.
No, not a troll and no where did I say that on-line emails where foolproof. I just checked and I can only see back to 2010 (you can tell how often I look). Good thing I backed them up.;)

Odd, my sent item folder has items back to 2002.
 
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Not enough. Print them out and put them in a fireproof box. It's the only way to be sure.
Do that with important account login info, too.

I call it making a [H]ardCopy. :)


I thought the only way to be sure was to nuc them from orbit :ROFLMAO:
 
I would hope so, too, and that records are permanent no matter whether an account is deleted or not. But, it's pretty strange that everything related to one person's account could disappear, including all supporting records. It sounds to me like it could be an act of deliberate sabotage.


Sounds to me like the first people he talked to weren't the right people to talk to. As soon as he get's ahold of the right people, and he probably has with this recent guy, they'll dig up the info and fix his shit for him.
 
EA is shoddy and Origin has basically no security or no way to roll anything back.

Years ago, they merged the Playstation and PC account names and someone took my Bad Company 2 name and I couldn't play the game.

Called up support and they guy says "let me try something" - he deleted my BC2 user and wiped the whole account history - all unlocks, all medals, etc.

Completely unrecoverable and unfixable - and it was all done on a "I wonder if this will help".

Sure, it was just stats and by that time, the game was dying, but make no mistake, Origin is fragile and insecure and one adventurous or vengeful rep can permanently wreck your account.


Almost certainly this is just a lazy or ignorant rep. Systems today are far more redundant and recovery is far more of a sure thing today then in the past. I'd put my money on the moron on the phone before I'd bet against the IT infrastructure itself.
 
Almost certainly this is just a lazy or ignorant rep. Systems today are far more redundant and recovery is far more of a sure thing today then in the past. I'd put my money on the moron on the phone before I'd bet against the IT infrastructure itself.

Yes, I assumed the same thing as I used to work in IT, but I escalated this and made numerous calls to numerous people at EA - I decided to make myself a much bigger pain than it would be to simply restore the data, but in the end, they said it was impossible and they comped me a couple games that I didn't care about.

Anyone who has worked in a production IT environment just assumes that it can't be THAT fragile and insecure - you can't just let a poorly trained rep with poor judgement do something so final and so devastating to your customers, but I have seen no evidence to support that very reasonable assumption and plenty of anecdotes that support the idea that your customer data is fragile and insecure.
 
If EA really has none of his purchase records despite he actually has them as evidence....well.. let's call the IRS, someone's playing a game here with VAT and taxes involved..LoL
 
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