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The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
Oh yes, "evil" EA is gone for good...
Posts
Yes, and if there's some lighting installed in a high-rape area to decrease rape I don't feel like the city is treating me like a rapist.
Having gun control laws doesn't make me feel like the government is treating me like a murderer.
That's like my girlfriend treating me like a potential cheater/rapist...
DRM should be called "mistrusting computing" instead of "trusted computing".
See the difference?
But the FAQ says that it is tied to the specific computer and it doesn't matter if it is installed or uninstalled, only that it has been activated.
It's also their job to try to combat piracy. Obviously they feel that their system will have some success and that maybe they will stop more people from pirating and maybe those folks will buy it.
Apparently they think this number will be greater then those who get mad and stamp their feet and refuse to buy the game.
Something tells me that will likely change if they start getting a lot of customer service calls.
Securom stopped people pirating Bioshock for the vital first 10 days,.
Everything else is window dressing. money talks. Stuff that reduces piracy saves the devs millions. Annoying a few passionate rabid anti-DRM fundamentalists doesn't even show up on the radar.
Because that's not true or.
Because maybe we're confused about what potential means.
Again, let's say that there's an area that on friday nights has a high incidence of rapes reported. Let's say that you frequent these areas, but aren't a rapist yourself.
the police increase their presence in the area. Also more lighting is installed.
Are you offended for being "treated like a rapist"?
You fucking moron.
If that area was YOUR area, an area YOU exclusively paid for, to be used by YOU only, and someone did that, how the fuck would YOU feel?
Your example only fits if you let other people use your area, ie. you lend a CD/game to someone, and even then, it's fucked up, because why shouldn't you be able to do that, even if you lend it to a pirate/rapist?
Sure it will. Just like Ubisoft patched Starforce out of their games once they got calls. Oh, wait.
Did you pay for the development of the game?
Do you own bioware?
Do you own EA?
no? Then you don't own Mass Effect, you own a license to play Mass Effect.
The only thing that just voting with your wallet does in situations like these is give people like cliffyB more ammunition for half-baked "the PC games market is dying and continual developer/publisher fuckups have nothing to do with it!!!" screeds.
Your analogy fails for so many reasons, and yes, because it's true that not everyone with a penis is a potential rapist.
The world is full of examples of people being upset that their privacy is invaded upon by things like the Patriot Act, random bag searches in stores, receipt checks... I can't see why there's such shock that people don't like any system that treats them like criminals first and consumers second.
People who don't like something have a right to bitch and try to change it, it's their time to do what they want with.
People who don't care have a right not to care and can choose to call people morons because they feel better than them. Or whatever Khavali's argument is I tuned out at the people who buy the game are potential pirates post.
That's my two cents.
Fuck that. I own a copy of Mass Effect if I buy it, and I can do whatever the hell I want with it. Fuck EULAs.
However, if they're going with this theory, why bother protecting an old-and-busted game like Mass Effect? The ADHD crowd probably has an Xbox360 and already bought or rented the game.
Now there's some excellent analysis for this thread.
Is EA a publically-held company?
Yup.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
Yes because Ubi and Starforce have something to do with this argument. Oh, wait.
A better analogy would be when Securom made adjustments to the way the BioShock system worked after having trouble.
Except that doesn't even fit becuase EA is using it's own servers and customer service and most the problems that cropped up with the BioShock launch were due to 2K using Securom's servers/CS.
And someone's going to do their best to distribute and crack the game, right?
And this is going to help to deter them, right?
Now there are also going to be people who buy it who don't.
How does EA know which is which? They release the game with protection against copy-protection. It doesn't say "YOU'RE ALL PIRATES" it says "Any one who buys this could be someone who cracks it and distributes it, so we're going to make it harder to do that".
That's not treating the consumer like a pirate, that's treating the consumer like they have the potential to be a pirate, which they do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
Absolutely not. Especially since, in my case, I live in California, where the federal courts have ruled exactly the opposite.
But I'm really bored, and I'm stuck here with nothing to do, so I'll just leave it open and keep handing out red cards to anyone who can't debate civilly.
Fine.
no one has ever to my knowledge played a game for which they didn't have the legal way of getting through the encryption or the illegal work-around.
This CD-key will be cracked. But if someone downloads it without the crack they won't be able to play it. And how do we tell who has a cracked version and who doesn't? By instituting a wide-sweeping anti-piracy system which will deter the pirates while trying not to interfere with the consumer, which involves such things as having the game automatically maintain its anti-piracy after one activation.
1. From what I can tell, EA have done nothing either on the box, or with retailers stating that it requires an internet connection. IANAL, but this is against most international sales of goods acts. This would be grounds to get a full refund if you should so wish. It is also poor form on EA's behalf.
2. I stated this earlier in the thread, but I imagine lots of people are just entering the thread now. On a popular A search for "Bioshock -360" gives 179 results, the same search gives "Sins of a solar empire" 2 results, and "galactic civilisations" 1 result (and that is a demo). Not an exact science by any means, but it certainly goes to show that securom is far from perfect, and by using this invasive DRM, EA are in a way throwing down the gauntlet to the hacking communities. Whoever is first to crack if will get a lot of 'street cred' as it were.
3. There are hundreds of decent reasons why someone might use up a limited number of installs. Corrupted hard drive, corrupted windows install, shared computer, forgetfulness (how many of you could list of by heart all the games you have installed at once, it's certainly reasonable that at least 1 person would be unable to). I have installed halflife over 12 times.
Sure, you can phone them up and get them to sort it out, but in 5 minutes of searching I was unable to find a contact number, and other people have said that in the past EA have taken a long time to respond to emails.
4. Stop using rape and/or car metaphors. They tend to not work, because someone will overstretch them beyond the confines of the original metaphor. Like a car that's ran out of petrol and can't rape someone any more.
It is in small font right next to the M rating.
As for your third point, call EA. It's what it's there for. I don't know what your "searching" consisted of, so I can't really help with that, but I'm pretty damn sure they'll list it in the manual.
Since it is a pretty big news item, I might be okay with it if someone makes another thread about it and wants to start anew. But not for 24 hours. Calm yourselves down and learn how to have an argument without alluding to rape or apartheid or the fucking Nazis.
now what am I supposed to do