Slashdot Mirror
EA Denies DRM Problems With Sims 2
Fizzlefist writes "For the past 2 weeks there has been an uproar on the Sims 2 forums concerning the inclusion of Sony's SecuROM DRM software in the latest expansion pack, Bon Voyage. It seems paid customers have been having problems since day one of release, but EA is only now, 5 weeks later, issuing an official statement on the matter. A lot of what's in the statement is outright fiction with proven reports of issues with disabling of disc burning software, optical disc drives, printers, cameras, system slowdown and even system crashes. Fan responses have been cold to say the least. Interestingly enough, the expansion pack was cracked and up on the internet less than 24 hours after its release."
Treat it like a DoS denial of service attack. EA installed malware that denied their customers access to their computers. Could be criminal charges too and a massive class action suit.
Or maybe your company's product is not in high demand.
More likely your program is not popular enough to be worth pirating.
More than likely people who install sims2 do not get the connection with a malfunctioning pc and their game. Instead they might call AOL or Dell and yell at them for a hardware issue.
.. meanwhile Mike from India who works for HP/DELL gets yelled at by the angry consumers.
Meanwhile EA says only 12 callers were affected?? Great it works then! Lets put it on all games!
This makes me happy I dont do help desk anymore.
http://saveie6.com/
and that was with Sid Meier's Railroads. I did the Analysis, sent it in to SecuROM, and the next day they sent me a modified binary that would supposedly ignore the specific authentication failure. However, I didnt encounter the issue once I had rebooted, so did not need the modded binary.
I installed BioShock Demo, which did install SecuROM... uninstalled the demo, and SecuROM was uninstalled with it.
While I dislike DRM, SecuROM is probably one of the more benign forms. Anyone remember Starforce?
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I remember when people were infuriated at first with the idea of Windows XP Product Activation and said that as long as everyone "voted with their wallets" and didn't buy XP Microsoft would be forced to change. We all know what a load of good that did.
The problem with the logic that consumers in these circumstances can make a drastic impact on a supplier by "voting with their wallets" is that it's next to impossible to reach the critical mass needed to make such an impact. People on the whole are apathetic, don't know about the issues and don't research the products they purchase, especially for software like games.
I think it will be far more likely that growing and increasingly vocal consumer frustration will cause a change in these ridiculous copy protection schemes, not people "voting with their wallets". But even with this scenario I'm still skeptical because again it assumes that companies actually care enough about their customers to listen to their cries for sanity and to take their needs into consideration.
Cheers, ~ Ruben
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
EA has a horrible reputation for Customer Service. It is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to get a straight answer from anyone, mainly because the process needed to actually get to a human being has been made by EA to be as twisted and complicated as possible.
EA loves to sweep problems out of sight by telling customers to use their "Knowledge Base", which is pretty much useless as it is, or to "contact" them by filling out a Bug Report/Complaint form, where they say they will "get back to you."
It took me forever to get the internet gaming part of Battlefield 1942 to work, and it STILL won't work at all. I spent a day trying to find a Tech Support phone number, which was supposed to be included in the manual (the text actually referred to the number to call in case of continuing problems), but the U.S.A. number wasn't given, only the website ant the Canadian number. I ended up calling 411 and asking for the n umber to their Redwood City office, and called that to get the Tech Support number. After calling that number, I got stuck in a phone tree offering Cheat servies and other junk, and an option for Tech Support. After choosing the tech support option, I got a recording referring me to their "Knowledge Base", to which I had already been to and found useless. After calling the Redwood City office, and asking to be referred to a person, I finally got a number for live Tech Support. I spoke to 2 differnt "Techs", on 2 separate occaisions, and both of them kept telling me to go to the EA website and download patches and updates. I downloaded 2 or three of them and none worked, or did anything for that matter.
EA can rot in hell for all I care. All they do is sell games, and nothing more. No service, no help, no functionality, nothing. They make it as hard as possible to take up any of their "precious" time by asking them to make their products actually work. I know BF1942 has a funtioning internet multiplayer component.
I kept getting an error message "UDATE NEEDED!" How can you call yourself a gaming company if you don't even know what your own error messages mean?
But I digress.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Nothing's changed. Sims 1 and Sims 2 each looked about 5 years behind their times graphically when they came out (ESPECIALLY Sims 1) but on a modern machine either one will take about 3-5 minutes to load the game, and another 2-3 minutes any time you change areas. It's ridiculous. IMO, the things are damn-near unplayable.
DRM does not stop "pirates"...it doesn't even slow them down. Quite frequently, cracked pirated verisons are available on the torrent sites before the actual products are released. The ONLY thing DRM does is inconvenience paying customers...you know the ones who actually went out and BOUGHT the product rather than just downloading it from a torrent site. Every time this happens, a fraction of those inconvenienced paying customers will get fed up and start downloading rather than buying. You'd think this is what the publishers wanted, from the way they act. Either that or they're just insane...the definition of insanity being repeating the same action time and time again expecting a different result.
Nope, they published it! At that time, DICE was not owned by EA yet (they bought them later, EA style).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
the expansion pack was cracked and up on the internet less than 24 hours after it's release.
In other words, the only people having problems as a result of this DRM are... the honest customers.
So as usual, DRM designed to make the pirates job impossible while not damaging the user experience have the exact opposite result, and the pirates are the only ones with a hassel-free experience, while the paying customers are left to suffer alone in the cold and dark that is Customer Relations.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Have you ever tried calling the support line? It is very apparent to anybody who calls that you do not want them to call. Some mouth-breather wastes 20 minutes of their time reading from a script that clearly does not accept the problem can exist, and you charge the customer for the privilege of this annoyance.
You've only got 12 calls logged for this reason because all the other people with the problem either had called you before and knew it would be a waste of time, or else they did call you and eventually got sick of arguing with a script, so they hung up and downloaded the crack instead.
Again, which is why you get a cracked copy of said games. "Sorry I won't share a computer with that _OTHER_ software" is bullshit. I don't know what the hell they're trying to do, either - I installed the cracked version of C&C3 via daemon tools. Most of these are cracked AND out on the net before release day - hell, you can finish games before you can legitimately buy them. Seriously, what are these clowns thinking - why the fuck would I pay money to infest my system with crippling viruses? When I buy it for real, I _STILL_ have to go download a cracked copy just to play the damned thing, the legitimate version refuses to install. Newsflash - we hate your rootkits, your securom and trying to type in 40-character keys with "o" and "0" in them. You're not stopping piracy and we all know it. Just release the goddamned game so I know I can go to the store, buy it and install it.