Electronic Arts at its finest

[Isaac]

Yeah, I found this on a site called reddit. It could be fake, but at the moment I think it's real. If it is, I think their DRM is out of control.

[Krom]

The truly sad state of the industry is that pirates would not have that problem. The illegal versions actually offer more functionality than the legitimate copy...

[Heretic]

Weird huh

[vision]

Christopher was a bot, right?

[Isaac]

Christopher was a bot, right?

I'd agree, except that's a typo on line 2.

"U appreciate your patients".

The letter "I" is the next key on the right. Easy accident for a clumsy human. I don't think a bot would have that mistake...

[Tunnelcat]

I had a similar problem with a brand new Steam game. Bought the CD version right off the shelf. Go home and try to install it and bingo, I get an error that my CD key is already in use. Well, after giving Steam Support proof that I actually purchased the game, they fixed me right up. I was very pleased they fixed the problem. EA is going to screw themselves if they can't treat their customers, well, like customers they want return business with.

[Alter-Fox]

EA doesn't seem to realize that there is a thing in existence called "manners". Oh wait, they do! They expect their customers to have them!

But I guess being a big corporation will do that to you.
The irony for EA will be when people stop legitimately buying their games to get around the DRM. I doubt they'll have any legit customers for much longer just because the hassle of getting their games to play won't be worth playing them. People will either not buy, or pirate their stuff.
EA is completely over the top -- and it's going to come back and stab them in the back. The red spy is in their base.

This is my prediction.

Of course, apart from Spore I don't particularly like their games anyway. They tend to be too generic.

[Sirius]

I can't fault the CS rep's level of courtesy much, but he sure wasn't showing much competence.

[[]V[]essenjah]

Yeah, I've worked in customer service before... that rep would have been fired on the spot.

He was not competent and ended the conversation with the customer without some sort of resolve.

Yes the customer was impatient but most customers are and I've seen far worse than this.

Customer rep should have handled it or found someone to handle it for them if they were not competent enough to handle the situation.

[Alter-Fox]

@ Sirius
I wasn't referring to the customer service rep's level of courtesy, I was referring to the company itself.

Making the DRM that overzealous is like the company saying: "We don't care about customer satisfaction. We just want your money. So fork it over!" That's not very polite.

[Isaac]

And its pointless. I think I'm quoting Krom when I say, the piraters are always going to pirate. DRM only effects those those who don't.

It might work better if EA gave games away for free and charged for special game items. Like guns and abilities normally not used in multiplayer, for a slight advantage. I think Street Fighter already does this, except with bonus characters and skins. Gunbound, a little 2d game, lets you spend points to buy avatar decorations or you can buy them with a credit card. Imagine if microsoft made you pay $5 for CTRL+C and CTRL+V, but gave the OS away for free.

[Avder]

This is the problem with companies treating their customers like criminals. We end up seeing that the criminals dont have to deal with this kind of bull★■◆● just to play the ★■◆●ing game.

Crap like this, which EA is infamous for, is the reason I just plain dont buy anything from them, ever. I don't want my DVD drive being broken by some stupid DRM wrapper, don't want to have to deal with copyright crap spying on my computer, and I want to be able to play the game if my net connection goes down.

[Heretic]

Yea but Sony isn't much better. With their stealth installs back a few years ago.

[Sirius]

@ Sirius
I wasn't referring to the customer service rep's level of courtesy, I was referring to the company itself.

Making the DRM that overzealous is like the company saying: "We don't care about customer satisfaction. We just want your money. So fork it over!" That's not very polite.

OK, I'm with you on that one. Treating customers like they're all pirates is one of the better ways to ensure they will be. Because they get a better deal on your product if they are.

Some companies have learned that lesson and found ways to give customers more for doing the right thing. EA... not so much.

[Krom]

It might work better if EA gave games away for free and charged for special game items. Like guns and abilities normally not used in multiplayer, for a slight advantage. I think Street Fighter already does this, except with bonus characters and skins. Gunbound, a little 2d game, lets you spend points to buy avatar decorations or you can buy them with a credit card. Imagine if microsoft made you pay $5 for CTRL+C and CTRL+V, but gave the OS away for free.

DLC annoys me since it also requires that you won't be able to modify the game yourself. Most games used to have the option to be extensively modified by the user, but games that use DLC in usually have encrypted data files and cannot be modified easily if at all. I'd often get a lot more mileage out of a single player game after the first couple runs through by editing the game files and making it more or less difficult or tweaking the weapons or just going hog wild with modifications and all that.

Just look at how many weapon mods there are for half life / half life 2 single player dozens of older games like doom 3 or even crysis which all have plain text data/configuration files, even Descent 3 can be extensively tweaked and modified by the user. Games that have DLC kill all that.

[Enzo-03]

Fallout 3 has several DLC but also has an official map editor and a humongous amount of mods, some of which the developers liked enough to put into New Vegas, which in turn also has both DLC and mods.

AFAIK GTA IV had DLCs as well (though eventually buyable in disc form) but is also extensively moddable - and as a matter of fact, even had tweakable text files for things such as, say, car handling. I fondly recall tweaking the car damage modifiers so that a straight 2 ft drop would make a car completely bottom out and collapse for one car and not do anything for the other. Stuff like this made the swingset glitch even funnier. But I generally just played with one that had more realistic damage.

Of course, you said "usually" regarding games with DLC. I'm not keen on new games because there aren't many that appeal to me.

[Avder]

The big issue I have with DLC is that most of it doesn't even need to be downloaded to begin with. Its usually there already in some form or another, but its just waiting for you to cough up your credit card number so the server can send a special "unlock XXX" code to your game in response. Its really just nickel and diming gone wild.

Now, in the case of stuff that actually gets completed in order to truly expand the game after its release, that's marginally justifiable, but the days of true expansion packs to games are pretty much long gone in favor of the DLC model where they just withhold cool stuff they made in the first place to give you that artificial feeling of getting something new when you cough up another five bucks.

And if that's the case, once again the pirates win, because any good pirated release will have all the included pay-unlockables pre-unlocked for you.

[Duper]

DLC from Mass Effect 2 is a download and install. You then have to log in their network (now "Origin") to verify the install as legit only once. You log in holds your DLC history and compares it to your installed game.

Pretty effective.

Of course, there will always be those that insist on getting around and/or pirate stuff. You can't stop a douche from being a douche ultimately.

[Enzo-03]

This reminds me of the Black & White II: Creature Isle expansion pack which supposedly added the Tiger animal to the game, among other things.

As it turns out, the Tiger was not only already present in the base game's data files, but was 100% complete and fully, perfectly playable, with the exception of the fact that the game simply would not allow you to use it. There are (unofficial of course) patches and game saves which can make it playable in an installation of B&W2 without Creature Isle.

But it's basically a patch in the same sense that enabling Hot Coffee in old versions of GTA San Andreas is. I don't know if what was changed was just a single bit like in GTASA but the idea is the same. Hack it to be enabled and it suddenly works perfectly.

[MidiV]

Heh, 4 days ago there was another epic conversation with EA support (Rented Battlefield 3 server disconnects people)
The 1st guy just said "Ok" after problem was described and got disconnected.
Then my friend was chatting with another guy:
--
Ashish:
Thanks for contacting EA Help! My name is Ashish how may I help you?
you:
I was talking with Robin about bf3 server issue and got disconnected. My problem is that my 64 slot server dumping all people every day in EXACT same time, in 2am, my second server on same host (gameservers.com) don't have such issue.
Ashish:
Could you please let me know the platform (For e.g. Xbox 360, PS 3 or PC) you are playing the game on?
you:
well i am playing on PC, but its not about Client side, its about server.
Ashish:
I can understand your concern. Please don't worry, I will try my best to help you out.
you:
well i am already facing the fact that i need to fill up server every day again, so i am not mad ) Just trying to solve this issue.
Ashish:
2.End Background Task:
Ashish:
1. Hold down the Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys at the same time
Ashish:
2. Click the "Processes" tab.
Ashish:
3. Click on the gray bar in the middle column that says User Name to sort by user name.
Ashish:
4. Do NOT select anything for SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, or NETWORK SERVICE.
Ashish:
5. Click on anything besides EXPLORER and TASKMGR for this User Name or other user names.
Ashish:
6. Click on END PROCESS
Ashish:
7. Repeat these steps until only explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe are open for this user profile.
Ashish:
Delete Temporary Folder:
Ashish:
1. Double click on "My Computer"
Ashish:
2. Double click on the C: drive
Ashish:
3. Double click on the "Windows" folder.
Ashish:
4. Double click on the "Temp" folder.
Ashish:
5. Hold the "CTRL" key and tap the "A" key to select all.
Ashish:
6. Tap the "Delete" key on your keyboard and accept the "Are you sure you want to delete these files" prompt.
Ashish:
Video driver update: In case of a Laptop, we may refer them to hardware vendor. However in case of Desktop, we may provide following support site link depending on the video driver:
Ashish:
ATI Technologies Inc. - http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
Ashish:
Intel - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/
Ashish:
Nvidia - http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
Ashish:
Run the game in Admin mode:
Ashish:
I would suggest that you try running the game using admin access. For this right click on your game’s shortcut available on your desktop and chose the “Run as Administrator” option.
Ashish:
Clean boot in Windows Xp:
Ashish:
I would suggest that you try running your system using the Windows clean boot option. That way you would be able to locate any program that might be interfering with the game. The instructions for clean booting your operating system can be found at the below given link: - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353
Ashish:
Disable firewall and antivirus:
Ashish:
I would suggest that you try temporarily disabling any firewalls you have running on your system: - • Software firewalls can simply be turned off, usually by right clicking on the icons near your clock and selecting "Close" or "Exit". • Hardware firewalls should be bypassed by going from the computer directly to your modem, skipping any router you may have.
Ashish:
Please try power-cycling your modem. For this, switch off your modem and leave it un-powered for about 2 minutes then re-start the modem, this should power cycle your modem.
Ashish:
Or if you are using windows-vista or windows 7 then please follow below steps
Ashish:
Clean boot in Windows Vista/7:
Ashish:
I would suggest that you try running your system using the Windows clean boot option. That way you would be able to locate any program that might be interfering with the game. The instructions for clean booting your operating system can be found at the below given link: - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135
Ashish:
Disabling UAC in Windows Vista
Ashish:
1. Click on Start 2. Click on Control Panel 3. Click on the "Classic View" option 4. Select User Accounts (it should open into the account of the user who is currently logged in) 5. Click on the bottom-most option, which will be "Turn User Account Control On or Off" 6. Uncheck the checkbox 7. Accept the changes 8. Restart the computer
Ashish:
Disabling UAC in Windows 7
Ashish:
1. Click on Start 2. Click on Control Panel 3. Click on the "View By" option and select the Icon view (large or small options give the same information) 4. Select User Accounts (it should open into the account of the user who is currently logged in) 5. Click on the bottom-most option, which will be "Change User Account Control Settings" 6. Adjust the slider to the bottom-most option 7. Accept the changes 8. Restart the computer
Ashish:
Online ports: For Battlefield 3 only
Ashish:
TCP: 80, 443, 9988, 20000-20100, 22990, 17502, 42127
Ashish:
UDP: 3659, 14000-14016, 22990-23006, 25200-25300
Ashish:
We may also suggest to try running the game in Admin mode and update Punkbuster using the link (Battlefield 3 Only)
Ashish:
http://websec.evenbalance.com/downloade ... php?file=1
Ashish:
Please follow all the steps.If the issue remain same please feel free to contact us again.
Ashish:
Thank you for contacting EA. Is there anything else I can help you with today?
you:
but steps you given to me are for game, i have server side issue, server dumps people, my client (game) works fine.
Ashish:
Please do not worry.
you:
i am not.
Ashish:
I have provided all the steps that you need in this case.So please follow all the steps after that your issue would be fix , If the issue remain same please feel free to contact us again.
Ashish:
Okay
you:
well, i cant do this steps on server, because, i am not even sure its on Windows OS. it can be Linux based.
Ashish:
As I already informed you that I have provided all the steps that you need in this case.So please follow all the steps after that your issue would be fix , If the issue remain same please feel free to contact us again, without your cooperation we can not assist you further so please follow the steps.
you:
okay, thank you for your help! Good bye!
--
.... and nothing done to solve the problem

[Isaac]

Thanks MidiV. So EA CS blames you, your computer, your hardware's manufacture, before it considers itself the problem. Oh wait, forget the last one.

[Alter-Fox]

Lol, talk about arrogance!
At least Midi's friend was courteous. That must have took some self-control.

[MidiV]

...At least Midi's friend was courteous. That must have took some self-control.

He was literally "rotating over the floor and laughing" after such productive chat.
Now he's nearly mad because an issue isn't resolved for now - every day/night server disconnects all the 64 players and just disappears from 'Battlelog' for a few minutes. Nothing has been said about such problems when he was paying real money for server rent

[Duper]

IT's EA's netcode. BC2 did the same thing, just not as bad.

[Ferno]

amazing.

"hey I have an issue that's not related to anything client-based"

ea rep goes into stupid mode and reads off list.


--------------


This among other things has convinced me not to buy BF3 until it hits the bargain bin. but knowing my roomate, he'll buy it next payday and encounter the same issues. I shall laugh. maybe post a video about it too.

[Duper]

Actually, that whole thing seems like a bot or very heavily scripted. So yeah, basically useless.

[Isaac]

I can imagine the CS worker getting fired for trying to submit a server side issue to upper management. "You didn't follow the steps. 1. blame them. 2. hang up."

[Alter-Fox]

I'd recommend we boycott EA, but... we're not exactly a large community that would actually put a dent in sales.
Plus it aint gonna happen.

I don't buy their games anymore after Spore (which was actually a pretty good game) because most of them are just average anyway. Besides, I can't run today's console ports on this computer -- my graphics card is not an equal to the Xbox 360!
I prefer to get the really good stuff (classics), even if it's old and looks terrible by today's standards -- this being why I've finally bought the original Red Faction off Steam.