EA threatens paying customers of Red Alert 3, Spore, and other games

It isn't all about not wanting to spend money.

I have spent thousands of dollars (probably tens of thousands) on my gaming habit over the years, and bought every game in my collection. But I will admit, more and more, I resort to third party hacks or pirated copies just so I can play the game, while still owning a legit copy.

Piracy is not right, but when companies pull this kind of BS, even the paying customers resort to using pirated copies so they can actually play the games that they paid to use, WITH NO HEADACHES!

Bottom line is that they punish the paying customer and wonder why pirating is so prevalent. It's all about greed, power, and control.

 

I think the simple answer to this is why should people? Why should you go through all this, why should you HAVE to watch what you do in a VIDEO GAME.

With the option to pirate the game and NEVER deal with ANY of this, why would anyone even want to buy it? Basically, for being a law abiding legal purchaser of the game, you're going to be harassed by staff members, be locked out of your own game, and spend countless hours dealing with problems.

OR

Pirate the game, no problems, do whatever you want in the game, never worry about waiting hours or days to play your game, never get locked out or harassed by EA staff.

What my, and many other people's point here is, that what EA is doing, is giving incentives to pirates to keep pirating the game. Securom doesn't stop pirates, it doesn't slow them down, it just pisses off legal buyers, and stops THEM from playing thier own game.

 

I just want to close my account on that site and get all my info off. How am I suppose to do that?

I also remember a post in the forum on that site I guess from admin saying anyone trading keys will be banned?! There already following EA's lead

Which made me think of this post and that. And I still didn't get my dam key! After downloading cod5 and registering for like 6 times.

I'll prophecy and say that Quakelive like the rest of em will also be a trojan in disguise where they can tamper with your belongings and violate your privacy. Look at the iphone and now android google phone.

 

It is not a rumor. This was posted by EA staff at the official C&C3 forum:

Link: http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=449687&tstart=0&start=0

 

EA backs down on FORUM BAN = GAME BAN policy:

Link: http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?messageID=4410153�

So, they claim it was a mistake. I am not so sure about that, but ultimately it does not matter, what matters is that the the policy is gone. I guess they do deserve a bit of kudos for turning it around so quickly after the deluge of negative feedback they received.

Nevertheless, EA still remains on my no-buy list due to its draconian DRM (DDRM) that requires online activation and has limited installs. DDRM of this nature does not fight piracy, it outright encourages it. I have even created an icon to represent it, that I may use in some fora as my avatar or signature. Feel free to use it too: http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/176/rlonlineactivationpiracga0.png

I would like to say that I do not support piracy in any way - the icon merely describes what online activation and limited installs do, so that hopefully higher-ups realize it - the icon does not seek to encourage it.

 

Hmm.. They may have patched up this issue but its a huge PR disaster and leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth. More and more i don't regret *acquiring* Spore (for other game-related issues of course)

 

First a Spore moderator brings this up and then an RA3 community manager. Both have said very similar things I get the feeling that there's something going on behind the scenes that isn't approved for public consumption yet, thus the quick denials over the controversy. Perhaps the system in which links ID's and bans across forums and games isn't completely implemented and the ability to ban across games and forums is in their road map. I have a hard time believing that these people are just making this up out of the blue. We won't know for sure for quite a while though. This is too serious a charge to just be coincidental. Discussion about cross-site and cross-game bans must be going on somewhere behind the scenes.

It's nice that this concern has been denied again, but my gut feeling says linking bans is something EA is working on behind the scenes. This is one of those "I hate it when I'm right" type feelings.

 

Cutting your foot accidentally on an axe is one thing and dropping the axe voluntarily on your feet is another. The second option is where EA is heading.

 

Calm down. While I doubt EA would be above doing such a thing if it served their purpose, it quite clearly does not. First, it is probably illegal in several jurisdictions. Second, what it prevents in hostility on their forums comes back a hundredfold elsewhere (for example, see this thread). Third, the people they'd ban are paying customers that are now far less likely to buy anything from them again. As I said, they're not stupid enough to do this.

 

Yes, I also doubt it's a coincindence. The policy was clearly planned by the EA, but the company probably backed down precisely because of the outcry on the internet.

 

Folks seem to have forgotten something - you don't own the software, you're merely paying a rental fee to rent it and use it. As such, EA is still the owner of the software and, like any other landlord, can evict the tenant for misusing the rented property.

Try an analogy to buying versus renting an apartment. If one rents an apartment from the owner, and then starts kicking great big gaping holes in the walls, the owner/landlord will generally be able to get the tenant evicted without too much trouble. On the other hand, if one buys an apartment from the owner, and even if the owner finances the purchase by taking an installment note as payment (i.e., an IOU), the buyer can kick as many holes as he likes in the walls and the ex-owner/creditor can't do anything about it - certainly he cannot evict the new-owner/buyer and retake possession of the apartment.

The fees paid for the EA software are for renting the right to use it from EA, not for the purchase of the underlying property interests. As such, EA is still the owner, and like the owner/landlord in my hypo, can more or less summarily evict any tenant who fails to abide by the terms of their rental agreement.

Furthermore, if one pays a little closer attention to other areas of law, such as anti-stalking legislation and whatnot, one will find that, in certain circumstances, EA may have no choice but to ban a person from all of their various EA accounts in order to comply with some of the more draconian legislation out there.

 

I don't buy EA games. They're a programmer sweatshop and have terrible policies. Screw you EA. Your games mostly suck anyways.

 

What does this have to do with misusing the software? To use your analogy, the landlord can evict the tenant, but he cannot do so arbitrarily. For example, he cannot do so simply because the tenant is loudly complaining about something being wrong with the apartment.

 

thats like saying because police dont stop crime we shouldnt have police, kinda stupid isnt it?

why you should buy the game vs pirating it?
1) support the gaming industry
2) pirating is against the law last i checked.

and like i said before, the chances of you actually having to deal with bad customer service from EA is a very small chance, they would not implement something like this just so they can ban all of their paying users, that would be completely stupid for any corporation.

 

People like you are why our countries laws are bullsh*t and the government can do pretty much whatever it wants. I do not wish to lease the content of this game, I want to own it. If I only have the choice of lease, forget it. EA's games aren't that good anyways.

You're view is kind of stupid. If police aren't doing what they're supposed to do, then get rid of them. What's the point of an organization that doesn't do it's job? So yes, quit using DRM. It doesn't do it's job. It only hurts the real customers.

 

WhaT?! Police do stop crime. Not only does a murderor get put to death, or shot down, thieves get arrested, crooks get beat down and sent to jail. It puts fear in other potential felons, and does slow down crime.

That comparison was terrible! Police do thier job, and they do it well, it's just that thier aren't enough of them to be everywhere at once, and they cannot prevent every crime, but they still make a stop to most.

Securom doesn't stop piracy, it doesn't hurt pirates, it doesn't slow them down.

If cops were anything like securom, they would put a tracking unit in every single person, but all the felons knew how to remove it. Thereby limiting what law abiding citizens can do, but not at all limiting the criminals.

 

I won't get in a big discussion on this but....police catch the criminals. Our justice system lets them go, because of loop holes in the law.

 

as long as we're reasoning by strained analogy, i bought a copy of Moby Dick but when I wrote to Penguin publishing to complain about the defective binding, they banned me from buying every other book they've printed.

but i realized that Penguin was well within their rights because i don't actually own this particular copy of Moby Dick, i'm just renting it. so i just sat down and accepted Penguin's customer-unfriendly business practices and never complained about them ever again.

 

When you buy a game, you are purchasing the liscence to use the game, each EULA has it's own terms, but most of the time, the liscense grants you access to use the product under terms that you do not reproduce, or modify the source code. Never have I seen a product tell you that your only renting the software, rather you own the right to use the software. No, it is NOT your software, it is property of the developer, but you have purchased rights to use it, and if those rights are taken away, then you have the right to get a refund unless otherwise stated in the contract you clicked I AGREE for.

 

I'm glad they backed down on the forum ban, but that's missing the bigger picture.

Anyone else remember that speech the CEO of EA gave, claiming that EA isn't the horrible company it used to be?

Is it just me, or has EA gotten worse since then---Forum ban, Spore (and other game's) DRM issues, Take-Two hostile takeover attempt, etc,etc

 

Actually, even the whole legal validity of the EULA is dubious at best. Many jurisdictions don't recognize it as valid for several reasons, one of them being that it was not a contract signed at the point of sale, but only after the sale. That essentially means that you own the game once you buy it. Of course, that still does not mean you can copy and distribute it further, since you don't own the intellectual property of the game, but you own your copy of the game.

 

Internet outcry has never stopped EA in the past. Sometimes you have to take 3 feet just to advance your ideology 1 foot. EA has shown horribly oppressive DRM schemes, dialed them back, and then rolled the exact same system out months later on a different product by promoting an even worse scheme and back pedaling from that. It's a pattern. EA announces something unconscionable in order to back pedal a little while continuing to slowly move the bar of acceptability to where they want it. I have no doubt that by the end of 2009 you will absolutely see this cross-game, cross-forum, global EA ID where a ban can strip you of access to all paid products and free services connected to that ID. I also have no doubt that EA games will phone home weekly if not daily when you go to play them.

There is no way these different community moderators and managers all just made this up on their own or coincidentally got confused about something that's never been talked about before. Something is going on behind the scenes. I don't think outcry has anything to do with it. I think the system isn't ready yet and I also predict this whole debacle will make a return. EA is merely softening people up right now for when the system is ready for prime time. They'll likely pair it with making EADM absolutely Steam-like required or the weekly phone home DRM scheme. People will complain and EA back pedal a little but not remove their global ID and banning system. It's a pattern founded on proven psychological marketing studies.

EA has gotten worse. They're more two-faced and deceptive than ever before. Their quality has not even marginally improved. In some cases it's remained stagnant, but on the whole I think it's been steadily declining when you consider what's been going on with their established Sim City, Sims, C&C, and NFS franchises taking a ride down the toilet. I think EA's CEO is continuing to run the company into the ground, which is evident by how their most recent investor report was filled with "smash hits" that boosted revenue despite the company losing an unprecedented $310+ million -- over double last year's figures. I would expect EA's CEO will cash out soon and take that golden parachute ride. The company seems to be self destructing, which would be a good thing for the gaming industry once EA is gone. Things always have to get worse before they get better.

 

Oh, I agree that EA still has plans that are very negative indeed for gamers. EA's CEO Riccitiello has explicitly stated that this is the last year that EA is releasing games that don't log online. I would dispute that too, since all their games already do log online for 'online activation'. I guess some games released early this year still didn't, hence the statement.

Worse, in the long run, EA plans to transition from a disc-based model to an online model of games with dollars per consumer as a metric. I would speculate that these plans mean that EA intends to make its games pay-to-play in the long term (though it is unclear how far away 'long term' means). I sincerely hope that my suspicion is wrong on this one, or if right that gamers manage to persuade EA to change course...

The policy was clearly planned and their retractions serve to make them scapegoats for the EA, which is thus trying to preserve/salvage its own reputation.

 

EULA's are not legally binding contracts!! That has already been established by the courts. And they certainly cannot circumvent state, local or federal laws, give me a break. There are consumer protection laws for a reason, and no, I mean NO company is above the law.

But that's ok EA with your shoddy business practices, because YOU are on MY ban list!

 

If everyone took that advice then America would still be English and most of the posters on this forum would be French.