You never "have to pirate" a game.

Indeed I jst grew tired with EA that's all. In fact it's the only game I have deliberate pirated to get back at them. In the pass I was given a pirated version of total annihilation, I bought the game 2 days later. I did downlaod a pirated version of gangters 2, but the game wasn't for sell anywere. I couldn't even find it int he old used game bins. But SPORE I pirate out of spite for EA 4 days before the official release. Just my way fo telling them to grease their corncomb up their exit only track. And that is my full pirate career. I didn't even botehr to pirate the other EA titles since I think they suck period to beging with. SPORe looke dinteresting but after 1 week I grew bored with it. Made me happy I pirated it EVEN more.

So they can go, "Look! Another pirate! Slap more DRM on it!"

So fuck em if they do that. If by what I am saying those retards can't fugure out they turned a once payign customer of their products to a boycutter/occasional pirate of their products by imposing him on horrible DRM then they can pleasure their selves with their corn comb for eternaty. Do you they that more of the thing that made me do what I did will somehow magicaly make me into one of their paying customers again?

What they shoudl do is realise that they are aliniating customers like me who are feed upw ith it. That they should adop a model like Stardocks. Becaus eI will say it I do not own many Stardock games yet. But Ic na garanty you my collection will grow with time. And that it will be 100% legit. I probably own or have owned close to 150 games and SPORE is the only so far I can say I truely 100% Pirated and have ABSOLUTELY ZERO intentions of paying for. And for 1 reason only: DRACONIAN DRM.

I think some people are having problems with Stardock letting companies use their own DRM on Impulse.  But think about these two options Stardock has.

1.  SD refuses to let any company use anything more than Stardock's DRM (GOO) on Impulse.  These companies don't like being forced to use some other DRM than theirs, so don't put their games on Impulse.  Result:  Impulse stays 'clean' of any nasty DRM but stays as a small distribution platform, and eventually is forced to concede the market to Steam and D2D etc.

2.  SD promote the use of no DRM or at most GOO, but allow companies to use their own DRM on Impulse.  Once these games are on Impulse, it becomes clear that the games with less DRM are comparatively better sellers, and are much less pirated.  Certain companies then decide to try using GOO instead, and find that sales increase.  They change to using that system, and pirating decreases.  Result:  while there may still be some draconian DRM in use on Impulse, several major companies have changed their DRM policies, and Impulse is a major player in the digital distribution market.

Which would you prefer?

in the dim distant days of history,

there was a 'powerful and flexible' computer called the 'crash80' or "TRS-80 model 1" that loaded "software" from cassette, I have one of these,

and a cassette game called 'flight simulator by sublogic' that used a machine language preloader to load the game,

BUT due to a fault in the manufacturing process the cassette would only load 1 in 20 times,

and I did try to get the faulty cassette replaced by the retailer, the distributor AND the manufacturer,

but they ALL said that if it works just once  it is NOT FAULTY, therefore we will NOT replace an item that is not faulty,

so by the ENTIRE supply chain I was forced (so that I could use more reliably a program that I had paid the huge price of $49.95 when the weekly paycheck was $118.00) to write a program to read in the pre-loader and the data it loaded,

and write out to another cassette the same data in the correct timing so that the copy would work as the manufacturer of the program had intended,

but if the manufacturer had used the more normal methods of program loading available at the time I would NOT have had to do this.

this happened back in 1981

harpo

Not really true.  If, for example, you DO live in some Asian area and no one online will accept a creditcard/ship to your area (As is the case i've heard sometimes), and the game sure as hell isn't going to hit retail...what the heck else could one do?

Not play the game? It's not a primary life need people.

If I find a game's DRM unacceptable or just can't get it in my region, I don't get the game. I just go buy a competitor's game instead. Hopefully market forces will eventually sort out the offending parties. (mind you, they'll still blame any sub-par sales on piracy, thats just the way the DDRM crowd rolls)

I wonder if game producers count using a crack as pirating. I know it's illegal by their terms, but I use a lot of no-dvd cracks for games I bought. Swapping cds is so 1995..

I see nothing wrong with cracks, I hate swapping DVDs (And it wears them out), as long as you still have original DVD.  I keep meaning to crack my fallout so I dont have to keep putting it in but they keep patching it so I dont bother.

Actually, yes.  Which is why I know that Suckrom has a habit of breaking internet explorer.  (As in in created a situation where right clicking on something caused explorer to crash; I found a solution online that involved deactivating parts of SuckRom apparently designed specifically to prevent you from right click on stuff).

Exactly. Games like Crysis and Mass Effect are hailed and awarded, and I've played an hour of Crysis at a friend's place and I saw a very, very long elevator in Mass Effect. I'd like to play those games, I really would, however I can't because of what they do and what they'll allow EA Games to continue to do.

To be honest, I've never understood the mentality of "it has DRM software in it so I'll pirate it" as people who do this are just reinforcing the misplaced belief of the company using the overly restrictive DRM software. Your not boycotting anyone and you're certainly not helping yourself - you're still using their products and giving them more reason to use even more harsh forms of DRM software. This is like a man on a hunger strike robbing a super market of food and claiming it didn't break his hunger strike. Why pirate the game? How does this help at all? DRM software is a response to piracy, not the other way around.

Just to get a few points strait.

I am not upset that Stardock is now distributing EA producs. It is definately a good sing for Stardock and maybe will entice EA to change but that is a logn shot.

I do not support pirating/hacking of games and ect. I am only stating actions I decided to take in personal retaliation towards EA's DRM policies.

But I am on a personal vedeta againts EA to warn as many people as possible about their malware products in attemps to dimish their sales and cut into their profit marging. I do realise me and thousands of other people will not be enought to make them go bankrupt or anything. I just hope it drives enought customers away for them to take notice and do somethign about it along the lines of what Stardock did.

And for those who have not figured it out yet I used to be a very good customer to EA products but DRM has driven me off. In my EA product collection that I ahve and can remember off the top of my head I ahve the following.

SimCity 4 and Rush Hours
C&C Generals
Red Alert2
C&C Tiberium Wars
BF2 and Special Forces
Dune Emperor
And more that I forget. In addition tot hat add in titles Iw ould have bought but decided not to buy as protest to them treating me the legitimate customer as a Pirate.

P.S. Had you guys at Stardock taken bets on how long it would take for EA to get bad mouthed after posting this announcement up?

NWN2 had this problem because of the Securom update in the 1.13 patch.

The CD check was removed in the 1.23 hotfix because of Securom causing people to blue screen when launching the game.

So people do have very valid reasons for disliking Securom and calling it malware.

That beacause it is malware. Know the saying: "If looks like shit, smell like shit, tastes like shit and feels like shit then it must be SHIT!"