Creative goes after driver modder

[tranceport]

The entire thread is great.. has an official statement from a VP at creative...

http://forums.creative.com/cre...aster&thread.id=116332


cliffs:

guy fixes audigy drivers in vista
guy makes all software for audigy work in vista
guy posts it
community rejoices
creative decides after a month that this is bad
creative threatens guy with legal action
all drivers removed
commutiy outraged
drives put back up

 

[KeithTalent]

Repost

KT

 

[videogames101]

Creative = noobcakes

 

[Captante]

This is repost-worthy ... the more people to see it & learn what total douche-bags run Creative labs the better!

This is the last straw & I for one will never buy another CL product.

 

[irishScott]

Creative Zen > iPod. Haven't had a problem yet. Of course, I'm avoiding Vista as long as possible. No reason to upgrade.

That said, I'm wondering how Creative has the money for legal action. There was an AT article on them a couple of months ago with fairly dismal findings from a business perspective. Unless the modder is rich, they won't get anything...

 

[Maleficus]

It won't make a difference, creative has a pretty solid history of sucking, people still buy their stuff.

 

[Saga]

Wow. This is the first time I am ever grateful for a repost. This is absolutely retarded - and as a X-Fi customer who downgraded to XP from Vista for various reasons (The fact that I could not use my sound card was one of many, but was also a pretty frustrating factor of the entire process) it's extremely interesting to see Creative Labs take a literal steaming shit on their customers.

I applaud this guy who actually tried to make a difference and am browsing to try and find the files he hosted now in case I ever need to use Vista again.

 

[shortylickens]

They're still living off their reputation from the DOS/Win95 days.

They havent done too much in the way of groundbreaking since the Wavetable Synthesis.
Like EA their idea of staying competative is squashing the opposition instead of making better products.

I have an Audigy 1 that still works great and wont be getting anything new from them until they clear up all their issues and cut the prices in half.

 

[Miramonti]

Very retarded, particularly for blasting daniel without providing an alternative solution of promise of one soon for his driver mods.

Better keep an eye out on Creative's future releases to make sure daniel's ip hasn't been inserted into them, lol.

 

[Phokus]

My onboard audio works great, no need for add-on sound cards

 

[maziwanka]

interesting read. it would've been nice to have a response from the VP. hahaha. too much to ask for though

 

[Phokus]

Originally posted by: maziwanka
interesting read. it would've been nice to have a response from the VP. hahaha. too much to ask for though

He's probably crying into his keyboard.... he knows he's fired

 

[Safeway]

Originally posted by: Phokus
My onboard audio works great, no need for add-on sound cards

Another problem with dedicated sound cards. Originally, the add-in card was to take some calculations off the main chips to speed up performance. With todays quad core CPUs, who the fuck cares.

 

[villageidiot111]

I haven't bought a sound card since 2000. While they might be nice if you're some kind of extreme audiophile, they aren't necessary anymore.

 

[WraithETC]

Good stuff... I want DD and DTS in vista

 

[Captante]

"Stop developing working drivers, because we don't want our products to work on Vista"


I wonder how they though any good would come of this policy going public?

 

[skace]

Glad I chose my onboard sound and shelved my Audigy 2 when I bought Vista. Creative is so retarded sometimes I wonder how they manage to have the best 3d positional sound software (EAX).

 

[chriskwarren]

I am actually embarrassed that I have put together a few systems using their cards...

 

[Nikamichi]

Fuck Creative, long live A3D!

 

[Captante]

Shamelessly quoted from a Creative forum post:

Proof Creative doesn't want their older sound cards to work with Vista. If you read their most recent annual report (available on the website of the Singapore Stock Exchange), you'll come across this on page 13:

"Sales of audio products, which consist of Sound Blaster audio cards and chipsets, decreased by 22% compared to fiscal year 2006 and represented 13% of sales in fiscal years 2007 and 2006. The decrease in audio product sales was mainly due to a decrease in sales of low-end audio sound cards."

Their sound card sales are down, and they think they can increase sales by making sure their older models stay broken on new operating system.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Well, their Zens are nice. But I'm not buying any more of their sound cards.

 

[tranceport]

The more I read the more it seems like they are trying to force people to upgrade.

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: Phokus
My onboard audio works great, no need for add-on sound cards

That, and this for skype.

 

[kranky]

Have to give them credit for allowing the angry posts to stay, even though the way they handled this was pure buffoonery.

 

[ViRGE]

I think you give Daniel too much credit. He basically was just repacking various driver files together from different driver versions. Not that it wasn't interesting, he churned out some very useful driver combinations, but he wasn't doing any real coding or software development, other than hacking up Alchemy to keep it from checking for a Creative soundcard.

What he was also doing was redistributing Creative's stuff without their permission, distributing pirated software (Universal Alchemy), and soliciting donations for all of this work (keep in mind that he never ran a website; he had no costs to require donations). It's fully within Creative's rights to deny someone the right to distribute modded drivers; they are Creative's property after all. I'm extremely surprised that they allowed him to distribute Universal Alchemy and solicit donations since that went beyond simply being helpful, basically he was charging for pirated software.

It'll be a loss for the community that's for sure, but he crossed the line. When you look at other modded drivers like the ATI Omega drivers, these guys have the permission of the company whose drivers they are modifying, and more importantly they're not doing anything so damn shady. Creative asked him to stop, and he did.