Run-a-way-BRAIN

Picture this. You go and buy a brand new Television. You take it home, do all the installations, etc, only to find out that it doesn't even switch on. You go back to the shop and they ask you to talk to the manufacturers. The manufacturers know of the problem it seems and have some suggestions for you to try. But that doesn't work either. Then the manufacturers stop responding to you. You also find out that 1 in 3 customers had the same problem and the manufacturers were happy to continue their sales inspite of that.

That's exactly what happened after I paid Rs 2000 to buy Spore (Universe).

After installing the game on my Vista laptop (which by the way met all the minimum hardware/software requirements), I was not able to start the game. I got the error: "The game can not start The game needs access to the internet in order to verify ownership of this game. Please ensure that your computer is online and try again". This error happened whether I was connected to the net or not.

In this case, Electronic Arts is the manufacturer.
I had a very good opinion about EA. They brought out some of my favourite games most notably the Command & Conquer series. As I went through the ordeal and searched the net for more information, I was shocked to learn about the extent of EA's bungling. More on that later...

So after a lot of painful searching on EA's support site, I found the post for the same error:
http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=....
I followed the silly steps they mentioned (they had complex Vista tcp/security changes required but had no explanation why or about any side-effects). After many reinstallations and restarts, the problem remained. Just for the record, there was a statistic there: 15 of 434 people found this answer helpful.
After this I had no other options available to me. I had no response to my mails to EA.

Needless to say the whole thing left me feeling swindled, helpless, INCENSED! Nothing less than a burning asteroid on the houses of the manufacturer's management would do!!!!!


I started searching the net in general for solutions and came across a shocking discovery - this bug and many others were rampant in Spore. Also a major hot issue was the DRM (Digital Rights Media) software that got installed with Spore. What this DRM did was limit the number of times you can install Spore to 3. After that, you have to call EA Support manually to request them for activation (I have to pay a long distance call to EA Europe from India and according to net posts, spend many calls and hours for this). Also note that they are not at all obligated to activate after that - they have to convinced that you are the purchaser and even the bill is not enough!

Also this DRM feature was what was causing Spore to connect to the net and first run which was what was causing the bug that was affecting me to kick in. SHEESH. The least they could do is after secretly delivering an unpopular DRM was to make sure that it worked at least as expected!!!


To sum it up, in any other industry other than software, you'd have people pillaging and burning EA's factories.

Please. Dont buy EA products. Most certainly don't buy Spore. You don't want the risk of an non-functioning product WHICH YOU CAN'T RETURN! If you still want any EA product, get one from your friend (or any other means - what never heard of mininova.com?!!). Install and test it thoroughly.
DONT EVER BUY SPORE OR ANY NEW PRODUCTS FROM ELECTRONIC ARTS. THEY DONT CARE ABOUT YOU. THE MORE YOU BUY THE MORE YOU ENDORSE THEIR OUTRAGEOUS BEHAVIOUR!


Here's a Run-a-way brain that got SPLATTERED!