For a while now, if you got banned from Electronic Arts’ Origin service (and, sometimes, even their message boards), you might also find yourself unable to access the single-player content from the games you’ve purchased. That rubbed people the wrong way, and EA has apparently worked out the backend hiccups to fix it.
Cinema Blend received a notification from EA about an update to Origin policy that notes “offline content” will now be available by enabling an offline mode within Origin. Read it in full here.
“If you find yourself with a disabled account, please note that you can still play EA games in single-player mode. For PC games you will need to enable Origin's offline mode to play games with a disabled account. Go to the settings tab in Origin (the gear icon) and select Go Offline.”
Getting banned isn’t a scenario most users will find themselves in, but besides the broader philosophical issues, banning mistakes do happen, and to find yourself unable to play the games you bought sounds incredibly frustrating.
It’s easy to forget nobody really liked Steam when it originally launched alongside Half-Life 2, but the service has come a long way since then, and Steam has since raised expectations for digital delivery services to the point that when Electronic Arts decided to get into the game with Origin, its missteps have been rightly criticized.