In anticipation of all the games that would be released around the holiday season I am putting together a PC just for playing these games. It is equipped with all the latest hard- and software and with a big wide screen TFT to boot I am all ready to lock myself in my office for a few days and play until either my fingers or my eyeballs start to bleed. Like many others I kept my gaze fixed on the release schedules of upcoming games and would put in my online order the moment they were released. As such I now have all latest games installed but for one and that is the game I wanted to play for quite some time now: EA's Crysis.



So why haven't I ordered and installed Crysis just yet? Well, apparently EA is perfectly fine with me creating an online account at their US web store, however when I pull out my credit card or key in my PayPal account details, it refuses to let me download the game. For some reason I am denied access because I am physically located in Europe, hence I cannot buy from the EA US web store. As a result I am forwarded to EA's European web store where Crysis is not yet available for download to begin with and secondly, they jacked up the price from $49.99 to 54.99 euro, that is almost twice the price at current exchange rates.



Now I do not mind giving EA my money, but paying almost twice what US customers are paying is a bit much, and also something that rubs me the wrong way as it is simply against my principles. After all, we are talking about a digital copy here, not a carton box with a DVD, hence there is no localized box and no localized manual, just the same download that is offered through the US store. Sure, they may have thrown in a different EULA to comply with EU legislation, but that is it. So I am sitting here empty-handed, with a perfectly good credit card and enough money in my PayPal balance to make the purchase, but EA simply will not let me.



So despite the fact that I usually buy all my games, as I feel the developer needs to be rewarded for their hard work, I am just going to download Crysis off of a P2P network. Here is a big 'FU' to EA, if you do not want my money, but rather charge me double because I am not physically located in the US, you deserve to be pirated. When you come to your senses I will get my credit card out so I can reward Crytek, the developer, for their hard work. No other online download system has this limitation, for example I just downloaded the Orange Box of gaming bliss from Steam the other day without any issues. So a word of caution to all the publishers that feel compelled to rip off their customers in different geographic regions: don't, as people will simply download a pirated copy instead.



Sander Sassen.