Creative’s executive team will be coming in to quite a mess Monday morning, thanks to its VP of Screw Ups, Phil O’Shaughnessy. Friday morning, he posted a warning on the Creative customer forums that told programmer Daniel_K to stop writing his own drivers for their X-Fi sound cards. The cards still won’t work on Vista over a year after the OS was released, because Creative hasn’t released drivers for them—but by Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s account, Daniel_K is “stealing” from Creative by making the cards work. Then the weekend happened.
Over the weekend, Creative’s forums have exploded with posts from angry customers who have sworn to stop buying their products. There’s already a boycott site up at boycottcreative.com.
A Creative Forum poster named “youAREkidding” summed up Creative’s stupidity quite nicely:
Imagine what would happen if 10%, just 10% of the people who will read about this, be in a store somewhere, see someone about to buy a Creative Labs product, and say to that potential customer. “If you have Vista, Creative has non-functioning drivers for it, there was a guy who created a Modified driver, but Creative made him stop distributing it, and there are still no workable drivers for Vista.” Some people might laugh at him, but the majority of computer perhiperal buyers don’t know squat, and if they hear it from someone who presents themselves in a knowledgeable manner, they may actually think twice about it. Creative loses another sale.
So, yes, Daniel may very well have stepped on some copyright rules, and Creative had the lawful option of doing what they did. Score 100 on the law, score minus several millions for not doing the job themselves in the first place, and putting someone like Daniel in a position where he had to do what he did, just to get the customers of this company happy.
By way of comparison, another forum poster, Igor_Levicki, points out that Nvidia supports its old cards much more reliably:
Let me just remind you that for example NVIDIA still supports GeForce generations 5, 6, 7, and 8 in their latest video drivers for XP, XP64, Vista, Linux and Mac OSX. All those old cards still get performance improvements instead of being crippled.
Even more entertaining is a mysterious post that appeared on the Daniel_K thread on Sunday, supposedly from Newegg. It’s quite possibly fake, but the email address registered with the account is webmaster@newegg.com, and that address has to be verified before it can be displayed. We’ll have to wait until Newegg opens for business Monday morning (7am PST) to verify. [Update 7:42 am PST: Newegg is still selling X-Fi cards this morning, and their chat-based CSR had no information regarding the supposed embargo.]
[Update 8:54pm PST: It turns out that Creative's protocol for verifying your identity is easy to get around--you can simply change the address after you publish a post, and the new, unverified address will be displayed on previous posts.]
In the meantime, here’s the post:The “Newegg” post is no longer relevant, but for posterity’s sake we’ll leave it below:
Newbie
Posts: 1
Registered: 03-30-2008
newegg
Message 1179 of 1,436
Viewed 2,595 times
To Whom it May Concern:
While it is not our place to condemn the decisions of Creative regarding this issue, our customers come first. That being said, it has come to our attention that many of our customers are not happy with the products Creative has released nor the support for those products. To wit, we have processed nearly 5,000 return orders within the past 48 hours. While it is not normally in our best interest to publically comment in a manufacturer’s forum, the overwhelming concensus has left us little choice. As such, effective tommorow morning newegg.com will suspend sales of the sound cards in question, particularly those indicated as “Vista compatible”, pending an investigation into the matter. Those of you whom recently ordered such a card will still recieve your product as indicated in any relevant conversations. While we regret this abrupt decision, it has been deemed neccessary to protect the interest of our consumers. We welcome contact from Creative as soon as is possible so that we may resolve this issue.
Thank you,
Newegg.com
http://www.newegg.com
Finally, here’s the infamous post that started it all, and that is going to lead to a very bad week for Creative, regardless of whether or not Newegg has gotten involved:
Daniel_K:
We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don’t have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.
Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.
Phil O’Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.
Rule of thumb for bad news in the mainstream media: release it Friday so it’s buried over the weekend. Rule of thumb for the web: don’t infuriate thousands of your customers right before you decide to tune out for 48 hours.
“Message to Daniel_K” [Creative Forums] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)
RELATED
Possibly fake Newegg response [Creative Forums]
BoycottCreative.com
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@Kryndis:
That’s it for me too, Kryndis. I’ve always got the hardware from them anyway because it lasts forever and it’s a high quality, but the software, sheesh. I have no words for how bad the software for my Zen Touch is. And yet, the hardware is incredible. That hard drive survived a major magnet attack, the damn magnet jumped a solid foot into the air to catch my player.
One press of the reset button later, and everything, firmware, songs, files, is back in the same shape it was before the magnet attacked.
I really wish the software and service were nearly as great as the hardware itself.
I’ve had absolutely no problem with creative’s drivers for my X-fi on Vista 64.
But it does suck that lots of people are having problems, and it sucks that over a year later Creative still hasn’t fixed the issue.
But I’m pretty sure the bulk of Creative’s issues come from the fact Daniel_K was soliciting donations for his modification of their intellectual property. That’s a big no-no, and I don’t blame Creative for taking action on him for that. If he hadn’t been soliciting donations I don’t know if this would be as big of an issue as it is.
I’ve been following this all weekend. Creative really stepped in it, I agree. But what is all the fuss about the the XFi not working in Vista? Mine seems to be working just fine on my Vista 64 box. I must have missed something somewhere.
Hey consumerist, is it too late to add Creative on the bracket?
I seriously doubt that Newegg would pull something so unprofessional as to post something like that on a vendor’s forum.
Hi customer! We will tell you this works when it doesn’t! Then get pissed when you fix the problem we refuse to!
LOVE US!!!!!!!
dicks. hope he gets very good legal help for this. law is law, but he deserves minimal damage for this infraction.
I operate a computer repair store in NC, I’ve been discouraging my customers from buying Creative products for several years because they think nothing of abandoning a product when a new operating system comes out. It is obviously their marketing approach to orphan cards, and we are supposed to run out and buy new Creative products for the new operating system, rather than expect them to do the right thing and release a new working driver. Over the last 5 years I’ve tossed several hundred dollars worth of Creative webcams, audio, and video cards in the garbage because they don’t support their products. My advice to all is avoid Creative products at all times.
@Woofer00: I stand corrected. Not enough coffee yet. My most sincere apologies to Korea, both North and South. I hope I didn’t create any problems for The State Department.
He should STOP selling the drivers or asking donations.
Period.
He should however charge for the shipping of the NEW FREE drivers over the information superhighway.
Since he is NO LONGER charging for the drivers, he can tell Creative to shove it.
Haven’t brought a product knowingly from them in MORE than 6 years and never will buy another Creative product again.
Creative should stop criticizing those better than themselves.
I have to say, youAREkidding did a fine job referencing Zaphod Beeblebrox.
@Soldier_CLE: I agree.
Although they haven’t been in the headlines much and they wouldn’t take home the trophy, they might make it through the first and second tier at least. Maybe remove a company off the east bracket that we know won’t go anywhere? Like Toyota, or Gamestop?
I wish Aureal had won the soundcard wars back in the day before they were destroyed by Creative. A3D was way better than EAX back then and the cards & drivers were much better.
Darn it! I bought a Creative Soundblaster card on Monday and threw away the packaging. Wish there was some way to turn it back to them. I’m running XP but hope to upgrade once whatever replaces Vista comes along. Wonder if Creative will NOT supply drivers then too.
@thewriteguy:
No, Creative wanted them to cease any and all distribution for violation of IP laws. It wasn’t just seeking donations for his time spent to put the drivers together, in fact he wasn’t seeking to charge anything for anything IP related. Just donations for his time.
Yeah, they did eventually say he could distribute the package for free, so long as he wasn’t profiting from what is (in part) their work. Somewhere about page 80 in that 150+page thread…
Still…I’ve owned countless Creative products (and have a Zen instead of an iPod, a decision I don’t regret at all), and whenever it comes to drivers and software they are god awful. Back when I was in the Vista Beta, Creative drivers were responsible for 90% of the system crashes I experienced, and they still supported almost none of the features of the card. I’ve subsequently built a PC with an Auzen card, as none of the Creative ones with S/PDIF work in Vista.
I’m calling the Newegg post a fake. Do we seriously think that a post on Creative’s forums would lead to 5,000 returns in two days? This is an instance of the echo chamber overestimating their importance.
@Slick36: Mine works too. I think they’re referring to the fact that EAX doesn’t work in Vista.
*thumbs-up*
I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth from Creative ever since they tortured and gutted Aureal (and, then, how many years did they have to get SBLive! type cards working right on VIA chipsets, when VIA was doing things right?). They’ve not proved themselves to have changed since. Each former Creative customer is a <Martha>Good Thing</Martha>.
USB DAC that works on anything from Win98SE on up FTW (not mentioning model or linking, because it’s not quite turn-key).
Many companies don’t give full support on all platforms. However, some, like nVidia, know when to leave things well enough alone. They have lawyer issues, like everybody else, but generally stay out of the way when folks in the community are trying to do just this sort of thing: get something working that doesn’t (modded drivers for vendor mobile cards that don’t get adequate driver support, FI).
Creative buys great technology, but such monopoly is all they’ve got.
I like how they claim it is not proper for him to use their trademark. WTF is a trademark for, if not to identify companies and their products?
@thewriteguy: they are becoming irrelevant to everyone. They became a monopoly on 3D audio DSP for games, yet CPUs keep getting more powerful, and are able to do the work for them. Doom 3 may not have been the greatest game to play, but there was a banshee keening at Creative HQ when it came out. Ironically, Id had to add EAX in after the fact
Creative is pulling an RIAA. The majority of consumers are just fine with onboard audio or an Audigy, so there’s really no broad demand for higher-grade audio unless they manufacture it via planned obsolescence. But while they could be pushing next-gen audio tech, such as the high-def formats that have sat idle for like a decade, they’d rather stick with their outmoded business model and focus on lawyers over developers, litigation over innovation.
I was all ready to be aghast that Creative was stifling somebody who was providing support for something they’re not doing until I read that he’s asking for donations…
Sorry, Creative have a point now, this guy is profiting (even in probably a verly limited way) from Intellectual Property that belongs to Creative.
There’s a petition up now with over 1400 signatures (and getting several more every minute). It demands that Creative release quality drivers and support them, stop mislabeling products, leave independent developers alone (within reason) and provide minimal support for open source development.
Check it out at [www.petitiononline.com]
@Ragman: Creative considers it stealing to make some of their cards work at all. Bizarre, I know.
Where as graphics card companies support their hardware for years, Creative thinks it’s OK to pull support for fairly new hardware, as well as to make claims of “Vista” compatibility for products that aren’t.
Try to download a “legacy” driver for a slightly older soundcard like a Live or an Audigy, even for XP, from Creative’s website. You will find that Creative considers theses cards too old to even allow you to download an XP driver, let alone a Vista driver.
That’s right. They do not even allow downloads for products they made which are a few years old or less.
I like Creative hardware, but I stopped suggesting people buy it years ago. You should not lose complete functionality of a device from misplacing a driver CD.
Attention Creative: Read this thread. People like your products, and hate your support of them. Fix the drivers for the new soundcards, and let us download the drivers for older cards too.
Nvidia and ATI both have easily obtained driver software, both for older and newer cards, and I dare say it has helped their companies sales immensely.
Technicians drive sales. Technicians are also the first to notice a complete lack of support. You cannot hope to change this, so make it work for you by supporting your products.
Believe me, we’ll notice.
@Sifl: You will want to take a look at Asus Xonar an alternative. They even have EAX working via driver.
“the overwhelming concensus has left us little choice“
Anyone else notice that “consensus” is spelled incorrectly in the allegedly-from Newegg e-mail? That makes me question its veracity.
Curiously, I was just this week kicking around buying a sound card for my HTPC. I figured that I might break with half a decade worth of Creative Labs boycotting and buy an X-Fi.
It all started back in the Sound Blaster Live days, when as a long-time creative customer I purchased an SB Live! to use in my AMD KT133 chipset motherboard. Ask any of the folks that were building systems back then know what happens next: random lockups, system instability. You could play around with drivers, which would net you a little better stability, but the ideal solution? Throw out the (very expensive, for the time) SB Live! card and buy a non-Creative replacement. As if by some sort of miracle, the lockups went away.
Years of driver isolation after that kept me estranged. The fact that you couldn’t download a full driver installation package for a brand-new product direct from their site was utterly pathetic.
It appears they are just as paranoid about their drivers now as they were back around 2000. That’s OK, it looks to me like the CMedia-based cards would be a better match for my HTPC anyway.
I’d like to think they will finally learn something from this issue but their pattern so far says otherwise.
I’m speculating on why would Creative decide to do what it did. Of course anything I say here is pure speculation. I have no insight into their decision making process at all.
– The lawyers run the company. The decision was driven purely by intellectual property concerns. Simply, take the C&D letter to daniel_k at face value.
– DRM issues. Maybe the reason for the Vista drivers “failures” are really just “the drivers don’t play sound at rated fidelity when I play my pirated media” and that daniel_k’s drivers do. This reason ties directly to lawyers running the show at Creative.
– Creative does not have the right, or enough software engineering capability to produce functional drivers. This implies that Creative is on the skids and may have to file for bankrupcy.
Again, just me speculating. Any of the above reasons is valid reason NOT to buy Creative anything until the truth comes out and Creative files for Chapter 7.
Too bad it’s fake. Newegg has not suspended sales of Creative Products, nor would corporate make such a decision on a Sunday. Creative products are still all over Newegg’s site and can be ordered. Nor have they processed 5,000 Creative returns in 48 hours. No RMA department can handle that kind of load.
1. Returns are not processed on the weekend.
2. It hadn’t even been 48 hours since the story broke that they were claiming they took back 5,000 products from them.
Newegg would not risk their relationship like this.
@Shevek: “Anyway, is it actually illegal to write a driver or a piece of software for hardware? I’d never given that much thought before, but it seems like an odd position.”
Not that I’m aware of. It’s been done for Linux for over a decade. I don’t think that the VP of Communications checked in with legal before he posted this.
Just imagine if Chevy could sue you for putting a bigger carburetor on an old Corvette, or Ford could sue for you changing your own spark plugs. You’re not allowed to improve an object that you own.
@Inhocmark: “Sorry, Creative have a point now, this guy is profiting (even in probably a verly limited way) from Intellectual Property that belongs to Creative.”
I don’t see how. Creative doesn’t produce the drivers. A third party came along and filled a need. If Creative wanted that business then they’d write the drivers.
The VP of Communications hasn’t cited any legal precedent for his ambiguous claims that the driver author is committing theft of intellectual property. I’m guessing there isn’t any.
I’m a mac user, and so I don’t speak from personal experience, but everyone I know who has used Turtle Beach sound cards has raved about them. Thats the route I would go if looking for an alternative to Creative:
[www.turtlebeach.com]
Huh. I was going to buy a creative card for my new Vista HTPC this week. Nice going Creative. Pull your head out of your collective asses. Had you done your job in the first place and provided the software you promised, you wouldn’t be in this position. Really, we should sue you for… what? False advertisement? Breaking a contract? Too bad I can’t sue for your being a douche.
@lawnmowerdeth: That’s a perfect analogy.
(Sorry if this gets posted twice. As far as I can tell, my previous effort was eaten by the machine elves.)
I’m a mac user, so I don’t speak from personal experience, but everyone I know that has used Turtle Beach sound cards has raved about them. If I were looking for a soundcard, thats the route I would go:
[www.turtlebeach.com]
I’ve been a Creative user for years. Back in the days I used to swear by them. The last retail card I bought was the full gold version of their Live! card. I won’t make that mistake again…
During the early years of WinXP this card was murder to get installed and working properly. Thankfully todays drivers are working fine but I’m not using any of the “fluff” this card came with.
For a while I was looking at the X-Fi cards thinking I could squeeze a couple of framerate increases out of an old system with their Gamer version. No stank you! I won’t be wasting any more money on their unsupported hardware. CREATIVE…Listen.. It’s all in the drivers! What gives!?
Thankfully todays onboard sound cards have gotten very good and quality is besting many other solutions so I will stick with whatever my motherboard gives me. At least I know it will come bundled with drivers I can use!
Bye Creative, now go away please. You’re embarassing yourself.
Creative’s mistake was openly stating their policy. This somehow led thousands of nerds to think that they are somehow different than every other audio card manufacturer. Do you really think any other company would want some dude collecting on modified versions of their drivers?
I’m also confused about some of the responses. It makes sense to me to say you won’t buy Creative anymore but over the weekend there were a bunch of goofballs who posted pics of their already purchased Creative hardware that they had smashed up. That, of course, is dumb. It doesn’t affect Creative’s bottom line at all.
I also wonder about the impact of all this stuff. None of my friends or family read the nerd blogs I read and will never hear about all this excitement – my suspicion is the lost sales from this PR fiasco will be so small that Creative won’t even notice (I’m assuming here that the NewEgg post is fake). Maybe I’m wrong, I dunno.
Thank God Im sticking with XP.
This kind of thing from Creative doesn’t shock me in the slightest.
Almost 10 years ago I jumped on the MP3 player bandwagon WAAAAAYYY early and bought a Creative Nomad 64mb player. At the time, it was getting stellar reviews and was clearly the slickest gadget on the market. It was also $400.
One day I bit the bullet and forked over for this thing and it was AMAZING for it’s time until I migrated to Win2k. All of a sudden the computer doesn’t see the Nomad. This is less than a year after buying it. I call Creative and get told that Win2k handles the serial port differently and that there are no drivers or planned support for Win2K. What was I told to do? Go back to Win98. After that, I never bought another Creative product again because when I said that rolling back my OS or setting up a dual boot was not an option just to sync the EXPENSIVE MP3 player that was less than a year old, I was told this little gem…
“Technology moves quickly sir, what’s new today is old tomorrow and that there was always the option to purchase the Nomad 2 which does offer Win2k support.”
Yeah, nice business pratices you got there.
Personally I believe they should be offering him a job instead of this mess. Anyone who can make a product work when the company itself cannot would, in most views of corporate values, be a very valuable addition to the company. If he is making the product work in ways that are not intended then this would be even further beneficial as they would be able to restrict the content via normal buisness measures rather then resorting to legal threats.
@icky2000: Creative A) knowingly decided not to support Vista properly and B) went after someone who produced a solution. Which other sound card company has done the same? You could claim that all card companies would do B but I’m not convinced about A.
Speedwell. You should not be working in IT . You obviously are blaming microsoft and vista for a 3rd parties problems.
YOu seem like you have a grudge with microsoft . Which means you cannot possibly make non biased informed descisions.
I run vista on my machine here at work with no problems what so ever. Its actually faster and more stable on this machine then XP professional ever was.
Also using your reasoning linux should be worse then vista because it has horrible 3rd party support right?
@lawnmowerdeth: While this is at face a good analogy, you have to take it a step further. Say after adding those improvements, you were able to copy that at will and give them away. Then you collected donations. This is what Daniel_K did.
At any rate, the DMCA allows for reverse engineering for compatibility reasons, which is what he did. Where Daniel got into trouble was allowing support for Dolby Digital (a non-licensed technology for Creative cards) and then collecting donations. By doing those two things, he stepped outside the law. If he nixed those two things, Daniel’s a friggin hero.
Creative should have C&D’d him taking donations and enabling Dolby Digital, not the whole kit-and-kaboodle. Doing so was a misuse of the DMCA and most likely illegal on Creative’s part.
All those reasons, plus it’s absolutely moronic PR. I’ve never been nor will I ever be a Creative customer, anyway.
Nice to see them getting called on the carpet for this driver crap. I started my own personal Creative boycott over a year ago, when my $200 Audigy Platinum stopped working after a CPU/Motherboard upgrade. When I requested support, they said that it was driver incompatibility with the newer hardware, and that I should just go out and buy a newer Audigy Platinum.
They *should* hire the guy, and get some decent drivers out there. Based on all the reading I did on the boards during the troubles I had, though, I’m not holding my breath.
X-fi cards have always had vista drivers. Since back in beta. I don’t see what the problem is. I have an x-fi card and vista x64. I just download them and install with no problems.
I think some people here are forgetting one major part of the story.
Cretive is freely admitting they degraded their older products (I had an Audigy and experienced this first hand) so as to force consumers to buy their newer products.
Last time I checked isn’t it illegal to do that?
I think that’s the clincher there. The guy was adding Dolby support, which could land Creative in some hot water if they haven’t licenced the technology from Dolby labs.
However, I’ve sworn off buying Creative Labs products. The drivers CD for a SB Audigy I had mysteriously would error out and no matter how many PCs I tried it in I could not get it to work. Fuckfaces at Creative wanted $16 to ship me a CD from their facility in OKLAHOMA to my home just 350 miles away. Not only that, the bastards shipped it in a 50 cent padded envelope via regular US Media Mail. Cost Creative a total of $2…SOBs made $14 off me. Every other hardware vendor that I’ve ever dealt with has offered nothing but full featured drivers for download. Creative offers nerfed 2.1 Channel drivers for download.
Creative Labs has themselves confused with a software company. Why in hell would I want their bloated shitty software if I didn’t have one of their soundcards to go with it?
@dj-anakin: I imagine they can sue him for distributing derived works, and probably for using others’ IP (I mean like Dobly’s, not Creative’s) without licensing it (they could try the EULA, too, but I have a hard time believing that wouldn’t be laughed out of court).
Legally, they probably have a decent case, and they are not afraid to throw lawyers around. Morally, they are in debt up to their eyeballs.
@icky2000: Why care if someone has modified versions of your drivers? Oh, let’s see: because they have intentionally disabled features that are in there!
Most audio card manufacturers take reference drivers, slap a neat looking config app in, and their logo…then out the door it goes. All features are there and working. Higher end manufacturers get all available features working in their drivers. Creative has decided to advertise features, and then not enable them.
@MrEvil:
If this is the problem, why is Creative involved at all? The IP belongs to Dolby Labs and it is a third party who is supposedly stealing it. Dolby would be in a position to take legal action but since creative is neither the owner of the IP, nor the one “stealing” it, what does Creative have anything to do with protecting Dolby’s IP?
Courtesy of bash.org, someone wrote a one-act internet play entitled “Creative screwed me like a bitch.” Linked, because the formatting gets severely broken by Consumerist’s parsing thing.
@lemur:
“Creative A) knowingly decided not to support Vista properly and B) went after someone who produced a solution. Which other sound card company has done the same? You could claim that all card companies would do B but I’m not convinced about A.”
We just need to keep on driving in these 2 points. I appreciate that people keep trying to make excuses for Creative’s behavior, as Creative has made good product in the past and might deserve some element of loyalty, doubt and skepticism. But it boils down to these simple facts.
You may have every legal right to be an asshole, but that doesn’t make it good for the consumer.