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EA Killing Rock Band For iPhone, Game Will Be Unplayable For Current Owners
- 0x0 14y agoWow, that's pretty insane. Wonder how Apple will treat EA's iOS developer license if they keep doing it like that. Otherwise you could dodge the whole "apps that are 'trial' versions" are prohibited... Release the app for a small sum, pull it after a while and release a sequel! Or will this be another case of "some developers are more equal than others"?
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoAs much as I dislike Apple's meddling, I'd love it if they punished EA for this.
- maximilianburke 14y agoApple's taking a 30% cut of $a-lot-of-money that passes through their App Store because of EA's games, I don't think they're going to rescind their ability to develop for iOS.
- Perceval 14y agoYes, but Apple is always willing to prioritize users over developers, which is why Apple is constantly pissing off developers by making them jump through extra hoops. Apple is not going to yank EA's apps, but it's likely that EA is going to get a call from Apple.
- aiscott 14y agoHowever Apple doesn't put users before dollars in the case of the kindle app and the recent dropbox debacle, regarding the whole in app purchase crap.
- danilocampos 14y agoApple cares about selling hardware. App Store revenues are absolutely nothing compared to their hardware margins. Anyone who fucks with their ability to sell feel-good hardware will get the lash. Let's see how fucked-with they feel after this.
- halfninety 14y agoDidn't Apple do the same thing themselves with Siri, albeit it was free?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jyap 14y agoI can only guess this is because of 2 reasons (which come down to cost): - Song licensing deals expire with unfavorable renewal costs - Server and other costs outweigh incoming revenue Either way live by the content, die by the content.
- 0x0 14y agoSoo... does that mean other platforms also expire when they can't be bothered to support a game? For example, a playstation version? What about guitar hero? (Why would the servers be required anyways? To stream content? Couldn't content be downloaded on first run (which means you only need to fund a server&pipe big enough for new purchases))
- Tiktaalik 14y agoThere been instances where games re-released on new platforms have been modified because the creators were unable or unwilling to re-license certain content again. One example that comes to mind is Sega removing songs from The Offspring from Crazy Taxi when they released a version of the game for Xbox Live Arcade. The original arcade version also featured real branded destinations, like KFC, and these have been turned into generic versions.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoI can't say I've ever heard of /existing/ copies of games disabled when a license expires.
- dpark 14y ago> Why would the servers be required anyways? To stream content? Couldn't content be downloaded on first run Probably depends on licensing terms. I can absolutely see record companies licensing under terms that don't allow end-users to save the music locally.
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- iamandrus 14y agoDoesn't this violate Apple's policy? If not, has this happened in the past?
- smackfu 14y agoPractically, it doesn't seem like there is any way to force a company to keep their servers running to support a game forever, no matter what the policy is.
- ceejayoz 14y agoThey could threaten EA's other apps, though, or perhaps refund all purchases for the game.
- modeless 14y agoRock Band isn't a multiplayer game and shouldn't need any servers to play.
- ajross 14y ago"Shouldn't" and "doesn't" are different concepts though. Just as you can't reasonably "force" EA to continue operating a service forever, you can't go back in time to make them architect it properly either. This is inevitable in the modern world. We want to allow for people to pay for software. We want software to engage with the broader world. Having those two things at once inevitably leads to a situation where software breaks because its "managers" don't want to maintain that engagement anymore. So pick one of those two and throw it out: make all services pay-for-play instead of one-time-fee. Or disallow non-standalone apps. (Or I guess a third option would be to force the customer and app vendor to sign a contract with a service level agreement). None of those seem workable to me.
- Karunamon 14y agoIf I had to put a valid reason to this instead of simply declaring that EA are dicks (which is still true but...), I'd guess that the rights on the songs expired and they are no longer legally allowed to distribute them. Think about it. It would be even more scummy of them to leave the app up for download with no way to pull the songs required to play the game down from the cloud. It's shitty either way, especially if you just bought the app but, I don't see a good way out of it.
- mikeash 14y agoNegotiating rights in such a way that leaves you open to this, then selling the app when you know you might have to pull it due to licensing, is not really any better.
- smackfu 14y agoThere is a middle ground. They can pull the app from the store, but it is still playable on people devices. It's not great, but it's a lot better than "you can't play this game anymore even though it's installed." And it seems fairly ridiculous that EA would not get rights that last for the life of a single product. They've been doing song licensing for 10+ years now.
- masterzora 14y agoIf the songs are in the cloud that middle ground doesn't work.
- jlawer 14y agoThe songs aren't on the cloud, as the game works perfectly on an ipod touch when wifi is disabled. The problem is games requiring "authentication servers" to do anything. The general thought has been when these servers were removed the last act of the company would be to release an update that disabled the requirement of the servers... however this has never really happened. It frustrates me as thanks to tools like DosBox I am still playing games on my Mac that I first played years ago (Master of Orion 2 specifically). There is a distinct possibility that every game you purchase will no longer work in 5 years between DRM'd executable, proprietary platforms and authentication servers.
- mikerice 14y agoIf you owned it, you can go to your transactions page and issue a refund. It takes around 4 hours, and it comes out of EA's pockets!
- josereyes 14y agoIs this on iOS? If so, how does one get to the transactions page?
- devindotcom 14y agoIt's in iTunes IIRC. Sorry, don't know exactly where, but it's in there. It won't be anywhere logical, I'm guessing.
- lucaspiller 14y agohttp://www.ehow.com/how_5590751_refund-itunes.html http://www.ehow.com/how_5590751_refund-itunes.html It only works for transactions made in the last 90 days though.
- ceejayoz 14y agoThe really inexcusable part is that the game is still available for purchase, with no indication in the description that it's about to self-destruct. Hopefully Apple nails them to the wall on this.
- daenz 14y agoI had to see it with my own eyes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rock-band/id333307161?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rock-band/id333307161?mt=8
- Permit 14y agoInteresting how there's no mention of its discontinuation with the exception of user reviews. I can't help but imagine a few stragglers might buy it this month and immediately lose access.
- ConstantineXVI 14y agoEven better, it hasn't been updated since 2010. That implies EA planned to pull the plug when they shipped it.
- eropple 14y agoNot necessarily. They could have a messaging thing built in that just pulled a message from a server.
- bluehex 14y agoSure, thats true for the message their popping. But it also means the kill switch was in there since then. I guess it doesn't necessarily mean they intended to cancel it from the start though, if this is standard practice for all their apps.
- endersshadow 14y agoI think the "kill switch" is that the server that it connects to when it boots up will be gone. It's not like it'll self destruct on the phone--you'll still be able to launch the app, it just won't connect to the server. Therefore, you won't be able to play. The same thing would happen with, say, Draw Something, if a tornado came through and wiped out their data center. They wouldn't have built a purposeful "kill switch," it's just a de facto one because the server would then be embedded into a tree somewhere.
- hack_edu 14y agoApple and EA didn't need more PR drama. Welcome to the yet another battle in the war of (signed) 'Apps' vs our old notions of software. Plus, EA certainly doesn't need any more bad publicity after Mass Effect 3 and all their release day DLC drama.
- jacquesm 14y agoI'm sure a blanket refund issued to all the current owners of the game will quickly explain to EA why this is a terrible idea. They'll survive, but they'll be wiser.
- jaysonelliot 14y agoAs apps move to the cloud, record albums turn into subscriptions, and books become bits on a Kindle, I fear this sort of thing will become more commonplace. Sometimes intentionally, like this example, sometimes you'll lose access to things you thought you had bought as companies merge or expire, or through good old-fashioned screw-ups. I can run a program on my thirty-year-old Apple computer today just as I could when I bought it, even though the company who made the software may have disappeared in the '90s. Records I bought as a kid are still here, and no one can edit or "deauthorize" the books on my shelf. I wonder if kids born now will grow up without any expectation that buying any form of software or media entitles them to keep and use what they've bought anytime they want?
- evoxed 14y agoParanoia: in 20 years when you try to go online with your MacBook, it defaults to a kernel message, "Unfortunately this hardware is too old to connect to the U-net and is no longer supported. Please upgrade at ____". I don't buy it, but it is possible, especially as operating systems become more centralized within the cloud and whatnot. Our Apple ][s, Macs, Mac Classics, etc. aren't social enough to be ostracized anyway.
- ctdonath 14y agoThe great irony of the information age is that everything will be forgotten.
- cdrxndr 14y agoWhat's crazy is that kids today won't have music passed down to them per this trend. The license to your iTunes music collection ends with your life as per the Apple ToS (seriously). I don't want to buy licenses. Can we please buy things that are real (like bits, real).
- tomjen3 14y agoNobody gives a shit what the tos say. People will share their music.
- AJ007 14y agoQuick, buy it now so you can get in on the class action.
- ctdonath 14y agoWhy, so you can get credit toward a future EA game purchase equal or lesser than the purchase price of this game? Or [squints suspiciously] are you a class-action lawyer?
- robomartin 14y agoSomeone brought-up an interesting point: The thought of your entire iBooks or Kindle book library evaporating is a sobering one. Will all of this be around in twenty or thirty years? I have physical books that are nearly 100 years old in my library. They don't require a third party to exist in order to be usable. These kinds of things make you re-think some of these ideas. Another place where this happens much faster is power tools. I still have a number of excellent power tools that are easily 15 to 20 years old. Sawzall, drill, router, biscuit joiner, circular saw, etc. All of them have a chord and are AC powered. None of the battery powered tools I bought long ago are around. In some cases the battery packs have been discontinued. In other cases the batteries went bad and the replacement cost for the obsolete packs is just too high. So, if you want to leave tools and books to your kids, you might want to rethink what you are buying. It is possible to imagine that iBooks and Kindle will not be around in 40 to 50 years. Anyone know what the TOS say about this for both Apple and Amazon? Do you own your books or have they become licenses that can go poof overnight?
- frio 14y agoIn the case of Amazon at least, the DRM on Kindle ebooks is ludicrously easy to crack. Every book I purchase, I crack - both for self-preservation (the removal of 1984 from every device it was installed on was worrying), and because not being able to share frustrates me. More than games, music, etc., not being able to share books drives me crazy. Everyone in my flat has a small library; we share our books between eachother. When we started getting Kindles, that was stymied: after reading the first book in the Void trilogy on paper, I was unable to let my flatmate (who read the first book after me) read the second book - because I bought it on Kindle. That was... well, lame. So now, I manage my Kindle with Calibre. Every book I buy gets cracked.
- caf 14y agoThis is exactly what I do with my Kobo. I buy EPUB format books and immediately crack the DRM off and load them into Calibre, confident that I'll be able to convert it and load it onto whatever device I may buy in the future.
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- jyap 14y agoI tried to find out more from their Support pages but only found this FAQ: https://help.ea.com/article/will-rock-band-no-longer-be-available-on-mobile-devices https://help.ea.com/article/will-rock-band-no-longer-be-avai... From the page: Will ROCK BAND no longer be available on mobile devices? Updated: 5/2/2012 I've heard ROCK BAND will not be available after May 31. Is this true? Yes, we will be suspending support of ROCK BAND after May 31 and focusing resources on other EA titles. We thank everyone for playing ROCK BAND, and we encourage you to explore some of the other exciting titles in our mobile line-up. Can I still play ROCK BAND if I've already downloaded it? The ROCK BAND servers will be live through May 31, 2012. If you have already downloaded the game, you can continue to play until then.
- creade 14y agoEA apparently just retracted: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57426660-93/ea-not-killing-rock-band-for-ios-after-all/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57426660-93/ea-not-killing-...
- bluedanieru 14y agoUsually when something I wrote or released produces an error, I don't corroborate that error with human-written text on my website. EA is full of shit.
- uncoder0 14y agoDoesn't really work when it is posted in the FAQ. This appears to be a poor cover-up or a pretty big internal misunderstanding. http://i.imgur.com/eTwHH.png http://i.imgur.com/eTwHH.png
- ctdonath 14y agoRemember some years back Belkin sold a router that would randomly replace web page requests with redirects to ads for their products? I haven't purchased any Belkin products since. I may not purchase any more EA products for similar reasons.