My last customer service interaction with EA Games is one of many reasons I’m boycotting their products. I installed Origin today, though, as I already have a couple of games acquired through it. It seemed the easiest way to find out if they ever got ported to Mac (unlikely though that may be).
When I logged in, however, the number of games in my library was three times what I expected. Is this related to that terrible customer service experience, or something else?
Poor Customer Service Experience
In case you didn’t read about my Sims 3 hiatus, here’s what happened.
I purchased The Sims 3 and three of its expansions through Steam when I still had a PC. I didn’t realize at the time those purchases covered only the PC version.
After I got my Mac, I contacted EA’s customer service to see if I could get my Steam licenses revoked and get the game through Origin instead. My hopes weren’t very high; since Steam is owned by Valve, I wasn’t sure if EA had any control over licenses there. I didn’t want any money back, though. I just wanted to be able to keep playing the games I had paid for.
However, the answer I got was insulting. Rather than citing an inability to revoke my Steam licenses, I was told that they wouldn’t help me because I hadn’t bought it through Origin. Steam wasn’t an “authorized retailer” and I therefore didn’t qualify for customer service at all.
How is Steam not an authorized retailer? The game wouldn’t be on there if EA said no!
Anyway…
Skipping ahead a year, I opened Origin today and logged in to find that all my Sims 3 content is now available to me.
Que?
I don’t have enough faith in EA to think they changed their minds about giving me a break and decided not to tell me about it. Since my Sims 3 purchases are registered with the same email address as my Origin account, I think a system update designed to integrate the two accounts tied them together.
It’s kinda nice to have The Sims 3 available to me again. They already have my money, so I plan to keep playing it. However, I’m still boycotting them. My Sims 3 Legacy Challenge Scorecard Spreadsheet updates are therefore still suspended for now. I could use Wiki information to update them, as I did for my last update, but I’m kinda busy of late.