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
(Photo: Young Frankenstein)
More From Consumerist
-
Adobe’s Creative Suite: Now Only For Rent, Not For Sale
-
Kohl’s Staff Is Helpless When Gift Card System Goes Down
-
Gay Lowe’s Customer Accuses Employees Of Making Slurs, Threats Of Violence
-
Microsoft Apologizes For Loudmouthed Creative Director’s Tweets
-
Should Netflix Crack Down On Account-Sharing Freeloaders?
@SuperJdynamite: I know what you’re saying here, but I’m of the understanding that he isn’t building these drivers from scratch and if he is, then by all means I apologize.
If he isn’t then he’s taking somebody elses property without permission, adding to it and then attempting to gain monetary value from modifying Creative’s product just doesn’t sit right with me.
It’s beyond argument that Creative are doing their business a great disservice by not keeping in use products updated, but that doesn’t give somebody the right to make a profit.
@Inhocmark:
“Attempting to gain monetary value?”
He’s received about $50 in donations. $50.
@í•œêµì–´/ì¡°ì„ ë§: That seems ridiculous to me. It’s like not being allowed to say “I have an XYZ brand TV at home and an ABC brand DVD player.” If it’s being used to factually refer to the widget an app works with, what’s the problem?
And here I thought reverse engineering was legal, and if it’s not allowed to make our own drivers for things, then why do Sound Blaster cards work in Linux? (I assume they do, anyway)
Actually gentleman you need to realize that the legal system has already had several cases tried on issues similiar to this one. Consumers who purchase hardware that the manufacturer no longer supports or is not fully supporting have the right to make their own changes to make it compatible if they so choose as the hardware itself belonds to the consumer.
So in Daniel_K case (which I actually have been a part of since the begining and over 6 months long and building) he built drivers for sound cards that Creative refused to release properly working drivers for and for some they even posted news claiming they will not write drivers to get them to work under Vista.
With that statement alone Creative Labs has release any EULA they have on any of their customers who own that hardware as they are now within their legal rights to do anything within their means to get the hardware which they purchased legally to work.
Creative is stretching their hand out here, I think their intent was to scare Daniel_K away as his drivers where catching mainstream underground Internet communities since they where the best drivers ever written for X-Fi. They never ever imagined that it would blow up into this spectacle.
I’ve been using an XFi card since last year with a vista system I built. Working drivers have always been available from Creative for that card. Although many of the applications that shipped with the card for XP were initially not available for Vista (and some still aren’t).
But I haven’t had any complaints; my card has always worked fine. I’ve been to the Creative forums and have been reading some of the complaints for exactly one year now. There seems to be quite a bit of dissatisfaction there, but I still think the Newegg post is a fake.
I can see both sides of this but in my opinion Creative could have prevented this problem by properly supporting their products in the first place as would have been the right thing to do. Whether or not one agrees with the modification of their drivers to make working ones or if one agrees with asking for donations for the work that Creative failed to do probably in order to force the purchase of newer cards, this would not have been possible had Creative not made the decision to screw its customers.
Personally I agree with asking for donations for the work that Creative was obviously unwilling to do and believe that the only possible motive Creative could have for taking this line is to force people to upgrade their Creative hardware along with their OS so that they can cash in on Vista switchers as well. These free drivers (asking for donations is not charging) would go a long way towards thwarting any such plans by Creative and I can understand why they would try to block if this is the case.
Honestly, I expected much more from a company like Creative and am probably never purchasing one of their products again if this is how they wish to treat their community.
I just recently purchased a Creative sound card ([www.futureshop.ca]) and guess what! It works perfectly fine. I don’t know where these people run into trouble with theirs, since mine has worked since day 1 (I bought it about 1.5 weeks ago, and yes, I use Vista).
So what’s all this fuss about then, if they don’t work yet they do?
@Fry: The issue is missing features claimed on the box and their advertising, such as Dolby Digital (DD) and DTS. These features work in XP. Creative claimed they couldn’t be made to work in Vista.
Using 2 files from Dell drivers, Daniel_K enabled these two features in Vista.
The drivers are also erratic, have cause instability, and there are many users that deal with pops and clicks, which Creative tried to blame on nForce4 chipsets for the PCI bus issues, much like they did Via many years ago with their old SoundBlaster lines, despite the fact that most of us aren’t using nVidia chipsets.
@Woofer00: Geographic confusion aside (hey, they all rook arike)*, there does seem to be a tendency with Asian tech companies to miss the forest for the trees, i.e. protecting proprietary intellectual property beyond reason, feature creep, and spec obsession (Nintendo being the obvious exception). Not that American companies are any better, but Asian companies have a way of ruining good products with crap corporate culture (as opposed to say making bad products worse).
*I’m Asian. I’m allowed to do that.
I haven’t bought a CREATIVE (how ironic) product since they put the screws to ID software a few years ago. They are overpriced and underperforming (check the benchmarks on CPU utilization).
–> The Daniel_K drivers in question are for THE AUDIGY SOUNDCARDS. <–
Creative has working X-FI drivers for vista x32 and x64 and I have been very happy with them so far
So let me get this straight. Creative taking reasonable action against someone illegally and blatantly profiting off Creative IP has brought Creative’s shitty driver support to everyone’s attention and people are now pissed? Is that an accurate summation of what’s happened here?
Creative isn’t doing so well anyway:
[us.creative.com]
It’s time for a Jalopnik-style deathwatch series on the Consumerist
First up Creative. Next… best buy?
I’ve always hated Creative, especially since they bought E-Mu/Ensoniq and basically gutted these two legendary instrument companies. Hey Creative! I want my ASRs and Fizmos back!
Some alternatives to Creative:
[www.bgears.com]
[www.turtlebeach.com]
[www.newegg.com]
[www.razerzone.com]
[www.auzentech.com]
[www.m-audio.com]
[www.m-audio.com]
[www.diamondmm.com]
[www.pricewatch.com]
The last link will find Creative cards as well, but you can find cards in all shapes, sizes, slots, and manufacturers for sale there.
This is my experience with Creative Labs:
[www.sibylleandthomas.info]
I used to work on the same block, in Milpitas back when they were small. I don’t think they ever had talented people writing drivers. Some companies have great teams, like nVidia, some don’t. Creative and Lexmark are two of them.
@Claystil: That’s kinda like saying that a parent were purposely trying to look at their kids naked, when in fact they were just trying to change the diaper.
The guy wasn’t blatantly looking to profit, since indeed it were donations optional. It’s not as if people were forced to donate, and it is both arbitrary and capricious for ANYONE to tell people who they can or can’t donate to, and the same to tell someone that they can or cannot accept donations.
It is also UNREASONABLE for a company to advertise a product’s feature and not have it work as advertised. It is reasonable for the consumer to have disdain and distrust for a company that does not sell the product’s features as advertised, and it is UNREASONABLE for a company to cripple an otherwise capable product.
For these reasons and others, it is indeed REASONABLE for consumers to view Creative unfavorably, and furthermore REASONABLE for consumers to decide to not buy their products if they so choose.
@Big Flicker: Word. Hire him and fire your current programmers.
@thejynxed: Last I heard, Auzentech was using Creative chipsets in it’s cards, so I’d say avoid them as well.
@flameboy:
They do? Since when?
I’m still getting popping and hiss, and for some reason I don’t have Dolby Digital or DTS with their drivers.
@Soldier_CLE: I mean, it seems like he was asking for donations rather than pay simply to cover his ass. This strategy is not uncommon.
To the rest of you post, absolutely, it would be unreasonable to claim otherwise. I suppose my summation was accurate.
I will explain to anyone willing to dig through the comments exactly what creative did,
I have the original X-fi Card, that was included with my xps 600, Since i booted vista 32 bit on my XPS 600, Random, EXTREMELY LOUD Static will play through my speakers with absolutely no relation to anything i am doing, I tried driver after driver and nothing. So i called dell, They sent me a new card, exact same thing happened,
Baffled, i tried more drivers, (all from creatives site) to no avail. This was getting VERY ANNOYING, i have surround sound so the Static is amplified 10x and easily could have blown my speakers, I (concerned for my speakers) seriously considered going out and buying another card, (much newer but close to 0 increase in capability!). I then realized that i could just Remove the card, and hook my surround sound up to the integrated audio controller, I did, And guess what? no static at all..
Its been close to a year since vista and much more than that since Vista Beta, Its just so ridiculously obvious, (especially considering that this ONE GUY fixed EVERY DRIVER in much less time than creative has had to fix them without even a promise of being paid) That creative DOESNT WANT ITS OLD CARDS TO BE VISTA COMPATIBLE! Because then we all wouldnt go out and buy new cards because we are tired of hearing static/no sound at all/ or horrible sound from our computers!
I emailed them Expressing my utter outrage, And i am currently pondering a creative way to destroy my X-FI card on You-tube.
Any Suggestions?
@Anticitizen: That is true, but they have working drivers, unlike Creative. They just license the chips, and personally, I think they make a superior sounding product.
For the record, I use a Turtle Beach Riviera Wave. Suits my purposes just fine, as my computer sits in a small room. I get 5.1 surround sound, etc. Works a treat.
Forget destroying it, sell it to someone who uses XP still and get yourself a better card using the proceeds of the sale.
I stopped using Creative crap years ago. I have been using Turtle Beach sound cards and have been happier, much happier. I used to have driver issues all the time with creative cards but with Turtle Beach, none. Before I was using Turtle Beach and XP, I was using A3D cards.
He reverse engineered Creatives drivers to create his. I think it would be a lot different if he just coded his own.
Ah, you gotta love the Streisand effect! I would’ve never heard of this since I’m not a Windows user (die-hard Linux user since 1994), however given a choice I will probably avoid Creative Labs’ products due to their poor treatment of a fellow developer.
I did own a Creative Labs Sound Blaster a long time ago and as I recall their drivers always did suck.
Cheers
@tinycorkscrew: $50 is still $50 and he’s still soliciting donations for something that’s ultimately not his to sell.
I understand the benefit of what the creator is doing here…I had an old unsupported Voodoo GFX card way back when that was supported for a long time on the hard work that others did to keep tweaking the card to keep it running. Beyond that, I’ve seen modders add their own value to games and volunteers release unsportted patches for games that publishers will no longer work on, even with game crippling issues.
But none of those folks ever tried to ask for money.
That’s the only thing about this that bothers me about this. It’s not about how much money he has made, it’s the principal of charging for something that doesn’t entirely belong to you.
Add me to the ‘never buying anything creative ever again’ list.
@Cyfun:
If you buy anything with Fatal-one-ty’s name on it you deserve every problem you get.
Consider me one of the 10% who no longer uses Creative cards. Not that I had any luck with them in the past to compel me to overlook this issue.
I’ve been looking for this for days:
“Not entirely. You pay for updates to your operating system, you pay for updates to application software. It wouldn’t be all that unusual to levy charges for major updates to driver software at some point. Don’t anyone freak out now, I’m just thinking out loud. I don’t know of any plans to start charging for driver updates. — Harvey Fong Technical Marketing Specialist Audio Products Creative Labs Inc.”
March 27, 2001
@FLConsumer: But they haven’t been threatened with lawsuits or received nastygrams. They just don’t get support.
If they had two neurons to rub togethey they would just hire the guy (Daniel_k I mean).
UnCreative is selling something, falsely claiming it does what it cannot do, and that is not “stealing” in their eyes? While a customer making their product work is “stealing”?
Those dumb fucks are too stupid to realize Daniel_K is doing them a BIG favour.
Just imagine Ford trying to make it illegal for people to modify the cars they buy, or running the cars on fuel other than commercial gasoline. They would be in the same financial mess as GM.
Creative has backed down….
From their announcement:
“We have read the strong feedback about Creative’s forum post regarding driver development by daniel_k and other outside parties.
Creative’s message tried to address our concern about the improper distribution of certain software, which is the property of other companies. However, we did not make it as clear as we would have liked that we do support driver development by independent third parties.
The huge task of developing driver updates to accommodate the many changes in the Vista operating system and the extensive testing required, including the lengthy Vista certification requirements for audio, makes it very difficult for Creative to develop updates for all past products.
Outside developers have been very helpful to Creative and our customers by developing updates for many of our Sound Blaster products, and we do support and appreciate these efforts. This however does not extend to the unauthorized distribution of other companies’ property.
We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers.”
@Ausoleil:
That’s not even remotely close to “backing down.”
Obviously, it wasn’t a “huge task” to develop updated drivers, since it took a single person a minor amount of time to fix them.
Obviously they weren’t “accomodat(ing) the many changes in the Vista operating system,” since they spent *additional* time *removing* features that *workd perfectly well* in Vista.
Creative’s driver development team is an icon… of why Vista isn’t working properly. Lazy software developers and companies who are seeking purely to profit from the ignorance of their customers.
If Creative spent more time *FIXING* the drivers instead of spending time *REMOVING FEATURES* from the drivers, the X-Fi, Audigy, and Live Vista drivers would be flawless, and they would still have a customer base.
Creative’s drivers are crap and their business plan is crap. They need to focus on putting out good drivers rather than suing people for trying to make something work. I am thankful everyday for integrated sound, because I don’t have to install crap-ola Creative drivers.
Reverse engineering is not illegal – just ask the original Compaq development team. The problem is, you need at least two engineers who don’t know each other to reverse-engineer something…
creative: jerks.
Creative sold me a soundcard which worked fine in Vista. Then they advised me to download the new drivers. Then it stopped working and they refuse to communicate, telling me that since the warranty period is up, they will not communicate unless I give them $13. When I tried that, they told me that the features I had are no longer available. They have no live support and cannot be reached by phone. These people ruined a sound card that DID work and now refuse to communicate honestly. I will never go near their products again. They are clearly dishonest. Their communication policies alone are proof of that.