You Are a Pirate or an Idiot, Says EA CEO

If you don't appreciate the DRM loaded onto the newest EA games, you must either be a pirate or a fool, according to an interview with the CEO of EA, John Riccitiello.

“Everyone gets that we need some level of protection, or we’re going to be in business for free,” Riccitiello says. But he sees a lack of understanding among “a minority of people that orchestrated a great PR program. They picked the highest-profile game they could find,” he says. “I respect them for the success of their movement.”

“‘I'm guessing that half of them were pirates, and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn’t understand,” he says. “If I’d had a chance to have a conversation with them, they’d have gotten it.”

Ya hear that, kids? Agree with the man, or face up to your binary choice of pirate or idjit.

That does it. No more EA games for the foreseeable future, and I'm going to do my level best to convince every gamer I know to do the same. The only thing these pin-headed suits understand is money, so let's hit them where they get it.

That means no Dead Space. No Spore, obviously. No Mirror's Edge. Nada. Nothing.

Who's with me?

I can't remember the last time I bought an EA game. So yeah, I'm in.

I can't speak for my wife though, she's a 'Sims' fan. At least I talked her out of Spore, though- I really didn't want that turd installed anywhere on our network. :thumbsdown:

As for:

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“If I’d had a chance to have a conversation with them, they’d have gotten it.”

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I would have loved to been in on that conversation. :laugh4:
"So, you're going to treat me like a criminal because I paid for the game, while the pirates get an unrestricted copy for free. You say I should be happy about this. Explain."

I'm in.

Maybe I can start an anti-EA crusade. It will just like the Anti-Jamster Crusade, only more popular and not spam.:beam:

No WAR for me, even though I was eagerly waiting for a Warhammer MMORPG. I sincerily hope EA will go bankrupt now.

I'm not that much of a pirate, as I've never downloaded any video game, but I'm starting to get tired by this whole 'punish the customer' trend.

If these companies are going to use DRM in their software then I demand that it is :
1. Plainly labelled on the product.
2. Is totally removed from my system when I uninstall the software.

This stealth DRM malware crap like SecuRom on the MTW2 Kingdoms pack should be illegal.
Let the consumer decide if he wants this stuff before he buys the product. Oh, and Johnny-boy...
:daisy: you ~:flirt: my :balloon3:.

you know, there is a reason why Relic hides phrases like "EASUX5" in their games....
:daisy:

but ya, i hate DRM stuff....
especially music! i cant use any of my songs i downloaded from itunes b/c of the DRM, and my new mp3 player (phillips brand, 4 gbs, music, video, text and pics for $50) wont play DRM protected music....:furious3:

This is b.s. Most game companies have a pretty contemptuous attitude towards their customers, so that is nothing incredibly new. But all these excessive measures to stop pirating, rarely stop pirates. They just inconvenience or aggravate customers.

I guess I'm going to have to become a pirate then.

CR

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

I guess I'm going to have to become a pirate then.

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That's a software patch EA won't like. :hijacked:

This thread is rated Arrrrrrrr.

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Originally Posted by Gregoshi

This thread is rated Arrrrrrrr.

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Ow, ow, ow, my poor sides hurt from laughing ...

CR, I think pirating their games just proves them right and reinforces their idée fixe. Better to ignore their slate completely, and send them a polite note explaining what you're doing.

Well I've never pirated a game (and won't start because of some idiot CEO), but if their CEO is saying I'm either stupid or a pirate to oppose them...

CR

This is why the PC Gaming industry has been struggeling. And he's making it even worse by these claims! I'm with you guys. I'm not buying EA anymore. I think the biggest problem was that Spore's DRM ambushed just about everybody. His quote about WoW's monthly charge frieghtened me a bit becuase it appears he has taken into consideration a type of year-round memebership that requires a monthly charge to play their games. That's how I took it. And EA's buying up and bullying out competitors kind of reminds me of Microsoft in some aspects... never really been happy with them.

Wow, the EA execs really don't know when to shut their greasy, stupid mouths:

‘We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn't notice,’ claimed Riccitiello, ‘but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.’

So if you're at all bothered by DRM, you're part of a meaningless 0.2% of humanity, and you opinions just don't matter.

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Wow, the EA execs really don't know when to shut their greasy, stupid mouths:

‘We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn't notice,’ claimed Riccitiello, ‘but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.’

So if you're at all bothered by DRM, you're part of a meaningless 0.2% of humanity, and you opinions just don't matter.

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Sounds just like Blizzard's comments whenever anyone brings up mmorpg addiction. They start making really nasty, greasy, reeking-of-covering-my-rear-from-lawsuit contempt remarks about their own customers.

Sony should buy EA so I only have to keep track of 1 boycott. ~:rolleyes:

I don´t buy EA games for my computer anymore.......hell...what the hell am I saying?...I don´t buy games for my PC period :laugh4:

I must admit that Burnout Paradise for the PS3 is pretty kickass though....I bought that one.:saint:

EA- :thumbsdown:

When you have cases where people buy the game and THEN download the crack to play that game, you should know you went too far...

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Who's with me?

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I follow the great Lemur! Finally, his historic conquest of the world has begun!

Aux barricades, mes amis! Vive la révolution!

Who would have thought that it would start with a boycot of some pc game company? Oh well...

I FIGHT WITH YOU LEMUR!!

What is this nefarious DRM and why is it so vexing?

Meh, I'm in, heck when did EA last bring out a decnt game? Freekin eons ago! They have really let the standards fall. They was never that 'igh to begin wiv niver!

You left out this:

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I personally hate DRM,” EA CEO John Riccitiello tells Gamasutra.

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and this:

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“I don’t like the whole concept; it can be a little bit cumbersome. But I don’t like locks on my door, and I don’t like to use keys in my car… I’d like to live in a world where there are no passports. Unfortunately, we don’t – and I think the vast majority of people voted with their wallets and went out and bought Spore.”

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Now everybody who posted about Spore in the Arena and wants to complain here just got roflpwned by John Riccitiello.

Apart from that I think I can count my EA games on one hand or so, naturally I'm not too interested in their policies as they don't affect me a whole lot.
I mean they had some good flight simulations for DOS... :shrug:

What is DRM?

Yay!

Just as a note, I may decide to source this thread as a "Community" reference to DRM, the topic of my current assignment.

On topic: EA has always been the company to leave. They ship out worthless products anyway, so :shrug:.

I'm never buying an EA game ever again. Pity, I was really looking forward to Dead Space.

I wanted so much to buy Spore, but neither is my PC able to run it, nor do I enjoy DRM one bit.

Welcome to my bandwagon. https://jimcee.homestead.com/emotbandwagonqr2ff4.gif

I haven't bought an Electronic Arts game since they, without announcement or explanation, unplugged the Shogun:TotalWar multiplayer servers in early 2002, after promising the community that they would never do so- or at least for 5 years.

My next day off, I'll dig through the 2002 Tech forums archives and find that (those) gem(s). They (EA) have proven since time immemorial that they cannot be trusted to even consider the will or pocketbooks of their customers.

-edit-
and that ‘but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.’ bit is eerily reminiscent of their response to our protest at the time, along the lines of: "You guys were only 1% of the community anyway...".

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Originally Posted by Fragony

What is DRM?

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Digital Rights Management. It come in several shapes and sizes. Spore's comes in a neat little flavor of "I can't uninstall it (easily) and I can only install my game three times and I won't know this until I open the box and invalidate the return policy". I don't mind Steam too much, mainly because I can get rid of it easily.

Sadly, PC gaming is in its death throes. I won't be surprised if the gaming company exec are purposefully alienating whatever is left of the PC gaming crowd in order to have everyone switch to consoles.

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Originally Posted by rvg

Sadly, PC gaming is in its death throes. I won't be surprised if the gaming company exec are purposefully alienating whatever is left of the PC gaming crowd in order to have everyone switch to consoles.

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Wow....and where is this coming from?

Just to let you know, piracy is hardly limited to PC. Fallout 3 on the XBOX 360 was released through piracy last week, something like 2 weeks before the game is even supposed to come out. Fable 2 has also been released on 360 through piracy, well before the game's official release date. The game companies will have to realize that just because its easier to pirate of a PC doesn't mean console piracy is nonexistant

PC Gaming is slightly declining, but it is still nowhere dead. And don't quote me those figures because they don't account for online sales like Steam which have millions of users or MMORPG revenue like WoW, which is still nothing to laugh at

I don't really buy many games anyway (3 so far this year: Crysis, Sins of a Solar Empire and Spore) but i'll join in anyway.

EA r teh sux lol

I'll mainly join the boycott because of Spore - not for the DRM, but what they did to it. Quite obviously chopping bits out so that it could be used in later expansion packs, makes me rage.

Sorry for the slightly OT remark... but in regards to PC gaming being in its death throes... I hope it's not quite that bad, but I think the general sentiment there is correct. Everything is either being primarily developed for consoles, or, if it's a big enough title, significantly dumbed down and flash-gameplay'd up for successful port to console markets. It's pretty sickening.

Reading this thread, 0,2% angry consumers can seem quite a lot, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Oleander Ardens

Reading this thread, 0,2% angry consumers can seem quite a lot, I guess.

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In my case it's not DRM or EA per se. I'm pretty disgruntled with the PC gaming industry in general. I wish that console titles and PC titles were largely separate like they were in the past, because it truly is not the same market in many cases. There is a reason that a lot of PC games were never ported to console and vice-versa, there are different levels of demand for different things. This move towards making amorphous games for both platforms means pretty much all the games coming out are aimed at about a 14 year old male's attention span and interest.

This brings a whole new meaning to that old "it's in the game" slogan...

I will probably have to buy Dragon Age from EA owned Bioware, but if its loaded with malware i will do what i did for Spore, Mass Effect, and Bioshock, which is to give it a 1 star amazon review.

This is why I buy mainly from Independent Developers - the ones who actually care about their ustomers, rather than just seeing them as walking dollars.

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Originally Posted by CountArach

This is why I buy mainly from Independent Developers - the ones who actually care about their ustomers, rather than just seeing them as walking dollars.

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I'm very much headed more that way too. I pay much more attention these days to the mixed old game bin or never-sold-well bin where everything's 8.99 than what's brand new and has 50 copies on the shelf for 49.99. There are very few big-title, big-developer games in the last 3-5 years I have purchased that were worth it. The downside is that nowadays I mostly play games no one even knows exists.

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Originally Posted by CountArach

This is why I buy mainly from Independent Developers - the ones who actually care about their ustomers, rather than just seeing them as walking dollars.

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I would too except that the tremendous cost of making a big name game is so high that the indies mostly only just make the arcade games or adventure games. Even if they do manage to make a half decent game, the odds are that some big company is either going to hire them or buy their small company and we'll be back to right where we started

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Originally Posted by Husar

Now everybody who posted about Spore in the Arena and wants to complain here just got roflpwned by John Riccitiello.

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His analogy missed it by this much.

DRM is like buying a new TV and having a security camera installed in your house for free. You are then told you can only move the TV 3 times, and if you move it a fourth time the TV will be broken. Even if you sell the TV, the security camera stays. Bonus security camera! Awesome, one that catches any criminals that enter the house! Great! Except this security camera's feed isn't CCTV for yourself. It is used by the company that sold you the TV, ostentatiously too monitor your viewing habits so they can tailor advertising for you. But also a little bit of voyeurism/ over protectionism to see how often you are downloading, making out on the couch and using competitors products.

Mint. :2thumbsup:

Here's a memo that EA sent out when they whacked Tiberium.

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It is with a heavy heart that I announce an end to all work on Tiberium effective immediately. I've consulted with Nick Earl and Frank Gibeau at the EA Games Label and together we have reached the conclusion that given the time and resources remaining, we will not be able to deliver this product to an appropriate level of quality.
The game had fundamental design challenges from the start. We fought to correct the issues, but we were not successful; the game just isn't coming together well enough to meet our own quality expectations as well as those of our consumers.
Unfortunately, this action will result in several individuals on the team being released. We will make every effort to place affected individuals on projects within the studio – and where that isn't possible, to connect them with opportunities in other teams at EA.
This is the right move for the studio and the company, but it's particularly hard for me because of the impact it will have on our people. Many individuals contributed their time and talents to this game. I spent time in the trenches with them and I was continually impressed by their work.
Moving forward, we need to make sure this doesn't happen again. I believe we are already doing a better job of engineering success in from the start. The quality bar has been raised. Now we need to step up our focus on great design and execution, catching any problems early and correcting them quickly.
We will strive to live up to our values: To make great games, treat people right, keep our commitments, and grow our business.

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And here is a zoom in on the first paragraph.

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It is with a heavy heart that I announce an end to all work on Tiberium effective immediately. I've consulted with Nick Earl and Frank Gibeau at the EA Games Label and together we have reached the conclusion that given the time and resources remaining, we will not be able to deliver this product to an appropriate level of quality.

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Part of the last sentence.

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that given the time and resources remaining, we will not be able to deliver this product to an appropriate level of quality.

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Time and resources has never been a problem with EA I think its their idiotic leaders.

Since EA seems to be buying up the market and no one is doing anything about it even the mass black list around the world doesn't hurt their sales of console crap. Seems like my days of PC gaming, hell even gaming as a whole, are coming to an end, unless EA dies a horrid painful death of a monopolistic company.

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To make great games, treat people right, keep our commitments, and grow our business.

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treat people right

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End quote rage

Are they trying to choke out the PC market?? Wow... where did ya find the article Veho??

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

His analogy missed it by this much.

DRM is like buying a new TV and having a security camera installed in your house for free. You are then told you can only move the TV 3 times, and if you move it a fourth time the TV will be broken. Even if you sell the TV, the security camera stays. Bonus security camera! Awesome, one that catches any criminals that enter the house! Great! Except this security camera's feed isn't CCTV for yourself. It is used by the company that sold you the TV, ostentatiously too monitor your viewing habits so they can tailor advertising for you. But also a little bit of voyeurism/ over protectionism to see how often you are downloading, making out on the couch and using competitors products.

Mint. :2thumbsup:

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Thanks for posting this, very useful to someone like myself almost wholly unversed in cracking game codes or pc game copyright protection methods.

Time and money are a problem when the product is supposed to pay itself in the end, just because EA as a whole has a lot of money doesn't mean they want to make a deficit with a single game like MS and sony were making deficits selling their consoles. Plus, experience tells us that significantly delayed games often become a bit of a joke and may just tank anyway.

EA bought a lot of companies which had good games (Westwood, DICE, Maxis) so they could use their names and brands to keep seeling games (Say, BF2 of DICE; Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, The Sims 2 and 3). If EA goes bankrupt, those companies will no longer exist (they ceased to exist when they sold themselves to EA anyway). The PC gaming market is going down , like Veho Nex said.

BTW, some few good games NOT FROM EA can be get for FREE. Free of piracy, free of DRM. Those might be not good, but its better than EA games, right?