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."

Comments

It sounds to me that they want to help.

[Anonymous Coward]

It also sound that there is a lot of bashing here:

"But of those 7,122 messages we can track, 2,976 have been authored by just 32 individuals (41.8 %). Each of these individuals has posted more than 40 times on the subject."

"Since that team was set up 2 weeks ago, we received only 12 calls to EA's North American Support Center from players looking for help with their PC's, suspecting a conflict with SecuROM. Sony DADC received just 29 calls about The Sims 2 Bon Voyage and SecuROM."

I didn't really notice an outright denial in the "offical statement". I read that 'problems happen' and if you want it fixed you need to call support.

Looking at the replies and the response, it 'sounds' like they want to help:

quote:
Guys-

If you really want to make a difference, you need to file a support ticket with Customer Support to explain what is going wrong with your PC and try to get help. Those numbers about the few number of calls to Support are not made up. I looked them up myself. There's just not enough people calling to cause change. We've received 4 times more calls with people with flashing red walls than any of the PC destruction calls about SecuROM. (and, btw, about those walls...don't forget to update your video card driver).

We want you to call. I want you to call. I work on the team that makes the game. The last thing we want to do is to make you unhappy.

To get support, follow the instructions in MaxoidVanquish's post above. The thread is here:

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=c7bc28ba7df0b19335a3d8edb3ec9919&directoryID=211&startRow=1&openItemID=item.211,root.1,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

If you create a support ticket and don't get the help you need, I want you to do this: send me a note in my SimPage guestbook. Click on "View My Sim Page" right above my post and you'll find my guestbook. Tell me what happened, and if you can, cite the Incident Number you were given so a supervisor can track what happened on your case (those numbers look something like 123456-789012. Write it down when the support person gives it to you). Also please give me your email or phone number and a good time when you can be reached, so a support supervisor can get back to you.

unquote

And to the thought of "interestingly enough, the expansion pack was cracked and up on the internet less than 24 hours after it's release."

I wonder just how many of the folks that 'cracked' the pack are having the problems and are bitching?

Of course I could be wrong and DRM could just be the cause of global warming.

Re:It sounds to me that they want to help.

[Jarjarthejedi]

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 :(

Re:It sounds to me that they want to help.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It sounds to me that they want to help.

[Bo'Bob'O]

I highly recommend you check out Demon Tools: just download the image from your favorite torrent, or rip it with another program, and be done with CD requirements. I buy a game, rip it to my drive, and put the disk safely away on my shelf never to be seen again. Plus not having to worry about which versions of a game are 'cracked' and keeping up with hacks is worth the few extra bucks in hard drive space.

If you do any sort of laptop gaming in down time on the road, or the occasional LAN party or such, I can't imagine being without it anymore.

It does install some sort of crap ware if you get the free version, but since I don't use IE, it doesn't much bother me, and you can just buy it and avoid that trouble, anyway.

Re:What the DRM providers don't want you to know..

[jonwil]

More likely your program is not popular enough to be worth pirating.

Re:no patience for this

[A Friendly Troll]

Company of Heroes doesn't require [the disc], and is A-list. Unfortunately, that is not true anymore. With the recent release of an expansion (Opposing Fronts), Company of Heroes was retrofitted with DRM and now requires you to either login to Relic Online or use the DVD for authentication. The game also sends various statistics back to Relic, and you cannot opt out of that. It gets worse: if Relic's authentication servers are offline, you have to *disable* your network connection to have the game check your DVD. If it detects a network connection but cannot connect to the servers, sorry, you are not allowed to play.

CoH on Wikipedia also says this: "Patch 2.102, released on October 12, 2007, revealed that the preceding 2.101 patch introduced a requirement of having the game patched up-to-date if the user has an active internet connection - users are not allowed to play the game at all until they download and apply patch 2.102, as the game never even enters the activation phase."

Reading Relic's forums confirms the above.

Company of Heroes seems to be the first game ever to be retrofitted with DRM... I hope enough people get to read this.