Battlefield 2142 $38.99 with Free Shipping

[Woofmeister]

Game officially releases tomorrow and this is the lowest price I've found.

 

[imported_swampfox]

Comes with free spyware also! Slashdot has a discussion of this.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I was on the fence about buying it but the news about included spyware, no thanks.

 

[videopho]

Originally posted by: Woofmeister
Game officially releases tomorrow and this is the lowest price I've found.

How does Google check out work once I've signed up for it?
I didn't see it at ny buy.com's account.

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: videopho
How does Google check out work once I've signed up for it?
I didn't see it at ny buy.com's account.

Click "Buy Now" and underneath "Proceed to Checkout" should be an icon for "Google Checkout."

Make sure you are signed out at Buy.com if you have a Buy.com account.

 

[evilmrt]

Cold....but thanks OP anyway

This game blows, courtesy of EA and its included spyware. I predict it will be much cheaper before too long.

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: swampfox
Comes with free spyware also! Slashdot has a discussion of this.

And Gamespot confirms the rumor.

Definitely not hot! Thanks for the heads up. Trying to cancel the order now . . .

 

[GZeus]

Wow, I thought only $ony was that stupid. Just cancelled my Fry's pre-order.
If this is the wave of the future, I'm going back to Pong!

EDIT: To be fair, at least EA tells you that they are doing this in the manual. I guess that's a bit better than $ony:disgust:.

Aside: What is with Fry's on-hold music? Are they trying to make me hangup?!

 

[SickNic]

Here's hoping that Quake Wars will be amazing....

 

[codeyf]

Wow, I knew EA blew chunks, but that is really unfortunate that they pulled such a shady maneuver.

Oh well, 1 less game I'll be playing.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I can imagine folks posting screenies of the game online to show others, realizing afterwards that their billboards in game are showing midget porn and stuff.

 

[imported_stev]

I used Google checkout at Buy.com to buy some games and it worked pretty well. I don't think I need such a system to streamline my internet purchases, but I certainly don't mind when it entails a $10 discount.

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: stev
I used Google checkout at Buy.com to buy some games and it worked pretty well. I don't think I need such a system to streamline my internet purchases, but I certainly don't mind when it entails a $10 discount.

Yes, but it makes it much more difficult to cancel an order. I had to send an e-mail to Buy.com through Google rather than just cancelling the order through my Buy.com account. Still waiting to find out whether or not my order was cancelled.

 

[Modular]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
I can imagine folks posting screenies of the game online to show others, realizing afterwards that their billboards in game are showing midget porn and stuff.

LoL

 

[VooDooAddict]

I just want to know if it has a Co-Op Multiplayer mode. So my friends and I can do our "People Vs More Dumb Bots then god could imagine".

8 Friends ... on 32 stupid bots ... it's good times.

 

[trigun500]

I hear a lot of people are having issues opening the ports for their firewalls. It's insane the number of ports you have to open. I can't play it because my college isn't willing to open that many ports.

 

[Souka]

Yep, it does Co-op mode....

Also can be set to remove a bot when a real person joins....that way the same# of players are playing...

 

[VanTheMan]

Some genius will come up with a way to disable the spyware. I guess EA is doing it to offset some of the revenue lost to piracy, but what are they going to do to offset the revenue lost to people not buying their games because they come with spyware? I, for one, will not be buying it.

 

[Devistater]

The actual insert that comes with the game only refers to in game behavior monitoring. In other words, how long you look at the in game ads, what angle, etc like SWAT 4.

Some forums have the full text from the insert if you are interested.

 

[rile0161]

I wonder how long it will take for the ads to be automatically blocked by privacy products or changed to porn or other offensive images through malware. The shoddy support for BF2 decided me against buying this game but this definatly pushed it over the edge. Thanks for the heads up though!

 

[John P]

Hmmm, my kids were looking forward to this game.

Does the information only transmit out when you play online, or does it connect to some server every time you play single player or LAN multiplayer like Steam? How does it get around a firewall like Kerio?

 

[Woofmeister]

Originally posted by: Devistater
The actual insert that comes with the game only refers to in game behavior monitoring. In other words, how long you look at the in game ads, what angle, etc like SWAT 4.

Some forums have the full text from the insert if you are interested.

Links please?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Dailytech now has the article about the spyware in Battlefield 1942 in space:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4568

 

[Woofmeister]

EA clarifies the spyware issue here:

The advertising program in Battlefield 2142 does not access any files which are not directly related to the game. It does not capture personal data such as cookies, account login detail, or surfing history.

BF 2142 delivers ads by region. The advertising system uses a player's IP address to determine the region of the player, assisting to serve the appropriate ads by region and language. For instance, a player in Paris might be presented with ads in French. The information collected will not be repurposed for other uses.

Battlefield 2142 also tracks "impression data" related to in-game advertisements: location of a billboard in the game, brand advertised, duration of advertisement impression, etc. This information is used to help advertisers qualify the reach of a given advertisement.

So according to EA, the only data being captured is your IP address and other data which was already being transferred to the server during the course of playing the game.

Nevertheless, I"m still not really comfortable with this. I think in-game adds are intrusive and distracting and I don't like being made a captive audience for a shampoo ad simply because I want to engage in some mindless fragging. I find it particularly disconcerting when ads appear in single-player games for products that were not even being sold at the time the game originally came out (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory anyone?) If you want to show ads, show them at the initial login and leave them out of the game content.

If you're not making enough money off game sales and related merchandise, maybe you should change your pricing model.

 

[Budarow]

Good deal on a new release. Too bad it comes with spyware.