Together we create positive play

At EA, we believe in the power of positive play. Being part of a gaming community should mean that all players are safe, welcome, and included. We’ve created the guidelines in this Charter to explain what behavior and content is and is not allowed across EA games and services. Whether you’re new to gaming or have been an active player for years, we need your help to make this a community we all want to be part of.

Respect the Community

Play Fair

Follow Local Laws

Remember the tools and controls available to you:

• EA Help - Your place to manage your account and get help from EA or the gaming community.
• Parental Controls - We give players and parents simple solutions to shape how they play including making choices on time spent playing, spending, social communication, and accessing games by rating.
• Accessibility Portal - We aim to break down barriers that prevent play.

Be aware of the consequences for unacceptable behavior and content:

The rules in this Charter are a part of the User Agreement you agree to when you play with EA by checking the “I Agree” box. If you promote, encourage, or take part in any of the prohibited activity described below, it’s a violation of the User Agreement and we may take a number of enforcement actions, including removing your access to certain or all EA Services.

• Warnings and temporary suspensions are our signals to remind you of the rules so you can make changes to your behavior and stay in the game.
• In some cases, we will issue permanent EA Account bans without warning to protect our players and employees from the most serious and illegal behaviors. If your EA Account is banned, you will lose access to any online content associated with your account.
• If you receive a suspension or ban on your account, we’ll send you an email or you’ll see an in-game message explaining the reason for it. We take these measures to ensure our communities remain positive. If you believe that any action has been taken against your account or device by mistake, let us know.

We take these actions to protect our players against harmful or illegal behaviors and content, and use a variety of features and tools to moderate the content that players share in our games. Learn more here.

Respect the Community

We all come from different places and spaces when we log on to play games. Each of us plays a role in helping others feel welcome and included in the game. The following behavior is not permitted on EA Services:

Harassment and Bullying

• Any act to harm, intimidate, or coerce others is prohibited. We do not allow any content or behavior that promotes, glorifies, or engages in harassing behavior including bullying, sexual harassment including sharing non-consensual intimate images, trolling, stalking, insults, or slurs.
• We do not allow violent threats, threats to physically harm others, promoting or inciting violence (for example encouraging attacks on others or praising a violent act) or threats to reveal another’s personally identifiable information (PII).
• Don’t engage in any unwanted conduct against any EA employee or representative because of their affiliation with EA, either on EA Services or anywhere else.

Hateful Conduct

Don’t share or engage in hateful conduct, or the promotion of hateful ideologies.

• Don’t discriminate, mock, or promote hatred against people or groups or encourage others to do so on the basis of their race, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, religion, heritage, age, country of origin, caste, disability, or nationality.
• This includes the use of hate symbols, logos, and imagery. For example, you may not post the Nazi swastika or similar logos of known hate groups, or images depicting others as less than human (such as depicting individuals as having animalistic features).

Profanity

Don’t excessively curse or swear. Don’t try to get away with it by using numbers or symbols in place of letters or by changing the order of the letters in a clearly-offensive word. We all k*** what you're trying to s**.

Spam

Don’t send spam to others. This includes sending repetitive messages or deceptive or misleading content to drive engagement or discoverability.

Don’t engage in other behaviors that are meant to mislead others, including posting a message for any purpose other than personal communication. Prohibited messages include advertising, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and other types of solicitation or commercial activities.

Suicide, Self-Harm, and Harmful Behavior

Don’t post or share content that glorifies, promotes, or encourages suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, or other activities that may lead to physical harm. 

• Don’t promote, encourage, provide instruction for, or normalize suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders. This includes content that normalizes self-inflicted physical injuries (such as cutting) and eating disorders (for example bulimia and anorexia).
• Don’t publish, post, upload, or distribute any material that would constitute, encourage, or provide instructions for criminal offense or, dangerous activities or challenges. This includes dares, games, and pranks such as ingesting harmful substances, dangerous stunts, inappropriately using dangerous tools or weapons, or other harmful or dangerous acts that have a risk of serious harm.

Unauthorized Sharing of Private Information

Don’t share people’s private information.

• Don’t disrespect others’ privacy or put the privacy or security of others at risk. Do not publish, post, or share other people’s private information (also called “doxing”) or incentivize or encourage others to do so.
• Don’t use information about users publicly available in any EA Service (such as on a leaderboard) for any purpose unrelated to the Service, including to attempt to identify such users in the real world. Don’t dox our employees, players, or partners.

Impersonation

Don’t impersonate another person, group, or organization or misrepresent your identity to mislead others about who you are or who you represent. This includes impersonating an EA employee or representative.

• If an EA Service requires you to create a "username" or a "persona" to represent yourself in-game and online, you should not use a username or persona that is used by someone else or one that EA determines is vulgar, offensive, or violates someone else's rights. You should also not use your real name in your “username” or “persona”.

Sexual Content

Don’t post or share content that depicts sexual activity. We do not allow content that references or depicts sexual activity including pornography, nudity, and graphic sexual acts. For example, depicting a flirty relationship in The Sims with full coverage intimate clothing is okay; depicting a graphic sexual act is not.

Extreme Violence, Gore, or Other Obscene Content

Don’t share or engage with content that features extreme violence, gore, or other obscenities. Although some EA experiences include weapons and violence, content that features extreme or gratuitous violence and gore is not allowed. This includes content depicting death or extreme injury.

Play Fair

Play games the way that they are meant to be played. Cheating and disruptive behavior risks the fairness of the game for everyone. The following types of behaviors are not permitted in EA Services:

Cheating

Don’t engage or assist in cheating or other anti-competitive behavior.

• Don’t use or distribute unauthorized hardware, accessories or software programs and tools such as aimbots or triggerbots, or otherwise use exploits, cheats, undocumented features, design errors, or bugs.
• Don’t use bugs, exploits, or other unintended game or platform interactions to gain in-game items or other entitlements.
• If you find an exploit or bug, you can let us know by reporting it.

Disruptive Behavior

Don’t engage in disruptive behavior, make it harder for someone else to play the game, or engage in any other activity that disturbs the peaceful, fair, and respectful gaming environment of an EA Service.

• Don’t use software that damages, interferes, or disrupts an EA Service or another's computer or property, including but not limited to: denial of service attacks, spamming, hacking, cracking or uploading malware. 
• Don’t perform disruptive in-game actions, such as intentionally killing teammates, purposefully losing, blocking a teammate’s ability to move, harassing players during live streams (such as stream sniping), or blocking access to an item or access point that is affecting gameplay for other players. 
• Don’t collude with other players to manipulate matchmaking, matches, or results unfairly.
• Don’t disrupt the normal flow of game play within an EA Service by, for example, using vulgar or harassing language, being abusive, excessive shouting (in voice chat or all caps in text chat), spamming, abusing formatting options in chat (such as extra large fonts or using repeated symbols or characters) flooding, or hitting the return key repeatedly.
• When using voice chat, be mindful of what others can hear and consider using push-to-talk rather than keeping your mic open at all times.

Abuse or Misuse EA Services

• Don’t use any robot, spider or other automated device or process to access EA Services such as scraping data, text and data mining, account creation, or copying material.
• Don’t use EA Services or Content to train any artificial intelligence, machine learning models, or other similar networks, algorithms, or systems.
• Don’t attempt to circumvent prior EA enforcement actions, including through the creation of new accounts after being removed for violating our policies.
• Don’t use or distribute counterfeit software or EA Content, including EA Virtual Currency.
• Don’t intentionally obfuscate your network connection, location, or other metadata to gain access to an EA Service or make purchases.
• Don’t attempt to obtain, or phish for, a password, account information, or other private information from anyone else on EA Services.
• Don’t sell, buy, trade, share or transfer your EA Account, Content or Entitlements, either temporarily or permanently. You can’t share an EA account with anyone, even a family member.
• Don’t provide, acquire, assist or engage in account boosting services.   
• Don’t promote or be involved in in-game currency buying, selling, or farming. This means don’t use bots, go through a third-party, or use other unauthorized methods to gain in-game currency. This includes buying, selling, or trading in-game currency for real-world money or value. 
• Don’t use our services for fraud, or attempt to circumvent our systems, such as through mass account creation for illegitimate purposes, deliberately making multiple payment or refund requests for the same content, using compromised accounts, or falsifying your connection to our services.
• Don’t make use of any payment methods or refund systems to access, purchase or refund EA Services for fraudulent purposes, or without permission of the authorized owner, or otherwise concerning a criminal offense or other unlawful activity.
• Don’t use an EA Service in a country in which EA is prohibited from offering such services under applicable export control laws.
• Don’t modify any file or any other part of the EA Service that EA does not specifically authorize you to modify.
• Don’t abuse reporting tools. While we always welcome feedback, don’t abuse in-game support or complaint buttons by making false reports to EA staff. You can find more info on how to use reporting tools at EA Help.

Follow Local Laws

To make things safe for everyone, keep things legal - whether in-game, IRL, or anywhere else - and report any illegal or harmful behavior, especially if it has the potential to endanger others. We don’t allow any content that promotes, incites, instructs, or depicts the following:

Terrorism

Don’t promote, organize, or support violent extremism. We do not allow content that depicts or supports terrorism, violent extremist groups, or other hateful entities. When we become aware of content containing pro-terror material on our services, EA reports the content to the appropriate authorities.

Child Exploitation

Don’t engage in any content or activity that endangers minors.

• We have zero-tolerance for any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation. Don’t engage in any activity that exploits, endangers, or threatens to harm children, including sharing or requesting sexually explicit content or sexualized images of minors. When we become aware of content containing child sexual exploitation and abuse on our services, EA reports the content to the appropriate authorities. 
• You may not promote or engage with content that facilitates predatory sexual behavior or inappropriate interactions with minors, including grooming, sextortion, and sexual solicitation. When we become aware of content containing child sexual exploitation on our services, EA reports the content to the appropriate authorities.

Regulated Goods and Services

Don’t engage in illegal activities or use EA Services to sell, buy, promote, or facilitate transactions in illegal or regulated goods or services including drugs and controlled substances, weapons, or counterfeit goods.

Intellectual Property

Don’t upload or distribute content that violates anyone’s intellectual property or other rights, or use EA Services to engage in any intellectual property crime or illegal activity. Infringing content includes but is not limited to copyrighted characters, individuals' names or likenesses, or protected logos or designs.

Other Illegal Activity

Don’t use EA Services to engage, promote, or organize any other illegal activity, such as human trafficking or sexual solicitation.