Driven To Tiers: How Simple Simon and Hasty Halston Helped Sesert34 To Run Amok On The EA Forum.

Simple Simon met a Porkie Pie Man
Sesert34, disaster of disguise.
‘Want a serial, to play Sims 3, that’s all!’
But because he wasn’t wise,
Simple Simon and Halston helped the Porkie Pie Man
Our patience EA tries!

You may have thought that things could not get much worse for EA over the latest activities of Sesert34 earning them some lurid media headlines, but with due respect to the likes of Fox News and their army of journalists, you don’t know the half of it yet, luvs!

Now for the twist in the tale – on the same day EA went into panic mode and deleted any posts on their forum from outraged (and more than a few gleeful) Simmers that the EA Sims 3 website was being well and truly hung out to dry by the media, the troll they had to ‘thank’ for getting them all the free publicity for the Generations expansion pack they certainly didn’t want was serving some extra sauce to go with his Bumnuggetry cake.

Sesert34 had started another blog in April (although hopefully not for much longer) to record whatever misdemeanours he’d made on the web. However, his posts took a brand new turn on 26th May, when he posted a remarkable series of revelations detailing just how he’s been able to hoodwink EA’s customer services to run up new accounts to create mayhem from on the EA Sims 3 forum.

But let’s have it straight from the horse’s mouth (which as metaphors go always sounds surreal when we’re saying it considering this blog’s title but never mind!)

At the end of this there will be a full copy of the post he made for you to digest from start to finish and do with as you will. Sit back, read on, and make sure there’s a nice soft cushion on the desk for when you start banging your head off it!

Sesert34 contacts EA customer services online claiming that it won’t let him register his copy of the Outdoor Living stuff pack.

There is a method to his madness – if he’s running up an EA account to troll with, it is the cheapest to buy, but also if he contacts their Customer Service looking for a new serial number for free, they are more likely to be willing to do so for a stuff pack. EA are naturally reluctant to dish out serial numbers willy-nilly when people have the ability to digitally download media and thus could be acquiring serials to pass or sell on to others that don’t have original copies to begin with (hello our pirating ‘friends’ in Meerkatland and the low lives hanging around Fatbeard’s orbit…), however as the stuff packs are useless without the base game, in terms of probability they are more likely to acquiesce to such requests.

What is Simon’s initial response?

Yes, Simon had paid no attention to the fact Sesert34 had just told him both the serial number and where he’d bought the game from. Inspires you with confidence already, doesn’t it?

Things improve however when Simon asked Sesert34 to prove that he has in fact bought a copy of the game and is not fobbed off with the Israeli troll’s excuses.

All well and good, but Sesert34’s not one to give up easily, and in doing so makes what ought to have been a fatal mistake.

Yes, Sesert34 claimed to have bought Sims 3 Outdoor Living last year, when it was only released in the spring of this year!

That alone ought to have started the alarm bells ringing with Simon. Instead he lost his cool when Sesert34 began making silly threats claiming to be working for Yahoo that wouldn’t intimidate a 5-year old.

Sesert34 now tried a different tack, the old ‘I demand to speak to your superiors!’ line, and like a complete idiot, Simon’s bottle crashed instead of sending Sesert34 packing. Sesert34 had been unable and/or unwilling to provide satisfactory proof of purchase, that should have been the end of the call.

It may have been that he realised he should not have said that Sesert34’s copy was a fake and had no way of knowing whether it was or not – begging the question as to whether EA have any confidence in their own information systems recording legitimate and illegitimate serial codes.

It may have been Simon simply could no longer be bothered and wanted to pass the buck to someone else.

Whatever the case, Simon passed the call to his supervisors – or ‘Tier 2’ as he called it – and a new arsepiece entered the board for this game of Bumnugget Chess, one Halston B, whose actions at work that day were to have such disastrous consequences worldwide for EA.

Once again, Sesert34 gave his story that he’d just bought a copy of the Outdoor Living stuff pack from GAME, but the serial number had been rejected.

Halston B asked him to wait whilst he read the Chat log between Sesert34 and Simon, but how much attention he paid to it can be gauged from Halston’s initial question.

Yes, having been told by Sesert34 that it was the Outdoor Living stuff pack he was having problems with, Halston also shows he’s paid no attention to what the caller has initially told him and asks him if he needs the serial code for the base game!

Once again, best beloved, Bracknell’s Law applies to this case.

To be fair, he did stick to the letter of the law in telling Sesert34 that he needed to provide proof of purchase, putting the ball back in Sesert34’s court.

What happened next however was an extraordinary piece of classic bumnuggetry, as Sesert34 now in desperation tried a new tack that ought to have sunk him but instead proved the turning point.

First Sesert34 tries to fool Halston by providing a scan of his base game serial number, but EA’s Customer Services ‘Tier 2’ (who must have now realised it was for the stuff pack) rejects it as not matching the so-called problematic serial code and also rejects the childish excuse of the broken camera.

But this was the point when Halston really had no excuse for realising Sesert34 was calling for nefarious purposes. After all, the picture that was sent to him begged the question of how Sesert34 ‘just happened’ to have a photo of his Sims 3 base game serial number on its enclosed booklet in the first place.

If Sesert34 had then attempted to explain his lie away by claiming he’d taken the picture a while ago, Halston could then reasonably assume it was for a previous reported problem with that particular serial number – what other logical explanation could there be for someone photographing it?! – in which instance a serial number surely would already have been provided sometime ago, begging the question as to why he would require yet another one – unless that serial number had been blacklisted by EA for some reason, yes?

Instead, Halston – in his haste to finish the call and be rid of someone clearly telling more fanciful stories than Bagpuss – behaves like an automation: as Sesert34 has now provided him with a serial number and linking proof of purchase, he disregards the abrupt change of stories (there was never any mention of a problem with his Sims 3 base game to Simon) and without any ado proceeds to give Sesert34 a brand new serial code for the base game – which of course includes free Simpoints with it he was now able to use to terrorise other Simmers with via the messages one can attach to gifts send from the EA Sims 3 online store.

Sesert34 must have thought Hanukkah had come early. Or April Fools Day had arrived very late.

Is it any surprise that Sesert34 chanced his arm in trying to get a second code out of Halston – thankfully he didn’t succeed. But you could hardly blame him for trying when he was so easily able to hoodwink EA’s Customer Services.

Thus the idiot from Israel set off on his merry way onto the EA forum to provoke angry and disgust with Simmers across the globe, all bankrolled by the idiots at EA, except this time it was also to make the global media outside of the Sims 3 players network as well.

‘EA you I can’t believe how stupid can you be.’

Nil out of ten for the textspeak grammar, but ten out of ten for the sentiment.

If EA aren’t a laughing stock already (and with this week’s episode of South Park lampooning them for matters other than the porn pics scandal pounced on by Fox News, etc. it certainly hasn’t been a happy week for their board), they certainly are now.

A company happily helping to arm their own cyber-terrorist problem by their own lack of diligence completely takes the cake – one cooked to a recipe for disaster.

As promised, the full transcript from start to finish: EA should be able to check off the conversation from their own customer services enquiry logs using the reference number for Sesert34 in the conversation to ascertain that Sesert34’s posting is true, although since he’s hardly the brightest bulb in the box he’s hardly likely to have made that all up now, is he?