Thread: Never again will I buy a game made by EA.

Forgive my ranting here, but this was how I spent my day.

After trying out Battlefield 3 at a friend's place I thought "cool, this looks good, I might support this company by going out and buying it". Oops.
He downloaded a cracked copy, I later found out that from download time he was installed and playing within 15 minutes with no problems.

So at around 1pm I went for a drive and picked it up.

The first problem arose when I found out in order to install this game I had to download EA's bloatware version of Steam called Origin. I didn't need it, I didn't want it, but I had no choice in the matter. After a bit of research (while it was installing) I found out that I wasn't the only one cheesed off about this, and it was VERY intrusive on its users, sending all sorts of data back to EA. Bit more research and I found out that I could play without Origin if I used a crack. So, I'm paying for a game to only later crack it. Great.

After about 40 minutes, Origin finally finishes infecting my PC, and it finally starts installing BF3, which takes a further 30 minutes. Once that finishes installing it starts downloading a 4gb "update". Of course, I'm unable to play it at all while it's updating, as I found out when I attempted to open it and was presented with a "battlefield 3 doesn't appear to be installed" error (paraphrased).



So, with steam coming from my ears, I decide to go play some SC2 while it finishes stuffing around. It finally finishes updating, and I'm told it's ready to go. So I double click the executable expecting the game to open (big mistake), it instead redirects to their f&#@ing website with options for campaign, multiplayer, co-op. A bit redundant, I thought. You'd think clicking an executable would open it, instead of opening their website and getting IT to open the executable.

Of course, there's more. After clicking campaign, I get an error telling me I'm missing EA's browser plugin (which it apparently needs to communicate with the executable I clicked to open the bloody website). Of course, when I cave and go to download their manager I'm presented with ANOTHER executable file, at which point I took the disk out, sent EA a very detailed email telling them exactly what I think of them, and will return the game tomorrow on the grounds that it was fraudulent, the bloatware was intrusive, and that the installation process was counter-intuitive and redundant.

So, I bought it at 1pm. I gave up at 7pm. Never again will EA see another cent of my money. That's 6 hours for a store bought game as opposed to 15 minutes from a torrent. It's a bit of a no-brainer in hindsight, I knew EA was bad, but I had no idea they were THIS bad.

Well, that's why that many people torrent stuff.
You don't want to give money to a company that treats their customers that bad.
I don't understand what is the benefit of the DRM protection when it takes 15 minutes to remove it by some of the release groups, and then the actual paying customers get screwed, not the ones who torrented it.

Yes, exactly. The DRM is pointless, punishing people that buy it with the bloatware and further by the increased costs in developing it.
EA in particular don't seem to realise this.

I have never bought one in the first place :D

What can I say? Welcome to Torrent-invites!
After all, that's what you came here for, right?

lol I actually buy all my games, that's the one field where I believe it's the right thing to do since I support all game developers(yeah even Activision). Maybe switch to a console instead, I've never had such issues with my PS3 or xbox of that magnitude.

Well, that's why that many people torrent stuff.
You don't want to give money to a company that treats their customers that bad.
I don't understand what is the benefit of the DRM protection when it takes 15 minutes to remove it by some of the release groups, and then the actual paying customers get screwed, not the ones who torrented it.

I've never really felt like I've been screwed over. If you read about what you're going to buy before you actually buy it there's no reason you should be either. I may be an active torrenter but I do agree they should protect their product as best they can, after all they did worked on it for a long time.