<\/td><\/tr><\/table>This was the original strip I wrote, before EA issued their retraction. It’s still rough, and it probably would have evolved a bit from this point if I hadn’t thrown it out. <\/p>\nThe metaphor here is kind of screwy. We’ve got Mr. Stock Photo Guy here (I love this guy) who I’ve been using as my all-purpose EA spokesman. Here he’s supposedly playing some sort of beleaguered forum moderator. It works well enough until the last panel when he… talks to the forum post? Hmmm. Not a deal breaker, as we’re playing fast-and-loose with reality already, but I probably would have looked for a more elegant way to do this. <\/p>\n
The first three posts themselves also needed a few touches to personalize the individual posters. Maybe some obnoxious sigs and some forum avatars would have completed these characters. <\/p>\n
The thing I really wanted to draw attention to was how this “anti-piracy” measure was being used against consumers while not having any impact on pirates. The pirates would not only retain their ill-gotten copy of the game but also be free to post asininity because they could create new accounts at will. So the measure wouldn’t stop either<\/em> piracy or<\/strong> forum hijinks.<\/p>\n We’ve sung this hymn enough times here that I think everyone here knows it by heart, but there are a number of readers at the Escapist who never come here, and my outlandish demands for customer service and respect actually sound sort of novel to them. <\/p>\n I sure hope EA surrenders soon. I’m running out of available stock photos to use against them. Certainly they can’t withstand my withering critique much longer. Perhaps it is time for an ultimatum. Yes, I believe it is:<\/p>\n I’m sorry to bring out the big guns, but really they have left me little choice. It’s about to get personal. EA must abandon their mad scheme of using online activation for single player games or I will be forced to imply in a future article that EA boss John Riccitiello is, in fact, a newbie<\/strong>. <\/p>\n I’m sorry to have to resort to such dire measures, but EA has forced my hand. They called down the thunder and now they will reap the whirlwind. <\/p>\n Newbie. Think about it, John. That sort of shame doesn’t fade easily. Don’t let it come to this.<\/p>\n You’ve been warned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have launched my latest rhetorical \/ satirical volley at the juggernaut that is EA. I’m sure they will crumble under the power of my arguments any second now. While we’re waiting for that, you can read today’s comic. You can read on here for an earlier version of the joke:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[30,83,525],"class_list":["post-1981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column","tag-drm","tag-ea","tag-stolen-pixels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}