EA Games: I see you!

[Roy Karrde]

Over the last few months gamers were shocked at EA's announcement of In Game Advertisements, the first to feature this is Battlefield 2142. Now while the fire storm has begun to quiet down, a more shocking discovery arose in the last few days which begs the question: Is EA looking for reasons for people to hate them? What I am talking about is that some people have recieved early shipments of Battlefield 2142 through contests and various other means.

When you open the game, the first thing to fall out, is not the disk, it is not the manual. No it is a slip of paper that states that the program ala Battlefield 2142 contains a program that monitors your internet activity and websites you frequent so that it can update content in the In Game Ads to fit your needs. In a round about way EA is now packaging spy ware in it's games now.

So before you go out and spend 50 dollers for a glossied up piece of spyware, think about what it could track on your computer, and how much your privacy is worth.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefield2142/review.html?page=2
Gamespot confirmed it in their review, half way down.

http://www.hostimage.org/img/82432.jpg

[Heald]

This disgusts me completely.

In-game advertising is only acceptable in real world environments e.g. in soccer games where the teams and stadiums have the correct sponsors and adverts or at least real world equivalents. However, in Battlefield 2142, where we have no idea what the future will behod, the prospect of adverts is silly and banal.

However, I'd rather have adverts that spyware anyday of the week. PC gaming in general is going down the shitter. EA aren't the only culprits here; even respected developers/publishers such as Valve are guilty of fucking up their games with excessive software. Half-Life 2 ought to have been banned for the way it treated its consumers - having to authorise the game with an online registration before you could even play it. This proved useless anyway, since cracks were available within days of its release. In fact had it not gone and treated its customers like filth, people probably wouldn't have reacted the way they did e.g. decide to boycott it or pirate it out of spite. In turn, Valve probably lost more money than it would have if it didn't have any anti-piracy measures at all.

And don't get me started on that Starforce crap or whatever it was that fucked up people's hardware.

In general, it is very hard to stop publishers pushing their shitty malware and other useless, harmful software upon us, mainly because those of us that are 'in the know' about such practices (read: malpractices) are in the vast minority; this isn't going to stop Billy Bunsen-Burner and his mates from buying the games and unwittingly installing malware. Hell, if you told them BF2142 had spyware, they'd probably think 'Wow! James Bond is in this game! Let's buy lol lol lol'.

I don't understand why EA keep doing this to us; they haven't released a decent game in years (the only good games I can recall at this point that EA have released in the last 5 or so years, The Sims 2 and the Battlefield game, were not even developed by them but by respected developers they bought out and then made shitty with their ridiculous 'Who cares if the game is a piece of crap/not even finished/a poor console port? Release it 6 months ahead of schedule' policies) and yet are richer than Rich Tea; you'd think they'd realise by now, 'Hey! We own most of the games industry now! Lets actually take some time over our games instead of slapping licences all over half-finished games!' but no, if anything, they're greedier and more insatiable for money than ever.

Unfortunately, Governments are too busy whining about Bully and making ludicrous claims that you, and I paraphrase, 'Score points for reenacting Columbine' during the course of the game to care that publishers are taking consumers to the cleaners and running riot all over consumer welfare.

The fact that politicians still claim that in controversial games players 'score points' (not including sports games where the idea is to earn more points than your opponent) is proof that they are completely out of touch. The last game I played where you 'scored points' for anything was Sonic on the Sega Mega Drive.

[Mewfour]

Dear EA: Fuck you.

No witty quip. No remarkable drollery. Just a plain old fuck you, EA.

[Heald]

The IGA CEO just released a statement saying something to the equivalent that it is not spyware and it collects information anonymously e.g. when you register your EA account, you say you're a white 30 year old male, therefore they'll show ads for that particular audience when enough of them are playing.

He also said 'ads are now necessary in gaming as developers need more revenue'.

Bullshit.

EA are rich bastards and they don't need more revenue. They have gotten along just fine without in game ads and this IGA cunt is just full of shit.

The thing is, they couldn't pull this shit off with their World War 2 games, mainly because that would be completely insensitive to those who died in that war. Still, I wouldn't put it past them, to be honest.

[Roy Karrde]

Kotaku has released this information about this new patch EA has just released


Hey, even more reason to just love Battlefield 2142, EA and DICE. Sure, they are infecting you with spyware... I'm sorry, a piece of software that allows them to more accurately monitor in-game ad usage. Sorry, even worse! But hey, it's just spyware... not exactly like they're leaving the backdoor open to hackers.

Well, except they are. According to Hearless Gamer, EA has already released a patch for BF:2142 today that requires you to uninstall a critical Windows Update patch.

What does that patch do?

"A security issue has been identified in the Windows Kernel that could allow an attacker to compromise your Windows-based system and gain control over it."

So not only is BF 2142 designed to monitor your computer, now it provides a open hole for hackers!

[Mewfour]

If EA never turns another profit because this I'll buy a hat just so I can eat it.