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[RANT] Mass Effect PC / "Extended Download Service" f* you EA
karlthepagan
Austin, TXRegistered User regular
Austin, TXRegistered User regular
My rights to your game DO NOT EXPIRE if you want me to be your customer EA.... EVER.
Steam and Greenhouse are terrific. I mean I've seen & heard all the worry about "what if Valve eats it and then your games all disappear into a puff of smoke." I put my trust into Valve and that trust has been repaid to me thus far! It's the same with Garage Games and Chronic Logic and every other little indie developer I've given my cash to.
With EA's digital download I'm basically told "I tell you what buddy, for you... I'll give you my premium top-coat finish and 'Extended Download Service' and not forget about you for a few years. Because hey... if you don't act now it's going to cost you $6 for those extra 18 months of service. You're gonna love that top-coat!"
I don't pay an extra $6 for the privilege of receiving the game I paid for... oh well yes I suppose some places DO charge you for the cost of physical media & packaging WHEN THEIR DOWNLOAD SERVICE IS FREE.
But in lieu of physical packaging is it so hard for a FUCKING GIGANTIC company like EA to hold on to my "subscription info" and allow me to continue to download an archived and ancient game three years from when I paid for it? Is that somehow difficult for you EA? No, it isn't. Your SecureROM better not forget about me in 2 years. Fuck you, EA.
Steam and Greenhouse are terrific. I mean I've seen & heard all the worry about "what if Valve eats it and then your games all disappear into a puff of smoke." I put my trust into Valve and that trust has been repaid to me thus far! It's the same with Garage Games and Chronic Logic and every other little indie developer I've given my cash to.
With EA's digital download I'm basically told "I tell you what buddy, for you... I'll give you my premium top-coat finish and 'Extended Download Service' and not forget about you for a few years. Because hey... if you don't act now it's going to cost you $6 for those extra 18 months of service. You're gonna love that top-coat!"
I don't pay an extra $6 for the privilege of receiving the game I paid for... oh well yes I suppose some places DO charge you for the cost of physical media & packaging WHEN THEIR DOWNLOAD SERVICE IS FREE.
But in lieu of physical packaging is it so hard for a FUCKING GIGANTIC company like EA to hold on to my "subscription info" and allow me to continue to download an archived and ancient game three years from when I paid for it? Is that somehow difficult for you EA? No, it isn't. Your SecureROM better not forget about me in 2 years. Fuck you, EA.
karlthepagan on
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"Vote with your wallet" sounds trite, but the plain fact is that if you do download it from them you agree to those terms. If you don't wish to agree to those terms, then don't download it. Purchase a hard copy or whatever. You DO have that option, right? I fail to see the outrage-worthy arm twisting. If there was no other way to get it, then maybe that would be a problem. But it's not the only option.
I find it odd that there is so much outrage here over the physical media version's DRM, but so little over the fact that the digital downloaded version is practically a 6-month or 2-year "rental" of the game.
I didn't think anyone used EA's Digital Distribution service.
Well, there was, until they removed it. Or is there more I don't know about?
Buy the boxed version instead, if you still can. You don't even need the disc in the drive to play.
This pleases me.
There's still the "3-installs max", that Bioshock still has, and that Spore will likely have, that lets EA effectively prevent further installs at any point by shutting down the server...
From the EA site: http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=19735&p_created=1211313603
Is there SecuROM?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/05/09/securom-update/
A hard limit on the number of installs (before begging to get reinstalled) still bothers me.
I would basically accept the other issues as part of pure-digital distribution (where I enter into a *permanent* ownership of the digital media), but both the limit on the lifetime of this relationship AND the added up-sell to lengthen my ability to acquire the digital media I supposedly own is flat-out insulting.
No, and yes.
If this is like a few other downloads places I've seen, you can just back up the file itself. Not as good as Steam in EA's case because you probably still have to authenticate.
MatrixGame's system works the same way, BUT I actually prefer it to Steam. Why? Got the installer? Got your key? Good. DONE. No internet checks, no CD checks, nada. You just have to make sure you back up the installer.
K thanks, that seals the deal for me. I'll just play some more Morrowind instead.
Which means if you try to call a few years from now your answer will likely be "We don't support that game anymore".
Weird, I thought you do.
In any case I'm possibly going to buy the game. But bluntly, if I run out of installs, screw EA, I'm torrenting my legitimate purchase and that's flat. Either that or just cracking the exe.
I've said it before, but I'm not sure I'd ever have gotten on with digital download services if it wasn't for the cast iron certainty in my mind that they would be cracked, allowing me to play my purchases regardless.
As it is though, I've had no problems with Steam and quickly warmed to it. But EA's 2 year limit? Yeah, no thanks. I've got games in my back-catalogue that span back over a decade that I still sometimes re-install for old times sakes (Bioware / Black isle RPG's, Lucasarts adventure games etc.). I realise playing old classics instead of the latest and greatest doesn't do EA much favours, but I'll deal with my evil practices somehow.
Yeah, I just looked an it did.
http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/revoketool.html
I'd much prefer to see this built into the uninstallation from the beginning, but at least it has been shown to be possible. Uh, except it's 2K so I have no idea if EA would also offer this kind of tool.
I've got the Steam version, so for the time being at least I'm presuming that the install limit doesn't apply to that. Since essentially that really would negate the whole point of Steam: being able to download as many times as you want to install on as many PC's as you want wherever you want.
It does. I *think* uninstalling it through Steam gives you back an installation credit though.
Man, you'd think thats the point of steam, but its in the steam version too.
That tool got released nearly 3 months after the problem happened. I was on my third install on the day of release becuase of the "stopped responding" issue. Ill add it took them moooooooooonths to fix that issue with their emergency patch that finally came out shoehorned into the big patch (5 months later), and it didnt completely fix the problem. I won't buy another one of their products ever again.
Well looking at the readme for the uninstall tool gives the following in BIG RED LETTERS at the start:
Take that as you will.
That's because, one would assume, the Steam (and Direct2Drive) versions use different forms of DRM, for which licence key retrieval would be inapplicable.
Yes. They encourage it.
This is also true of the Atari service, Ubisofts and I think some of the stuff on Blizzards store.
I wasn't referring to the uninstall tool, I was referring to uninstalling directly through Steam itself. I think I remember them saying that would refund the credit. It's possible that that's just what I *hoped* they said, though.
Does it still require one of your three authentications when you reinstall it?
Not on the same hardware. SecureROM isn't letting any of their secrets out, so we don't know exactly how much your hardware can change and still be considered the same computer.