A Series of Tubes

Being a Myst fan, I obviously hate Ubisoft. For those who don’t know or understand why, it’s becuase they were the publishers Cyan Worlds was working for for a long time. They own the rights to Myst III, IV, and have the licences for V. They were the ones who originally published Uru Live, and pulled it’s funding when not enough people signed up for it.

They’re the ones who are responsible for what happened to Cyan Worlds in September of last year.

They have manufactured an anti-piracy program which has the ability to shut down your computer if it suspects piracy. And that means if you have the disc in one drive and are burning another disc in another drive, it will shut down your computer, potentially doing lots of damage.

This is the huge capitalist pig of a game publisher.

And on to today’s topic, their support. The support form I filled out to get help with installing Myst V on my mac (read the next post for info on that) is pretty good. They have a platform selector (with every platform they publish games on, which is virtually every one), and then a game selector, then a selector for the type of problem. I filled this out neatly, and proceeded to tell them my story and ask for help. I must have mentioned the fact that I’m trying to use their stupid patcher to get it to install on my INTEL BASED MAC at least 4 times.

I just now received a reply from them (very prompt, congrats), which was somewhat confusing. Here’s a sample.

– Updating your video drivers:

Please visit your sound, video, and 3D card manufacturer’s websites for the most recently available drivers for the components in your system.
Major video chipset manufacturers web sites:

http://www.nvidia.com – GeForce/TNT/Riva/Vanta/Etc models
http://www.ati.com – Radeon/Rage Pro/Rage 128 Pro/Etc models
http://www.3dfx.com – All Voodoo model cards
http://www.s3graphics.com – All Savage model cards
http://www.matrox.com – G200/G400 models

Once you have downloaded and installed these drivers according to the manufacturer’s suggestions then follow the next step.

– Updating your Directx:
Download and install DirectX from http://www.microsoft.com/directx. For more help with this, please search the Ubi Soft Database for how to update drivers.

– Please check to see if there is a patch available for your game at http://support.ubi.com/patches.php

This is ridiculous, because my software updater automagically updates my drivers (all of them). That’s a link to www.MICROSOFT.com, the guys who make WINDOWS?! Oh wait, theres a patch available! Oh that’s right, THE PATCH IS WHAT I’M COMPLAINING ABOUT. Another sample:

– Try running the game from the executable
Instead of starting the game from the start menu or the Autorun menu, try running the game from the executable file in the game’s installation directory.

– Close all programs running in the background
To do this in XP:
Go to the Start menu, and choose Run. Delete anything on the Open line that you’ll find there, and type in the work MSCONFIG. Click on OK, and that will bring up a program called the System Configuration Utility.

Look down the list of startup items (not the tab labeled Startup), and choose Selective Startup (if it is not already selected). If you don’t see this, make sure you’ve clicked on General, near the top of the window. Once you’ve chosen Selective Startup, uncheck ‘Load Startup Items’, and leave ‘Process System.INI file’ and ‘Process Win.INI file’ checked. Once you’re done here, click OK, and let it reboot your computer.

Look at that. Last time I checked, Mac OS X does not have an Autorun menu. Last time I checked, there is no Start Menu or an option called Run to choose. Last time I checked, Process System.INI and Process Win.INI didn’t exist on my computer, and last time I checked I WAS RUNNING OS X 10.4.7, NOT WINDOWS XP, YOU STUPID MORONS!

I read the e-mail carefully, and not once does it mention Mac OS X.