Battlefield 4 DRM Locking Out Part of North America Until EU Release 312
An anonymous reader writes "On the whole, Battlefield 4 had a reasonable launch. The have clearly learned from their past experiences with Battlefield 3 and, more notably, SimCity. Still, some customers are unable to access the game (until, presumably, October 30th at 7PM EDT, 39 hours after launch) because they are incorrectly flagged by region-locking. Do regional release dates help diminish all the work EA has been putting into Origin with their refund policy and live technical support? Should they just take our money and deliver the service before we change our minds?"
It could make sense (Score:3)
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It's to stagger the load increase on the battlelog backend so that they can address loading issues hour by hour without the whole system crashing. There's still a few bugs to work out but by and large the launch has been quite smooth. None of the unusable battlelog features of the BF3 launch.
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Sure release it on different dates, but so what if a EU person did buy a copy from the US? Maybe they were in the US then flew home?
Staggering load doesn't actually explain why they prevent otherwise legit purchases from working.
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Is there an official reason for regionally differed releases?
European release dates differ from NA and Asian release dates, and even AUS dates sometimes. Generally, NA/Asian releases are tuesdays, and european are thursday but mostly friday.
As for regionlocking a game out until the confirmed date, EA is hardly the first one to do this too. Blizzard, Ubisoft, Activision, and pretty much everyone else does this if it's a major release as well. Your second point that splitting server nodes helps, it can help a lot.
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So your argument is that everyone does it for no reason, so it's fine?
By that logic, slavery was a-ok in the last century 'cause everyone did it.
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That does make sense for digital distribution, but in that case it's a copout for building infrastructure to handle the distribution.
However, in this case it's merely a case of continuing the tradition commonly seen with physical distribution (which attracts the same scorn).
I am one affected (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh yeah I'm sure that the pirates are enjoying the lovely single player campaign as we speak
Re:I am one affected (Score:5, Interesting)
I happen to like single player campaigns. No stupid kids playing spawn-shoot-suicide-repeat.
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Oh yeah I'm sure that the pirates are enjoying the lovely single player campaign as we speak
Well, watching the webrip of Riddick right now, but will be playing BF4 in about 10 mins.
Re:I am one affected (Score:5, Informative)
You buy from EA, you get what you pay for.
Don't want to pay to be treated like shit? Don't buy from EA.
It's been that way for years. Why are people acting suprised?
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"It's been that way for years. Why are people acting surprised?"
Because people are irrational and stupid. Just look at all the morons that bought Diablo 3 giving the green light to 'online only games' f2p, auction house, and SINGLE PLAYER LAG.
We just have too many brainless gaming addicts on planet earth.
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But the single player online requirement wont. So it really doesn't matter. It's still DRM and they've still taken the game code hostage. The whole idea of single-player lag is bullshit. It's got to be the most awful thing especially for hardcore SP mode players.
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You're not supposed to play alone. Didn't you get the memo? Global playing is hip now. Tell everyone and their dog about the latest achievement you got on facebook and twitter, right out of the game, while connecting your game (which may make no sense at all as a multiplayer experience) with everyone else on the planet. Sim City didn't teach you anything, did it?
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"You're not supposed to play alone. Didn't you get the memo?"
I don't care about your fucking corporate propaganda. DRM is DRM this whole "this game was meant to be an MMO" is bullshit. Diablo 2 had online and didn't have single player lag so go please fuck yourself. I don't appreciate them purposely breaking the single player game. The fact that you would defend it, is fucking sick that you'd tolerate such criminality.
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Just look at all the morons that bought Diablo 3 giving the green light to 'online only games' f2p, auction house, and SINGLE PLAYER LAG.
None of those were the reason the game was bad, though (well, auction house did hurt a bit, but they're removing it). The game was bad because it was overproduced and uninspired. It's the brainless gaming senior management that's to blame for that one.
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You're watching elections and you're really wondering?
"They dicked us over 8 years ago, so we voted the other guy in 4 years ago and he dicked us over too, so now we'll vote the first party again and then everything will be better".
Sounds familiar?
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As a gamedev: Stop leasing games, you fool.
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You paid money to EA. That invalidates you from pretty much any reasonable conversation about the videogame industry.
Well, maybe as a case study.
But the truth is that you've clearly proven that you either "Aren't interested in the fundamental debate about videogame industry." or "Don't give a shit about what others tell you and just keep acting the same way".
Any of those make it quite futile to keep trying to explain.
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Deminishing returns on "fun" (Score:2)
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The new RoTT blows away BattleField and Cal of Duty left and fucking right. A real soundtrack, real choice of character, awesome weaponry..... And people wonder why I still play old games like Doom/Heretic with the new mods. These older than dirt games kick the pants off of newer games.
Re:Deminishing returns on "fun" (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you stupid, or have you just been living under a rock? [wikipedia.org]
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Probably for the same reason Cities XL went on sale on Steam when the Sim City 4 shit hit the fan.
Steam is a direct competitor to EA with their Origin dungpile, and I guess Steam enjoys rubbing it in. So whenever EA drops the ball on something (which is pretty much reliably predictable by simply looking at their release schedules), you'll find something similar on sale at Steam, with the (right) assumption that people will be pissed at EA and in a "stick it to da man" attitude turn and buy something from a
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Keeping in mind I've only purchased one game pre-launch in the past ten years (Skyrim) so maybe I just "don't get it"
Actually in all the ways that truly matter, that's a sign that you really do "get it". Something so frivolous as commercial amusement should never become so important. The real danger is that companies other than EA may really get this right, make such idolatry comfortable, meaning that the dangers of such horribly faulty priorities in life may never be noticed by those who didn't already understand them.
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Well I hadn't really intended to go all philosophical with it. I was just trying to say I don't get the appeal of owning the latest hot game on the day it's released. I know people well into their thirties who still pre-order all the latest games and stand in line at the game stop to get it day one. That's what I don't get. The point of that. Maybe the mutli-player of the various Call of Duties etc drops over time so you have to get it day one to have the most fun via the largest pool of other players. Als
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I was never much into pre-purchasing games (D3 is my badge of shame), but kickstarter seems very different to me - I'll pay far more to help kickstart an indie game, with far more chance of epic fail,, just to get the big producers/distributers out of the picture and see what the devs can really do.
Not on Steam? (Score:3)
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... and now they get none of it (from me.)
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They didn't pull out of Steam over any sort of philosophical disagreement, they did it because they wanted all of the pie.
But I don't like shit pie...
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take your money (Score:3)
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Umm... they did? It's not like you can't pay, you only can't play.
It will be a cold day in hell before EA will say something like "sorry, we can't take your money... but hey, if you wanna you can play!"
i cant believe people still give EA money (Score:2)
when will you all learn they're ruining PC gaming
Serves them right (Score:2)
Serves them right, for giving EA money!
BF3 was a real hard act to follow (Score:3)
but you think they'd try. The keybinds don't work, "Well play with the WASD set-up" you say,
but some of us play with a left handed mouse.
The graphics are great in some cases (you won't hear many people say that) but causes problems.
You get out of the water and a sheet of water flows off of you (part of the realism) and it stops you in your tracks,
All low settings GTX-570. You never know when lag will hit (other than the water) but it sure gets one killed.
B is a key to open a Map, it opens the console, and you have to press ~ to close it. It's like BF3 all over again,
you couldn't reassign the Q key for one. BF3 the chat was in your face, the middle of the screen was where people
typed back and forth, some helpful most calling others names (normal chats), The BF4 map is now in your face;
it takes up the entire screen which you can change the opacity but you can't view the map no matter how transparent
and the action of the game at the same time. (I do that with BF3 the mini map is alway open taking up the bottom left
corner of my monitor, I only play hardcore so the map is the only way you can see people.
BF3 moved the chat to the side, and allowed one to reassign the Q key, the very things that upset people is how BF4 works now.
I'd change the keybinds and it would hang on me, I'd let it be and sometimes I could continue,
other times I had to turn off the power supply, the secret is not to change the jet keys.
The game profile (a text file) is around 100K, mine was 35,000K and had 678961 lines that had the word jet in them.
Copy an pasting BF3's helicopter and jet config lines to the BF4 profile is how I configured my game.
You don't know when you die oddly enough, going along just fine only to find you were killed, it's not
obvious by any means, I don't know if one gets used to that or not, many times I thought I was still in the game.
I could go on, multiplayer is a real mess right now. as mentioned it looks like everything they did wrong with BF3 and patched out,
is how BF4 was released.
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You have my sympathies about the key bindings. It happens a lot and used to drive me crazy. I switched to WASD some years ago partially due to being sick of re-mapping my keys every time I got a new game but mainly because of carpal tunnel-like symptoms which the switch actually fixed. These days I still get occasionally burned by PC games assuming that I have a official XBox controller when I have a generic one. You'd think it wouldn't make much difference but it can.
That said, BF4 has been a pretty
What?! (Score:2)
'we' who? I'll buy an EA game when hell freezes over. They beat Bank of America for worst company on the planet.
Slogan... (Score:2)
EA
You're not in the game.
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least a fix is released!
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:4, Informative)
How is that DRM supposed to work again?
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By keeping you from playing what's primarily a multiplayer game online with a pirated copy. Being able to steal the client won't do you much good without access to the service.
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Wait, what? DRM is supposed to WORK? I thought it's a customer annoyance system to test what he is willing to put up with and see when he stops complaining and actually stops buying, i.e. when it goes from something nobody gives a fuck about to something that actually might make studios think.
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Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:5, Interesting)
The entire fucking point of DRM is to prevent piracy. It prevented it not at all. The pirated copy is out before the legal copy for much of the world. However, it did massively inconvenience many paying customers. People pirate for lots of reasons; It is free, it is not supporting "the man," it is "l337!" But there is one other big reason now; The pirated version is a superior product! I know lots of people who buy a game, has trouble installing, and then get the pirated version so they can play. It doesn't take much of that before they just skip the painful step of bothering with the legal copy...
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So true. Whilst companies put in draconian DRM there will always be superior pirate versions out there, and the risk to the companies is that otherwise legitimate users then 'forget' to then buy a copy to put straight into the bottom of their cupboard. Remember those games where you had to have the original CD in to play it? A real pain. Or the one that tied a game to a specific CPU, meaning if you put in a faster processor you had to buy a new copy of the game? Or the one where you needed to be connected t
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Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
If you bought a copy, found iout ater it had huge problems and a pirate copy is the only way to get a usable product, then go for it. You bought it and can do what you want. But that's totally different than pirating it from the get go simply because it has DRM and you don't like that.
And after doing this a few times, wouldn't a reasonable and intelegent person just skip the first step that they knew would only cause frustration?
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Sure, but the only honest response is to skip the second step too. You simply cannot reasonably argue that the product was so bad you had to steal it.
Do people really like these big AAA console-port titles based on their content in the first place? Or is it just a burning need to play what everyone else is playing? The latter makes much more sense as a reason to get a copy by whatever means even if the game is bad.
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I dunno about that. I think sometimes, maybe all the time, when a company releases something with obnoxious DRM, massive piracy is a nice middle finger to the company. I think it sends a clear message, unfortunately that message can be interpreted several ways.
a) We like your game but your DRM is retarded.
b) We don't like your game, but we're pirating it just to pirated it.
c) We like your game but it's too expensive, so we'll just pirate it.
All of the examples should send the publisher (and lets face it,
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As an additional.. its pretty obvious some consumers are ok with DRM up their .. yeah.. someone is buying this crap, or they'd for sure cut it out if people would just stop buying it. Companies do understand money, if people would just give the thumbs down and not buy this junk...yeah.. that would finally make it go away. But someone is buying.
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Yeah, when people don't act the way I want them to act I feel justified in stealing from them too.
You are confused about the word stealing. It does not mean what you think it means.
If someone else tells a joke I made, I've not been stolen from.
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Dude, if I buy something from you with the reasonable faith that it will work the way it is not only advertised but also it is reasonable to believe it would, and you fail to deliver, my moral obligations to you are off.
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
They've always been around. They're the ones who believe they're entitled to government-enforced monopolies over ideas.
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Um, they are. It's the law, and it has been since before all of us were born. Our government promises a government-enforced monopoly over artistic works (FTFY) to anyone who comes up with them. Until that law is changed, then they bloody well are entitled to a government-enforced monopoly!
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the law HAS changed. Originally, copyright was for a much shorter time (14 years, renewable for another 14 years if the creator was still alive), but in modern times the length has been pushed so far that the "for limited times" part of the constitutional clause that gives the U.S. government the authority to CREATE a copyright law is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Anything you see created today will still be copyrighted long after you die.
Unfortunately, this makes the public domain a nearly worthless concept; copyright is limited so that things will eventually become public domain, but with copyrights so long, nothing relevant to modern society belongs in it. Hell, we have entire forms of media that will never have a single item enter public domain until you are dead, buried, and dust.
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Exactly. 14 years, as envisaged by everybody that put in place the framework for copyright, is perfect. I don't think Origin would have a problem having exclusivity on Battlefield 4 for the next 14 years. Valve might still be selling the original Counterstrike 1.6 in a box set but it hardly sustains their company any more.
The perversion of copyright law is quite tragic, and definitely detrimental to our society.
Phillip.
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In the US, there have been copyrights since colonial times. The point is, this is not a concept we are all just now getting used to. Practically every person in the west knows that, with a creative work, comes a copyright. Why shouldn't artists feel entitled to one?
Well fuck, the
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The pirates aren't the only entitled ones you know. They're responding to the entitled attitudes of the developers who think licensing is a justification for abuse.
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In other words, pretty much every corporation out there acts like a sociopath.
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No, please, games are already a lot like movies, we needn't add that "feature".
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Well that is not such as easy argument as you make it out to be.
It is to me. If it's not to you, then our opinions simply differ. There is no inherent contradiction here.
There has indeed been controversy about medical research based on the "work" done in Nazi concentration camps.
I don't care what others think; I care what I think. Even if there is some controversy (and I have no idea exactly what you're referring to here), chances are, I'd disagree with the people who think we should just discard the results.
With that said, if there is indeed a "controversy," then that implies there are at least two sides in the debate. Saying I am "internally inconsistent" is therefore prematu
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Have you ever heard the expression "Step up so others won’t get stepped on"?
Yes, it's a slogan commonly used in anti-bullying campaigns. You know, something that is an actual problem. Using it to justify piracy is pretty shitty.
A LOT of customers took the principled stand of simply not purchasing DRM-laced products in the last decade and the entertainment industry reacted by mass suing the public.
Really? People were sued for simply not buying a product? Or were they sued for not buying a product and "acquiring" it anyway? Pirating a product does not make you some sort of hero of civil disobedience. It makes you pirate. Standing up to practices you consider unfair by refusing to buy or use products from companies that engage in that behavior, a practi
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It's theft of services. Not paying for what you use is stealing, plain and simple. You'll likely do it whatever it's called, and it's no great evil, but let's not kid ourselves about what it is.
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:4, Insightful)
The primary difference is that theft implies you're taking something away, when the most likely reality is that they are just continuing to get what they were never going to get (for whatever reason - because you can, because you disagree with the drm, whatever)
Yes, both are wrong. But there are vastly different levels of wrong, and in this case there's not a small difference in level. You should at least acknowledge that, even if you don't believe it excuses the behavior.
Well, unless you're one of those crazies who thinks jaywalkers deserve prison sentences - but I don't think you are.
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:4, Informative)
It's not mere pedantry. The difference isn't equivocal or superficial; making a copy of a thing is fundamentally different from taking it away from another. An idea or expression is only "yours" until you share it with the world; the fact that the law protects right-to-copy and physical property doesn't make them equivalent.
For those who need a refresher: Copying is Not Theft [youtube.com]
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Yes; we know it is legally defined as copyright infringement.
Why don't we just call it that then? We know exactly what it is, it's got a pretty normal definition. Copyright infringement seems obvious to people who know what it is
Stealing is another matter entirely, which involves taking something from someone else.
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What, "fuck you"? That seems like it got through loud and clear.
No, the message you're sending is, "I'm too weak willed to go without your product". People probably just as stupid as you at publishing companies think that if they can just make better DRM you would have to buy the product, You're both wrong and morons, but you're combining to perpetuate the problem. Fuck both of you. Start doing without games with shitty DRM.
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:5, Informative)
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...that doesn't give one solitary shred of a damn about its customers. News at 11.
The only reason a large enterprise gives a damn about its customers is because they believe it is more profitable to be seen doing so. If they believe they can profit without bothering, the expense of doing so will be dispensed with.
... well, these humanizing things don't scale nearly as well as do organ
Giving a damn about your fellow human beings, how you are treating them, what that says about who you are and which ideals you represent, and what kind of world it helps to build one baby step at a time
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What company does?
As long as there's no profit in treating your customers better than dirt, it won't be done. And since every game company essentially has a monopoly on their games, and you HAVE to deal with them if you want to play a certain game, there is no incentive for them to treat you any better than garbage.
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Look - are you really going to give up a game you've been anticipating for months
There's something horrifically empty and meaningless about a life in which this or any other form of entertainment would be a really important, high-priority concern.
You're EA's bitch, and you'll like what they give you, when they decide to give it to you.
I would say both the customers and EA are the "bitches" of something far more tragic.
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There's something horrifically empty and meaningless about a life in which this or any other form of entertainment would be a really important, high-priority concern.
Sorry, but entertainment is important. I imagine you have read some really good books in your time, books that widened your horizons and made you think of things you would not have thought of otherwise. For me sci-fi helped get me interested in electronics and computers, which is now my hobby and my career. Good entertainment has value beyond being a mere distraction, as does all art.
Okay, BF4 isn't high art, I'll grant you that, but it is compelling. Working in a team to accomplish something, to better you
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That's strange, because I haven't bought any EA games, and yet your post seems to be referring to me.
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Only because the English language sorely lacks an impersonal pronoun like the French "on" or the German "man".
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Bought BC2 on Steam and was really looking forward to BF3 after all the videos during E3. Then EA made some shit up about Steam/Valve not cooperating with them and the beautiful Origin emerged. What a pile of shit. That invasive, irritating, and completely unnecessary bloated trash was the last straw for me.
I play BF3 and really enjoyed it. Origin isn't a problem; I open my browser, log into a server, Origin loads,
and after the BF3 icon shows it's loading I shut Origin down. BF3 didn't need Origin to play just load.
With BF4 Origin won't let you close it, and I don't care for that at all.
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So, just to play a game, you have to open a browser, log into the browser, wait for some software to load and only THEN you can start starting the game?
It really is amazing what people put up with. Personally, I consider spash screens that make me wait without needing interaction from me to go away annoying, but apparently I have ADHD or something...
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So you had the heavy lifting of regional languages, fonts, packaging, censorship and media distribution done by locals - say in Canada or UK or Australia or Spain.
e.g. select groups and individuals got very, very rich getting "used" US cinema "film" months later and showing it months later in their region.
They thought this dreamy captured market would go on forever with neat digital legal deals for their regions.
The Au
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Which doesn't make any sense in this context, given that EA is both the development house and the publisher.
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So, in a nutshell, screw the customers, we got contracts to fulfill!
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Whores get paid. If anything, the users are Johns.
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At least usually the whores get the money. This is more like a fraternity freshman saying "thank you sir, may I have another one?"
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