EA has been SUED 5 TIMES MERRY CHRISTMAS EA MUHAHA ARR!

[dusdeedawn]

I know I'm dumb, but I don't get (all of) it.  Does this do this every time you want to play FreeTime?

[SnarkyShark]

Regarding the third screen: Is that the infamous phone home feature or something entirely different? Either way, I'm not sure what business a computer game has trying to covertly download invisible (?) data.

[Piratey]

It certainly does appear to be the infamous phone-home "feature". But wow, do we have some proof now or what? Out of interest, is this mouse/keyboard replication "internal" or will it actually attempt to randomly move your mouse around and stuff?

[Silver Arrows]

will it actually attempt to randomly move your mouse around and stuff?

You can just imagine it. Leave the PC alone for 5 minutes, come back and notice that the mouse has clicked on a link to "paypal donate to EA", and the keyboard has entered $100.

*it's 2am.. too early to be funny*

[SoggyFox]

What scares me is this.  Last night, on an MMO i play, I shared that they were getting sued for securom in spore.  And there were various people bemoaning not buying it because of it.

Someone actually not only claimed she'd installed the game on -four- computers, but stated that securom did nothing to your computer, that anyone who said was blaming their lack of a decent computer on securom, and that all the various articles on securom was shoddy reporting.

Now, considering I several times told her that the three install limit was from -official- sources, and that at no time was pirating mentioned except that the inclusion of securom was -not- preventing piracy, was encouraging it, she also accused two of us of -encourging- piracy and that obviously it was just fine for EA to install stuff to stop us evil pirates.

It is scary because it makes me wonder how many other idiots are saying the same thing.

[Paden]

Sounds like you need to point this ignorant little bitch towards the official sites with links and such. She needs her monitor shoved out the window, her computer beaten with a sledgehammer and her keyboard and mouse blown to hell with a few M-80's.

[SoggyFox]

Well, considering who she was arguing with and accusing of being pirate encouragers....well, she's not precisely popular.

[Paden]

Layeth the smack down upon her candy ass!

[calalily]

Umm, I don't know that those screenshots prove anything about it other than A-squared virus definitions need to be examined. My firewall will ping me everytime Sims 2 tries to connect to the internet, but so do lots of programs.

will it actually attempt to randomly move your mouse around and stuff?

You can just imagine it. Leave the PC alone for 5 minutes, come back and notice that the mouse has clicked on a link to "paypal donate to EA", and the keyboard has entered $100.

*it's 2am.. too early to be funny*

I laughed.

[nekochanpurr]

I hope they kick EAs ASS!! And a very selfish part of me hopes that this happens before sims 3 comes out.. My friend actually sent this to me tonight.. i was running over here to see if you guys had the info yet.. But i should have known!

[Druid]

Someone actually not only claimed she'd installed the game on -four- computers, but stated that securom did nothing to your computer, that anyone who said was blaming their lack of a decent computer on securom, and that all the various articles on securom was shoddy reporting.

Now, I did A Very Stupid Thing (t) and, due to some switching of hard drives and other things, I accidentally ran Apartment Life without replacing the .exe with the cracked version. Lo and Behold, my shiny laptop got SecuRom. It promptly fucked up my DVD burner - It would tag any blank cd AS SOON AS i put it in the the drive so that it was "not blank" and therefore not valid media. (It took me a few tries to realise this - I now have a few shiny coasters.) It wouldn't read burned discs that I was absolutely sure were good (I had used them previously, on the same computer, multiple times). Thank goodness for the instructions at MATY, I replaced the .exe with the correct version (give me a good poking for not doing it in the first place... distraction is no excuse!) and removed suckurom from my computer. My dvd burner, luckily, seems to be in perfect working order again. Amazing coincidence, of course...

I'm glad Sony views me making backups of my digital pictures and important documents as some sort of SUPAH ILLEGALZ and awful activity. 

Now, this was obviously not the Spore version. (And didn't they change the # of installs to 5? I'm pretty sure they did.) However, my computer is nice and still pretty new. Bought in April, it's a laptop w/ 2.0 gHz Pentium CoreDuo (whatever the mobile version is), 3 gb RAM. It's not a piece of shit - It's not top of the line, either, but, seriously, it's perfectly serviceable and not to blame for the burner going wacky.

[Nightmare]

Sounds like you need to point this ignorant little bitch towards the official sites with links and such. She needs her monitor shoved out the window, her computer beaten with a sledgehammer and her keyboard and mouse blown to hell with a few M-80's.

Or maybe she needs a good gift like X3, Spellforce 2, Loki or any other Starforce game... 

[Paden]

Oh, that would be just too perfect and I would love to have photos of her face when the computer says, "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't let you do that. Please exterminate your Operating System and try again. Thank you and have a nice day."

[SoggyFox]

I'd forgot that, which would of course be why she could install it four times.  As for Sims 3, yes, a lot of folks are hoping that it doesn't have securom or something similar.

The channel we were both in [and she was arguing with mods of the channel] was also discussing Starforce, so, other folks are getting the word out that you don't need these draconian measures to make money.

[minionsRmine]

As for Sims 3, yes, a lot of folks are hoping that it doesn't have securom or something similar.

I don't hold out much hope. We've seen how well they listen to what the community needs.