(You may recall a story we posted a couple of months ago concerning the DRM in EA’s Command & Conquer 4, where a constant internet connection is required in order to play the game. In what will likely become a regular segment until EA, and others, come up with a solution to pirating that doesn’t hinder the consumer, I present to you with a harrowing tale straight from my own life, centered this time around EA’s ever popular Sims franchise. Enjoy.)
My girlfriend loves The Sims. Though it’s a statement that certainly ranks somewhere in the “Top 10 Most Commonly Stated Sentences of All Time,” the truth and validity of it remains unwavering. Most anytime we are parked on the sofa watching TV, she is simulating God on her laptop. If she is not, you can almost sense her desire to be doing so. And since her game of choice doesn’t hog the TV or require her to use the high-end PC in the bedroom, she gets to spend a lot of time playing it. There are many nights where she is only half-there on the couch watching a movie with me; her consciousness somewhere else, watching over numerous little lives.
This was all well, until one morning when we awoke to find her laptop refusing to power on. It was probably time for an upgrade anyway, so we drove to our nearest corporate megastore in order to pick out a young new laptop to take home. We found one that she liked and that was well-priced, but it didn’t include a DVD drive of any kind. Though I had prepared my speech on “Cloud” theory and how owning physical media would be dead as soon as we entered our species’ Enlightened Years, I instead assured her that we would have no problem getting The Sims 3 on her new laptop.
This, I later learned, would be no easy task.
I had a few tricks up my sleeve. First, I figured we could just download a torrent of the game and use the CD key from her legally purchased copy to install it. The torrent was just a means to get all the install data onto her computer. This failed to work though, as the game requires the disc to be present to play, and I did not want to install a cracked version of the game if I could avoid it. So this idea was scrapped, and we moved on to Plan B.
Plan B saw me creating an .iso file from her very real, very purchased disc. I mounted the .iso file, installed the game, and began to celebrate while thinking of all the foot rubs this good deed had earned me. However, once the game loaded and made it to the menu screen, we received an error message saying that the disc could not be validated. We were then returned to the desktop.
Now I was getting a little worried. I knew I could resort to a cracked version of the game, but I wanted to avoid this at all costs. Why should we have to use a pirated version when we have the physical game right here in our hands? I should point out, we did contemplate buying an external DVD drive, but this would have meant she would have had to plug in this drive and have it sitting next to her each time she played. That seemed a bit much and, frankly, stupid.
Soon after Plan B failed, I stumbled face first into Plan C. I didn’t realize it, having never played The Sims 3 myself, but you are asked to create an EA account to which the game is tied when you start playing it. This knowledge inspired my next idea. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I went to EA’s website and found their Download Manager software, which is used to buy and download games straight from them. I had her log into her account, and there it was, in her list of purchased games: “The Sims 3.”
So, we began the download, while I once again imagined myself next to, nay, above all the world’s greatest heroes. Several hours went by, and once the download was complete, we feverishly began the installation. We entered her CD key and… it failed. It once again wouldn’t let us play the game. I was baffled. We downloaded a legitimate copy of the game from EA already tied to her account. We entered the very genuine CD key. We were once again forbade from playing the game.
After this, we contacted EA’s customer service. Surely, if we explain the situation, they can help us. After all, we are paying customers who just want to enjoy their fine product. We emailed customer service back and forth a few times, expecting we were closer to resolution with each addition to our inbox. As is the theme for this story so far, however, disappointment was all we received.
Apparently, we couldn’t download and play the game from EA because the key we have is for the disc-based version of the game. Why, then, were we able to even download the game from the beginning? Why have the game tied to an EA account if you can’t use that connection to download the game to a new PC? Why not offer us a key we can use with the downloadable version for all the trouble we went through?
I had tried three different ways to get the contents of that stupid disc in our living room onto her new laptop, and all failed. EA themselves refused to help us in any way. Well, I shouldn’t say that actually. They helped me finally do what I should have just done from the start. We now run a cracked, downloaded copy of the game. An illegal version that cannot be updated or used with any legitimately purchased expansions, which puts us in an interesting position.
My girlfriend would love the expansions, but we would have to buy a whole new copy of the original game to be able to purchase and use them. Alternatively, there are cracks of those expansions out there as well. Do we spend an extra $50 bucks in order to purchase the expansions, or do we simply pirate the expansions as well? When I contemplate all we went through that week, all the hoops EA set up which, try hard as we might, we could not jump through, I think the answer to that question becomes quite clear.
I was once a legitimate customer; I am now an agent of piracy.
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The management of Crush! Frag! Destroy! would like to make it clear that the views opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author only and not those of the site itself. We at CFD! do not condone or approve of software piracy. However, we also do not approve of publishers causing paying customers to be unable to install and play legitimately owned software due to silly, unnecessary DRM measures either.
What we support, in the end, is bringing these issues to light in the hopes that they will lead to improvements in the future that will not lead to situations like the one outlined above. If the industry really hopes to embrace a digital distribution model, as it seems to want, then it needs to recognize that if you own a physical, registered copy of the media, you should have access to a digital version as well. Many publishers already understand this fact – Blizzard leaps to mind. When will the rest of the industry follow suit?
– R. Thomas – EIC/Owner, Crush! Frag! Destroy!
Every time I try to become a PC gamer, something like this happens. Glad to know it’s not just me.
indeed it is a sad world to be a paying customer out there. im not much for PC gaming but i think ive only purchased 4-5 games most notably is starcraft (which ive bought about 5-6 times, kept losing the discs and cd keys)
A good thing to note about StarCraft specifically: when I was cleaning house a couple of months ago, I found one of my old SC cd cases, but the disc was (of course) nowhere to be found. If you go to your Battle.net account and enter the CD key there, you can download the entire client straight from Blizzard. This made me ridiculously happy and was exactly the kind of thing I was referring to in my disclaimer at the end of Scott’s editorial. Why more companies don’t have this same policy is beyond me.
Oh yeah, I hope this little story doesn’t dissuade anyone from pursuing PC gaming. I love playing PC games, and I have since I was about 11 or 12. I just built a new PC a few months ago. Some companies really get it right, such as Blizzard or Valve, but others are still fumbling awkwardly towards PC gaming’s future. Even with all the trouble of dealing with EA, I still <3 PC gaming.
yes i love blizzards stance on it, but alas when i bought all of my copies they didnt offer such a wonderful service. as such i hope they keep it in the future. plus it gives the game some resale value at gamestop and the like, now i can use my cd key and sell it to them after i am no longer interested in it and someone else can enter the key online and download it. works out good for everyone
Just an FYI – the time you purchased the discs should be irrelevant. I bought my StarCraft copies maybe 8 or 10 years ago. All I had to do was go into my B-net dashboard and punch in the key from the back of the box. Should work just fine. Once you enter the key though, it ties it to your account though.
yes but i lost all those cases and games years before this system, being military i used to move a lot as such things get shuffled in the mix
Interesting how if I lost a disc to a PC game I’d expect to get a copy from the publisher somehow, whereas if I lost a disc to a console game I’d understand that it’s gone. I’m going to go consider this paradox while I come down from an absinthe high.
I’m an obsessive-compulsive completionist and the other day I decided to get the Prima guides to Dragon Age: Origins to make sure I had everything done I could possibly do. I had already bought the stupid Steam website versions when they ended up there and I was hoping that they could be incorporated back as digital versions as a result, allowing me to view them on my iPad while I actually played the game.
Quickly finding out that they’re two separate products I was two clicks away from saying “alas” and buying the digital versions for a second time when I decided to make sure that they would be compatible with my iPad before I did– I assumed they would be, but I went through their FAQ to guarantee it and I’m really glad I did. Not only are the digital versions DRM wrapped executables– not PDFs– they only work on Windows, meaning that I can’t even view them on my MacBook, much less my iPad. Hooray!
In the end a quick look through torrent sites found me a handy PDF of the same file. I felt marginally guilty downloading it, but I already bought it once and would have happily paid for the digital version a second time if it hadn’t been locked down through a Windows-only client. Obviously the DRM didn’t prevent it from being ripped and put online for free, but it lost Prima out of a second sale from me because I couldn’t even use it if I had bought it again.
This might be going off topic, Josh, but I think with gamefaqs on your iPad you don’t need a guide anymore… especially for a game with a bunch of DLC that isn’t covered in the guide.
Yeah I could use wikia or something else, but I preferred using something that was a simple PDF to minimise clicking and scrolling around. With the internet you don’t really need to purchase these guides anymore in the first place, but there is something to be said for having it laid out nice and coherently.