EA terminating BF4 Server Rental and Support? [ Edited ]

[CyberDyme]

Thank you @grawitj , must otherwise say that the EA Support have so far been OK to solve most of my server issue.  And no matter, they were always responsive and polite.  Hence my surprise by the un-pleasant chat they gave me this morning.  And very very long periods of no response or reaction at all to my posting of description of issue to them and answer to specific question they posed.

But biggest surprise was of course their response: 

We can no longer re-load BF4 servers! 

Hence, no restart of any error-locked or 'frozen' BF4 server box in their server park.

No resolution to get my server back to life.  At all. No suggestions.  No offering of my money back.  No nothing.

They simply just said, it was now with the server group ad they had no longer access to that from the Support team.
No courtesy to say they would then ask their server team to fix the issue.
Just repeating:  No, we can no longer re-load a BF4 server.

Not really sure what that then really means either to us who pays for having them run a live server for us?
I cant get it to work again from my end either.  Its just sitting there.  I have tried to change some of the parameters, but it still stays frozen in term of starting a new game round or ability for any player to join it.  It doesnt work, and it doesnt deliver what EA committed to in their rental agreement with us the renters.
Can see yet again one more server renter has messaged me, having same issue!

Shameful behavior by EA if this is indeed the end of BF4 (rental servers) and this is intentional !  

[grawitj]

@CyberDyme They never solved the issue with my BF server I had months ago where server would not show up in for the public unless it had 1 active player. As soon as you would quit, the server just shuts down and you would need to join it from server panel in rented servers to start again. But you can find the comments on this same thread above. 

EA's support said they will get back to me when they will speak with technical team and they never really did contact me back with a solution to the problem, so I just wasted bucks on server nobody really were using for the 3 months or so, just because it was not visible for everyone on PS4 99% of the time, unless I would join the server or keep console on all the time, while being in the game. 

[CyberDyme]

100% correct @grawitj , which you know me and 15+ other server owners also confirmed to be the case!

As EA never fixed that server software side 'bug', which they introduced on 24 January this year, so servers disappear when empty of players and require that an admin starts it up again, then we can only conclude that this was a very deliberate 'bug' that EA introduced at that time!
Now looking back in the mirror and seeing what EA have done since yesterday, then we can only expect this to have been their master-plan for long,and just first steps we see of BF4 being terminated.

If truly so, shameful that EA are not honest about this and communicating out to their player base and server renters!
Taking our money for server rental and then not supporting it as stipulated in our rental agreement with EA is direct fraud from their side!  

[Plaster41]

Hey cyber, this is Kashdin. Pretty ignorant on EA's part, but that's pretty standard for EA. I would consider this as theft, and report the fraud to whatever authority exists in your country. Here in the U.S. I would report it directly to our states Attorney General, who is pretty responsive to issues such as this. EA would indeed be contacted by him. They still may not care, but it would be on record, and reflect poorly on EA in a manner greater than just having pissed off customers. Theft and fraud never looks good for a company.

It sounds like tech support are just a bunch of pencil pushers from India who love to do * like this. I could tell you personal stories about support from India for other companies, not just EA, that have made my blood boil!

I think this just proves how poorly EA think of its customers. If you want to file a real complaint, do it directly at the corporate level, and don't go through this site, because the people running this will be sure it never goes further than their own eyes.

In addition to that, creating a page, maybe on Facebook about this issue so others can see, and relate their own stories about the poor attention EA gives to its customers is another way to get the attention of the corporate office. NO company likes to be publicly shamed for poor business practices.

If you do create a page, let me know. I have my own complaint to add to it. Also, detail what happened to you, and how this affects everyone who used the server. How many members were there? Just post a message to the community, asking people to visit and comment. When you begin to get some responses, send a link to the EA corporate publicity liaison and make them aware that the page is being shared far and wide.

[Marten2018]

I am the owner of the BF4 PC Asia server.

In fact, we also encountered a similar situation on the PC, This is a very frustrating thing.

There are many DDoS attackers from China in Asia, Launch DDoS attacks on Asia servers every day.

Only because China does not have a sound judicial system, So this kind of mischievous DDoS attack has never stopped from three years ago.

The reason for this is that EA designed Battlelog's [Join Server] button, Because anyone can find important information about all servers through the browser.

Although we are not directly renting servers with EA, But I believe EA has been charging us a license fee, But we can’t solve this problem all the time.

This is what makes me feel very sad.

[CyberDyme]

Thank you @NPCtom , 
Fully agreed !

Btw, just noticed that here today, now we suddenly see a long list of empty EA servers with no players on when using the server browser!  Which for the same reason as you filed your complaint back in January, we have not see since back then.  So clearly EA must have been fiddling around again with the server side software and their setup.  Also just look at it, my own European Metro server remains visible in the browser despite there are now zero players on it!  It has not been like that since EA 'updated' the server software in January.
Is it asking for too much to have EA be honest about this and tell their customer base what is really going on here please?    

[CyberDyme]

Hi @Plaster41 / Kashdin,

Thank you for your kind support !

Now personally I do not mind where the support is coming from, as long as they are polite, subject mater experts in the area causing problem and can get the issue resolved in a timely manner.  But here this morning CET it was indeed a chat support group from India location that was on the line to help.  And they scored poorly in all 3 areas of value for me...
Very disappointed to say it mildly, as that was a shocking rock-bottom experience I got there...

I will try and call their European support group tomorrow and hope that they can do better, which one would think would be possible with the service bar set so low today.

If they still confirm that the rented BF4 now will be left to die out and they do not service them anymore, then I will raise hell on earth to get my money back.

Such a rude service and no server running is not what I paid them money for, when renting the server per user license agreement till end of November 2019.

So more to follow for sure !

[CyberDyme]

I owe you all to explain that for whatever reason then EA reloaded our European based server after all late this evening CET, and it is now back up and running!

Thank you all for your support in this situation and lets hope that EA will indeed give us due notification and treat us respectfully whenever they may decide to discontinue the BF4 server hosting and support.   Still flabbergasted by the shocking treatment and messaging their live Chat Support gave me this morning...

[ApartNeptune987]

my server will not allow us to update the name, desription, maps, presets, or privacy. we have tried our best to fix it ourselves and EA support told me that the lacked to "tools" to fix it. i asked if they could maybe refund the server and then just renew it, but they told me that they lacked the "tools" to do so and to contact the "studio". 

[NZ-Roulette]

@CyberDyme How did you get EA to reload the server? Who did you contact?