Loading ...The downfall of Creative Labs
It seems this week is not going to be a good one for Creative Labs. After a forum moderator has indirectly admitted that Creative Labs’ soundcard drivers are crippled on the Windows Vista operating system, thousands of people have decided to boycott Creative Labs products, including online shops.
Moderator threatening community modder
It started with a moderator (”Phil O’Shaughnessy” aka “Dale-CL”) posting a threat to a community modder (”Daniel_K”) who was very active on the Creative Labs Forum activating additional sound features and fixing many bugs which lead to compatibility with older products for example.
Daniel_K’s driver improvements were tolerated for long, but when he activated features that were not supposed to be available on Windows Vista with older soundcards, the Creative Labs management went crazy. The moderator’s message (who is talking for the Creative Labs management) to the community modder was:
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.
Somewhere in the middle of his post you can read:
“… are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. …”
So, basically what he is saying is that Creative Labs intentionally crippled the drivers so that some features would not work on Windows Vista. Creative Labs never wanted these features to work. A sad message for everybody who has been waiting for drivers.
The drivers
The drivers have been removed first, but as the crowd got angry they have put the links back online as it seems.
If you are interested in downloading the drivers (they are Windows Vista drivers for the Creative Labs Audigy series), they can be found on The Pirate Bay - Creative.Soundblaster.Audigy.Series.Vista.Drivers[by.daniel_k].
Creative underestimated the internet
After the post on late Friday, this news have made their way to digg.com very quickly - “Creative threatens community modder”. It reached 4000 diggs over the weekend. Many pissed off customers went to the Creative Labs forum and started spamming/flaming in the forum.
The actual thread of the Creative Labs forum, Message to Daniel_K, already reached over 1500 messages of customers saying they will never ever buy a Creative Labs product anymore.
The message has spread like wildfire. Numerous news pages and forums are reporting. Here a list of a few reports:
- Gizmodo: Creative Present Cease And Desist Note To Developer Hero
- Slashdot: Creative Goes After Driver Modder
- The Inquirer: Creative Driver Debacle Rumbles On
- Wired: Creative: Fixing Our Crippled Sound Card Drivers Is “Stealing our Goods”
- The Consumerist: Creative Sparks Customer Revolt When It Tries To Silence Third-Party Programmer
- CNET: Creative pisses more people off, like… HORDES!
- engadged: Creative halts unauthorized distribution of homegrown Vista drivers
- Ubuntu Forums: Creative Threatens Community Modder
- neowin: Creative Goes After Community Modder
- Boycottcreative: An information hub for the creative crisis
Creative Labs coders getting angry
The Creative Labs driver programmers don’t seem to have a clue about PR at all. After the reaction of the community they showed a message upon downloading the SoundBlaster drivers that if they wanted better drivers they should have bought the 300$ version of the soundcard instead.
Ok, I see a lot of negativity here. Please lets cut the bad talk. We try our best to get working drivers and sure we might not be the best coders but god knows you’re really only paying for the low end cards anyway, if people want the professional stuff they would be getting the true pro stuff, its a get what you pay for thing, so don’t complain so much, we’ll get the drivers working eventually.
Dale-CL’s official response is:
My guess is someone had a bad day at the office. I passed along the feedback to the appropriate management.
Dale
You can see the official response by Dale-CL on the Creative labs forum here:
X-Fi alternatives
If you were about to buy a Creative Labs X-Fi soundcard but changed your mind, a good list of alternatives:
- bgears b-Enspirer
- Turtle Beach Riviera
- Razer Barracuda AC-1
- Asus Xonar DX
- *hot* Asus Xonar D2X (full EAX support through emulation!)
They compete very well with the X-Fi. Especially the last one. I believed the X-Fi was an hype anyway, see my article “X-Fi: Hype or innovation?“. Many of the features used in the X-Fi soundcard were useless or not supported by software.
Creative Labs
It looks like their company ain’t doing so well either. The Creative Labs stock is worth 4.50$ and continuously falling. The peak was 36$ between 1999/2000. For more information, see CREAF - Creative Technology Ltd.
They had to sell their headquarter lately for a few hundred million dollars to make a positive income.
And their CEO and chairman, Sim Wong Hoo seems to be careless about all the changes.
*UPDATE* Monday, 31st March 2008: Creative Labs is having a record low of 4.30$ per share at the end of this day.
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