Poll: Should we boycott EA Products?

[Comieman]

Nope, probably because living in a totalitarian government one gets used to people trying to dig up personal information all the time.

And honestly, I don't care if Bioware / EA has access or no to my computer, I honestly doubt they will be selling my Essays or bank statements to a prince in Nigeria

 

[ppsh41]

I am, in fact i emailed their PR reps and am sending them a letter

 

[stabnex]

No only bad enough they are forcing us to use yet another RAM consuming DRM, but this particular DRM happens to soak up your computers interactions in much the way a keystroke logger does.

AH so that's your password to Paypal is it?
So your mothers maiden name is that huh?
I didn't know your credit card number was xxxx

And what of the parents of the world who play videogames?

So your kid goes to that school? we don't need this info but our sweeps picked it up by accident as we're EA and thus completely incompetent.

Yeah, sorry EA. I was going to preorder the special edition of BF3 but with this, feel free to go fuck yourself.

Sorry for the suspension you got yourself there, but you definitely make a good point. I've been saying for years that EA is a malevolent, demonically-infused conscious ball of fecal matter, but when I put it that way people think I'm strange.

OT: I've LONG since boycotted anything generated in the cookie-cutter offices of EA. Not entirely for a lack of moral security, but more for a lack of good games. I've been compelled to buy NOTHING from that cardboard factory for as long as I can remember and have no intention whatsoever to make them feel entitled to even a cent of my hard-earned wages.

PS: Wages I earn by discouraging the retail sales of EA products in favor of Valve sales, mind you.

 

[octafish]

I don't think that boycotts will do any difference. Truly. There's simply not enough of us to make a dent in the legions of fanboys that will buy it anyway.

What we can do is educate. Let people know that Origin is acting like a virus. Use words like "cracked", "hacked" and other scare words when describing it. Tell your mum and dad not to get you any EA products because they might wreck your computer, show them one of the threads and then let word of mouth spread to the legions.

Origins relies on good will - defeat it with word of mouth.

This really is the answer. If this information gets out enough general users might start looking at all EULAs and realise the shit we agree to all the time.

I'm actually OK with the snooping that Valve gets me to agree to as they are really only collecting information that relates to their business. They restrict the information collected to Steam related stuff. If they then sell that information it is not my personal information they sell but I am part of the aggregate information. I am OK with that, I don't think it is super fantastic, but it is something I am willing to conceed to.

From what I read of Origins EULA (Here I must admit to only reading the parts of it posted in news articles and forums) the wording is very open and open to expoitation. If all they want is to collect and use my information in the same way as Steam does (to better target their products to me, to check for the most popular hardware to aim for, to arrange their advertising, to determine their game production schedule, to sell a generalised overview of their customers, to check for pirates and cheats) then I can accept that. However the wording in their EULA gives them the right to track everything you do with your computer and that goes too far.

 

[Imperius]

For those of you who say I am "crying boycott" in this thread, that is not the case. This is a calm rational question that I think needs to be addressed. Most of the time when companies do things that I dont like I just go with it.
But in this case, I feel EA have gone a bit too far. Even if they themselves are totally awesome and cool about how they use this software, there may be others that can and will use it as a backdoor into someone's computer.

And if you think because EA is large, its software is immune to hackers,
---->

And you may argue that Steam has a similar DRM, but theirs is limited to only the games you purchase through them.

My point is, that yes people tend to boycott for the stupidest little fucking things, but sometimes there is actually a just cause for it. I fear this may be just such an occasion.

 

[likalaruku]

I bought Alice Madness Returns through Origin months ago & I STILL can't get it to play, so yes. If I can't play the games, I'm not paying for them.