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On December 06 2011 18:29 TheYango wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that Origin is in direct competition with Steam. I deny that this is a problem of Origin. Steam does essentially the same thing. Valve might be handling it better, but that does not really make a difference in the general problem.
On December 06 2011 18:34 gruff wrote:
DRM doesn't have to be bad, it's the bad implemented ones that we have to revolt against. I remember buying a few songs maybe 2-3 years ago. It had some form of security that you had to activate it once to be able to listen to it. It worked fine right after I bought it but maybe half a year later I had to make a clean install of windows. When I then tried to play my music files you couldn't reactivate them as I had already did once as the service had ended or something like that. I ended up deleting them and pirated the songs instead. When you create drm's that severely hamper the use of the products you have bought I think it's time to reconsider your strategy.
As above, I think that is not true. Everyone his own opinion, but for me, the distinction between "good DRM" and "bad DRM" is pointless, because the basic problem lies in the idea behind it, whether a company implements it more or less strict; more or less customer friendly is only a nuance.
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glad i only posted on the EA forums once... This is pretty ridiculous.
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On December 06 2011 18:45 grs wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 18:29 TheYango wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that Origin is in direct competition with Steam. I deny that this is a problem of Origin. Steam does essentially the same thing. Valve might be handling it better, but that does not really make a difference in the general problem. Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 18:34 gruff wrote:
DRM doesn't have to be bad, it's the bad implemented ones that we have to revolt against. I remember buying a few songs maybe 2-3 years ago. It had some form of security that you had to activate it once to be able to listen to it. It worked fine right after I bought it but maybe half a year later I had to make a clean install of windows. When I then tried to play my music files you couldn't reactivate them as I had already did once as the service had ended or something like that. I ended up deleting them and pirated the songs instead. When you create drm's that severely hamper the use of the products you have bought I think it's time to reconsider your strategy. As above, I think that is not true. Everyone his own opinion, but for me, the distinction between "good DRM" and "bad DRM" is pointless, because the basic problem lies in the idea behind it, whether a company implements it more or less strict; more or less customer friendly is only a nuance.
There is a lot of things in the world that is a nuance but in the end something unavoidable. If you look at it from the company's pov then it's entirely understandable why they want drm or something equivellent. Are there better ways? Perhaps. But at the end of the day I can accept a well thought out drm that aren't too intrucive. Why shouldn't you make a distinction between a good or a bad one?
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On December 06 2011 19:51 gruff wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 18:45 grs wrote:On December 06 2011 18:29 TheYango wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that Origin is in direct competition with Steam. I deny that this is a problem of Origin. Steam does essentially the same thing. Valve might be handling it better, but that does not really make a difference in the general problem. On December 06 2011 18:34 gruff wrote:
DRM doesn't have to be bad, it's the bad implemented ones that we have to revolt against. I remember buying a few songs maybe 2-3 years ago. It had some form of security that you had to activate it once to be able to listen to it. It worked fine right after I bought it but maybe half a year later I had to make a clean install of windows. When I then tried to play my music files you couldn't reactivate them as I had already did once as the service had ended or something like that. I ended up deleting them and pirated the songs instead. When you create drm's that severely hamper the use of the products you have bought I think it's time to reconsider your strategy. As above, I think that is not true. Everyone his own opinion, but for me, the distinction between "good DRM" and "bad DRM" is pointless, because the basic problem lies in the idea behind it, whether a company implements it more or less strict; more or less customer friendly is only a nuance. There is a lot of things in the world that is a nuance but in the end something unavoidable. If you look at it from the company's pov then it's entirely understandable why they want drm or something equivellent. Are there better ways? Perhaps. But at the end of the day I can accept a well thought out drm that aren't too intrucive. Why shouldn't you make a distinction between a good or a bad one?
Because the underlying principle is what is bad. To me is is not the question if a certain implementation harms me personally. It starts something that will harm me personally.
Anyways, you can probably have endless debates with different opinions about this; yours is just different from mine. What makes me wonder sometimes though, is that certain incidents (like this) get spotlighted, while others of the same kind go unnoticed or even get mostly positive response (like the current banning of bug abusers in WoW).
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although I obviously don't have any inside intel, in my humble opinion EA could get sued - but not from you, but from retailers!; just think about it that way: you buy a car from person X; then you call person Y, who produced the car, an asshole without any provocation/explanation/whatsoever - does that give person Y the right to take the car away from you? most definitely not
the problem is, I have no idea how this would look like under US law, but such things would definitely not hold under Austrian Law; meaning, you could get your money back from amazon/whatever, because regardless of who the owner of the digital rights is, your contractual relationship is with the RETAILER - the person of whom you bought the product from is directly responsible that you can use it properly
people around here need to realize that you don't really have to start a lawsuit vs EA - it's 100% sufficient if you demand your money back from the company that sold you the product and provide as explanation that EA has shut you out, which means that you can't use the product any more; and suddenly it's not sleepingdog vs EA but amazon vs EA
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On December 06 2011 19:51 gruff wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 18:45 grs wrote:On December 06 2011 18:29 TheYango wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that Origin is in direct competition with Steam. I deny that this is a problem of Origin. Steam does essentially the same thing. Valve might be handling it better, but that does not really make a difference in the general problem. On December 06 2011 18:34 gruff wrote:
DRM doesn't have to be bad, it's the bad implemented ones that we have to revolt against. I remember buying a few songs maybe 2-3 years ago. It had some form of security that you had to activate it once to be able to listen to it. It worked fine right after I bought it but maybe half a year later I had to make a clean install of windows. When I then tried to play my music files you couldn't reactivate them as I had already did once as the service had ended or something like that. I ended up deleting them and pirated the songs instead. When you create drm's that severely hamper the use of the products you have bought I think it's time to reconsider your strategy. As above, I think that is not true. Everyone his own opinion, but for me, the distinction between "good DRM" and "bad DRM" is pointless, because the basic problem lies in the idea behind it, whether a company implements it more or less strict; more or less customer friendly is only a nuance. There is a lot of things in the world that is a nuance but in the end something unavoidable. If you look at it from the company's pov then it's entirely understandable why they want drm or something equivellent. Are there better ways? Perhaps. But at the end of the day I can accept a well thought out drm that aren't too intrucive. Why shouldn't you make a distinction between a good or a bad one?
I think the basic idea is that the company and the customer should ideally have a mutually-beneficial relationship, rather than an adversarial one where the customers are basically the enemies of the company.
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And here I was, considering for the first time in my life using Origin to buy swtor before release. That is in spite of the ridiculous early access extra fee that EA seemingly thought up for no reason at all. Well... guess what. Not much discussion about that anymore.
EA can go play with their ridiculous attitude somewhere in cyber-vision-of-grandure-land.
Now the only remaining issue is that I stilll WANT to buy Swtor, but I can't do so without some of that coin going to the EA coffers. Damn you Bioware, for joining EA!
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I've long since decided to not buy anything from EA anymore. I don't think I've missed much...
Edit: Horrible business practice... Seems like they never heard of this internet thingy before everyone else is talking about. Bad press? Hooray!
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On December 06 2011 16:11 TheKK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 15:24 killa_robot wrote:On December 06 2011 14:21 overt wrote:On December 06 2011 09:53 killa_robot wrote:On December 06 2011 08:01 Latedi wrote:On December 06 2011 06:53 overt wrote:On December 06 2011 06:48 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:On December 06 2011 06:40 overt wrote:
The solution to all of this is to just not buy EA or Activision products. You're supporting the two companies that are ruining video games when you do.
If you boycott those companies (which would include not buying Blizzard games btw) you can actually hope for things to change. Like for Origin to be less shitty. For EA's customer service to be better. For Activision to stop being dicks to their employees and producing games like they're all Madden.
Boycotts work. Buying EA/Activision games and then bitching about lack of features and shitty customer service doesn't because they're still getting your money. thats the problem in the game industry. in a sense a company has the monopoly on a product. while in most other branches the products more or less do the same there is only ONE starcraft and only ONE assassins creed and only ONE Fifa etc. so boycotting a company(esp big publishers) shuts yourself out of products you might really want and have no alternative to. names like that will sell no matter what. even if tomorrow came out that EA is extracting kids souls to power their servers people would still buy the next fifa. also in todays grand global videogame industry you have a hard time getting noticed that way . i mean i agree with you and as said in my previous post dont plan to buy EA games anytime soon. but i WILL buy hots and d3 even tho i hate much of what they done with sc2, hate activision, HATE kotick etc just because i need to have them and i cant get them from anyone else. I understand why most people don't choose to boycott EA/Activision but those two companies are, imo, ruining the video game industry. If people want shit to change you have to actually do something rather than complain about it on reddit or TL and send angry emails. Most of the people bitching about Origin and EA will probably end up buying Mass Effect 3 regardless. Most of the people who are mad about Activision laying off the guys at Infinity Ward, not putting LAN in SC2, and all of the other shenanigans that they pull will still buy the new Call of Duty or StarCraft expansion. You have to show companies that you're mad with your wallet not with your words. The answer is easy if you ask me :p PiracyJust download the games you want to play but are being made by some douche company and pay for games from studios you like. Don't give money to Blizzard, give it to indie developers or other companies which are not controlled by money  Money is how businesses work, the only different between Indie developers and ones like Blizzard is that ones like Blizzard have the room to be an ass. If the Indie developer has even the smallest screw-up with how they treat their customers, no one will buy their product. The same can not be said for larger developers. Valve? Probably one of the biggest video game companies after EA/Activision and they generally do things that are good and awesome. I can't really think of any major grievance I have with Valve. They even created Steam, which while benefiting them greatly, works fantastic and the notion of me only having to buy a game once and I can download it at any point in the future is pretty fantastic. They're at least one example of a very large video game company that generates a lot of revenue and doesn't screw over their fanbase. Money is important but so is keeping your consumer happy. The problem with gaming companies like EA and Activision is that they create policies that give them more control over their games and don't see a decrease in profits because most gamers don't care enough to stop buying their products. Just because an indie company gets big doesn't mean they'll adopt policies that punish the consumer. Valve killed CS:S (for me at least) when they did the big update which allowed people on macs to play it. It changed the game so much that I couldn't play it anymore. It also broke nearly every mod that had been created up until that point. They're motivation? Money. Mac playerbase = untapped players = people buying that couldn't before = more money. Regardless of the fact that nearly everyone I know hated it when it was in beta (the best I saw were people going "meh"), they still went ahead with it anyways. Granted Valve isn't anywhere nears EA's level, but the same rules still apply to them. All actions they do are for money, keeping their consumers happy (read: not pissed off) is just an easy way to ensure future sales. I also never said that it was a certainty that they would treat their customers badly, just that there's really nothing stopping them. Really? You don't think they did that as a favor to mac users who want to be able to play CS? I bet they were getting e-mails from mac-users who wanted the game to be compatible with their OS.
A favor....
Um no. They did it for the extra player base, at the expense of their current one. My personally experience with how the game ended up aside, they still broke nearly every mod that had been created. If that's not a kick in the face to the existing community then I don't know what is.
I doubt they got emails from mac users, because up until recently it was pretty much just accepted that if you buy a mac you're not using it to play games on. Unless you have something to prove otherwise?
Companies don't just do "favors" for no reason.
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On December 06 2011 18:29 TheYango wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that Origin is in direct competition with Steam.
I don't see how EA expects to keep customers on their own platform when they do shit like this, especially given that many of their AAA titles like Mass Effect and Dragon Age are also available on Steam.
Is it in their right to ban people from their Origin games based on Forum posts? Sure. Is it a smart move? Certainly not, when they're trying to break into the digital distribution sphere--stuff like this hurts their image when they're already not the leading brand name when it comes to digital distribution.
New EA games don't come out on Steam anymore. Battlefield 3, The Old Republic and Mass Effect 3 are good examples. Valve also pulled both Crysis 2 and Dragon Age 2 from Steam because those two games had DLC that was distributed via Direct2Drive instead of distributing their DLC through Steam.
So, I actually do understand EA wanting to create Origin. Right now Valve almost has a monopoly on PC games and EA wants a piece of the pie. I do agree that EA needs to be careful because I've only seen and heard horror stories about Origin and honestly since all they're offering are EA products right now I don't see myself getting it anytime soon.
On December 06 2011 20:29 killa_robot wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 16:11 TheKK wrote:On December 06 2011 15:24 killa_robot wrote:On December 06 2011 14:21 overt wrote:On December 06 2011 09:53 killa_robot wrote:On December 06 2011 08:01 Latedi wrote:On December 06 2011 06:53 overt wrote:On December 06 2011 06:48 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:On December 06 2011 06:40 overt wrote:
The solution to all of this is to just not buy EA or Activision products. You're supporting the two companies that are ruining video games when you do.
If you boycott those companies (which would include not buying Blizzard games btw) you can actually hope for things to change. Like for Origin to be less shitty. For EA's customer service to be better. For Activision to stop being dicks to their employees and producing games like they're all Madden.
Boycotts work. Buying EA/Activision games and then bitching about lack of features and shitty customer service doesn't because they're still getting your money. thats the problem in the game industry. in a sense a company has the monopoly on a product. while in most other branches the products more or less do the same there is only ONE starcraft and only ONE assassins creed and only ONE Fifa etc. so boycotting a company(esp big publishers) shuts yourself out of products you might really want and have no alternative to. names like that will sell no matter what. even if tomorrow came out that EA is extracting kids souls to power their servers people would still buy the next fifa. also in todays grand global videogame industry you have a hard time getting noticed that way . i mean i agree with you and as said in my previous post dont plan to buy EA games anytime soon. but i WILL buy hots and d3 even tho i hate much of what they done with sc2, hate activision, HATE kotick etc just because i need to have them and i cant get them from anyone else. I understand why most people don't choose to boycott EA/Activision but those two companies are, imo, ruining the video game industry. If people want shit to change you have to actually do something rather than complain about it on reddit or TL and send angry emails. Most of the people bitching about Origin and EA will probably end up buying Mass Effect 3 regardless. Most of the people who are mad about Activision laying off the guys at Infinity Ward, not putting LAN in SC2, and all of the other shenanigans that they pull will still buy the new Call of Duty or StarCraft expansion. You have to show companies that you're mad with your wallet not with your words. The answer is easy if you ask me :p PiracyJust download the games you want to play but are being made by some douche company and pay for games from studios you like. Don't give money to Blizzard, give it to indie developers or other companies which are not controlled by money Money is how businesses work, the only different between Indie developers and ones like Blizzard is that ones like Blizzard have the room to be an ass. If the Indie developer has even the smallest screw-up with how they treat their customers, no one will buy their product. The same can not be said for larger developers. Valve? Probably one of the biggest video game companies after EA/Activision and they generally do things that are good and awesome. I can't really think of any major grievance I have with Valve. They even created Steam, which while benefiting them greatly, works fantastic and the notion of me only having to buy a game once and I can download it at any point in the future is pretty fantastic. They're at least one example of a very large video game company that generates a lot of revenue and doesn't screw over their fanbase. Money is important but so is keeping your consumer happy. The problem with gaming companies like EA and Activision is that they create policies that give them more control over their games and don't see a decrease in profits because most gamers don't care enough to stop buying their products. Just because an indie company gets big doesn't mean they'll adopt policies that punish the consumer. Valve killed CS:S (for me at least) when they did the big update which allowed people on macs to play it. It changed the game so much that I couldn't play it anymore. It also broke nearly every mod that had been created up until that point. They're motivation? Money. Mac playerbase = untapped players = people buying that couldn't before = more money. Regardless of the fact that nearly everyone I know hated it when it was in beta (the best I saw were people going "meh"), they still went ahead with it anyways. Granted Valve isn't anywhere nears EA's level, but the same rules still apply to them. All actions they do are for money, keeping their consumers happy (read: not pissed off) is just an easy way to ensure future sales. I also never said that it was a certainty that they would treat their customers badly, just that there's really nothing stopping them. Really? You don't think they did that as a favor to mac users who want to be able to play CS? I bet they were getting e-mails from mac-users who wanted the game to be compatible with their OS. A favor.... Um no. They did it for the extra player base, at the expense of their current one. My personally experience with how the game ended up aside, they still broke nearly every mod that had been created. If that's not a kick in the face to the existing community then I don't know what is. I doubt they got emails from mac users, because up until recently it was pretty much just accepted that if you buy a mac you're not using it to play games on. Unless you have something to prove otherwise? Companies don't just do "favors" for no reason.
I was going to ignore your initial comment because I didn't think it was worth any time but I don't think a company allowing more people to play their game can really count as them being money grubbers who are screwing over their fans.
Yes, the Mac change broke mods for not just CS:S but for numerous other Source games like TF2 and Half-Life. I don't know about CS:S but for TF2 and Half-Life it took only a matter of weeks for virtually every mod to be repaired and fixed. I highly doubt Valve opened their Source code up to Mac users with the intention of breaking all mods ever made. Fun fact, Valve updates tend to break SourceMod and numerous other tools that are used for running TF2 and CS:S servers. I guess they're being assholes when they provide free updates to their games too?
I don't think you can fault them too much for opening their games up to Mac users. Yeah, they're trying to bring in new customers but they're allowing an entirely new section of the market to play their games. And I can understand where you're coming from a bit, when Valve made TF2 free I was a little annoyed because servers became filled with idiots who had no clue what they were doing and the game felt almost unplayable for a few months because of all the new players who were completely awful (seriously going 50:5 on most maps just isn't fun). But could I really fault Valve for doing something cool and making their game free to let new people try it out? Even if I could argue they only did it because they could now make tons of money with the MannCo store and so it was probably a smart business venture it was still an incredibly cool move by them to allow new people to get into their game.
I don't play CS:S but I would imagine that nearly every mod that used to exist probably still does. And if it doesn't then I would argue that's the fault of the community because every other Source game that I've played had their mods repaired after the Mac update.
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EA never forced you to sign there agreements. Though luck.
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Heh. Reminds me of how my friend broke a story on how the EULA for Origins originally gave EA permission to "search" through your computer. Probably just language legal thought it could sneak through to cover any loose ends rather than anything else but EA deserve the negativity associated with it.
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I wouldn't say that Valve has a monopoly on PC games itself, but the platform for which PC games are delivered on. Even with that, it's still false considering that Blizzard's platform is extremely successful for its own library of games (even though Blizzard does not have a game management console program, just the one built into the website which is clever since web standards are universal across almost every OS platform. If only they could bring their games to Linux distributions).
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On December 06 2011 07:43 Klondikebar wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 07:39 Trashie wrote:
I don't see a problem with banning people ingame aswell as forum, based on their forum behavior. If you act like a dick, just to be a dick, just because you can - you deserve it.. Deal with the consequences, dick.
EAs other practices? Horrible. Lets hope they die out soon. Do you see a problem with EA banning people who were simply mentioned in someone else's posts? Do you see a problem with them denying access to the single player game when they have said that forum bans would not affect Origin accounts? Did you even read the OP?
Did you even read MY post, or are you being intentionally dense?
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EA are absolute fucking pieces of shit that get away with WAY more than they have any right to. Games affiliated with EA tend to be released to market at an alpha stage of development, then after a few years of patching they develop it to beta. After the ridiculous BF2 saga, a game which was initially borderline unplayable, I vowed to not buy anything with the EA logo on it.
As it happened, I got BF3 for my birthday and to find that they expect people to put up with this Origin / Battlelogger bullshit is absolutely ridiculous. I can just hear the cogs turning in their planning phase 'hmm, everybody seems to like facebook. lets make a pointless game version of facebook. then maybe everybody will like the game'.
PS. I also heard that I guy on the EA forums got banned for saying 'badass'.
I just hope that they manage to offend enough people to cripple their business, cause they're heading that way.
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On December 06 2011 20:00 grs wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2011 19:51 gruff wrote:On December 06 2011 18:45 grs wrote:On December 06 2011 18:29 TheYango wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that Origin is in direct competition with Steam. I deny that this is a problem of Origin. Steam does essentially the same thing. Valve might be handling it better, but that does not really make a difference in the general problem. On December 06 2011 18:34 gruff wrote:
DRM doesn't have to be bad, it's the bad implemented ones that we have to revolt against. I remember buying a few songs maybe 2-3 years ago. It had some form of security that you had to activate it once to be able to listen to it. It worked fine right after I bought it but maybe half a year later I had to make a clean install of windows. When I then tried to play my music files you couldn't reactivate them as I had already did once as the service had ended or something like that. I ended up deleting them and pirated the songs instead. When you create drm's that severely hamper the use of the products you have bought I think it's time to reconsider your strategy. As above, I think that is not true. Everyone his own opinion, but for me, the distinction between "good DRM" and "bad DRM" is pointless, because the basic problem lies in the idea behind it, whether a company implements it more or less strict; more or less customer friendly is only a nuance. There is a lot of things in the world that is a nuance but in the end something unavoidable. If you look at it from the company's pov then it's entirely understandable why they want drm or something equivellent. Are there better ways? Perhaps. But at the end of the day I can accept a well thought out drm that aren't too intrucive. Why shouldn't you make a distinction between a good or a bad one? Because the underlying principle is what is bad. To me is is not the question if a certain implementation harms me personally. It starts something that will harm me personally. Anyways, you can probably have endless debates with different opinions about this; yours is just different from mine. What makes me wonder sometimes though, is that certain incidents (like this) get spotlighted, while others of the same kind go unnoticed or even get mostly positive response (like the current banning of bug abusers in WoW).
Even though this is a little off topic, what happened in WoW was just. Getting any level item by exploit discredits the game and the effort of the players. A 3-8 day "ban" hardly equates to EA's lifetime ban of all games.
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Baltimore, USA22260 Posts
On December 06 2011 18:30 Phenny wrote:
Banned for swearing??? lol what a fucking joke EA
Hope "Phenny" isn't your Username 
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Its completely ridiculous. I read this story earlier and couldn't believe it. I've already strayed away from EA after they implemented the used game fees for online games. (I don't like buying sports games at launch but enjoy a game or two online...)
I've never played an MMO but TOR looked like it'd be my first. (Star Wars games are my kryptonite.) However, in a game filled with PvP and such I don't want to risk getting banned because someone flames me or something stupid. Since it doesn't even have Singleplayer I think I'll hold off til this passes over.
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EPT
