Be Excellent To Each Other

So, Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 requires you to be online to install, online frequently to play and you can only install it 5 times ever if you pay them £35.

But at least it's pirate proof...


Whoops!

Of course that copy I could have on my PC in an hour isn't exactly like a paid for copy.

Mine will work.

Meanwhile it seems they forgot to include the last digit of the serial number in a bunch of copies. But it's ok, EA has it in hand.

They've advised customers to guess the number since there's only 36 possibilities.

Seriously.

http://help.commandandconquer.com/cgi-b ... aqid=20760


NO REALLY.



They've directly lost a sale from me here (and I've bought virtually everything with a C+C logo on it ever) and I doubt I'm alone. And yet you can still pirate it on release day and end up with a copy that functions much better than one bought at retail. The ONLY people they've inconvenienced are the people who gave them money.

I own every single C&C game, including the EA Box Set, up to C&C3. I didn't get the expansion, and I might download RA3. At some point. With this DRM on it, I'm not really interested. And I fucking LOVE Red Alert.

36 possibles? Wow. Why bother?

For the last character. Not 36 possible codes.

Is there some difference between guessing and "guessing"?

Is "guessing" a technical term that they think will make them look less incapable?

They also say it "may allow you to bypass the issue", when presumably it "will allow you to bypass the issue". Unless it breaks after you enter the wrong serial number a few times.

its this kind of shit that's killing pc gaming. As simple as that.

They should get their marketing folks onto it.

'PC Version includes exclusive 'hacking' mini-game'

ah right, 26 letters and 10 numbers. I gets it

It's not actually to prevent piracy though is it? It's to stop second hand sales.

They always talk about how the PC format is dying due to pirates. Well I think it's actually the hardcore/casual* divide. I'm just far to casual to bother with trying to understand all this crap. I just want to buy a game and play it. Worrying about system requirements is bad enough, but I just can't be arsed to research the DRM before each purchase. So I just don't bother.

So my GFs superfast lovely mac doesn't even have windows installed because the games are too much effort.

*(using horrible buzzwords to help the idiot at EA understand).

I agree with Lave. PC gaming died for me the day I bought my Xbox. hmmm.. that last sentence you could almost sing..

companies should reward people who buy the game. How? Centralized gaming communities is the best option for me. Blizzard got it right with Battle-net with continuous support of games even many years after it has been released and good online play. Games for windows live should also do this. You can still play it offline and install many times as you want.

I bought Fallout 3 just because its Fallout, but nowadays i rarely buy pc games anymore since Bioshock (not that i had any issues with it, but the 3 installs limit baffled me).

For as long as I can remember, companies have been convinced that the knowledge that you're not a dirty pirate and can sleep soundly at night with a clear conscience should be reward enough for purchasing a game.

Yeah, I helped Stu buy that Mazda by getting Cannon Fodder 2. (only joking, I pirated it like everybody else did)

Bear in mind that if people didn't pirate it in the first place, this kind of shit wouldn't exist.

And... GO!

FEEXED.

So, by adding in zero resale value to all the other 'benefits' you can expect as a purchaser of a legitimate copy I think it's safe to assume that this is the game that will single-handedly crush piracy and the second-hand market in one foul swoop.

PC gaming is slowly but surely dying. There's a reason why the MMO people are looking at getting on to the consoles.

This is why Microsoft are starting to get worried, as Gaming is the one big BIG thing their OS does better than any other. Games for Windows, anyone?

I'll be fucked if I EVER buy a DRM game with this kind of restriction. If I'd only been allowed to install red alert 5 times it would have become useless to me over 10 years ago.

I'm more than happy to buy it, but since I'm keen on a game that actually works I'm far, far more inclined to download a fixed pirate copy despite legitimately owning all other C&C games. Cunts.

I must eb one of the only people on this forum that doesn not own a console.

I do enjoy PC gaming, as I work away a lot, and play stuff on my laptop (Dues ex and Company of heroes).

My home machine is only a pent 4 with a 7600GS. so I can't and don;t play the latest games... but I prefer pc to consoles at teh moment.

pirating used to be harder. Your mates would type up their games list in Wordsworth, print it out on their citizen swift 9 dot matrix and bring it in to school. You'd look down the list going "got, crap, got, oooh MORTAL KOMBAT! Copy us that!" Hand over your blanks from the market and a few xcopy sessions later and maybe a bit of time, you got your maybe-working-probably-not-better-do-a-nibble-copy copy of the next big thing. Nowadays the kids have 'teh torrnetz' and it's all too easy for them. Noobs.

Don't get me wrong, I love to play games on my PC, but I'm severely limited in what I buy these days, despite having a PC that can run pretty much any game out there.

I used to play PC games all the damn time, but my PC's in the loft and it gets cold up there. So living room gaming has taken over my life. The only PC game I've played recently is Trackmania.

,as may have been gleaned from the original post is my entire feelings. (Apart from the fact I don't have C+C decade).

If it was still a separate company I would just sent the devs £20 with a note explaining and pirate it.

As I said I don't play PC games because of all this nonsense, but I'm curious, would the pirates be able to play online or not? I assume they wouldn't?

Despite all the DRM stuff (I'll have to see how bad this is), I have bought RA3 because like Dudley I've bought pretty much everything C&C/RA since ever. The fact that it arrived this morning at work and is now sitting on my desk - and I won't be able to play it until at least Sunday evening - is very annoying.

Like other things I buy that I could pirate though, I think they deserve my money. I don't see the DRM as being an issue for me - I'm unlikely to hit the five install thing for quite some time - and if it is I'll just phone customer services and complain at them so they give me a new code.

Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather it didn't have the DRM, but I'm not going to not buy it just to make a point

I hope so, because I want to play with/against Duds.

Spore was hideous to install, get working and patch. In fact, with the first patch I had to uninstall and reinstall twice to get it work. So I'm only two from my limit of five now.

I wouldn't mind the ire of programmers and developers against trade-in shops if games were a bit cheaper and easier to patch. DRM is this hideous, bloated, flailing beast and EA seem completely unable to fully test their products for installation bugs and patching issues before release.

My only console is a DS and I play on my PC pretty exclusively. Spore and Colonization were the last games I bought and were pretty disappointing. Also, I only have a 2.5 Athlon XP with 2 gigs of ram and an AGP 7600GS, which limits the games I can play now. Fortunately, the following games are enough for me...

Company of Heroes
Il-42
Sim City 4 Deluxe (with loads of add-ons and downloads from Simtropolis)
The Orange Box
LotR:O Online
Civ 4: Broken Sword
Freespace 2 + ace mods like the BSG and Babylon 5 ones.

That's enough for me, really. They're all 10/10 games in my opinion. Well, Lordy Lordy Online is more 9/10. Though I do crave Empire: Total War.

The copy I looked at briefly (but didn't download) claims to have an actual Key-generator. So theoretically yes.



The bet you're taking there is that the company still exists. Admittedly a reasonable bet with EA but certainly not if this spreads and if anyone buys EA they're unlikely to care.

Equally they're not obliged to give you a key, they say they will "Consider" allowing it "On a case by case basis".

That's a risk I'm prepared to take. And if in N years I have to pirate it to get it working again, at least I originally owned a copy. If that's a legal problem for EA, I'll consider it on a case-by-case basis.

Sunday evening needs to hurry the fuck up.

It's like the 1200 pointer Live Arcade games. If you buy it, nothing will change.

Well indeed, and James is entirely right on it being tempting , especially after seeing vids of it (TIM CURRY ) but I'm just not going to support this shit, at least not during the initial sales period they'll use to calculate these things.

I didn't buy Castle Crashers or Braid either, I suspect I'd have snapped at 800, especially on CC.

That fair enough because a big company like EA will never just shut down their activation servers locking you out of their content though will.

It's not like a big company like Microsoft would do that.
It's not like big company like Yahoo would do that.
It's not like a big company like Wallmart would do that.
It's not like a big company like Google would do that.

Oh.

I didn't get Braid, though I did get Castle Crashers. But I paid 600 points and Shewolf paid 600, and we bought it on my xbox with her account so we can both play it.

It's worth mentioning this is the same EA that held MS to ransom over live and refused to make any game online onto Xbox until MS granted them the right to switch off the servers according to the timescale they lay down on the box (which for instance in the case of the newly released Nascar 09 means they can do so before xmas THIS YEAR - 30 days past the end of the 2008 Nascar season. Yes, they have the right to deactivate 09 before 2009 even starts.).

Until your xbox breaks and MS have removed the re-auth tool anyway, whenever that is.

Games companies are fucking idiots.

Compare this with this.

Having to check the back of the box for supported gfx chipsets means that I'll not be buying another PC game. How they've managed to make everything so complex and rubbish when it used to be so easy is beyond me. Even boot disks were simpler than this crap.

This is a risk I'm prepared to take.

EA have obviously already lost a couple of sales to people in this thread who would have otherwise purchased it, so it's not like it's having no effect on their sales figures.

Have you considered getting in touch with them to tell them how you feel about it? They won't know otherwise.

If the DRM stuff turns out to shoot me in the feet and I can't play my legitimiately purchased game then I'll pirate it and will probably (attempt to) return the game for a refund.

If my Eggbox breaks then it'll still play on my next one because they transfer it. And she can play on hers because she's signed in to Live. Not ideal, but it's getting her in to gaming with a game she enjoys. Call it an investment.

They transfer it NOW, wonder if they'll do it once the XB720 is out...

But the futility of renting (because it's not buying) by downloading is another thread

Run that by me again.

Look on the back of your Nascar 08 box, I suspect it's the same clause a year earlier which means they haven't actually done it.

But basically it says "Online services may be deactivated with 30 days notice after the conclusion of the 2008 Nascar Season" on my Nascar 09 box.

Which makes it roughly mid-december at worst.

I'll scan it tonight.

Why would they do that? It doesn't make any sense to me.

Well it's badly thought out in this case but essentially they insisted on the clause so you'll buy the sequel.

The Fifa games use the end of their season too.

That is so crap. What if Fifa 09 becomes the definitive version that everyone wants to play? They won't be able to at all.

I'm going to see if I can still play Tiger Woods 08 online tonight.

So that you have to go and buy the 2010 update if you want to continue being called a "limey fag" by teenage americans as they punt you off the track?

No they won't, so they'll have to play Fifa 11 instead. EA didn't release anything live until MS agreed to that (around 2003/4). They all but held them to ransom over it.

I have to say I don't know what they did deactivate, apart from pretty much the entire 04 and 05 line sometime in 2006. It did include Burnout 3 but that was turned back on when the Xbox original was released.

Except we can't play against Americans as I'll have the EU locked version.

Le sigh.

Wow. It's almost like EA don't want people playing online.