Episode 464: EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II plans

Since the podcast recording last Wednesday had audio issues and the news was, frankly, boring, the crew decided to record a new 464th episode on Easter Sunday, after some more interesting stuff was announced near the end of the week. That, and Scott expresses his enthusiasm for Thimbleweed Park, the spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle, using a SCUMM-like interface.

This week’s news items include:

  • Diving into Project Scorpio’s backwards compatibility, 4K, VR, and 1080p support
  • Nintendo discontinues the NES Classic Edition
  • It looks like Star Wars: Battlefront II will ditch the Season Pass

All that and some Listener Feedback.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

TD Gaming Podcast 78: Isometric EmotionsTD Gaming Podcast 78: Isometric Emotions

This weeks gaming podcast, emotions run wild while we talk about our initial reactions to Diablo 3’s isometric engine, gaming graphics and overall Diablo experiences. Doug admits to owning two copies of Diablo 2, but doesn’t really know why.

This weeks news round up:

We take a stroll down memory lane and talk about River Raid for the Atari 2600 and also cover some more history on RPG’s including Magic The Gathering.

Don’t forget to DIGG IT!

EA’s Spore Spawns Class Action LawsuitEA’s Spore Spawns Class Action Lawsuit

As most folks expected, Electronic Arts use of the SecuROM trojan install has sparked up a little class action lawsuit against the publisher. At first, EA thought they could just bump the total installs from three to five to make gamers happy, but they’re out for blood.

With an amazon rating of 1.5 stars and 2900+ ratings, it’s obvious that people are not happy with the security system used by Electronic Arts for this title. Forbes mentions how pirated the game has become since the DRM news went hot and pirates are touting to download it for free to make your “voice” heard. Legally, you can make your voice heard by setting up a class action lawsuit and so it begins!

“Although consumers are told the game uses access control and copy protection technology, consumers are not told that this technology is actually an entirely separate, stand-alone program which will download, install, and operate on their computer,” read the complaint. “Once installed, it becomes a permanent part of the consumer’s software portfolio. Even if the consumer uninstalls Spore, and entirely deletes it from their computer, SecurROM remains a fixture on their computer unless and until the consumer completely wipes their hard drive through reformatting or replacement of the drive.” (gamespot)

It seems everything boils down to the how EA went about protecting their assets. Nobody faults the publisher for trying to keep their products out of the hands of pirates. The pure fact that EA has chosen to install separate products that snoop on your operations and can malfunction your system is the hart hitting point. Rubbing it in worse, pirates had the game broken and free to download prior to the release of Spore in the US.

Although the license agreement will state the product uses a digital rights management technique, it fails to explain the details of the SecuROM’s stealth install and inability to remove itself without wiping the hard disk.

The suit accuses EA of “intentionally” hiding the fact Spore uses the SecurROM.