EULA are screwed-a

Adam bought Spore but didn’t like it.
I wanted to buy Spore.

According to paragraph 3 of the Spore EULA (End User License Agreement, the contract software companies make you agree to in order to use their software), the purchaser of Spore CAN transfer his ownership/license to another person.

So it all works out, right?

Not so fast.

He uninstalled Spore on his computer.
I installed Spore on my computer, using the serial number.

So far so good.

I run Spore and try to register it.

No go. “This serial number cannot be linked to this account.”

I contact EA support. This is what I said:

My roommate purchased Spore but didn’t like it. I was planning on purchasing Spore, but since he didn’t want it, he uninstalled it and gave me his copy. However, after installing it on my computer, it says it cannot be linked to my account.

According to the EULA, owners are allowed to make a one-time permanent transfer of the license to another person, so it’s within his rights as defined by EA to give me his copy after uninstalling it.

What gives?

This is what they responded with:

Response (Priyaranjan Chatterjee)
09/14/2008 10:18 PM
Hi,

Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts.

If you have purchased a previously registered copy of the game then you will not be able to create a brand new account. You will need to get the user name and the password from the person that sold the game. If you do not have the user name and password from the person who previously registered copy, then we will not be able to assist you. We do not recommend that someone purchase used software or accounts, unless he/she is sure that they are buying a brand new game, which has never been registered. In addition, the registration code can only be used to create one account. If an account was created using the code, you cannot use it again to create a new account. Also, the account registered once cannot be unregistered. You will need to login to the game using the same account name and password with which it is registered.

However if you wish you can purchase a new Registration code/Serial number/CD from our warranty department, please mail our Warranty department the following information:

-The [Proof of Purchase] page from the manual, or if that is not available the game disk.
Note: If you send the game disk, please send it using a traceable method, as Electronic Arts is not responsible for products lost in transit.
-A letter explaining that you need a replacement serial number.
-A money order for $10.00 USD.
-Note: We do NOT accept cash, checks, or credit cards.
-Include full contact information:
-First and Last Name
-Return Address (Including City, State, and Zip Code)
-Phone Number
-E-mail Address

You must mail in your request to the following address:
Electronic Arts Customer Warranty
209 Redwood Shores Pkwy
Redwood City, CA 94065

Once all of the information has been received, our Warranty Department will process your request and e-mail as well as standard mail you a serial number. If you mailed the game disks to us, the disks will be returned to you shortly. NOTE: If you fail to include all of the requested items, it will prevent us from processing your request.

If you have any further questions feel free to respond to this email for assistance.

Sincerely,

EARep Paddy
Player Relations
Electronic Arts

Umm… WHAT?

To transfer your license to someone else, you have to GIVE THEM YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD TOO?

Excuse me, but that is NOT “transferring your license”. That is transferring your IDENTITY to someone else and allowing them to log in as you!!!

This is the problem with EULAs and DRM, the draconian restrictions that companies put on “ownership” of content. If I have a game, or song, or movie, or digital book, there NEEDS to be a method BUILT INTO THE SYSTEM that allows me, LEGALLY and PRACTICALLY and EASILY, the ability to LEND it to someone temporarily, and SELL it to someone permanently.

And that lending or sale should NOT require me to disseminate personal information such as my fucking USERNAME and PASSWORD to someone who might be only a passing acquaintance or even a stranger.

Looking more closely at paragraph 3 of the Spore EULA, it seems you can transfer your license, but they put in a whole bunch of disclaimers and gotchas, so essentially you CAN’T, and if you do, it’s a crippled version with no online features (which is a big part of Spore):

3. Transfer. You may make a one time permanent transfer to all your rights to install and use the Software to another individual or legal entity provided that: (a) the technical protection measures used by the Software supports such transfers; (b) you also transfer this License and all copies of the Software; (b) you retain no copies of the Software, upgrades, updates or prior versions; and (c) the receiving party accepts the terms and conditions of this License. You may not be able to transfer the right to receive updates, dynamically served content, or the right to use any online service of EA in connection with the Software. You may not be able to transfer the Software if you have already exhausted the terms of this License by authenticating the Software on the allowed number machines. Subsequent recipients of this License may not be able to authenticate the Software on additional machines. EA may require that any end user of the Software register the Software online as a condition of use and/or purchase additional licenses. NOTWITHSTANDING THE FOREGOING, YOU MAY NOT TRANSFER PRE-RELEASE COPIES OF THE SOFTWARE.

The EULA/DRM situation needs to get unfucked, soon.

One company taking a logical position is StarDock games, who have posted a Gamer’s Bill of Rights, common-sense items that they are considered radical for adopting. They make great games, and have the right (although sadly, pretty unique) approach: your customers are not the enemy.

Here’s hoping the digital media industries will someday come around to that way of thinking. Might be a long way off, though. Especially since the RIAA and MPAA are moving in the opposite direction, trying to ban fair use and treating their customers like criminals.

Groovy

I bought the Bionic Commando: Rearmed soundtrack this morning on iTunes (I’d have preferred buying it from Amazon, and avoid the hassle of DRM, but it appears to be an iTunes exclusive).

You can listen to it on the Bionic Commando site.

Fun synth remixes and re-imaginings of the 80’s Capcom 8-bit tunes. Also on the soundtrack, a humorous trailer for the game… “When the world needed a hero, what they got was… this guy. A guy who couldn’t even jump.”

I also bought Bionic Commando: Rearmed (the game) on Xbox Live the other day, but with all that’s been going on, I haven’t played it much. Bionic Commando was one of my favorite games on the NES back in the day – Rearmed is the same game, with improved graphics and sound and some other stuff added. Maybe I can play it, if I ever get a free moment when my organs aren’t exploding. =P

Comings and goings

Yesterday I drove to Sumerville (on the outskirts of Boston) and met Snooj at Good Time Emporium, an arcade/bowling alley/bar. I met Snooj and Kyle there.

From there Snooj and I went to eat at the 99 (Kyle stayed at the arcade), we were running late so had to kinda scarf our food down.

Then we drove around Sumerville looking for parking, and then walked to the Sumerville Theatre for the They Might Be Giants show.

I was a bit worried because we got there like 25 minutes late (the Sumerville Theatre directions recommend taking public transportation, since parking is so hard to find), but luckily there was an opening act, we got there just as they finished and had 15 minutes or so to relax before TMBG came on.

It was a good show, we had seats just about as far back as possible, balcony, last row, but we could see ok. They played a good variety of songs, and came on for two encores. During the intro song everyone was invited to stand up, and everyone remained standing for the whole show, which was fine, but I think Snooj’s legs got tired, he had been playing In The Groove 2 (spiritual successor to Dance Dance Revolution) for a while beforehand at the arcade.

After the show we went back to the arcade, played a few games. I played some Police 911 (quite a workout, it’s a gun game where you physically dodge for cover by ducking and moving your body side to side), Fast and the Furious (with motion seat), Tetris (kicked Kyle’s ass), and Soul Caliber 2.

Then it was time to drive back home. Snooj and Kyle followed me, since they were coming by to crash on the couch and floor at my place. Got home around 2am, got to bed about 3am, then had to get up at 4:45am and drive Adam to the Logan Express bus in Framingham. Got back home around 6am, slept until 9:30am.

Made Hastings Cakes (hollandaise flavored) for everyone for breakfast, hung out with Snooj and Kyle until 11am when they had to head out.

Now I’m finishing up my packing and Dave was nice enough to agree to drive me to the Logan Express in Framingham at 4pm.

I’ll catch the 5pm bus, get to the airport around 6, giving me plenty of time till my plane leaves at 8:30.

Then I’ll get to Vegas at about midnight Vegas time, which is 3am EST.

Busy busy busy is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”
-Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

“GON OUT
BACKSON
BISY
BACKSON
C.R.”
-Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne

Might logic prevail?

Finally, some intelligent discussion of video games and their impact on children (even though the book has a rather sensationalist title).

“Video game popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions. Violent juvenile crime in the United States reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining ever since. School violence has also gone down. Between 1994 and 2001, arrests for murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assaults fell 44 percent, resulting in the lowest juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes since 1983.”

Part of a 3-part openeducation.net writeup on the upcoming book “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games”

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Eye of Judgement

I recently got Eye of Judgement for the Playstation 3. Actually, it’s the only game disc I own for the PS3 – I bought a few small downloadable games, but Eye of Judgement is the first “real” game I bought.

Eye of Judgement interested me for a few reasons:

  • It’s a card game along the lines of Magic, also by Wizards of the Coast
  • It uses augmented reality in a mass-market game
  • It comes with the Playstation Eye, the PS3 webcam

First off, the bundle:

On Amazon, it’s $45 for the game, which comes bundled with the Playstation Eye (PSeye). $45 for a game and a webcam is pretty cheap. I think if you buy the webcam by itself, it’s $30. It comes with the game, PSeye, game mat, stand for the PSeye, starter deck, and one booster pack.

Probably the reason the whole thing is so cheap is they expect to make it up in booster pack sales. As with Magic: the Gathering, it’s all about getting a bunch of good cards, and building a deck from them that works well. Booster packs are pretty pricey, $4 for 8 cards.

The setup:

You assemble the stand, attach the PSeye to the stand, plug the PSeye into the PS3, and lay the game mat under the PSeye. You want a well-lit area, since the primary premise here is that the PSeye can see which cards are being played, and have the game react accordingly.

This setup is easy enough in my bedroom, but if I ever want to set it up in my living room, I’ll have to hook up some kind of powered USB extension to reach across the room to the coffee table.

The basic operation:

The cards have two main features, as far as the PSeye is concerned: oversized black bars at the top and bottom of the card, and green triangles on the sides of the card. The black bars act as an oversized barcode to let the PS3 determine which card it is, and the green triangles allow the PS3 to know the orientation of the card.

There is a test mode, where you can hold a card and view it as a rendered pop-up. It shows the video feed from the PSeye, with a 3D model of the monster from that card overlayed on the video feed, scaled and rotated so it appears to be standing on the card. You can move and rotate the card and the 3D model updates reasonably quickly. You can tilt the card slightly from side to side, but since the marks on the card have to be clearly in camera, you can’t tilt it that far.

This test mode is the most traditional use of augmented reality, but in actual gameplay the entire video feed is covered, so isn’t such direct AR.

The game:

The game is played on the 3×3 grid of the game mat. The object is to have a creature card in 5 of the 9 squares at the end of your turn (thus controlling a majority of the board). Since there are only 9 potential places to play, the game play is much shorter and more strategic than a game of Magic, which could easily last over an hour. Typical Eye of Judgement games last about 20 minutes, though that’s just an estimate, I didn’t actually time them.

I won’t go into all the details of gameplay, but it’s very strategic. Each square has a type, and each card has a type, so where you play the card is very important. Creatures also have strong sides and weak sides, so the direction the card is facing when you play it is important as well.

So far, I pretty much suck. I’m playing against the computer on the easiest setting, and most of the time I lose. However, I only just started playing, so hopefully after some practice I’ll suck a lot less. =)

[ UPDATE ]

I just noticed the price on Amazon has gone from $45 to $65… not as great a deal, but still not too bad for a game and a webcam.

“I hate video games”

Sometimes, someone I know says something so unexpected that I am taken aback, momentarily literally stopped in my tracks.

We were walking downstairs to get coffee, when my co-worker Lyn says “I hate video games”. Now, she’s a smart person, and this kind of blanket statement struck me as so short-sighted and ignorant that I was momentarily stunned.

It is one thing to condemn a work, or even a theme, but to condemn an entire medium seems like an awfully broad stroke.

It frustrates me when people have a narrow view of a medium because it is “new”, treating it as special or different because it’s not exactly the same as what came before it.

Comic books/graphic novels, for example – people make assumptions like “they are just for kids” or “they are a waste of space” or “they aren’t art” just because the few they have seen are less sophisticated (if they have even seen any, many judgements of this type are based on second- or third-hand information). But if they were to read Maus, could they then say that comics were not art, and a waste of space?

Video games are now in the same spot. Recently, Roger Ebert declared “video games can never be high art”. I strongly disagree, for a number of reasons. His main arguement is that because video games are interactive, they cannot be art, because the artist doesn’t have complete control over the viewer. Does this mean that scuptures are not art, because the viewer is free to walk around and see it from any angle? Or interactive art installations are not art, because they are interactive? Saying that interaction negates art, or relegates it to “low art” seems like a very limited viewpoint.

The other part of his statement, that video games “will never be” high art, is similarly limited in vision. He is making a firm prediction for all of time. Video games are in their infancy, but even now there are games that I would say qualify as art, such as “Ico” or “Flow”. I think his exposure to video games is also pretty limited, he has seen a handful of games and is basing his views of the entire medium on that small group. That would be like seeing “Son of the Mask,” “3 Ninjas,” “Kazam,” and “Lawnmower Man 2” and declaring that movies can never be high art.

In the end, I cannot contridict the statements “I hate video games” or “I think video games will never be high art”, because they are opinions. What I can do is strongly disagree, and offer my own point of view.