quanta
Premium
join:2002-05-07
Toronto, ON | reply to pp03
Re: Spore to require online validation...every 10 days
It's a slippery slope, Nightfall. This DRM treats legitimate customers like criminals, which is unfair.
Besides, not everyone in the world has constant Internet access. |
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Airwolf
Premium
join:2001-10-30
Windsor, ON
clubs:
 ·Cogeco Cable
| said by quanta  :It's a slippery slope, Nightfall. This DRM treats legitimate customers like criminals, which is unfair. So I suppose metal detectors are insulting as well? |
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Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI
 ·Site5.com
 ·AT&T Midwest
·Comcast
| reply to quanta
said by quanta :It's a slippery slope, Nightfall. This DRM treats legitimate customers like criminals, which is unfair. Besides, not everyone in the world has constant Internet access. You are speculating what the DRM is like though. Heck, everytime you play online, your CD key is checked. Is that considered intrusive?
Point is, if something is going on behind the scenes that checks for a valid cd key every 10 days, its no big deal so long as I don't have to hastle with it. Now, if its something that pops up on the screen every 10 days, I have to click through windows to get it to validate, then thats another issue.
How about we wait before we draw conclusions. Every game we play online on the PC has some form of check and balance when it comes to checking the CD key. |
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IamGimli
join:2004-02-28
Canada
 ·Primus Talkbroadband
·B2B2C High-Speed I..
| reply to quanta
said by quanta :It's a slippery slope, Nightfall. This DRM treats legitimate customers like criminals, which is unfair. Vote with your wallet. I haven't paid for a poor EA or Ubisoft console port riddled with useless DRM in over five years. If I'm gonna do the time regardless I'm damn well not gonna pay for it. |
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salzan
Experienced Optimist
Premium
join:2004-01-08
WA State
| reply to Nightfall
said by Nightfall :You are speculating what the DRM is like though. Heck, everytime you play online, your CD key is checked. Is that considered intrusive? You seem to be forgetting that this is EA.
I'm seeing a nightmare for some when their game suddenly won't validate and they maybe even lose their profile...
Ever dealt with EA's support? |
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Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI
·Site5.com
·AT&T Midwest
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1 edit | said by salzan :said by Nightfall :You are speculating what the DRM is like though. Heck, everytime you play online, your CD key is checked. Is that considered intrusive? You seem to be forgetting that this is EA. I'm seeing a nightmare for some when their game suddenly won't validate and they maybe even lose their profile... Ever dealt with EA's support? I have dealt with support from EA, Valve, Microsoft, etc and I haven't been happy with any of them.
That being said, Battlefield 2 is an EA game with a cd key checking utility and that isn't intrusive at all. I am not saying that it won't be intrusive, I just choose to wait and see what happens.
You and others on this site, on the other hand, choose to see a nightmare in the making. Some people even choosing to see the "Chicken Little" aspect of things by crying out "The sky is falling!"
I guess our questions will be answered in the coming months.
Oh, and I don't subscribe to the pessimist view of this checking mechanism. We are talking about a form of copy protection that hasn't been released yet. There is a ton of speculation out there on how it is going to work with some people, even Karl our very own news guy jumping on the bandwagon.
When I read reactions like this, it reminds me of fearmongering on Fox News. It reminds me of the Amber alerts that are so easily tossed around saying to "be aware" of what is going on because the terrorists could attack at any moment.
If this DRM screws up peoples computers or makes them click through windows over and over again every 10 days to reactivate, then I won't be buying the product. However, if its something I don't even notice because every 10 days it checks the cd key online like Battlefield 2 or just about any other game out there, then I may buy it depending on how good the game is.
There is nothing wrong with a concerned stance on this issue though. I am taking that stance, but I won't subscribe to "The sky is falling!" |
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quanta
Premium
join:2002-05-07
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| reply to Airwolf
said by Airwolf :said by quanta :It's a slippery slope, Nightfall. This DRM treats legitimate customers like criminals, which is unfair. So I suppose metal detectors are insulting as well? Yes, I do, in cases that don't involve national or personal security. Let me ask the question in a different context: Do you suppose having someone frisk you every time you walk out of a store is insulting? Because that's what DRM is increasingly like.
In an age where we're forced to keep CDs in drives, have rootkits, corporate engineered trojans and stealth drivers, I'm surprised you guys think it's perfectly fine for a game to demand you be on a constant Internet connection.
Heaven forbid you're on the plane, or your cable modem goes down, or you live in a place with no broadband.
And one of these days that game's authentication server is going to go down for whatever reason, and you're screwed. Sounds improbable? It happened to Microsoft with people registering their new installs of WinXP. It happened when Xbox Live went down for two weeks last year, preventing people from watching their DRM'd Video Marketplace movies. You trust a game developer to keep a server up 24/7?
Even if you believe they'll have that down pat, you think they'll still have it running for years to come? Heaven forbid that five years later, you decide to play that game again for old time's sake, and you're locked out because the game developer shut down their authentication server years ago to save money.
The question really is, is the game you bought yours or not? |
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salzan
Experienced Optimist
Premium
join:2004-01-08
WA State
| reply to Nightfall
said by Nightfall :You and others on this site, on the other hand, choose to see a nightmare in the making. Some people even choosing to see the "Chicken Little" aspect of things by crying out "The sky is falling!" Nah, the sky fell on Spore (for me) when EA got involved in the game. They have a terrible habit of dropping support right after release (NFSMW and Carbon) and ignoring customer complaints. When the next version comes out, the forums are even deleted. Check out the EA forums for older games like the Sims2... »forums.ea.com/mboards/index.jspa
IMO, EA's support will depend entirely upon how succesful Spore is. If it doesn't make enough money quickly enough, they'll walk away. If it's incredibly buggy they'll release a do-nothing patch or two and walk away. If they release Spore2, they'll forget Spore ever existed.
As someone mentioned previously, what happens if they take the validation servers down? Do you really think EA will release a patch to cover the validation issue first? |
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Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI
·Site5.com
·AT&T Midwest
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| said by salzan :said by Nightfall :You and others on this site, on the other hand, choose to see a nightmare in the making. Some people even choosing to see the "Chicken Little" aspect of things by crying out "The sky is falling!" Nah, the sky fell on Spore (for me) when EA got involved in the game. They have a terrible habit of dropping support right after release (NFSMW and Carbon) and ignoring customer complaints. When the next version comes out, the forums are even deleted. Check out the EA forums for older games like the Sims2... » forums.ea.com/mboards/index.jspaIMO, EA's support will depend entirely upon how succesful Spore is. If it doesn't make enough money quickly enough, they'll walk away. If it's incredibly buggy they'll release a do-nothing patch or two and walk away. If they release Spore2, they'll forget Spore ever existed. As someone mentioned previously, what happens if they take the validation servers down? Do you really think EA will release a patch to cover the validation issue first? The support from any of these gaming companies has been lackluster at best. The customer service aspect is the last thing considered by these companies. I am surprised that people like pulling the "lack of support" card on EA when it could easily be pulled against any of these companies that put games out.
I have been on the phone with numerous companies because of problems with their games. Most recently, I had a friend trying to get a hold of Rockstar games for the GTAIV problem that was causing his system to lock up. After waiting on hold for 45 minutes, he was disconnected. His emails are going unreplied to. He is finding more help on various forums.
Oh, and that was on a console game. I had an issue with GTA San Andreas for the PC and never got a response back from emailing them about it. I won't go into all the other companies that have crap support, but I will go into the ones that are actually good. Blizzard and Valve are probably the best I have seen as of recent. Valve was on my crap list until about a year ago when I had a Steam issue and they helped me fix it right away. Before Steam though, I had an issue with HL2 and they didn't lift a finger for me. |
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