EA just can't (or don't want to) win

As a gamer, I, like many others, have a strong dislike for the big gaming publishers who blatantly put profits before customers, such as EA and Activision (my thoughts on Ubisoft are for a later post as my feelings about them are rather more complex).  I do rather seem to have a penchant for burning bridges... Anyway, EA's latest 'grand gesture to the gamers' is giving away The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection until July 31st 2014, 10AM PDT, as their way of saying "we're ending support for the game". Because nothing says sensible like giving away software that you're ending support for - imagine if Microsoft gave away Windows XP.

Don't be mistaken, I'm not being ungrateful - I love The Sims 2 to the extent that it's hands-down my favorite of all the Sims games. There's so much 'DLC' (except of course back in 2004, it came on discs instead) that there isn't really anything you can't do in the game. On that topic, for example, with The Sims 2 Apartment Life Expansion Pack, you could live in any number of varied apartment buildings, with neighbors in the building. From all I could see in what I played of The Sims 3 with similar expansion packs installed, their new idea of 'apartment life' is living in a penthouse with no neighbors in the building, thus negating the entire point of living in a virtual apartment instead of a house.

As neat as some of the new mechanics introduced into The Sims 3 were, even if you were to drop £354.79 (yes, that's right) on buying all of The Sims 3 on Steam, you still wouldn't be able to do everything you can in The Sims 2 (such as run a business hands-on (as far as I know)). Harking back to Windows analogies, that's as if Microsoft were to release a successor to Windows 7 that's half-baked and unsuitable for desktops. Oh...

Once again, I'm getting off-point, but at least you can see how much I appreciate The Sims 2. Which is why I think it's a pretty nice gesture on EA's part to give it away for free, even if just for a limited amount of time. BUT, the inexplicable choices on EA's part don't end there. For some unknown reason, The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection now has SecuROM DRM, which in my eclectic experience has been one of the most frustrating DRM 'solutions' there are for 'protecting' PC games from piracy.

If EA are 1) giving the game away for free (albeit for a limited time) and 2) ending support for the game, why do they feel the need to impose horrendous DRM on consumers yet again? It's bad enough (but understandable from their point of view) that you have to use Origin (which is comparable to Steam as much as LibreOffice is to Microsoft Office) to obtain and play the Ultimate Collection - adding SecuROM protection has, in the eyes of the press, essentially negated the good will of giving the game away for free.

I really would be fascinated to know the thought processes going on at EA. That said, I'd love to know the thought processes at many billion dollar corporations making similarly inept decisions. Going back to the title of this post and the first sentence of it, the saying "too big to fail" comes to mind. While it turned out that THQ (RIP) weren't big enough to be invincible, it's fairly clear that both EA and Activision are, pretty much, too big to fail, which is presumably why they never seem to be fussed about what opinion the public, and more importantly, their customers, have of them.

Apologies for all the parentheses.

Why can't you add audiobooks to the iTunes queue?

I just tried to drag an audiobook into my iTunes queue, and it wouldn't let me. I then tried to add it to play next via the iOS Remote, and I couldn't there either, so it must be a lack of function rather than a UI oversight.

I understand that the two are different types of media, despite being transmitted through the same means. However, is it not feasible that I may want to chill to some music before delving into an audiobook, and then may want some music afterwards to relax themselves out of the tension of some exciting roller coaster of fiction. Better still, if audiobook publishers used .m4b files properly and added chapter markers, would it not be a neat experience to listen to an audiobook, with chapters separated by some tracks of your choosing?

One final note, I spotted in the iOS Remote app that the "Rewind 30s" button is displayed when an audiobook was playing, which is useful. However, I can't find such a button on iTunes itself.

(One last note - when viewing this post the i in iTunes looks uppercase. It is not; I wrote the i in lowercase, it just seems to display merged)

A Lack of Security

As fellow Kickstarter users know, an email was sent out this morning notifying us of a security breach. They may well be "incredibly sorry that this happened", but it did, and they recommend "that you change the password of your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password" - how very convenient. For those of us not blessed with eidetic memories, keeping track of passwords is a pain, and even the most computer-savvy among us use the same password across multiple sites for the sake of ease as a password manager is no good if you don't have the relevant device with you.

But, my main point is, "upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system" does not seem logical to me. It's not just Kickstarter though, it's Adobe, Ubisoft, Sony, Target,... the list is endless. It's the same spiel every time - "we were attacked, your password and/or payment details were copied, change your stuff. We're sorry. We've fixed it now". Here's a thought - patch the system before it gets exploited? You know, hire somebody to try and infiltrate it and then fix it, rather than idly sit on your ass with an insecure system and count down the days until you're a large enough target to be attacked and profusely apologize to your userbase.

Yes, ultimate unbreachable security is merely blue-sky thinking, but if these exploits have happened, they were patchable. For the sake of not looking like amateurs, please big companies, I implore you, fix it before the inevitable happens. Think of all the class action suits you could be avoiding (see here for example).