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Battlefield 4 DRM Locking Out Part of North America Until EU Release
An anonymous reader writes "On the whole, Battlefield 4 had a reasonable launch. The have clearly learned from their past experiences with Battlefield 3 and, more notably, SimCity. Still, some customers are unable to access the game (until, presumably, October 30th at 7PM EDT, 39 hours after launch) because they are incorrectly flagged by region-locking. Do regional release dates help diminish all the work EA has been putting into Origin with their refund policy and live technical support? Should they just take our money and deliver the service before we change our minds?"
But at least region locking prevented piracy! Oh, wait... http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/9118685/Battlefield_4_Update_1-RELOADED
Well, at least a fix is released!
Sorry... That was the first patch. The game is here... http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/9114398/Battlefield_4-RELOADED
How is that DRM supposed to work again?
Is there an official reason for regionally differed releases? I could see a valid one: Spear first-day server load on several periods. Obamacare website has shown it can be important.
This seems to be tied to certain ISPs, especially Uverse. They claim they can't verify it is a US IP address, even though I'm in indiana and the IP clearly comes up under a US company's IP block (AT&T). The first EA person actually had the nerve to tell me my ISP programmed the release date wrong. The second one said it would be fixed in an hour. Finally after getting a manager he said they are aware of the problem and can only wait until 7pm tomorrow. I asked why don't they just completely remove the lock outs to let people play the game they paid for, acknowledging that some regions may get early access. That was "impossible". I bet people pirating the game are playing just fine, I feel like a fool for parting with $100 for the deluxe edition. Not buying another EA game. Some have suggested using a VPN service to somewhere else in North America that the Origin virus can verify you to North America properly. Silly...
today is spelling optional day.
The new RoTT blows away BattleField and Cal of Duty left and fucking right. A real soundtrack, real choice of character, awesome weaponry..... And people wonder why I still play old games like Doom/Heretic with the new mods. These older than dirt games kick the pants off of newer games.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I checked and it's not on Steam, same with Battlefield 3, looks like EA is trying to force that Origin crap down on people, oh well one less sale for them.
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
Look - are you really going to give up a game you've been anticipating for months
There's something horrifically empty and meaningless about a life in which this or any other form of entertainment would be a really important, high-priority concern.
You're EA's bitch, and you'll like what they give you, when they decide to give it to you.
I would say both the customers and EA are the "bitches" of something far more tragic.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
"Shut up and take your money" sounds like a reasonable business plan to me.
They've always been around. They're the ones who believe they're entitled to government-enforced monopolies over ideas.
Ignorance is a choice
The primary difference is that theft implies you're taking something away, when the most likely reality is that they are just continuing to get what they were never going to get (for whatever reason - because you can, because you disagree with the drm, whatever)
Yes, both are wrong. But there are vastly different levels of wrong, and in this case there's not a small difference in level. You should at least acknowledge that, even if you don't believe it excuses the behavior.
Well, unless you're one of those crazies who thinks jaywalkers deserve prison sentences - but I don't think you are.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Are you stupid, or have you just been living under a rock?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Which doesn't make any sense in this context, given that EA is both the development house and the publisher.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
You totally missed every little bit of my point. (And no, it has nothing to do with you not understand terms like theft vs infringement.)
The entire fucking point of DRM is to prevent piracy. It prevented it not at all. The pirated copy is out before the legal copy for much of the world. However, it did massively inconvenience many paying customers. People pirate for lots of reasons; It is free, it is not supporting "the man," it is "l337!" But there is one other big reason now; The pirated version is a superior product! I know lots of people who buy a game, has trouble installing, and then get the pirated version so they can play. It doesn't take much of that before they just skip the painful step of bothering with the legal copy...
Meanwhile, a lot of other Aussies (myself included) have used VPN services to activate and play the game yesterday and today... as well as using them to avoid paying the 50% Australia tax! ;)
... wait, what?
but you think they'd try. The keybinds don't work, "Well play with the WASD set-up" you say,
but some of us play with a left handed mouse.
The graphics are great in some cases (you won't hear many people say that) but causes problems.
You get out of the water and a sheet of water flows off of you (part of the realism) and it stops you in your tracks,
All low settings GTX-570. You never know when lag will hit (other than the water) but it sure gets one killed.
B is a key to open a Map, it opens the console, and you have to press ~ to close it. It's like BF3 all over again,
you couldn't reassign the Q key for one. BF3 the chat was in your face, the middle of the screen was where people
typed back and forth, some helpful most calling others names (normal chats), The BF4 map is now in your face;
it takes up the entire screen which you can change the opacity but you can't view the map no matter how transparent
and the action of the game at the same time. (I do that with BF3 the mini map is alway open taking up the bottom left
corner of my monitor, I only play hardcore so the map is the only way you can see people.
BF3 moved the chat to the side, and allowed one to reassign the Q key, the very things that upset people is how BF4 works now.
I'd change the keybinds and it would hang on me, I'd let it be and sometimes I could continue,
other times I had to turn off the power supply, the secret is not to change the jet keys.
The game profile (a text file) is around 100K, mine was 35,000K and had 678961 lines that had the word jet in them.
Copy an pasting BF3's helicopter and jet config lines to the BF4 profile is how I configured my game.
You don't know when you die oddly enough, going along just fine only to find you were killed, it's not
obvious by any means, I don't know if one gets used to that or not, many times I thought I was still in the game.
I could go on, multiplayer is a real mess right now. as mentioned it looks like everything they did wrong with BF3 and patched out,
is how BF4 was released.
If you bought a copy, found iout ater it had huge problems and a pirate copy is the only way to get a usable product, then go for it. You bought it and can do what you want. But that's totally different than pirating it from the get go simply because it has DRM and you don't like that.
And after doing this a few times, wouldn't a reasonable and intelegent person just skip the first step that they knew would only cause frustration?
It's not mere pedantry. The difference isn't equivocal or superficial; making a copy of a thing is fundamentally different from taking it away from another. An idea or expression is only "yours" until you share it with the world; the fact that the law protects right-to-copy and physical property doesn't make them equivalent.
For those who need a refresher: Copying is Not Theft
Sure, but the only honest response is to skip the second step too. You simply cannot reasonably argue that the product was so bad you had to steal it.
Do people really like these big AAA console-port titles based on their content in the first place? Or is it just a burning need to play what everyone else is playing? The latter makes much more sense as a reason to get a copy by whatever means even if the game is bad.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How does region locking do that?
Actually, the law HAS changed. Originally, copyright was for a much shorter time (14 years, renewable for another 14 years if the creator was still alive), but in modern times the length has been pushed so far that the "for limited times" part of the constitutional clause that gives the U.S. government the authority to CREATE a copyright law is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Anything you see created today will still be copyrighted long after you die.
Unfortunately, this makes the public domain a nearly worthless concept; copyright is limited so that things will eventually become public domain, but with copyrights so long, nothing relevant to modern society belongs in it. Hell, we have entire forms of media that will never have a single item enter public domain until you are dead, buried, and dust.
My sig can beat up your sig.
By keeping you from playing what's primarily a multiplayer game online with a pirated copy. Being able to steal the client won't do you much good without access to the service.
Well that is not such as easy argument as you make it out to be.
It is to me. If it's not to you, then our opinions simply differ. There is no inherent contradiction here.
There has indeed been controversy about medical research based on the "work" done in Nazi concentration camps.
I don't care what others think; I care what I think. Even if there is some controversy (and I have no idea exactly what you're referring to here), chances are, I'd disagree with the people who think we should just discard the results.
With that said, if there is indeed a "controversy," then that implies there are at least two sides in the debate. Saying I am "internally inconsistent" is therefore premature at best.
The ethical debate about that isn't as easy as you make it out to be here.
It is to me. Again, morality is subjective.
You make arguments that are internally inconsistent
You've failed to point out any inconsistencies.
Again I'd ask "Explain how your actions are distinguishable from someone trying to get away without paying for these copyrighted products?"
I've already answered that. Actually, the last time you asked that question, it was worded slightly differently.
As I asked before, what actions are you referring to? And again, as I already said, I want copyright abolished, so I don't think it's morally wrong to infringe upon copyright. Surely even if you disagree with me, you understand this much?
Ignorance is a choice