MMR: EA Breaks Your Disk? Too Bad, Your Problem
June 26, 2006 03:55
But Wait, There's More... The Kicker
EA is definitely not the only company culpable in this DVD "protective" case matter. However, since they did publish Battlefield 2, I got on the case of Simon Smith-Wright, UK PR director for EA. I asked him whether he had heard of any such cases and what the official EA line is on discs broken in this manner.
| Hi Aaron
I looked into this for you. It seems we occasionally receive the kind of breakages you are describing but it accounts for an extremely small percentage. In our experience this is not the fault of the disc but more often the way they are removed from the boxes. We advise all gamers who have broken disks how they should remove them from the box. Often in PS2, Xbox and PC/DVD disk boxes (Amray cases) the button that holds the disk must be pressed before the disk can be removed. Sometimes the button is slightly over zealous in its role of holding the disk in place - so it really must be pressed down properly to remove the disk. If the disk is removed by pulling it at the edge of the disk, without pressing the centre button, it will slowly damage the disk over time. Our advice to gamers (and anyone who uses DVDs or music CDs) is to take care when removing them from the case. Always press the button firmly and never just pull them out by the disk edge. Our current policy is to replace the discs for a small charge. This is because our warranty policy does not cover damage to the discs at the fault of the user. Simon |
I wanted to publish his reply in full before picking out two particular bits to see if you might think, as I do, that EA is trying to have its cake and eat it too. Let's pay close attention to the following: "sometimes the button is slightly over zealous in its role of holding the disk in place - so it really must be pressed down properly to remove the disk" and then to "our warranty policy does not cover damage to the discs at the fault of the user."
We're all in agreement that any idiot who grabs his disc at the edges and yanks it out is the one at fault. However, who is to blame for the "over zealous button"? Ultimately it is you and your £7.50. (I would give that to you in dollars, but you yanks just don't have anything that rolls off the tongue quite as smoothly as "seven pounds fifty"...)
Uhh, hello, solution?
This is an unacceptable state of affairs, from EA or any other publisher. A disc is destroyed because of a faulty or just plain crappy case design, and it is the user who must pay for it (in more ways than one)? The easy solution would be to use cases that work in their job of "protecting" discs. In the shorter term, screw you (publishers at large) and your warranty charge to replace discs broken "at the fault of the user." In the meantime, we have to be careful with our discs and buy soft cases for them.
| ||||||
Previous Page 
