As we draw into the blustery month of December, we enter a period of reflection before we move to embrace the coming year. While the new year will be all about righting wrongs and changing our habits, we’ll take this time of giving and considering to look back and snicker at all the firms who booked passage on the failboat in 2008.
10. Spore’s DRM
Electronic Arts’ Spore, the brainchild of Sim City luminary Will Wright, was a product bound for scrutiny. Though nearly stumbling on a protracted development cycle, the game was released to an eager fan base after years of speculation and excitement. Believe it when we say this pent up demand had much to do with the ensuing fallout after users learned that the AAA title was anchored to a SecuROM DRM scheme that only permitted three reinstallations.
EA’s policies demanded that users running up against the reactivation limit — an event that could be spurred by simple hardware changes — call customer service for permission to reactivate Spore. Begging a game maker for the right to play a purchased product understandably left a sour taste in the mouths of enthusiasts as they tanked the game’s Amazon rating with more than 2500 one star votes.
DRM hard at work!
Because of — or perhaps in spite of — Spore’s DRM, it became the fastest-pirated game in history. With over 500,000 downloads in the 24 hours after its appearance on Torrent networks, it remains readily available even today.
Though EA eventually increased the reinstallation limit to five, the firm looked more petulant than obliging to do so. Claiming that a majority of the brouhaha came from game pirates, EA Games Label President Frank Gibeau glossed over the concerns of millions even while relenting. “While it’s easy to discount the noise from those who only want to post or transfer thousands of copies of the game on the Internet, I believe we need to adapt our policy to accommodate our legitimate consumers,” he said.
In spite of this debacle, EA continues to believe that DRM is an integral component of their economic structure. “We’re hoping that everyone understands that DRM policy is essential to the economic structure we use to fund our games and as well as to the rights of people who create them,” said Gibeau.
Our take: DRM stinks. Games like Sins of a Solar Empire have readily proven that DRM-free titles can effortlessly breach the top 10 sales charts. Electronic Arts relies on DRM because the company is not prepared to operate in a digital economy.
9. Obama bamboozles Twitterers
Wow, a real life kthxbye.
With a campaign built on the mantra of “change,” Barack Obama’s Twitter presence was a breath of fresh air when compared to the digital dark ages of other candidacies. With frequent updates and a veritable legion of followers, it was immediately evident that the savvy public was ready for an internet-enabled presidency.
In spite of the obvious demand, it seems the internet-enabled presidency isn’t ready for us. In the time since a post-election thank you on November 5, Obama’s corner of the Twitterverse has been remarkably silent. This move has left many to increasingly wonder if the 44th US president’s Twitter campaign wasn’t a disingenuous sham to pull the netizen vote.
Our take: Though tremendously popular, Twitter’s culture of integrity helps it breathe with an honest realism. Obama’s reign as the most-followed Tweep destined the abandoned account for broad disappointment. We sincerely hope that Barack can return to the account, even if ghostwritten by a staffer, but we’re not placing any bets.
8. iPhone 3G MMS
Just enter this easy ID numb-- wait...
Moving into its second generation, 2008 was unquestionably the year of the iPhone. While the first iPhones struggled along with a stunningly outdated EDGE connection, the iPhone 3G brought the heat by jumping on AT&T’s HSDPA/UMTS fast lane. With all the sweet features which have made it the number one smartphone, the iPhone 3G is still not equipped with an MMS client.
While solutions for the MMS conundrum have stepped forward, iPhoners must resort to hacking their device with a jailbreak just to get a feature much dumber phones have had since 2002.
Our take: What the hell, Apple? It’s 2008.
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