Earlier, my co-blogger suggested giving EA games a miss, because of the annoying nonsense with DRM and EA Online. I'm now going to make a firm commitment: I'm no longer buying EA games. If they come out with something fantastic that I absolutely have to have, I'll buy it used, but until that, I'll be boycotting them.
Why? Because this stupid DRM nonsense has gone too far. We recently got a new XBox, and transferred all our stuff over from the old one. It was remarkably easy: take a normal USB "stick", let the XBox format it and use it to move profiles and save games. All the Arcade games and downloadable content you can easily re-download, because anything you've bought from XBox Live you can download again any time you want.
Except, that is, if you bought it from EA.
What we found was that first of all, we were unable to redownload the Dragon Age: Origins DLCs via the game itself. Having then moved them over from the old console, what we now found was that only the person who actually downloaded them can play them. The rest of us get told by the game that the extra content is "corrupt", and we can only access it through an idiotic workaround. All other DLC for other games works just fine. Thanks, EA.
Why on earth can't they just use the XBox Live system for managing downloadable content and user accounts? Why do they persist with this nonsense of separate EA accounts and their own DRM systems? It's damned annoying. In multiplayer games like Army of Two, online multiplayer is only accessible if you have an EA account. Why? What the hell is wrong with my XBox Live gold account? Why do I have to jump through additional hoops? And why can't they use the XBox DRM for downloadable content, which can handle moving from one console to another just fine?
Further, EA and Bioware have known about this problem for as long as it's existed, and haven't bothered to fix it. Also, one of the patches for Dragon Age broke a couple of achievements, which they also know but haven't fixed. Nice after-market support, guys.
This may seem like a small thing, but frankly, it pisses me off. As long as they persist with this stupidity, I'm not buying their games.
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computers. Show all posts
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Any way you want to play
I used to be a big fan of Electronic Arts. That old square/circle/triangle logo always promised good times, and their NHL line of hockey games were long my favorite.
Over the years, my appreciation for them lessened. Yearly NHL titles became little more than roster updates, and I switched to a competing franchise. Were I more of a football guy, that wouldn't have been an option, as EA secured exclusive rights to NFL titles. I didn't think that was very sporting, but if NFL was willing to sell it, and EA willing to pay, it wasn't any business of mine.
Since then EA has, along with Ubisoft, led the publishing field in the introduction of increasingly distasteful DRM schemes, which is why you won't find many recent titles from them in my PC game collection. I'm not a big fan of those things.
They managed to annoy me on console side as well, by requiring me to create an EA account to access some features of games I had already paid money for. Somehow, none of the other publishers had found this necessary. I found it not only annoying, but a worrisome development.
Requiring an EA account to play an EA game opens up some rather disturbing possibilities, like preventing someone from playing a game they paid $50 for if EA doesn't like what they're saying on forums.
The player's account has since been activated, and EA's PR people insist locking the game was 'a glitch'.
That wasn't the only controversy surrounding Dragon Age II's launch. Along with the usual rumors of a rushed release, and somewhat less common allegations of Metacritic score fixing, it was reported that DAII secretly installed SecuRom DRM despite earlier announcement it wouldn't be used. That was apparently a false alarm, though, and the SecuRom product being installed is Release Control, which BioWare had already said would be used. DAII will still require periodic online checks to play, though, which is bad enough.
The publishers will insist schemes like these are necessary to fight piracy, but making legal product less convenient, and thus less valuable, isn't really likely to work for games any more than it did for music. And when those schemes make it possible to prevent you from playing a game you bought if they don't like you, it's time to say enough is enough. It should be us, the players, who decide the way we want to play. We shouldn't be required to jump an increasing number of hoops just to have some fun.
The only way to get the publishers' attention is to vote with the wallet. How about giving EA games a miss for a while?
Over the years, my appreciation for them lessened. Yearly NHL titles became little more than roster updates, and I switched to a competing franchise. Were I more of a football guy, that wouldn't have been an option, as EA secured exclusive rights to NFL titles. I didn't think that was very sporting, but if NFL was willing to sell it, and EA willing to pay, it wasn't any business of mine.
Since then EA has, along with Ubisoft, led the publishing field in the introduction of increasingly distasteful DRM schemes, which is why you won't find many recent titles from them in my PC game collection. I'm not a big fan of those things.
They managed to annoy me on console side as well, by requiring me to create an EA account to access some features of games I had already paid money for. Somehow, none of the other publishers had found this necessary. I found it not only annoying, but a worrisome development.
Requiring an EA account to play an EA game opens up some rather disturbing possibilities, like preventing someone from playing a game they paid $50 for if EA doesn't like what they're saying on forums.
The player's account has since been activated, and EA's PR people insist locking the game was 'a glitch'.
That wasn't the only controversy surrounding Dragon Age II's launch. Along with the usual rumors of a rushed release, and somewhat less common allegations of Metacritic score fixing, it was reported that DAII secretly installed SecuRom DRM despite earlier announcement it wouldn't be used. That was apparently a false alarm, though, and the SecuRom product being installed is Release Control, which BioWare had already said would be used. DAII will still require periodic online checks to play, though, which is bad enough.
The publishers will insist schemes like these are necessary to fight piracy, but making legal product less convenient, and thus less valuable, isn't really likely to work for games any more than it did for music. And when those schemes make it possible to prevent you from playing a game you bought if they don't like you, it's time to say enough is enough. It should be us, the players, who decide the way we want to play. We shouldn't be required to jump an increasing number of hoops just to have some fun.
The only way to get the publishers' attention is to vote with the wallet. How about giving EA games a miss for a while?
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