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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."
I was the biggest fan of all the sim stuff for the longest time. I had multiple versions of simcity, simfarm, the sims. That ended when they introduced the need to have the original CD available to run the game. I was used to having the game on my two computers, and play as I wanted to. I know this probably violated so license restrictions, but I don't care. I bought the game to enjoy, and that is the way I wanted to enjoy it. The fact that I paid for the game, and could not play it without keeping up with the CD, was intolerable. When the Sims came with the limitation, that was the last sims I bought. There are is much competition for my money, and if someone is more worried about the people who don't buy that the people who do, that is someone that I have no desire to deal with.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I agree with pretty much everything you said (despite my dislike for EA as the life-sucking vampire of the game industry, You made battlefield '42! Where's the good games EA!?). The one part I draw question to is your final question, it's much more likely that the problems stem from the DRM rather than the DRM-free versions for the simple reason that extra code tends to add extra problems. Cracker's are very good at what they do* and it's unlikely that anyone grabbing one of the cracked games would have the types of problems they're having, and would report it to EA ('What's that? You're having problems? Well lets just check your CD Key...oh what's this? Cracked version, BANNINATION).
:(
I mean, cracking is by no means perfect, and is illegal to boot, but tends to produce higher quality products than the un-cracked versions, one of the big DRM criticisms (and my personal favorite, people don't seem to understand that they could run their favorite programs without the CD if there was no DRM, they seem to think there's some kind of hardware issue that requires the CD, or that it's too much data to write to the hard drive (sometimes the case for the new DVD games).
*I've more than once considered grabbing cracked versions of games I own, mainly so I can run them without the CD...I'm considering getting a cracked BF 1942 as I lost 1 disk, have the other and the key, and can't do anything about it
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
I work for a software company that prides itself on its lack of intrusive copy protection. Almost a month after the latest release of our flagship product, I am still unable to find it on any torrent or warez site. It almost seems like, without the technical challenge of cracking the protection, the warez d00ds don't even bother, or at least give it a very low priority. I've never heard of any software with intrusive protection that wasn't cracked within 24 hours of release.
We're a niche market, to be sure, but there's plenty of demand. All of our previous releases did eventually get posted.
Wow. That takes me back to the old days of EA software on the Commodore 64. Games like M.U.L.E., Archon, Pinball Construction Set, etc.
I used to buy all of EA's games, but they had the most annoyingly long load times from floppy. These were slow 5 1/4" drives, and we were used to the very long cassette load times from previous years, so taking more than 15 minutes to load a game was bad, but not unexpected. I can still see that color changing EA logo on the screen and hear the weird clicking of the drive.
But then I found cracked copies. Broken versions of the same games that loaded in a minute or two rather than 15 to 30. No copy protection. Those weird clicks? That was a non-standard kludge of a DOS thrashing around looking for the proper keys. EA punished their paying customers to such an extent even all those years ago.
I still bought their games, but then found the broken versions to actually use. The broken copies were better.
According to the FA, DRM appears to be helping pirates.
Who wouldn't pay $5 for a working DRM free copy of their favourite game?
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