Tag: EA
EA gets more DRM lawsuits over its use of SecuROM
Electronic Arts, the company responsible for the Spore DRM fiasco earlier this year, has been hit by two new lawsuits over the hated SecuROM ‘copy protection’ system that installs itself if you so much as look at an EA product, and can only be uninstalled by chucking your PC into a black hole.
Both suits have been filed in Northern California, one references the free ‘Spore Creature Creator’ demo/software toy, and the other names The Sims 2: Bon Voyage as the culprit. These follow another class-action suit earlier this year. In the suits EA are branded as “immoral, unethical, oppressive [and] unscrupulous”. Crikey.
Stat-counters of the world reveal the best-selling video games of the last three months
What’s been the biggest-selling game around the world over the last three months? You’re probably thinking GTA IV or Mario Kart, or perhaps you’re being clever and thinking it’s something weird for girls and old people like Ubisoft’s mind-numbingly odd Imagine: Interior Designer?
If you are, you are WRONG – the best selling game around the entire world is Electronic Arts’ Madden 08, the latest annual update in the long-running US football sim. It shifted a ludicrous 2.994 million copies to inhabitants of Earth, beating Wii Fit (!) into second place, with the bizarre balancing exercise “game” amazingly managing to convince 2.089 million people that what they really need to start getting into is video game yoga…
Red Alert 3 suggests customers fix incorrect CD key issue by "guessing"
Aww, bless you EA. This is very sweet. There’s been an issue where “a small number” of copies of Red Alert 3 have been shipped without a full CD key to allow installation of the game. The copies in question have a 19-digit key, rather than a 20-digit one, due to a misprint. So what’s EA’s solution? Guess it:
“There is currently a work around that may allow you to bypass this issue. Since you have the first 19 characters of the code already, you can basically try “guessing” the last character. To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination, and be able to play the game.”
If picking letters randomly doesn’t work, then EA provides a phone number to be supplied with a new CD key. Wonderful!
EA Support Page (via Kotaku)
Related posts: SPORESUIT: EA sued over Spore DRM | Look out Scrabulous – EA and Hasbro to launch legit Facebook Scrabble in North America
London Games Festival 2008: What's happened, and what's still to come
If you’re a gamer in the UK, you might be aware that it’s currently the London Games Festival, a celebration of all aspects of video games and gaming. It’s been going on since last Friday, and it continues until Nov 7th. Here’s a brief roundup of what’s been going on, and what’s planned for the next few weeks…
SPORESUIT: EA sued over Spore DRM
The Spore DRM Wars rumble on. The latest development is that a class action suit has been filed in the Northern District of California court. It’s being brought on behalf of Melissa Thomas, and all other Spore purchasers. That includes me, actually…
Spore fans threatened with game ban over DRM discussion
The company vs consumer battle between EA and its customers is really starting to kick off. The debate centres on the DRM slathered all over Spore – the new game from Will Wright, creator of The Sims. The digital rights management system that EA built into the game has led fans to plaster Amazon with bad reviews, and even create protest species within the game…
EA to ease Spore's DRM restrictions
EA says they will be launching a patch for Spore in response to fans’ anger over the game’s DRM restrictions that will enable users to install the downloaded version of the game more than three times.
It will work my dissociating each version of the game as it is removed from a computer…
Sporegasm: Creationists and gamers angered but Maxis release game prototypes to quell the riots
This is three stories in one really, so I apologise in advance for the length of this post. The three things I’m about to cover are as follows: Creationists are trying to ban Spore in the USA due to its evolutionary content, video-game fans are slamming EA and refusing to buy the game due to its DRM system, and EA have released a bunch of early prototypes of different aspects of the game….
EA mistakes Finsbury Park for Venezuela, hijacks petrol station
Electronic Arts decided to disrupt North London’s rush-hour commuter traffic this morning by staging a mock hijack of a petrol station in Finsbury Park and giving away £20,000 worth of free petrol…
Spore available for download NOW
No, not on the Pirate Bay. Will Wright’s magnum opus is available for downloading right now on the (awful) EA Games download manager. The catch? You won’t be able to play it until Sunday 7th September, when it’s released in shops…
