Early in November, a character came up to Urizenus in Alphaville and, quite suddenly, "became confessional," Ludlow says. The character told Ludlow that he was a teenage boy and that he had been beating up his sister -- that he "sent her to the hospital," in fact. Ludlow didn't know if the account was true, and he had no way of knowing who the character was in real life and where he or she lived, but he found the story alarming enough to report it to Maxis, asking the company to alert local authorities. But the response he got back from the firm did not address his plea, and instead the company told him to ignore any character who offended him.
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Finally, early in December, Bolter sent a heated letter to E.A., a letter she also posted online under the heading "E.A.'s Indifference on Record Here & Now." "Quite frankly," Bolter wrote, "this is a very serious issue and your lack of response is not only exasperating but also sickeningly disturbing.
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Bolter's tactic worked. "In response to concerns raised by a petitioner, and after careful review of our Web log, we contacted local authorities and identified the player," the firm said in a letter to her. "Resolution of his incident now lies with the local authorities."

It was the very next day that Ludlow got a letter from E.A. about his site. On Dec. 6, the company warned him that his link to alphavilleherald.com in his Sims profile violated the firm's policy prohibiting links to commercial sites. Ludlow maintains that the Herald is not a commercial entity
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Yet on Wednesday, E.A. sent him another letter saying he was still violating the policy and that the company was suspending his account for three days. And then, about 11 hours later, E.A. sent him the final letter terminating his account. (Electronic Arts could not be reached for comment.)