Sep 12, 2008
The Evolution of Bad PR
PR Lesson #63: Treat your customers like thieves and you will get, in most cases, a negative reaction
Poor EA Games, not content with creating the biggest games franchise of all time with The Sims and making millions in the process they decide that their bulging wallets just weren’t bulging enough. They have recently released their latest “must-have” game, Spore, with a new DRM system that means people that buy the game can only install it three times before the game locks and it can’t be used. Wait it gets better…
…now, this could be a brilliant ploy to sell more games but then a glitch with EA’s registration system means gamers were struggling to authorise their copy of Spore and ended up using up their three installations and locking the game.
The decision by EA games to treat all their (loyal) fans as software pirates has resulted in a flurry of negative reviews and uproar amongst the gaming community.
In one fell swoop, EA has turned the most eagerly anticipated game of 2008 into one of the worst.
Can I suggest next time EA skip the formalities of online registration and simply take fingerprints and DNA swabs at point-of-sale.
It’s incredibly hard to find examples of DRM which actually work well, and don’t annoy consumers – partly the reason why a lot of successful promotions in entertainement are now DRM free releases of albums etc – Nine Inch Nails for example!