sry bout the double post, didnt know that quote was not by a mod in bioware
still refuse to buy a game with 10 day reactivation crap

Anyone remember Earth & Beyond? It was a nice-looking sci-fi MMORPG that EA published several years ago. It had about 22,000 subscribers according to Wikipedia, which is moderately successful as far as western MMOG's go. Anyway, back in 2004, EA decided to pull the plug because the game wasn't making enough money. Not because it wasn't making money, mind you, but because it wasn't making enough money. And this was an MMOG that people were paying for on a continuous basis!

If they shut down that game, do they really expect us to believe that they won't ever "cancel" a game you only pay for once, now that they have the ability? Would it be so surprising if they quietly turned off the authentication servers a few years from now, just in time for you to buy the sequel?

(I also found it telling that EA would shut down a MMORPG with 22k subscribers at the same time I was playing Jumpgate, another MMO that had mere hundreds of subscribers. Jumpgate's publisher went bankrupt, their outsourced in-game support team managed to alienate most of the playerbase, and there was a period of a few months where part of the billing service went down and you couldn't even sign up, but still they scraped by with enough revenue to pay the server bills and keep a programmer supplied with chips and soda. And then here comes EA with their players and their profits, and they just throw it all away...)



DO WANT

It was not changed by an admin. Trust me, it would show if the post had been edited, even by an admin. I know how their forums work. Toss me a PM if you want to know exactly how I know this.

This is EA. You really think so?

This is the return of starforce

You do know you also pay for the Spore DEMO.

C'mon guys, If you buy the game why worry about any copy protection method at all? Besides you can have internet access everywhere even in Burger King.

Predator, I don't know if you read the last 8 pages, but it's been laid out earlier. Specifically (and this is only part of it):

1) It's the principal of the thing. Why should we put up with a phone-home game, designed to check whether or not we're pirates, when we've paid money for it?

2) Constant and unceasing required re-activations mean you cannot be disconnected from the internet for long intervals. What about people with no internet access? What about people that are travelling? What about those who are deployed and can't get access to internet? what about... the list goes on. What happens when the servers are down?

3) 3 game activations before you're forced to call in to tech support and beg for another. The game is tied to your hardware. What happens when you change hardware often (as many, if not most, gaming enthusiasts do)? Who wants to be forced into the Tech Support merry-go-round time and time again?

4) Why a constant re-validation for a single player game!?

5) This heavy-handed 'copy protection' will, once again, be cracked and serve no purpose whatsoever. The end result is (some) paying customers will be inconvenienced due to connection issues, some will have the inevitable problems that are packaged with any DRM scheme, and all will end up with EA-sanctioned malware on their computers which many times will force you to either shut of or uninstall perfectly legitimate programs (Process Explorer, some burning programs, Daemon Tools, etc.) No bloody game software should be able to tell you what you can and can't run on your own computer.

So, pirates end up with a trouble free and completely clean gaming experience, while paying customers have to eat a s**t sandwich and smile.

Basically, I (and most others I've seen that are discussing this on various forums) have had enough. This is where we draw the line and say "No more. I'm not going to be treated this way anymore and I'm not going to accept it".

TheDarkKnight: win/win for them isn't it? If the game sells well, they can point to the DRM and say "See, it works". If it sells poorly (no matter what the reason), they can point to pirates and say "Despite this great DRM, the pirates have ruined the sales of our great game." It would never be because the draconian protection scheme drove away customers in droves. Oh, no.