Stolen Pixels #94: Crysis Demo, Part 3

By Shamus Posted Friday May 29, 2009

Filed under: Column 23 comments

The ending of the Crysis Demo was quite a surprise.

Punchline spoiler: People refuse to believe, but yes. See for yourself.

 


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23 thoughts on “Stolen Pixels #94: Crysis Demo, Part 3

  1. Hello, World…

    That may be the most awesomeness thing ever.

  2. pulse says:

    I’m sorry to say this, but off the top of my head I can’t remember when your writing made me laugh as much as EA’s… web design just did. That was awesome well and truly hilarious. :-)

  3. Yar Kramer says:

    Wow. I knew EA was evil about DRM and other things, but I never thought I’d see outright stupidity like this.

  4. ngthagg says:

    It’s quite simple: if NO ONE can buy the game, it will NEVER be pirated! It’s brilliant!

  5. wererogue says:

    That’s… amazing.

  6. vdgmprgrmr says:

    … *sigh*

    EA…

    We should just give up on them.

  7. Vladius says:

    What the damn?

  8. Saint Rising says:

    Hello, World.

    …Do you think there’s some deep philosophical meaning behind these two words?

  9. Zel says:

    I never click on links to buy software from a demo, so I wouldn’t know if it happens often, but I have to admit it’s surprising from a company as big as EA. Somebody there must have forgotten that the demo linked to http://buycrysis.ea.com instead of http://crysis.ea.com (which works).

    1. Shamus says:

      I should have explained it earlier, but the real hilarity of this is that “Hello World” is a classic exercise for someone using a new programming language for the first time. The point of the program is to print out the words “Hello World” in some way. Many people began learning C / C++ by typing in the “Hello World” program from a tutorial somewhere. (I did.)

      So not only is this a link to a broken page which negates the entire purpose of the demo, but it’s the coding equivalent of a sign written in crayon on construction paper that says “Hi”.

  10. I think EA buys all of these domains and subdomains that they later forget they have.

    There’s also a http://www.buycrysis.com which contains nothing but some game footage and a release date of 16 November 2007.

    Perhaps I should send them my resume and suggest that they hire me as their “Domain Manager”.

    Leslee

  11. edcalaban says:

    @Leslee: Race you for that job.

    This makes me think of Valve’s corporate achievement they unlocked for the Meet the Spy video, except I like Valve and they actually noticed what went wrong.

    Anyone want to start a betting pool on how long the page stays “Hello World”?

  12. Volatar says:

    I bet on it not changing for at least a year.

  13. Coyote says:

    Oh, yeah. It’s a mainstream game. If it’s more than three months old, the publisher doesn’t care about it anymore, and wants you to buy something else anyway.

  14. Eathanu says:

    So what you’re saying is, my silly website is better than EA’s. Got it.

    (I mean, shit, even I remembered to edit WordPress’ default first post)

  15. MadTinkerer says:

    @vdgmprgrmr:

    I’ve already given up on EA.

    I may eventually buy Spore, though, when all the DRM is exorcized. But other than that…

  16. Kell says:

    10 PRINT “EA SUCKS”
    20 GOTO 10

  17. Xpovos says:

    I had to view the source for that page. I figured it would at least be chock full of Dreamweaver or equivalent unnecessary java script that never gets called and comments about nothing in particular. Best case scenario, I figured maybe it was a joke and the source would give me a clue as to some super secret deal for buying the game cheap.

    Nope. It’s ultra-basic 1995-style HTML.

    Amazing.

  18. Cuthalion says:

    while(true)
    {
    print(“Goodbye, EA\n”)
    }

  19. Nick Pitino says:

    Heh, my first program I ever got to work said “Hello World Foolish Mortals!”, you know, just to mix things up a bit.

    As a bit of a side note, that first program was only written a week ago. Mr Young, your posts about programing projects are what finally have gotten me to pick up a compiler, a series of tutorials, a bunch of patience and to get around to trying to learn how this programing stuff works.

    Thank you.

    Anyway…

    I’m willing to bet that the page never changes until EA just takes it down completely and pretend nothing ever happened.

    You know, along the lines of “We have always been at war with Eastasia…”

  20. perry says:

    now the ea page works! no longer hello world.

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