I thought the community, Stardock, GPG, and IronClad might like to read A Tale, followed by analysis...
http://www.womengamers.com/articles/editorials/bottom-line-crytek-and-piracy/
It seems somewhat pertinent to the general discussions on DRM and piracy throughout the forums. Forgive my indulgence.
EA in a nutshell. Funnily enough, I never had any problems with them.
Either way, I suggest that any purchaser of a game check up on their consumer rights. Where I live, if a product wouldn't play or install, I'd take it back to the shop or return to sender, and if it wasn't fixed in a month I'd get my money back. Didn't EA have something similar? Don't get me wrong, I understand one person's desires and I do respect them, but sometimes I think people go too far trying to play something. Surely, the person should just ask for a refund and hope that the next game he bought was better? But I guess, truly, you cannot spell fanatiscism without fan. That a game is released unfinished, perhaps even intentionally broken (if I read between the lines right?), that speaks for the company. A poor support service doesn't help. But let's not lose track of our humanity, trying to cram the latest piece of software into our boxes.
If it's not worth the trouble, don't put yourself in it. If a company doesn't care about it's customers, then don't care about the company. Whereas some might read a story about an evil company refusing to support it's product, I read a story about a rather daft man who wanted what he couldn't get.
The story the article is based on is a classic EA play. I had a similar experience with them and have not purchased a single EA title since.
Additionally the DR "timed" download is also something that blew me away in my experience. Most people dont stop to think about that one. You pay the same price for the store copy, with the public excuse being "the retailers are the reason for the matched price" and then they screw you on limited time downloads and do not allow for local backups. The entire system is a scam and I honestly cant believe companies like that have not ended up in court for such practices yet.
In my opinion companies like EA, Acti & Ubi need to go out of business - pure and simple. They have all but destroyed the gaming industry as far as I'm concerned and turned the customer experience into a damn joke and the support experience into a naked nightmare.
If I could change the industry just a little, I would merge SD, PI, IC and KB into one company. To me such a thing would be the beginning of the end for the aforementioned "brands" that have plagued the gamers of this world for far too long.
Thxxx for the link to the Women Gamer's article. I particularly liked this part :
« EA has a reputation. They are a megalithic corporate entity with the bureaucratic structure that goes with it, as attested to not only by a myriad of ‘bad experience’ consumers over the years but also by those who have partaken of employment there. »
Recently, I did not purchase their SPORE game because of its very intrusive (and potentially ) form of DRM programme : an "advanced" form of SecuROM.
I knew that if I had any serious problem with Spore, EA Tech Support would be totally useless (and clueless) :
Recently, I experienced an issue with Impulse, and an officer of StarDock Tech Support (IamDean) saw my post, on the forum, and he took the intitiative of guiding me through some troubleshooting steps -- which resulted in fixing the issue. I never had to contact SD Tech Support : it came to me, on the forum !
EA Tech Support << and >> StarDock Tech Support are the total, polar opposites -- in terms of customer care & problem-solving efficiency.
My family owns 5 EA titles (still installed) : BFME 1, BFME 2 + WitchKing expansion, C&C 3 + expansion. But their copy-protection scheme is far less problematic than the one EA is using to "defend" Spore.
(What a "defense" : Spore, in September, has been illegally downloaded, by torrent, somewhere between ½ & ¾ million times !)
StarDock's Impulse, taking into account that it is a relatively new programme, is much more trustworthy than the EA Download Manager -- which does not come with any significant tech support !
My biggest problem with EA isn't the DRM, it's that they're deliberately trying to stifle any and all innovation and replace it with throwing money at the graphics so the smaller companies don't have the cash to compete. Well, that and the fact that they keep buying good studios just so they can put a graphic on the box which contains the same formulaic dross. In much the way that impulse is now my first place to go for games, I will only buy an EA game if I'm truly desperate. I bought crysis, but I'm much more likely to just get x64 windows and mod levels if I want more variety than actually buy one of their games even though I haven't been burned yet. I am however moderately likely to get mirror's edge because it looks like the stars may have aligned on that one and it may actually be interesting.
I love the guy's quote from a recent conference and I say this as a "cabal leader". Gee I wonder if I qualify as a terrorist now...
"We chose a particularly aggressive form of DRM, which 99.8 percent of consumers would never notice, but that two-tenths of one percent got incredibly focused and formed an online PR cabal," he said. "We can eliminate piracy by essentially blocking the online service from the pirate." Riccitiello called it "the future of DRM," one we hope will be more adept at distinguishing between the consumers and the criminals." -John Riccitiello
Honestly, a working DRM isn't all that hard to implement. Just set autoexec to rewrite the boot sector. Done, no chance of copying now . I give it three years. Also, spartan, I would advise you to wonder why that guy in the black car is wearing an agent earpiece. Just friendly advice , I know declaring random people is completely acceptable in the dmca. This is really getting rediculous. The worst bit is if I buy these guys' games, I'll need to crack it and they will still claim they lost a sale from me. It really isn't that short a leap from 'pirating' a game you own to one you don't, and it's just hurting them in the long run.
Anyway, I'm out of stardock games to buy to support them, so it looks like all my friends are getting sins or demigod for their birthdays . Either that or I give galciv 1 a look.
Spartan, over on the Bioware Board people are going nuts over this particular statement and another one made by JR in which he states that 50% of the people who are condemming DRM must be pirates, where everyone knows that pirates don't give a flying fart about DRM coz they just crack or circumvent it and that's it.
Right now there is a second class action suit against EA underway (apart form the Spore one) for the installation of SecuRom in Mass Effect without the customer's knowledge or consent.
A number of people have already stated they won't buy any Bioware products as long as they make use of EA DRM mechanisms, including myself.
Yep. I'm aware of the issue and just posted this in the EA thread.
"Count me in as one of the disenfranchised, disempowered and alienated people as well. I also passed on ME but still supported it with the whole "sexbox" thing by being an organizer for the Amazon protest. Anyway, I was so very stoked for DA:O but now my interest has diminished considerably because I noticed a change in BW attitude especially when several threads were lock and deleted about DRM on the BW forums. If memory serves the reasons were "not the place or time for such discussions and they are never productive so dont bother having them - etc.." If not on official forums and long before the release of a title then when and where? It blows my mind... "
Sadly enough my activity on the BW forums has dropped to nearly nothing since the taint of EA infected BW.
Damn - I had a good lengthy post pertaining to Bioware and their 'new face' under EA, how I predict a near-future outflux of core developers from them, and how Bioware projects are now very low on my gaming radar, but my login expired! Damn it. Gotta remember to *ALWAYS* copy the body of my posts.
I was very thrilled about getting my hands on and playing ME, but now the thrill pretty much turned into anger about not being able to.
I for one still hang out on the board to see how things turn out.
Though chances are very slim to say the least I do hope that the suits or the cummunity pressure can achieve a change of mind of some sort. Like I posted on the BW board: The germans managed to tear down the wall and kick the government through protest. Maybe we manage to do the same with DRM and EA.
Oh, and to stay on topic of piracy:
For every action/mechanism to prevent piracy there will always be a reaction/counter-mechanism to circumvent it.
But as long as publishers don't realize that and only see how much cash they lost to pirating they will keep losing even more to pissed customers.
I honestly think DRM is less about piracy than it is about
1) Stopping the used game market.
2) Releasing terrible games based on hype, instead of people having the ability to play a game and then make an informed decision.
To elaborate on 2) - when a company releases a demo, it is often the best part of the game. When they hype a title for months, a lot of thier money and prestige for the release comes from opening day. If by opening day the word is all over the internet the game is terribad, they lose that $$$. DRM is, to me, about companies wanting to make money while still releasing inferior games - not graphically inferior, but lacking in actual gameplay.
@Star Adder - I've posted some pretty heavy stuff in the thread the past few days. So far my posts have not been removed. However with the BW founders as VPs for EA now it all seems moot to be honest.
Yeah, I saw it.
And making them VPs IMO is nothing but a cheap trick. They'd bite the hand that feeds them if they'd oppose JR and the likes now. Let's just hope that one day they wake up to see that they can't be fed when their feeders don't have any money left to buy food due to not selling enough of their DRM infested crap. Though chances for that are going towards nil, I'd say.
I wonder how long the threads will be allowed to get before a decision is made. Moreover I think the logic on the part of the community management reps part is an epic fail. Why should we wait until they a.k.a.: "the executives" make a decision before talking about DRM. It seems rather moot to engage in such a discussion after the fact.
Dunno, we'll see.
I checked the Sacred2 forums today. There isn't one single thread dicussing the pros and cons of SecuRom or DRM in general to find. Not even in the ones run on fan sites. And in the official one everyone who states he'd return the game coz e.g. in mid game of a legally activated copy he get's a message not to use illegal copies is instantaniously bashed. Looks like the fanboys have their heads stuck up the publishers arse too high to see the light of reality.
I was honestly considering registering only to start one and see what happens.
I don't really mind the DRM as long as it's not Starforce, I bought Spore and didn't really experience problems with it, the whole thing seemed a bit overblown to me, I hope eventually they'll release a patch or something to get rid of it tho.
But there's no excuse for bad customer support. It's kinda ironic that those who pirate games not only avoid the DRM but propably also get answers quickly to their problems from the p2p community. Makes you wonder what you're paying for.
In Crytek's case I believe piracy is just a scapegoat, they knew the deal before they started making the game.
But you should mind.
*usingmasteryodavoice* You WILL be afraid ... *nods* you WILL be...
You cannot simply patch out a rootkit as is SecuRom. Granted, there is such a thing as a SecuRom removal tool on the SecuRom site to alledgedly help you get rid of it once you uninstalled the game it came with, but once you use it every other game installed that makes use of SecuRom won't run anymore, so go figure...
Funny thing. Put a rootkit on another person's PC as a private person and it's called a criminal act.
Put one on a PC as a game publisher and it's called DRM.
QFT ++ One has to love the politicians in DC for that jem.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
