Re: An Open Indictment of Electronic Arts

To the executives, algorithm designers, and so-called "customer service" stewards at Electronic Arts (EA)—a corporation that has long prioritized profit over player trust, and convenience over fairness—this letter is a reckoning. For years, gamers worldwide have endured your half-baked releases, predatory monetization, and systemic disregard for the communities that fund your empire. But your latest outrage—targeting innocent players of EA SPORTS FC 26 with arbitrary, unaccountable bans—crosses a line from negligence to outright exploitation.

The Betrayal of a Paying Player: A Story of Unjust Silence

On September 18, 2025, a player invested in your "Ultimate Edition" of FC 26—a premium purchase marketed to deliver early access, a privilege for which they paid hard-earned money. For 7 to 8 hours, they engaged in nothing but legitimate gameplay: no cheats, no glitches, no violations of your rules—merely working through basic in-game tasks, never even completing the transfer-focused objectives. By September 19, their account was erased from your platforms. No warning. No explanation beyond a vague, automated email citing "violations of user guidelines."

This player did not stop at outrage. They pored over your User Agreement and Fair Play Policy—documents you claim are the backbone of your "community standards"—and found no overlap between their actions and your so-called "violations." They filed an appeal, hoping for a modicum of due process. Two days passed. Then another. Silence. Desperate for answers, they used a friend’s account to reach out to your support team—only to be met with cold, scripted responses that dismissed their concerns, as if their experience, their investment, and their trust were meaningless.

This is not an "isolated mistake." It is a pattern. Across Reddit, Twitter, and gaming forums, countless players share identical tales: accounts banned for no discernible reason, appeals vanishing into a black hole, support teams that treat paying customers like pests to be ignored. You have built a system where algorithms act as judge, jury, and executioner—no human oversight, no evidence, no chance to defend oneself.

Your Rules Are a Sham: Hypocrisy Wrapped in Fine Print

Let us turn to your own User Agreement—a document you force players to accept before they even touch your game. It explicitly states: "EA shall provide thirty (30) days’ prior written notice via email before terminating a user’s account for alleged violations of these Terms." Yet you violated this promise without hesitation. You did not send a warning. You did not investigate the data. You did not afford this player—this customer—the basic courtesy of verifying their actions before stripping them of access to a product they paid for.

Your "fair play" rhetoric is equally hollow. You claim to protect the "integrity of the game," yet you allow servers to crash mid-match, AI to undermine legitimate skill, and microtransactions to turn progression into a pay-to-win scheme. The only "integrity" you defend is the integrity of your profit margins. When a player buys your Ultimate Edition, they are not just purchasing a game—they are purchasing trust. You have broken that trust, not with a mistake, but with a deliberate choice: to prioritize the speed of automated bans over the fairness owed to those who keep your company afloat.

The Cost of Your Arrogance: More Than a Banned Account

This is not just about a disrupted gaming session. For the player in question, your actions represent a theft of their investment—money spent on early access, time spent building progress, and faith spent believing your company might value them. You have turned a source of joy into a source of frustration and powerlessness. For the broader community, you have reinforced a bitter truth: EA sees players not as partners, but as disposable revenue streams. When you dismiss appeals with form letters, when you hide behind algorithms instead of human accountability, you erode the very foundation of gaming—a community built on shared passion.

A Final Warning: The Tide Is Turning

You have long relied on the idea that gamers have no choice—that we will keep buying your products despite your contempt. That era is ending.

To EA: We demand three things. First, the immediate reinstatement of all wrongfully banned FC 26 accounts—including the one at the center of this story. Second, full transparency: release a public report explaining how your automated ban system works, why it failed so catastrophically here, and what you will do to prevent it from failing again. Third, a complete overhaul of your customer support: replace scripted responses with human empathy, and ensure no appeal goes unanswered for more than 24 hours.

If you refuse, know this: We will not stay silent. We will share our stories. We will boycott your future releases. We will remind the world that a company that treats its customers with disdain does not deserve to survive.

Electronic Arts, you have spent years exploiting the trust of gamers. The bill is now due.

Sincerely,A Global Community of Gamers Wronged by Your GreedAnd Defenders of Fairness in the World You Seek to Control