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Old 03-17-2019, 03:23 PM   #6
QuikSand
lolzcat
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Annapolis, Md
Fun side story here... some might recall these fun times.

Jim had announced that the new game was going to be a partnership effort with EA Sports, and the company had posted a website as a placeholder for the forthcoming game. One random day, a few of us diehards wandered to the site, and the purchase option had been enabled. I pulled out my CC, entered in my payment information, and downloaded the game for $30 or whatever it cost.

I opened it up, and started fiddling around... posting a thread at FOF Central (sadly, this was at a predecessor site to this one, all this content is lost I'm fairly sure) about what I had found on day one with the new game. Lots of feature that were new and exciting. It was a fun day.

I had a work commitment that afternoon, as I recall, and I had to head out to a meeting or something. So, my notes stopped.

Well... it turns out all hell broke loose during my walk-away time. Seems that EA had only posted the purchasing options as a "test" and didn't mean to release the game. By the time I had gotten re-plugged in a few hours later, the FOF board was on fire with EA henchmen accusing fans of "stealing" their game.

To be clear, I was among them. Stealing the game. Because I, you know, PAID FOR IT ON THEIR WEBSITE WHERE IT SAID PAY FOR IT HERE.

I cannot do this chapter of the story justice. It was crazy and sideways.

By the time I got home (this was pre-cell phone, recall) I had a message on my home phone from Barry Dorf of EA. He was asking me, fairly sternly, to unlicense the software that I had illegally downloaded. I think over the course of the day, my online absence (which had nothing to do with FOF) had become a matter of some suspicion, EA thought I was up to something I guess. I think only a handful of people bought and downloaded the game, and I was the last one they had not been able to reach. I suspect I was just at a boring meeting or some sort, not off selling FOF secrets to the East Germans or whatnot.

Anyway, I got back in touch with Barry Dorf, told him I understood where they were coming from, and agreed to un-license the game. I did. He pledged that I would get my download code for the game for free when it was officially released (just a week or so later, IIRC), and he offered me a free copy of any other EA game. I passed on the latter offer, correctly sensing that this was going to represent the end of my relationship with EA in pretty much any form. He did make good on the free download, though. Oddly, my registration code was an easy-to-remember phrase, rather than the usual XGR45WR43WE8 or whetever... thus enabling me to get the game back up and running in 2009 or whenever I last dug up this dusty laptop. Fun twist.

Things remained hot on these forums for some time after that. Some guy screen-named STIX was dispatched by EA (I think) to work things out, that did not go well. (People have mis-remembered his screen name as STYX or styx, but I'm 100% certain it was STIX) I don't recall all the details from there... Tony Wyss was a player in this mix, too, and at least another unsavory character here or there. Blackadar from this site was, I think, the forum moderator here (predecessor site) at the time, and got embroiled into some of the mess, too... some of those details are eluding me here. I think aggression from EA ultimately resulted in the migration away from the old site and to this one.

In the event any other old-timers remember more details, I'd welcome them being corrected or filled-in here.

So, my quick foray into software piracy involved me buying a game online, and apparently firing the shot heard round the FOF world.
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