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EA Denies DRM Problems With Sims 2
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Oct 12, 2007 11:25 PM
from the typical-mmo-company-response dept.
from the typical-mmo-company-response dept.
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."
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EA Denies DRM Problems With Sims 2
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It sounds to me that they want to help. (Score:5, Informative)
"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. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday October 24, @11:51AM)
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. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.fallingcow.com/)
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. (Score:5, Informative)
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. (Score:4, Informative)
They PUBLISHED Battlefied 1942 (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://wod.home.dyndns.org/)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.livejournal.com/users/sinistertim101 | Last Journal: Saturday March 24 2007, @12:32PM)
Meanwhile EA says only 12 callers were affected?? Great it works then! Lets put it on all games!
This makes me happy I dont do help desk anymore.
what's new here? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://vftp.net/ | Last Journal: Saturday December 09 2006, @09:52PM)
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. (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.atomjax.com/)
I think they just transposed the "e" and the "u" in the name of that software. It should read "Suc e ROM".
Re:yep. (Score:4, Informative)
(http://dragonstone.org/)
Class action suit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Class action suit... (Score:4, Informative)
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
http://www.brownraysman.com/index.cfm?section=articles&function=ViewArticle&articleID=1393 [brownraysman.com]
EA's take in bizarro world... (Score:1)
"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... (Score:1)
Re:In a perfect world that would work but... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 03 2007, @11:34AM)
Re:no patience for this (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What the DRM providers don't want you to know.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What the DRM providers don't want you to know.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What the DRM providers don't want you to know.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When will they figure it out... (Score:1)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.avpmud.com/)
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... (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday October 06 2006, @06:40PM)
Insane Moderators too (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 15 2007, @08:40PM)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
EA..... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.. (Score:1)
Aren't they ever going to learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Aren't they ever going to learn? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who wouldn't pay $5 for a working DRM free copy of their favourite game?
Related and not related (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Friday August 17, @05:34AM)
I absolutly loved the longest journey, but when dreamfall came out I was too busy to get it, bought it months later, only to find that there were patches out. For some reason, funcom, has split distribution up around the world and the patches only work on certain versions, my version did not have a patch. Not because the game didn't have troubles, but because the distributor apparently hadn't bothered to patch.
To top it off it also wanted to install a protection system, I don't like those. Apart from everything else they got a habbit of sticking around and being impossible to delete.
So I just downloaded a version from bittorrent got the right patches and did not have to bother with DRM.
So tell me again why I need to pay for software? Essentially all I got was a box with a useless dvd inside and perhaps the feeling that i did the right thing. But I got to play the game THANKS to the people who shared it and hacked up a fix.
It is intresting to note that games often are not just cracked right after release, but often days before it. DRM ain't stopping anyone, the only people you hurt are paying customers.
It seems a bit like this, imagine that each time you wanted to open the door on your car you had to donate blood to analyse your DNA. Fair enough? Did I mention the car is a convertible, the roof is open and the engine is running? It like putting ten locks on your door, and leaving the window open.
CD protection sucks. (Score:2)
It all looks that all this crap only helps make customer experience worse than it should be, it certainly does not stop pirates.
I guess I don't have to place any link to prove that Sims2 is getting pirated as heck and this is certainly not stopping the torrents to appear.
As much as CD protection got heavier these days, I can still go to the street and find the latest games ready for 2$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! (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday June 14, @11:03PM)
Ugh Securom (Score:1)
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 (Score:1)
(http://www.zeroserenity.com/ | Last Journal: Friday November 24 2006, @03:05PM)
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. (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
(http://www.users.qwest.net/~waffleck-asch/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @04:46PM)
Great, now I have to uninstall all the versions I have on my laptop.
Re:Jack Thompson says.. (Score:1, Offtopic)
(Last Journal: Wednesday October 24, @11:51AM)
Re:Jack Thompson says.. (Score:2, Offtopic)
(http://2130706433/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 19, @10:29AM)
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.. (Score:2)
Half-Life (Score:2, Funny)
(http://www.pandalan.com/)