Battlefield 3 beta bans could suspend Origin accounts

A bit of troubling news from the Battlefield 3 beta. Some modders have found a way to change the player limits on Operation Metro, and have been running servers that let up to 128 players onto the map. RPS have spotted an official DICE forum post, since removed, which says that anyone stumbling into these modded servers could have their Origin account suspended, denying those players access to any games they've bought through Origin.

So, if you enter a modded server, even accidentally, you risk being locked out of not just Battlefield 3, but all of the EA games you own on Origin. Even if it were only aimed at the modders themselves, that punishment would seem extreme, but the fact that it could happen to anyone even visiting a modded server seems mad. It's understandable that DICE are keen to protect server code and their ranking/unlock system to defend Battlefield 3 against hacks and cheaters, but there must be a better way to do that than to penalise paying customers for joining a server.

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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.