Origin customers attempting to connect from Myanmar have discovered that they are no longer welcome on the service. Users have reported that all attempts to access the Origin store or their games libraries are met with an “access denied” message. Of course, this also prevents people from playing the games for which they paid a lot of money.
Electronic Arts attempted to explain the ban on connections coming from the ASEAN country; saying that it was in line with US imposed policy on providing services to certain countries. The company decided to comply with the legislation in the recent Origin 10 update, likely to get in line with American sanctions on the country.
“Yes, with the Origin 10 update, US laws (which is where EA is based) forced them to block certain countries. Unfortunately you live in one of those countries. I’m sorry but there is nothing we ca do here to allow you access again,” wrote a representative from EA on the community message boards.
The only problem with the explanation is that sanctions on Myanmar were lifted by President Barack Obama on 7 October 2016; after being in existence for 19 years. In other words, EA had almost two decades to comply with the law, and only chose to do so after it was no longer in effect.
At the moment, EA has realised its mistake. However, connections for the country have not been restored as of yet. The company is apparently “working to restore access to Origin” for its Myanmar based players, but that has not yet happened.
This incident between EA and Myanmar shows the danger of modern digitally distributed content. The owners of the platforms are more than capable of preventing people from playing games they buy with their hard earned money. Modern DRM simply means that nobody owns their games; they just buy permission to play them.
[Source: EA Community]
