An open letter to Electronic Arts – because voting with my wallet isn’t enough.
Oct 29th, 2008 by Mike
I’ve been speaking to SecuROM DRM using companies through my wallet for quite some time, but this guy has hit the nail on the head in exactly how I feel about the whole debacle.
I respect the fact that developers spend a lot of money and put a lot of time into creating great games. I am completely willing to put up my $50 for a new title. I am not willing to be treated to third party software installs on my computer, EULAs that effectively eliminate any rights I may have to use that software or dictate how I may do so after I’ve paid my money or in short, be treated like a criminal while the individuals who do pirate your software enjoy a better user experience.
Ben goes on to quote an EA rep from their forum, which pretty much sums up why EA is the devil
Be nice in your forums. The below quote is a perfect example of not being nice. It shows only that you would willingly take away a paying user’s ability to play a game based on words they would say.
Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you’d actually be banned from your other EA games as well since its all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It’s all one in the same, so I strongly reccommend people play nice and act mature.
All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but its what we have to do.
Those banned will stay banned, but like most other internet services, its not that hard to create a new fake e-mail account. However, its a lot harder to get a new serial key =)
I’m glad that smiley is in there or this slap in my face would sting a lot more. In short, don’t punish us for buying your software.
This really is a good read, and I highly recommend any gamer chooses to speak out about the way we’re treated.
An open letter to Electronic Arts – because voting with my wallet isn’t enough.
This has been something that was stewing in me for a while as well. Ever since Spore started getting closer and I started reading more and more about EA’s practices.
I know that games are essentially paying for the ability to use someone’s software. When we buy a game, we don’t own the game, we own the right to play it.
Now EA’s looking to take that away on a whim through their forums. Or use pretty nasty 3rd party DRM stuff to limit installs and cause other problems.
Today it just got my goat so to speak and I had had enough.
I’m glad others like you are thinking about this as well. I paid for these games, I don’t want to be treated like *I* am the bad guy.
Ben