Creative says custom drivers are "stealing"

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11297

Short of it, Creative is threatening a custom driver writer for creating drivers that enable Audigy sound card features in Vista.

Best thing out of all of this, is that I'm going to grab his custom drivers and use them, because Creative's Vista support is absolute **** for my Audigy 2 ZS.

This also cements it, I'll probably go with on-board sound or something from Asus or some other company for my next build this summer.

Goodbye Creative, your hardware is nice but your software is crap.

I'm surprised Creative is still in the buisness of sound cards. I can't imagine there is a huge market for them.

Hopefully they loose ample customers over this choice. I can't believe the thought this would fly.

It's their own darn fault for crippling older cards to force people to upgrade.

Boo on Creative... glad I caught this, I was actually thinking of buying a sound card from them... not anymore!

Sometimes, it makes me think how some companies run...
if their driver is ****, obviously there will be someone else to help "take over" that job.

Creative saying no to custom driver is like shooting themselves in the knee.

Wow, I doubt I'll buy another Creative soundcard again.

Even more encouraging are the post on this page
Link

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

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.] In the meantime, here's the post:

That sounds pretty dumb... I didn't read the article but maybe they need to take action or they may run into problems if they do want to go after someone for intellectual property issues in the future and they had a history of not doing it in the past.. (like, with trademark issues, companies need to be shown that they will actively sue companies that infringe on trademark abuses)

What newegg and big **resellers* need to do is step up to defend the little guys. Daniel_K is doing Creative a favour, and Creative is completely banning him (in essence) from doing anything to help. Dumb move by Creative, and they'll feel the effects of even faster dwindling sales soon.

This has been posted on other forums too.
Apparently, they were okay with him writing drivers. They took action when he posted a link that allowed people, who were downloading his drivers, to give him a donation (towards download bandwidth). That's where the "stealing" perspective came in. i.e. someone was 'making money' from users who were buying a Creative product.
As long as he can prove that the money is for bandwidth he'll be fine. Still, a pretty crappy move on Creative's part.

Originally Posted by fitbrit

This has been posted on other forums too.
Apparently, they were okay with him writing drivers. They took action when he posted a link that allowed people, who were downloading his drivers, to give him a donation (towards download bandwidth). That's where the "stealing" perspective came in. i.e. someone was 'making money' from users who were buying a Creative product.
As long as he can prove that the money is for bandwidth he'll be fine. Still, a pretty crappy move on Creative's part.

Yeah, that's their excuse. I'd support Creative if Daniel_K was making people pay for his drivers, but asking for donations shouldn't be a issue. Creative just wanted to find a way to keep their drivers crippled for the older sound cards so people would buy new hardware for Vista machines.

Originally Posted by Evil Baby

Yeah, that's their excuse. I'd support Creative if Daniel_K was making people pay for his drivers, but asking for donations shouldn't be a issue. Creative just wanted to find a way to keep their drivers crippled for the older sound cards so people would buy new hardware for Vista machines.

+1 to that... donations are okay, considering the guy did spend time to make the custom driver.

Daniel_K is probably getting more donations today then ever. I'd never heard of him until today, but I'll be sending him some money and using his drivers. I won't buy another Creative product, but I'll keep using my Audigy 2.

Given the backlash though, I'll bet that Creative backs down pretty quickly.

If these drivers are released using 'forced donation$' then I side with creative. You shouldn't make money off of it. If its pay what you can or nothing and he still lets people use it, I would support him. Why doesn't he work out a deal with creative? Or work for them?

I guess hardware makers want you to buy the latest and greatest instead of writing new drivers. Microsoft must understand that this is really slowing the migration to vista. People don't want to buy all new hardware for a software upgrade.

Originally Posted by ephemera

If these drivers are released using 'forced donation$' then I side with creative. You shouldn't make money off of it. If its pay what you can or nothing and he still lets people use it, I would support him. Why doesn't he work out a deal with creative? Or work for them?

I guess hardware makers want you to buy the latest and greatest instead of writing new drivers. Microsoft must understand that this is really slowing the migration to vista. People don't want to buy all new hardware for a software upgrade.

If only MS was lucky enought that it was just a hardware issue. Many users just went out and bought new machines for Vista.

Lots of software companies have done the same thing, refusing to make their program compatible with Vista. That is a huge issue with MS

This is the way not-so-Creative Labs has been running for years!

Evil, dirty buggers. Anyone remember when they bought Aureal A3D just to dismantle them and remove the competitor everyone preferred...?