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."

It sounds to me that they want to help.

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 [ea.com]

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.

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.

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.

I used to buy all of EA's games, but they had the most annoyingly long load times from floppy.

Nothing's changed. Sims 1 and Sims 2 each looked about 5 years behind their times graphically when they came out (ESPECIALLY Sims 1) but on a modern machine either one will take about 3-5 minutes to load the game, and another 2-3 minutes any time you change areas. It's ridiculous. IMO, the things are damn-near unplayable.

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

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:It sounds to me that they want to help.

There's a much better way of doing this. Game Jackal [slysoft.com] (from the people who make CloneCD) is way easier to use and doesn't require you to store entire cd/dvd images on your hard drive, nor have virtual drive letters, nor temporarily remove registry keys to hide it's existence from copy protection. It's dedicated purely to allowing you to start your legitimately purchased games without a disc.

They PUBLISHED Battlefied 1942

You made battlefield '42!

Nope, they published it! At that time, DICE was not owned by EA yet (they bought them later, EA style).

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

More than likely people who install sims2 do not get the connection with a malfunctioning pc and their game. Instead they might call AOL or Dell and yell at them for a hardware issue.

Meanwhile EA says only 12 callers were affected?? Great it works then! Lets put it on all games! .. meanwhile Mike from India who works for HP/DELL gets yelled at by the angry consumers.

This makes me happy I dont do help desk anymore.

what's new here?

the expansion pack was cracked and up on the internet less than 24 hours after it's release.

In other words, the only people having problems as a result of this DRM are... the honest customers.

So as usual, DRM designed to make the pirates job impossible while not damaging the user experience have the exact opposite result, and the pirates are the only ones with a hassel-free experience, while the paying customers are left to suffer alone in the cold and dark that is Customer Relations.

yep.

For the past 2 weeks there has been an uproar on the Sims 2 forums concerning the inclusion of Sony's SecuROM DRM software

I think they just transposed the "e" and the "u" in the name of that software. It should read "Suc e ROM".

Re:yep.

Why bother even coming up with a creative name for it. Just go get the crack from Gamecopyworld or something, problem solved.

Class action suit...

Treat it like a DoS denial of service attack. EA installed malware that denied their customers access to their computers. Could be criminal charges too and a massive class action suit.

Re:Class action suit...

Whoever modded you down obviously has a motive. This has lawsuit written all over it. And you are correct, if EA is purposely trying to damage your computer, then criminal charges should be filed against them. Intent may not even be required. And for those thinking "yea but it's in the contract/EULA" . . the contract would be immediately voided if it allows illegal activity.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

"Subsection 1030(a)(5) prohibits transmitting "a program, information, code, or command" that causes damage to a computer system. Those with authority to access the computer are criminally liable only for intentional damage, while those without authority are liable for any damage that they cause.
. . .
Penalties under most of the provisions can be up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine for a first offense, and up to ten years in prison and up to a $500,000 fine for a second offense. The Act also authorizes the victims of computer crime to maintain a civil action for damages and other equitable relief."

http://www.brownraysman.com/index.cfm?section=articles&function=ViewArticle&articleID=1393 [brownraysman.com]

EA's take in bizarro world...

"It's not a DRM problem because it isn't DRM! I mean, how could this game be afflicted by copy protection when it's avialable for download from third party the same day?

"Rather, it's a new technology we're trying out. Digital Crippling Environment, or DCE for short. Unlike DRM, DCE isn't for stopping piracy. but it's for getting you to be constantly thinking about our product as you try to put it into a usable form. Maybe we'll even make the news, giving even more exposure to our product and giving EA the recognition it deserves! That's...good, right?"

Vote...

If people want problems (yes, I do consider them to be problems) like SecuROM to go away, they need to vote with their wallets and pocketbooks. If the general public really cared enough about the issue to stop buying games with these issues, the publishers might reconsider. The fact is, however, that users like us are a relative minority when compared with the total number of potential customers. They have no reason to care about what a very vocal but small community think.

Re:In a perfect world that would work but...

Eventually the word will get out "EA software will break your computer"... eventually. The Sony rootkit CDs issue eventually hit mainstream media and results were a little pleasing where various government entities prosecuted.

The Sims series is hugely popular and has very real potential to hit mainstream media if they let the problem get out of hand.

no patience for this

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.

Re:no patience for this

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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [relicnews.com] 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.

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

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.

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

Or maybe your company's product is not in high demand.

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

We're a niche market, to be sure, but there's plenty of demand. All of our previous releases did eventually get posted.

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

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

When will they figure it out...

I can only wonder what it'll take, when will companies like EA actually get a clue, and realize that they are completely ruining many loyal customers experience. It's not even just the customers they will loose, or the increased support costs they face, but the simple fact that they don't care in the least bit about their customers actually having a positive experience with their programs.

Why is it okay for them to expect their customers to completely tweak their systems to run their one program? How is this even remotely an okay concept?

Why is it okay for them to install something that thrashes a customers computer and not be expected to pay the bill when it comes to them having to get it repaired?

What the hell has the software industry turned into? Worse than that, why are they still making enough money off this garbage such that they still think it's a good idea, or consider it more cost effective?

It's terribly sad when the people they are trying to protect these programs from, come out with versions that are way more consumer friendly.

Just a sad sad state of affairs anymore.

~RK

Only had one problem with SecuROM

and that was with Sid Meier's Railroads. I did the Analysis, sent it in to SecuROM, and the next day they sent me a modified binary that would supposedly ignore the specific authentication failure. However, I didnt encounter the issue once I had rebooted, so did not need the modded binary.

I installed BioShock Demo, which did install SecuROM... uninstalled the demo, and SecuROM was uninstalled with it.

While I dislike DRM, SecuROM is probably one of the more benign forms. Anyone remember Starforce?

Not the first group to have issues with SecuROM...

...being in a game. And I am not just talking about Bioshock, either. A bunch of people had issues with SupCom having SecuROM, and when the SupCom community told GPG to get rid of it, they did. With WIC, there was a petition started on the forums that was eventually locked (look http://www.massgate.net/read.php?3,29121,page=1 [massgate.net]). Bunches of other games have had issues with SecuROM as well.

Insane Moderators too

The summary failed to cover the moderator who declared martial law banning so many people and locking so many threads that for once EA actually stepped in and publicly turfed them. With diplomatic language but for anyone paying attention it was quite obvious. Essentially anyone who dared post information based on fact that contradicted their opinion of the glorious cosmic orgy that was securom was due for a banning.

Some might say "The system works". However this moderator had been displaying this behaviour for longer than most people can remember yet EA looked the other way even with user complaints until she finally went off the deep end and banned too many 12 year olds who could dial the customer service line.

Sony = king of spin

You really have to admire how they dance around some of the questions as well as an experienced politican.

So in perspective, while we'd like to have zero calls, we have received 41 calls on the more than 100,000 copies sold.

So.. because only a small number have reported the problem, it means there is no problem!

3) How does SecuROM interact with the Internet? A: Not at all, if you install a game using a CD or DVD. In that case SecuROM comes with the game on the disc. If you download a SecuROM-protected game from the Internet, then you have to use your Internet connection to request a license for the desired application. The communication is a simple request and response to a server used for this purpose. No personal information is collected or stored during this or any SecuROM process.

Well then. The answer would be "Yes it does connect to the internet"

8) Is SecuROM harming my computer? A: No. SecuROM does not damage a computer in any way.

So is that a guarantee that securom will never ever damage my computer ever, even if it had a bug?

19) How do I remove SecuROM from my machine?.... The registry keys described above in FAQ No. 5 above are not removed by the above uninstall process; otherwise, the copy protection function of SecuROM would be completely undermined. The registry keys, which contain license data, remain on your PC and do not affect any of your PC's functions. This is no different than other commercially available software programs that employ a similar use of registry keys.

Well then. It's not actually "removed" is it?

We don't disclose specifically which copy protection or digital rights management system we use --in this case, SecuROM -- because EA typically uses one license agreement for all of its downloadable games, and different EA downloadable games may use different copy protection and digital rights management.

"We don't tell you what DRM we use because different games use different DRM"?? Can someone please explain that in english?

EA.....

EA has a horrible reputation for Customer Service. It is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to get a straight answer from anyone, mainly because the process needed to actually get to a human being has been made by EA to be as twisted and complicated as possible.

EA loves to sweep problems out of sight by telling customers to use their "Knowledge Base", which is pretty much useless as it is, or to "contact" them by filling out a Bug Report/Complaint form, where they say they will "get back to you."

It took me forever to get the internet gaming part of Battlefield 1942 to work, and it STILL won't work at all. I spent a day trying to find a Tech Support phone number, which was supposed to be included in the manual (the text actually referred to the number to call in case of continuing problems), but the U.S.A. number wasn't given, only the website ant the Canadian number. I ended up calling 411 and asking for the n umber to their Redwood City office, and called that to get the Tech Support number. After calling that number, I got stuck in a phone tree offering Cheat servies and other junk, and an option for Tech Support. After choosing the tech support option, I got a recording referring me to their "Knowledge Base", to which I had already been to and found useless. After calling the Redwood City office, and asking to be referred to a person, I finally got a number for live Tech Support. I spoke to 2 differnt "Techs", on 2 separate occaisions, and both of them kept telling me to go to the EA website and download patches and updates. I downloaded 2 or three of them and none worked, or did anything for that matter.

EA can rot in hell for all I care. All they do is sell games, and nothing more. No service, no help, no functionality, nothing. They make it as hard as possible to take up any of their "precious" time by asking them to make their products actually work. I know BF1942 has a funtioning internet multiplayer component.

I kept getting an error message "UDATE NEEDED!" How can you call yourself a gaming company if you don't even know what your own error messages mean?

But I digress.....

Easy solution..

.. return the product, get refund. DON'T BUY ANY MORE OF ThEIR PRODUCTS. Is it really that difficult?

Aren't they ever going to learn?

DRM does not stop "pirates"...it doesn't even slow them down. Quite frequently, cracked pirated verisons are available on the torrent sites before the actual products are released. The ONLY thing DRM does is inconvenience paying customers...you know the ones who actually went out and BOUGHT the product rather than just downloading it from a torrent site. Every time this happens, a fraction of those inconvenienced paying customers will get fed up and start downloading rather than buying. You'd think this is what the publishers wanted, from the way they act. Either that or they're just insane...the definition of insanity being repeating the same action time and time again expecting a different result.

Re:Aren't they ever going to learn?

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?

Related and not related

I absolutly loved the longest journey, but when dreamfall came out I was too busy to get it, bought it months later, only to find that there were patches out. For some reason, funcom, has split distribution up around the world and the patches only work on certain versions, my version did not have a patch. Not because the game didn't have troubles, but because the distributor apparently hadn't bothered to patch.

To top it off it also wanted to install a protection system, I don't like those. Apart from everything else they got a habbit of sticking around and being impossible to delete.

So I just downloaded a version from bittorrent got the right patches and did not have to bother with DRM.

So tell me again why I need to pay for software? Essentially all I got was a box with a useless dvd inside and perhaps the feeling that i did the right thing. But I got to play the game THANKS to the people who shared it and hacked up a fix.

It is intresting to note that games often are not just cracked right after release, but often days before it. DRM ain't stopping anyone, the only people you hurt are paying customers.

It seems a bit like this, imagine that each time you wanted to open the door on your car you had to donate blood to analyse your DNA. Fair enough? Did I mention the car is a convertible, the roof is open and the engine is running? It like putting ten locks on your door, and leaving the window open.

CD protection sucks.

It all looks that all this crap only helps make customer experience worse than it should be, it certainly does not stop pirates.

I guess I don't have to place any link to prove that Sims2 is getting pirated as heck and this is certainly not stopping the torrents to appear.

As much as CD protection got heavier these days, I can still go to the street and find the latest games ready for 2$us. (This country is quite special, few got the broadband to download CDs, and pirated software is an street product like a hotdog or candy :)

Hahaha!

I don't have any such problems. You know why? Because I downloaded the warez version! My girlfriend likes to play the game, but there's no way in Hell that EA is getting $30 every three months for incremental item packs. Besides, those first three expansion packs for the original game should more than make up for it... It's not exactly as if EA is short on cash flow or anything.

Ugh Securom

Unfortunately a lot of stuff with Securom is good, and yet insists on trying to break my computer.
E.G. I have two DVD drives on my machine (lets call them E, and F).
E drive, is from where I installed bioshock. If I have the Bioshock disk in the drive, I have to reboot my computer for the drive to recognize any other disk I might wish to replace it with.
Then I bought Medieval II: Total War, Kingdoms. Good game, but wouldn't install from E drive at all. So I installed it from F drive. Now, if the MEII:TWK is in F drive, I have to reboot my computer for it to read any other disk.
NWN2 Mask of the betrayer (expansion to NWN2). Managed to install from E drive, must reboot to read any other disk.

All 3 use securom. While I've had minor inconveniences with securom before, nothing that requires I reboot my damn machine all the time so I can read DVD's/CD's. I'd hate to have to go the starforce route and boycott anything with securom but that's more and more looking like what I'll have to do. Which is too bad, because the 3 aforementioned games are all really good, when securom lets me play them.

Speaking of EA and DRM

This actually happened with Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. In patch 1.05, they introduced a heavier version of their DRM, similar to what this article describes, but within a couple weeks of it's release, released another patch (1.06) which got rid of it altogether because of the massive series of issues it kept causing with big guys on the ladder.

1.07 Introduced the Mod Development Kit and runtime environment.
1.08 Was a patch for the MDK.
1.09 Will be a balance patch.

However, will EA ever get around to the hundreds of thousands of errors just like this? [zeroserenity.com] In a similar fashion of censorship described above, they deny these errors exist. Why do they happen? Apparently from my reading of hundreds of posts involving these errors, they all revolve around mutlicore and multi-CPU machines. According to some googling, this was a problem with Battle for Middle Earth. What is EA's official response? It's because we're either: Running Emulation Software (a resounding no), outdated drivers (majority no), lack of fulfilling system requirements (big no) and networking issues (no through a horrible laugh). Another thing that bothers me about this game is that the main executable and many other things reside inside of another file appropriately named game.dat (you will see it in the above screenshot).

However, this is truly a shame. Why? The game ****ing rocks! I have to play it on an old 2.8GHz P4 (all other computers in my network are mutlticpu, emulated or not) with other shoddy hardware on the lowest settings possible, but it's still fun to play as a game, while not looking visually appealing at all. I'd rather play it on my Quad-DuoCPU machine, but I can't! Is this game a waste of money? You bet it is. With EA and who they are, do they really think they can survive making a game that can't run with multiple CPU computers when every other game in the series can do so without an issue? Okay, I've had enough.

I crack every game I buy.

I crack every game I buy specifically because of issues like this and that annoying lag I see in so many games when every once in a while it's "checking for media".

Every time I see DRM related problems all I can think is: How can business types be so incredibly stupid? They're obviously not complete dullards as the company is successful. But doesn't anyone ever speak up at board meetings and say "Excuse me, Mr. Pointy Head. You do realize all this R&D is going to go straight down the toilet when some 12 year old from russia cracks it in the first day?"

So that's why the latest Patch hosed my XP laptop

I was wondering what they did.

Great, now I have to uninstall all the versions I have on my laptop.

Re:Jack Thompson says..

Wow...is the new /. trend to not even read the title? I've got to keep up with these things better...

Re:Jack Thompson says..

Um, children have genitalia which are visible when they're naked, and acknowledging the fact doesn't make one into a pedophile. Depicting naked persons (of any age) without genitalia would be calling attention to what's left out.

Someone being unable to see a naked child without having thoughts of sexuality, on the other hand, makes me question what kind of deviants they are.

Re:Jack Thompson says..

EA isn't responsible for or an endorser of any of the THIRD PARTY FAN CREATED content. EA merely provided people with a sandbox to create their own content and share it with others who play the game. It's analogous to getting angry at paper companies because someone could draw obscene things on their product. See how much sense your ideology works in that situation and you'll see that what you're saying is patently absurd.

Half-Life

The original Half-Life can no longer authenticate to WON. This makes my $500 investment worth less than 10 coasters, as CDs have a hole in the middle. CD keys, and remote authentication, especially, are irritating. CD key, remote authentication via name and password, along with required E-mail address, PLUS various disk copy protections is just too damned much effort. I will just download the warez versions. 90% of the games out now are like ditzy blonde trophy wives: great to look at, and show off to your friends, but in the end, not much better than masturbating.