The whole electronic 'Games Industry' is still relatively young and needless to say, it brings along its problems that have to be resolved along the route to adulthood. Imagine buying a car, brand new. Only thing is, the engine suddenly explodes within a couple of weeks. What service do you expect ?
Apologies and a new engine, of course ! Chances are pretty big that you'll get one.

Well, what happened to Asqwanka (one of our young faithfull crewmembers) is somewhat of the same nature. As most gamers, he has a pretty new pc, not older than 6 months - and thus within the guarantee period.

What happened ? Well to roughly translate his own words:And he has taken some ...erm... funny (webcam)pictures to prove it :)

Now we all have to agree that this is funny :-) But what are the poor guys options now ? We talked to a representative from EA and much to our surprise and liking ... they have a special service for tragic cases like our poor Asqwanka. The EA helpdesk provides all unfortunate explosive CD owners with a new copy for only €5 ! Now I know it's popular amongst gamers to bash EA for different reasons (which I almost never agree with, but that's another story) - but this is what I call 'good service'.

If they wished, they could just tell you to demand compensation from the CD-rom manufacturer, but no, you get a new game for just €5. But, how about the CD-R/RW player ? Well, Asqwanka contacted the dealer where he bought his Aopen rewriter. The guy said that it wasn't his problem. And that was that. Enough said.

Apparently, some CD-R/RW manufacturers don't provide enough cooling in the device itself, thus leading to the damage (and exploding !) of some CD-roms. Now we don't know what Aopen's policy is on this, but we know that *some* dealers who distribute their products are ... just simply... arseholes.

EA provides a service, but it appears that local dealers aren't willing to step up and deliver what they should.

In other news: