I know what the underage bans are about now, and I really doubt that players are going to be getting their accounts back if they started playing this game when they were 13 years old or younger. This really sucks, and yes it comes down to Acclaim Fail, but I'm sure they are no happier than any of the players. There is very little they can do about the situation.

What it comes down to is a law that I knew nothing about, and I bet Acclaim was clueless too. We've all gotten used to Acclaim being clueless but the Federal Trade Commission in the USA is less forgiving about it. The law involved is called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act or, COPPA. It's not a "protection" act, it's a Privacy Protection act and what it means is that children 13 years old or younger cannot give away private information online.

The law as it's written says pretty bluntly that it is the duty of the website, or in this case a gaming company, to ensure that children are not able to provide any personal information at all, and what that really means is they can't sign up for ANYTHING online. You can read the FAQ provided by the Federal Trade Commission if you like. The law has been in effect for quite a while now so this isn't a retroactive law. Acclaim failed to take notice of it, and enforce the age limit as they should have done. Now, everyone of those accounts that was started when the player was 13 years old or younger has been restricted.

I'm betting that Acclaim received a Cease and Desist order from the Federal Trade Commission and they have obviously complied as best they can. It does not matter even in the slightest that the player may now be 16 or 17 years old, and legal. Acclaim collected private information from players who were underage at the time, and that information must be restricted.

About all Acclaim can possibly do now is to offer to replace lost coin mall items on to a replacement account, for those players who are now the legal age to play. Really though, a character copy to a new account would be a more thorough compensation plan.

When was the last time we saw Acclaim do a thorough job of anything?

That really does need to be considered though, at least for active coin mall users.

As always, all comments are welcome so long as they are balanced and fair. Yes, this is Acclaim Fail at it's Finest but simply whining about it helps no one. If any of our members have been caught in this problem I'm sure we can get material together to help them start again.

Edit: I see that [GM]Fugen has posted on the forum admitting to what I've posted here. I'll pat myself on the shoulder that I posted before he did, but I would still like to see a better job of compensation for the players affected. This is total bullshit from Acclaim. The only things to be transferred to replacement accounts are current coin mall items.

- SpearDriver