Remembering why I don't buy EA games much anymore...

[Golgatha]

I recently purchased NFS: HP during this week's Steam sale and was "greeted" by the game with a 2 minute NFS: Shift2 trailer and some mandatory, unskippable, 3 minute tutorial on how to use their Facebook type features in the game. This is of course after signing into my EA Online account (I only have one for Battlefield BC and was lucky I even remembered the password) and putting in an Online activation code. Why am I doing this? I get it, you don't want me reselling my incredibly valuable $5 PC game, and you need binary product activation (once with Steam and once with EA Online) to make sure I'm not a filthy pirate.

Let me tell you something EA, my PC is not the place to put advertisements for your other products. All this type of shenanigans does is make me do exactly what you don't want, which is not buy the advertised product or any of your other products for that matter. In an ideal world I would purchase my game Online and be playing the game within seconds of my download completing. My RAID0 Velociraptor array is setup to load games swiftly, but the unskippable trailers, game and company movies, and EA "challenge everything" messages keep me from my enjoyment of your actual product that I care about. Remove the layers and let me play my game in peace.

Anyone else just completely tired of all this BS from EA (et. al.)? It's hard to be a gamer these days, and soon, very soon I will probably be completely burnt out and just play my backlog and end my obsession then and there.

/rant

 

[shortylickens]

We already talked about this in like 2 other threads. EA sucks. Hot Pursuit sucks. Everybody is so sick of them, except console gamers.

 

[Martimus]

Yep. I hadn't played an EA game in a while, so I didn't expect the huge number of hoops I had to jump through to play Dragon Age: Origins a couple weeks ago. After about an hour of doing various mandatory things to activate the product and DLC, I still couldn't get the game to work because their activation server was down. To top it off it took them a full week to fix the activation server, so I never did get to play the game. By the time they fixed the problem, I had moved on to a different non-EA game.


I don't think I will buy another EA game for quite awhile now.

 

[wanderer27]

Does EA even make games anymore?

I sure haven't seen anything cross my radar from them in ages . . . .

 

[gothamhunter]

The ad was annoying, but it's only shown once, and for their own game at least. They have you put in your key to link it to your account. They explained the interface of the game. So...besides the ad, you're complaining about things that really aren't that big of a deal.

 

[gorcorps]

We already talked about this in like 2 other threads. EA sucks. Hot Pursuit sucks. Everybody is so sick of them, except console gamers.

Console gamers aren't exactly happy about it either, but it's not like the market it flooded with good arcade racers and sports games so everyone can jump ship. For some reason EA is keeping hold of a few select genres so everybody has to put up with their bullshit to play the games.

 

[lupi]

Ea just haad dao ultimate physical copy on sale for 20, and yet I still couldn't make myself buy it.

 

[Golgatha]

The ad was annoying, but it's only shown once, and for their own game at least. They have you put in your key to link it to your account. They explained the interface of the game. So...besides the ad, you're complaining about things that really aren't that big of a deal.

You know what else isn't a big deal? Putting in a line of code that allows me to use the esc key or B button on the gamepad to kill the advertisement, tutorial, and opening company shills screens.

 

[Monster_Munch]

I actually quite liked Hot Pursuit. I mean it wasn't a classic, but it was fun enough to make it worth a purchase in the steam sale.

 

[AstroManLuca]

You know what else isn't a big deal? Putting in a line of code that allows me to use the esc key or B button on the gamepad to kill the advertisement, tutorial, and opening company shills screens.

Yeah the long, unskippable intro movie for Shift 2 Unleashed is pretty annoying too. At least there weren't any ads. Oh, and the game is full of stupid unskippable cutscenes of some race car driver telling you shit you already know.

At least I was able to turn off the intro video by renaming the movie file, but it should be skippable. Actually, it is skippable, it just makes you wait about 10 seconds before you can skip the rest.

Actually, just about every game these days has these, not just EA games. Borderlands (from 2K Games) has that insanely long nVidia cutscene with Claptrap that you can't skip at all. Again, it's possible to mess around with the game files in order to skip it anyway. Plus it makes you watch about 5 minutes of unskippable movies every time you create a new character. Mass Effect 1 has a habit of putting a save point immediately before an unskippable cutscene.

 

[gothamhunter]

You know what else isn't a big deal? Putting in a line of code that allows me to use the esc key or B button on the gamepad to kill the advertisement, tutorial, and opening company shills screens.

The use the opening as a way to load the game without having a "loading screen". True, they could have made the ad skippable, but it's only shown once. Allowing you to skip the tutorial would then cause rage for those who did so accidentally and now state that they don't know how to play the game. Also, once again, only shown once.

 

[superccs]

So we are all in favor of calling it quits (cold turkey) after diablo 3?

Who's in?

 

[Golgatha]

So we are all in favor of calling it quits (cold turkey) after diablo 3?

Who's in?

I'm good with that. Will probably cave in for Diablo 4 around the time I get to retirement age though. I'm 33 currently so it seems like a viable scenario.

 

[BladeVenom]

? Diablo is a Blizzard game. Activision with Bobby Kotick is now worse than EA.

I'm still probably going to get Battlefield 3 when it comes out.

 

[simonizor]

I dunno if the instructional video is EA's doing or not. Criterion had a long, unskipable instructional video for Burnout Paradise, also (granted, EA also published that)

 

[Lonyo]

Quit bitching about having to do stuff "in addition" to Steam.
If you don't like having to do stuff "in addition" to Steam, don't buy games on fucking Steam when they don't require it.

Got a game that requires Steam and something else? Fine, bitch.
Got a game that doesn't require Steam, but you CHOSE to buy on Steam, and it requires something? Don't bitch. You chose to have Steam involved, not the developer. If you don't like Steam AND, then don't buy Steam.
If you don't like buying non-Steam, then quit bitching.

Also, I don't know how NFS works, but when it comes to Dragon Age, you can actually REMOVE a game from your EA account, which means the CD key is no longer registered to your EA account.
Most EA games also state in the EULA that you are allowed to make one transfer of your license for the game (e.g. the game) to sell it on, and that's stated in the EULA of the EA games I've looked at the EULA of (Dragon Age and Crysis for sure), so acting like they don't want you to resell it is BS. The only thing that stops you reselling at least some EA games is the Steam agreement you insist on putting with your purchases.

All the advert crap is annoying, yes, and it's dumb.
The registering is to prevent pirated copies from accessing online/etc features, it's not designed to prevent you from reselling your game.

Paragraph 2 of most EULA's on EA games (DA:O, BFBC2, Crysis Warhead for sure):

2. Transfer. You may make a one-time permanent transfer of all your rights to install and use the Software to another individual or legal entity provided that: (a) the Technical Protection Measures used by the Software supports such transfers; (b) you also transfer this License and all copies of the Software; (c) you retain no copies of the Software, upgrades, updates or prior versions; and (d) the receiving party accepts the terms and conditions of this License. Such transfer may not include access to any online feature, service or functionality, or right thereto, including updates, patches, unlocked or downloadable content, dynamically served content and other online features and/or services that require registration with the enclosed access code, that are limited to one user account and/or that are otherwise non-transferable. If you purchased this Software via digital download and if you wish to transfer the Software in accordance with the terms of this License, EA recommends that you de-authorize all of your machines to allow the transferee to authorize the Software on his/her own machines; otherwise, the transferee may not be able to authorize the Software on any additional machines. For more information, visit http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize. EA may require that any end user of the Software register the Software online as a condition of use and/or purchase additional Licenses. NOTWITHSTANDING THE FOREGOING, YOU MAY NOT TRANSFER PRE-RELEASE COPIES OF THE SOFTWARE.

It says "if the protection measures support". With Dragon Age, you can remove a CD key from your Bioware/etc account, and that will remove the core game (but not any DLC tied to that account). I haven't tried with Crysis/BFBC2 because I don't have a need to mess about with them, and I don't know about NFS:HP as mentioned earlier, but Steam is certainly preventing you from selling your game more than anything EA does is preventing it.

 

[Barfo]

? Diablo is a Blizzard game. Activision with Bobby Kotick is now worse than EA.

I'm still probably going to get Battlefield 3 when it comes out.

Have you played SCII? there's no BS like this in it.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Does EA even make games anymore?

I sure haven't seen anything cross my radar from them in ages . . . .

They bought Bioware D:

 

[wanderer27]

They bought Bioware D:

That's the problem.

They bought quite a few good Company's and are just sitting on their IP.

Look at what the did with Sim City for example (not to mention how they nuked what Spore was supposed to be), and there are plenty of others.

 

[Red Hawk]

That's the problem.

They bought quite a few good Company's and are just sitting on their IP.

Look at what the did with Sim City for example (not to mention how they nuked what Spore was supposed to be), and there are plenty of others.

Sitting on IP? That's why Dragon Age was first published after EA bought BioWare, right? And Mass Effect was envisioned originally as a trilogy, so EA isn't milking it beyond what was already intended. Yet.

 

[gothamhunter]

Sitting on IP? That's why Dragon Age was first published after EA bought BioWare, right? And Mass Effect was envisioned originally as a trilogy, so EA isn't milking it beyond what was already intended. Yet.

Mass Effect 7 Crisis Core: Dirge of Cerberus's Advent Children

 

[BladeVenom]

Have you played SCII? there's no BS like this in it.

They won't even allow you to buy SC2 through Steam.

They also removed LAN play in SC2.

 

[wanderer27]

Sitting on IP? That's why Dragon Age was first published after EA bought BioWare, right? And Mass Effect was envisioned originally as a trilogy, so EA isn't milking it beyond what was already intended. Yet.

Yep.

Some BioWare titles are limbo-ized
Bullfrog
EA Sports
Tiburon
Maxis
Mythic
Origin
Pandemic
Westwood

Dragon Age is a possible exception, but DA2 and ME3 - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2163157

Spore wasn't what it was supposed to be, and Darkspore . . . . well, likely crap the way it's going.

And don't even try to tell me SimCity Societies is the evolutionary sequel to SC 1 through 4 . . . .


I'm not saying 100% wipeout on all the company's above (there are others besides this), but it's definitely major to total damage in a lot of cases.



.

 

[Lonyo]

Meanwhile they made things like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Dante's Inferno, split Need for Speed into different types of game, Dragon Age, ME, Star Wars game (new IP to them at least), Crysis.

Sure, they may be sitting on various IP that they aren't using, and some that they are sequeling, but they are also adding more IP to their stable, and definitely more than certain other big publishers.

 

[pontifex]

We already talked about this in like 2 other threads. EA sucks. Hot Pursuit sucks. Everybody is so sick of them, except console gamers.

and Battlefield fanboys