The Worst Copy Protection Scheme

[Titanwarrior89]

I quess I won't be buying their products ever again. Well if they ever go belly-up! Good![X(]

ORIGINAL: terje439

Just read in one of the Norwegian papers, if you get banned from the EA forum, you now also lose the ability to play your game since your forum account is linked to your master account, which again is linked to your games...

[Arctic Blast]

Just learned that there are in fact FOUR separate class action suits being brought against EA for SecuROM related reasons (and being headed by the same lawyers that smacked Ubisoft down over Starforce, by the way). The most interesting one...a guy ended up with SecuROM in his computer when it installed alongside the FREE limited downloadable Spore Creature Creator. WHAT is DRM doing on FREEWARE?!

[V22 Osprey]

ORIGINAL: terje439

Just read in one of the Norwegian papers, if you get banned from the EA forum, you now also lose the ability to play your game since your forum account is linked to your master account, which again is linked to your games...

That should be a crime. [:@]

[cdbeck]

Yeah, I heard that news item. Very very stupid of them, and probably looking for a class action lawsuit (how can you trust a capricious and human moderator to handle people's property). But for me, it is a good reason NEVER to post on the EA forum. That place is a cesspool anyway.

SoM

[Arctic Blast]

It's like EA has made a decision at the corporate level to continually screw up their company. The only word I can really think of...bizarre.

[invernomuto]

ORIGINAL: terje439

Just read in one of the Norwegian papers, if you get banned from the EA forum, you now also lose the ability to play your game since your forum account is linked to your master account, which again is linked to your games...

Is that legal ???

[terje439]

ORIGINAL: terje439

Just read in one of the Norwegian papers, if you get banned from the EA forum, you now also lose the ability to play your game since your forum account is linked to your master account, which again is linked to your games...

And just in on another Norwegian newspaper - EA will now not ban you from playing your games if you get banned from their forums after all. Seems even EA was scared of losing customers in the end.

[Phatguy]

But the bad publicity will continue to haunt them.. I have no problem with companies having some kind of safeguards against theft but really, all these intrusive DRM's do is send people over to the dark side where ill-gotten products are easier to install and use.I have washed my hands of all EA games(PC,Xbox,Xbox360) and am going to either sell or toss all leftover EA products I have left. This is the epitome of horribly bad customer service. There are enough decent companies out there who wont treat me like trash or a thief. They are welcome to  my money.

Plus I will cheer whenever I hear how widely pirated EA games are.

[Arctic Blast]

ORIGINAL: apathetic lurker

But the bad publicity will continue to haunt them.. I have no problem with companies having some kind of safeguards against theft but really, all these intrusive DRM's do is send people over to the dark side where ill-gotten products are easier to install and use.I have washed my hands of all EA games(PC,Xbox,Xbox360) and am going to either sell or toss all leftover EA products I have left. This is the epitome of horribly bad customer service. There are enough decent companies out there who wont treat me like trash or a thief. They are welcome to  my money.

Plus I will cheer whenever I hear how widely pirated EA games are.

There was a line one poster over at the Fallout 3 forums used that I think fits the bill her...

Treat your customers like customers and you'll make more money, treat your customers like pirates and you'll make more pirates.

[Kuokkanen]

Audio CDs had some copy protection stuff, that made them incompatible with many CD players. Complaining about those was so loud, that eventually most (or all) publishers stopped using copy protections. There is hope that this will eventually happen with computer games too.

What's the case with DRMs with downloaded games, like anything from Steam or Direct2Drive?

[Phatguy]

ORIGINAL: Arctic Blast

ORIGINAL: apathetic lurker

But the bad publicity will continue to haunt them.. I have no problem with companies having some kind of safeguards against theft but really, all these intrusive DRM's do is send people over to the dark side where ill-gotten products are easier to install and use.I have washed my hands of all EA games(PC,Xbox,Xbox360) and am going to either sell or toss all leftover EA products I have left. This is the epitome of horribly bad customer service. There are enough decent companies out there who wont treat me like trash or a thief. They are welcome to  my money.

Plus I will cheer whenever I hear how widely pirated EA games are.

There was a line one poster over at the Fallout 3 forums used that I think fits the bill her...

Treat your customers like customers and you'll make more money, treat your customers like pirates and you'll make more pirates.

AMEN

[Phatguy]

ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen

Audio CDs had some copy protection stuff, that made them incompatible with many CD players. Complaining about those was so loud, that eventually most (or all) publishers stopped using copy protections. There is hope that this will eventually happen with computer games too.

What's the case with DRMs with downloaded games, like anything from Steam or Direct2Drive?

I do believe Sony is still crappimg on audio cd's, but not as hard. That and the fact that they are the proud parents of Securom means I never support thier products.....

[madgamer2]

Many years ago back in the time of the apple II and the first IBM pc's there was a game and in the first paragraph of the manual was a statement that read that if you attempted to copy this program and install it on your computer dire things would happen.
Well my friend shows up one day and tells me he copied the game. He starts the game and gets this blank screen and a statement comes up and says "you were warned
not to copy this game program". It then preceded to trash his whole HDD OS and all.
I never laughed so hard in my life.

Madgamer

[madgamer2]

The worst case I can think of was a friend who bought a game from the publisher's web site and when he installed it the damn disk had a very nasty virus that trashed his system so bad that he had to buy a new computer. When he called the company they offered to replace the game if he would send them the infected disk.
He bought a new system and turned the infected disk over to his brother who was a lawyer and eventually got a check from the game company which paid for the cost of his old system. I do not remember the game title but the company went bankrupt the following year. Poetic justice?

Madgamer

[JamesM]

Starforce caused me so much trouble that I had to reformat my system to get rid of it!

[pmelheck1]

I remember a game from a LONG time ago (before HD were a common item) that used a virus for copy protection.  It would infect any disk that was inserted other than the game disk.  This was before the advent of Anti-virus software so it couldn't be cleaned as you couldn't insert any kind of tool disk without infecting it.

[JudgeDredd]

Ten Most Annoying DRM Methods

[Greybriar]

It looks like Electronic Arts is being sued due to its use of SecuROM. Four class action lawsuits!

[Phatguy]

ORIGINAL: Greybriar

It looks like Electronic Arts is being sued due to its use of SecuROM. Four class action lawsuits!

This brings a nice warmth to my heart......

[JudgeDredd]

Well, whilst I don't like this "sue everyone for everything" society we are becoming...there isa place for lawyers, and this is one of them.
 
DRM, mostly, is nasty and can prohibit the purchaser from an enjoyable experience. And when there's a chance, it shouldn't be taken.
 
Seems to me if Matrix keeps it's method it will probably be one of the very few games publishers who actually develop specifically for the PC...everyone else will disappear.