99.8% of Gamers Don't Care About DRM, Says EA 554
arcticstoat writes "If you thought that EA might have been humbled by the massive Internet backlash against its use of SecuROM in its recent games, then you'd be wrong. Speaking at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference, EA's CEO John Riccitiello claimed that the whole issue had been blown out of all proportion. 'We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn't notice,' claimed Riccitiello, 'but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.'"
Keep hammering! (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like they're getting nervous, keep the 1-star reviews coming!
Red Alert 3 (upcoming):
http://www.amazon.com/Command-Conquer-Red-Alert-Premier-Pc/dp/B001F6HJIY/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1224087512&sr=8-2 [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/Command-Conquer-Red-Alert-3-Pc/dp/B0016BVY7U/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1224087512&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
Far Cry 2 (upcoming):
http://www.amazon.com/Far-Cry-2-Pc/dp/B000X9FV5M/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1224087659&sr=8-2 [amazon.com]
Spore:
http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Mac/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1224087603&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Galactic-Pc/dp/B001AYEGXM/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1224087603&sr=8-2 [amazon.com]
Crysis Warhead:
http://www.amazon.com/Crysis-Warhead-Pc/dp/B001ATHKVC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1224087659&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
My Spore DRM woes (Score:5, Informative)
I've been playing Spore quite a bit until this weekend, when it simply stopped showing any graphics whatsoever after updating my video drivers. Rolling back to the old drivers didn't help. So I tried reinstalling, and the game would simply crash.
After much futzing around and unhelpful EA support people basically reprinting their FAQ for me, page by page, I figured out the problem. I had patched Spore and uninstalled. But the DRM is never uininstalled, it lurks around forever. When I reinstalled the unpatched version from the CD, it was not what the DRM expected, and it crashed.
EA provides no way to download the patch without running the game, but I found the patch file on gamershell.com. Patching the game let it run without graphics again, and I switched to windowed mode (good like finding the key combo for that in the printed manual or help files) and checked out the graphics settings, uhhh, 170Hz refrsh rate, WTF? Setting it back to 75Hz allowed the game to run once again in full screen mode.
To reiterate: if you patch the game, uninstall, and reinstall the unpatched version, IT WILL NOT WORK, and the only component I can think of that would cause this is the DRM. Thanks EA, for making your paying customers prefer the pirated versions of your programs.
Ric Romero Reporting (Score:4, Informative)
In other news, 99.8% of gamers are playing pirated versions of their games.
My wallet thanks EA and DRM (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Games not on Wii (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My Spore DRM woes (Score:3, Informative)
And what you don't know can't hurt you... right? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm guessing 99.8% of people whose computers are in botnets also don't care because they don't know.
Exactly. I'm guessing 99.8% of people whose computers are in botnets also don't care because they don't know. This does not make botnets a good thing, nor mean that those people would be happy if they discovered they couldn't use their Internet any more because the ISP cut them off.
One need only look at the response to recent attempts to close down some music DRM authentication servers to see that when people are informed about their purchases and the limitations concerned, they most certainly do not support DRM. It's just that most people assume when they buy a track that they've bought it and can keep it. I bet most people who buy games assume that having done so, they can play it forever, too.
Re:Good games sell, but sell enough? (Score:4, Informative)
Your post sounds perfectly reasonable and solid on the outset. Too bad it's complete nonsense.
On the matter of Thief, here is the Looking Glass post-mortem [ttlg.com].
Interestingly, you'll find that piracy isn't even mention. Piracy did not kill Looking Glass studios. Difficult financials did, same as Origin, Westwood, and a multitude of other classic studios.
"No doubt" is not a real-world metric. In fact, 2D Boy EXPLICITLY shipped with no DRM on the honor system. So far, it has not hurt them [arstechnica.com]. And with the recent release on the Nintendo Wii, 2D Boy is flying high with the first 10/10 review from WiiWare World [wiiware-world.com].
As much as I'd like to believe your post is simply ignorant, I cannot ignore your posting history [slashdot.org]. All posts on copyright topics, all in favor of stronger copyrights. You are most certainly a shill. The question is, for whom do you shill?
Mod parent -1 Troll.
Re:Someone failed statistics (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Games not on Wii (Score:4, Informative)
"The reason you hear about the people that have problems is because they come on the internet to explain their problem and get help. You don't hear much from the people for which it "just worked"."
No, it's not. It's because people have problems, and in console land they just don't.
I'm another person that moved off the PC to consoles, as much due to social reasons as anything (playing with friends on the TV is just nicer), but I recently purchased spore. It wanted to install a patch after a while because a lot of people had problems getting it to run at all. The patch broke my install.
Sod that, I'm going back to my easer, cheaper consoles.
Re:Transition from hobby to small business (Score:5, Informative)
I'm actually in your position. The standard practice for obtaining a WiiWare license appears to be:
1. Create a title that runs on the computer. Even if it's just a demo, it should convince Nintendo that you can create games for their system.
2. OBTAIN COMMERCIAL OFFICE SPACE! I can't stress this one enough. Even if you get 200 square feet of office space that costs $200/mo., this step is critical to getting Nintendo to trust you. (Nintendo is concerned about secure access to the development kit.)
3. Apply for a WiiWare license [warioworld.com]. 2D games don't matter. DYC, World of Goo, Mega Man 9, Gradius Rebirth, Cave Story, and many other games have already paved that road for you.
At least, that's the strategy my little cadre expects to pursue. If we can ever finish pulling a team together, that is. Having a part time game designer and part time programmer does us no good if we can't get one of our artist friends to sign up. At least we have some seriously recognized brands lined up.
Anyway, feel free to email me if you need any more info. I'm far from a fountain of information on the process, but I may be able to point you in the right direction.
Re:Almost completely off-topic. (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't quite do that. Just deleting the directory doesn't completely remove the program and you may be setting yourself up for big fail.
Supposedly this link should help out: SecuROM Uninstaller [securom.com].
Re:Game logic on single-language platforms? (Score:3, Informative)
They may claim that, but you can get XNA to run any language that will compile to MSIL, such as VB.NET or IronPython (although the main program has to be a C# XNA game). You can even get C++ working if you compile it with /clr:safe. Beyond that, you can program shaders in Cg, HLSL or your own code if you write a content loader for it (this same idea applies to music, models or any other content). XNA is quite powerful and is expanding to the Zune with the next release.
Re:Almost completely off-topic. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Keep hammering! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good games sell, but sell enough? (Score:3, Informative)
Interestingly, you'll find that piracy isn't even mention. Piracy did not kill Looking Glass studios. Difficult financials did, same as Origin, Westwood, and a multitude of other classic studios.
Define "difficult financials", please. I think that Origin died not because of any real financial problem, but because EA made some bad decisions. Origin was soled to EA in 1992. Once Ultima Online became such a hit, EA decided that Origin would only focus on online play. This is the bonehead move that did Origin in--the bread and butter of gaming (back then) was not in online play. Even back then, there were several MMO and MMO-like games which tanked. But EA got lucky with Origin's Ultima Online, saw the huge hit it was going to be, and got greedy.
Every post-UO game slated to be produced by Origin was eventually canceled. They were put to work milking the UO cash cow until their death in 2004. It's certainly hard to say for sure whether or not they would have been successful if they'd been allowed to work on other projects (specifically non-online ones), but their track record indicates that, yeah, they probably would have been.