Those EA Nazi’s are at it again with their anti information campaign. Apparently this time EA moderators started warning users on their official message board with bans if they continued to inform others about their crappy DRM and their use of secruROM. The official post:

“Please do not continue to post theses thread or you account may be at risk of banning which in some cases would mean you would need to buy a new copy to play Spore.”

They later reversed this, but still that isn’t very cool to begin with…I really hope EA cleans up their act.

An oldie but goodie, The Suffering was a scary shooter/survival/horror game along the same lines as Resident Evil with a little bit of Max Payne style thrown in. The Suffering was developed in 2004 by Surreal and published by Midway. And now the full version of the PC game is available to the public as an ad-supported venture. Don’t miss out on this 1.2GB download. Read more »

EA has not decided that limiting owners to 3 activations was a bad idea, since so many people complained on Amazon. They have not been so nice to add 2 more activations (wow a whole 5 total???)

Here is what Frank Gibeau, EA Games Label president had to say:

"We've received complaints from a lot of customers who we recognize and respect. And while it's easy to discount the noise from those who only want to post or transfer thousands of copies of the game on the Internet, I believe we need to adapt our policy to accommodate our legitimate consumers."

“We’re willing to evolve our policy to accommodate our consumers. But we’re hoping that everyone understands that DRM policy is essential to the economic structure we use to fund our games and as well as to the rights of people who create them.”

And to that, all I can say is DIE! This still gives them no right to install secruRom on our computers and monitor our systems without fair warning.

Whats wrong with the Spore DRM? Whats wrong with EA putting some “file protection” on their computer games? Its actually a major problem.

SecuROM that crappy Malware on your computer:

Conflicts with other software
SecuROM is a huge security risk. It sits in the background running as an administrator, thereby bypassing the most basic security best practice of running software using a lesser privileged account. Some versions of SecuROM silently install a shell extension that prevents Windows Explorer from deleting 16-bit executables.

This is why people are complaining about this game. (Worth the read)
What is DRM and is it bad? Read more »

The Video above shows a new launcher in development that allows people to play backed up / copied wii games using the homebrew channel. Its seems like you will need to rip a Wii game, burn on some loading info and off you go!

No word on when the instructions on how to do it will be released…(we’ll keep you posted)

xbox 360

I guess price really does matter. Ever since good old uncle Bill reduced the price on the Xbox 360, sales have jumped up 100%. I guess people are still impressed with 360’s large game collection.

MS reps and retailed report “that between Friday, Sept. 5 and Sunday, Sept. 7, some Xbox 360 models were selling at six times the rate they were the weekend prior”

Congrats?

Apparently it’s possible to cheat at Mario Kart Wii during online game play. This video shows someone who starts off the race with a blue shell in his item box and a never ending supply of them after that. The video is pretty chaotic with a blue shell being fired about once every 5 seconds or so but keeps the race pretty close as the back wave catches up to the first wave of racers and vice versa as groups are nailed with an artillery of infinite blue shells. While we don’t condone cheating, it’s really pretty funny to watch. Especially at the end, make sure you watch it all the way through. Let’s all take a lesson from the video though, don’t use this cheat to get ahead and ruin other people’s stats. With great power comes great responsibility… mmm’kay Peter?

For Red Alert 3, EA has heard or seen the outcry of 1700+ 1 star reviews. This time the SecuROM will allow for up to 5 activations (big wow…), a slight upgrade from Spore’s 3. You will also only need to authenticate the game online once, on initial launch and never again.

Chris Corry, Executive producer, pleaded with users to look past the DRM and to buy the game for the game. “I think it would be a shame if people decided to not play a great game simply because it came with DRM, but I understand that this is a very personal decision for many of you and I respect that,” he added. “As you might imagine, I’m a lot less respectful of those people who take the position that they will illegally download a game simply because it has DRM. Either way, we’re very proud of the hard work our team has put into this game and we hope you will all enjoy it when it launches.”

What that means is we should all take a stand and find a good warez site with the game and download it. Don’t let them get away with this kind of DRM bs! (By the way, this is only my personal stance.)

While i was surfing…I happened to stumble upon this:

Read more »

The highly anticipated Spore game that went on sale yesterday was supposed to be a huge hit for EA, the game’s publisher. Spore is basically a fun lesson in survival and evolution from microbe to complex organism with endless customization and even more possibilities. Except there was one thing wrong: the DRM. Complaints on Amazon have totally killed the star rating for the game, with 1,167 out of 1,254 (or 93%) of reviewers scoring it with one star - the lowest possible score. Notable problems with Spore include the restriction to install the game only three times, installing of unwanted software that cannot be removed, secret communication with EA servers, and general Sony rootkit reminiscent bad feelings all around. The funniest thing of all was put best in one review. Read more »