CJDD01071 wrote:

Jonandra wrote:... and this is why I have not bothered to reinstall my buggy and data corrupted Spore...

A "fixed" version that I got from the Intertubes works BETTER AND FASTER than EA's original product.

Better Customer Service too.

Finnical wrote:

CJDD01071 wrote:

Jonandra wrote:... and this is why I have not bothered to reinstall my buggy and data corrupted Spore...

A "fixed" version that I got from the Intertubes works BETTER AND FASTER than EA's original product.

Better Customer Service too.

Yar! The best service a man and his shipmates can provide!

p.s. Don't mind the Parot doo

Bumped for all to see how EA treats their paying customers.

We, as paying customers, want to be ripped off, abused, and treated like criminals. How dare you speak out against this policy of consumer abuse! How dare you even think that we deserve to be treated like human beings!

Teddy Roosevelt is dead - we are property of the corporate world now. We are the cows. Milk us dry EA, for it is destiny. Manifest Destiny.

Unless of course... we all awaken to this SecuROM SecRAP. SecuROM is nothing more than a way to prevent your right to have a return, or to resell the game later, as Electronic Arts representatives, and its CEO have stated that the second hand market is something no less than a plague to them. They do not want you to have your right to legally sell a product as second hand. They don't want anyone to get a game unless they pay for it.

Unfortunately, they did indeed shoot themselves, because although I cannot sell Spore to someone else, at least just as many people who have bought it have indeed gotten it for free.

You do not make money by making the customer despise you.

You do not make money by treating the customer like a criminal.

You do not make money SPORE people off.

You do not make money from micro transactions and little expansions less than two months after the initial game.

You do not make money by stripping a product, no matter how buggy, before release.

You do not make money by super-inflated-hype.

You do not make money acting like the corporate evil that at least more than half this country hates.

In fact, you do the opposite of each one of these. That's how you make money.

You make money by building a good reputation of support and compassion for the customer.

You make money by being professional and admitting mistakes but at the same time fixing them.

You make money by treating the customer as if they were law abiding citizens. Not criminals.

You allow them to resell it. So, they resold it - likelyhood is that the person who bought it will buy your next product in that genre. You cannot expect to profit from the second hand market. Sofa makers, Computer manufacturers, and Amish furniture builders do not expect to get money from every second, third, and fourth-hand sale. Neither should you.

In fact, you should probably be more focused on making meaningful products that will make people NOT WANT TO SELL THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

You give the customer the benefit of the doubt. This is not the land of the gulag, this is the land of the 'free' and home of the 'innocent until proven guilty' people. Your tactics might work in Soviet Russia, but not here. Not for long at least.

You have created a digital product. Treat it like a product. So what if you can download it - that right there eliminates the resell. But when I buy a physical disk... I better have the right to sell it should I wish to.

You should never ever strip a product of many of the basic things that were talked about right up to release. Sea stage? Open game for an expansion. Parts? Not. Cell Editor? Not. Trees? Not. Space Expansion with much hyped beaming down (which was never said not to be in release to my knowledge)? Not.

In fact, you should spend as much time on the expansion packs as will justify the marginal income. I'm sure you blew that development budget all to crap, but that doesn't mean you strip the game. You sold about a million (liberal estimation) copies. Sims 1 sold about 100 million. Sims 2? Not so much.

What went wrong. You didn't strip a whole bunch from the Sims, it was a pretty complete game, and stood on its own like the black monolith that gave human beings knowledge in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

In spore we got a Swiss army knife missing the big blade, the clippers, the wine opener, and the small knife. We still have the toothpick, tweezers and the nail file. But now we have to pay for the additional parts? No.

Instead we should have the whole knife. Then you can sell us another knife. Like, a hunting knife, which ads to the overall abilities. Then a machete. Then a backpack. You see? Each one large, whole, and complimentary to the Swiss army knife. By the time you wrap up the process we should be able to camp out without even missing the toilet paper - and you would have sold millions of copies of the first game, more than justifying the development time and the budget.

But, EA, you decided to maximize profits for the short term. Congratulations, you are Alan Greenspan.



Bottom Line? You listen to us.

(Recorded in 1912 - Theodore Roosevelt.)
Backup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-G_UlfgY9A

Hint, think of SecuROM as you listen. Reactionary. Radical. Restrictive.

is it true if you uninstall spore then reinstall it that it doesnt use up an install?

Also, spore used to keep on crashing so I sent EA and email with the problem. They sent me five of the same email saying please wait then thats it. it didnt say please wait but it didnt say anything at all, really. it was just something about a next email. Customer support my A**!

This would actuly tempt me to download a spore torrent for free but I would never do that because I want to support maxis. But definaltly not support EA... They dont seem to give us any support from my expereances.

I also brought my copy of Spore off the internet. How am I supposed to have a recept? And is there any possable way of prooving you have Spore if youm dont have a recept? I live in New Zealand so I payed $70 dollars for mine and in shops it costs $90-$100 for spore and $110-$120 for galactic edition. also the creature creator id $15.


What they need and would be alot better for us is if you could tell them your used CD key then buy a new CD key for $10 or something. It would work alot better and be cheaper than wasing money on over seas calls then having to end up buying spore again or mabey not at all.

LOL.. EA and all other firms who try to push this intrusive DRM/install limits ect. on folks are totally pwning themselves. I find it very amusing that the big-time publishers are crying the death of PC gaming...as they try to squeeze the life out of it with both hands. Never again am i going to buy a game published by EA.

Before i go, i'd just like to quote this awesome song:

"YAR HAR, FIDDLE DI DEE,
Being a pirate is alright with me!
ARR YARR, AHOY AND AVAST,
dinky-dink-dink-a-dinkadefast!
Hang the black flag
At the end of the mast!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AzpByR3MvI

also... check out http://reclaimyourgame.com/ if you'd like to know more about DRM and SecuROM

DanIhjel wrote:LOL.. EA and all other firms who try to push this intrusive DRM/install limits ect. on folks are totally pwning themselves. I find it very amusing that the big-time publishers are crying the death of PC gaming...as they try to squeeze the life out of it with both hands. Never again am i going to buy a game published by EA.

Before i go, i'd just like to quote this awesome song:

"YAR HAR, FIDDLE DI DEE,
Being a pirate is alright with me!
ARR YARR, AHOY AND AVAST,
dinky-dink-dink-a-dinkadefast!
Hang the black flag
At the end of the mast!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AzpByR3MvI

also... check out http://reclaimyourgame.com/ if you'd like to know more about DRM and SecuROM

You need something about rum in there.

DanIhjel wrote:LOL.. EA and all other firms who try to push this intrusive DRM/install limits ect. on folks are totally pwning themselves. I find it very amusing that the big-time publishers are crying the death of PC gaming...as they try to squeeze the life out of it with both hands. Never again am i going to buy a game published by EA.

Before i go, i'd just like to quote this awesome song:

"YAR HAR, FIDDLE DI DEE,
Being a pirate is alright with me!
ARR YARR, AHOY AND AVAST,
dinky-dink-dink-a-dinkadefast!
Hang the black flag
At the end of the mast!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AzpByR3MvI



Lol I love that song too. And I dont think I will ever buy from EA again.

also... check out http://reclaimyourgame.com/ if you'd like to know more about DRM and SecuROM

This thread certainly spread around the internet fast. After being pointed out to a couple of these threads by some friends earlier, I did a quick search on Google and found over a dozen in only the first four pages of results!

This clearly isn't a local problem. There are petitions on the Mass Effect Forums, Crysis: Warhead and the Red Alert 3 forums now. We can't forget the mass-boycott, and down-rating petition on Amazon.com. EA needs to do something about the DRM... and truth be told, a deactivation tool doesn't go far enough. They need to revert back to the CD-Checking SecuROM of the past... this experiment goes too far and does absolutely nothing but Rip Legitimate Customers Off by preventing it from being returned, and killing all resale value.

http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/325430/page/13/#1919572

http://forums.galciv2.com/328541/get;1920781

http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?act=findpost&pid=892370

http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=609829

http://boards.1up.com/zd/board/message?board.id=games&message.id=904551#M904551

http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?p=263537&highlight=#263537

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1521068375/m/3981062496?r=6461047596#6461047596

Non-English Sites:

http://www.simforum.de/showpost.php?p=3384087&postcount=403

http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?session=&showtopic=972352&view=findpost&p=12274745

If you're having a hard time locating the posts talking about this thread; just press CTRL + F and type in 6800.page

I'm excited that others are picking up our struggle....

Honestly, we might just be able to pull this off without the help of the media.

Marx83 wrote:I'm excited that others are picking up our struggle....

Honestly, we might just be able to pull this off without the help of the media.

I think it's time I went and found every single petition regarding EA's securom, and posted them here so we can all register for those forums and sign them also.

Online petitions usually fizzle out due to a lack of organization, and centralization. Perhaps it's time we consolidated all of the petitioners together on multiple EA forums.

Good Idea.....

We'll also want to set up an independant forum, incase EA decides to crack down on free speach. I'll create one when I get home, unless you'd rather do it

EA needs a "watchdog" group, and I think we just volunteered....... LOL, if EA thought we were organized b4, there in for a surprise.

The first post in the thread is immesurably frustrating... Has EA changed it's customer service policy yet?? has anyone had a more positive experience?

These kinds of stories are the reason I haven't yet bought RA3, and I'm not gonna do so anytime soon.

However, I had to reset my BIOS yesterday (pulled out the battery for a couple of hours) due to serious booting errors. Even though my game has been installed on 3 different machines, I could still launch it afterwards. Maybe 'cause I use an external hard disk with the PC I had to reset.

It's really annoying that even after all the protest about EA's practices they'll still carry on making craploads of money... and as long as that's happening they won't give two ****s about how badly they treat the people that keep them in gold plated ivory backscratchers.

I hope I'm wrong but I think EA will continue to take the **ss out of it's customers for as long as it's in business.

I hate EA but was looking forward to spore so much that I bought it, I do like the game alot but I was very dissapointed with what I actually got compared to what I was expecting from earlier footage... although that's a different issue, but I can't help feeling that the missing content is down to EA.

Like having a kid buy a toy firetruck from a store, only to then tell him he can buy the wheels later on as an extra... and if it breaks he can only fix it 3 times before it has to be taken away. Where else are consumers treated like that?

I'll probably buy the parts pack anyway, as it's the price of two boxes of cigs... and I'm hoping that eventually after £150 worth more of expansions I'll get part of the game I was expecting.

I've already had my money's worth out of EA in the past so I don't mind so much (take that how you want) - but I won't be buying another game by EA, coz to me they're the department store santa that picks the kids pocket as they're telling him what they want for xmas.