Screw Sierra and VU Games

[[AK]Nuts]

I played Sierra Games back in the 80's. You would think that after 20 frickin' years in the business they would have this crap down. Tonight when I tried to play Vengeance online, I got the ever popular, "The Product Key you are attempting to use is already in use." Their online forums don't list Vengeance as a product. The online form to e-mail customer support automatically forwards you to the forums. I called them... they are closed. I found an e-mail address... we'll see how long it takes them to fix this. This sucks.

[[AK]Goob]

Heh at least you can get it to run. Still no game for me..... Gonna wipe the pc this weekend and refresh it. If it still don't run I am gonna cry

-Goob

[[AK]Abaddon]

I found this link on Tribalwar.com. They are doing maintenance now, but you might try it tomorrow, Nuts.

http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=330390

[[AK]Nuts]

Well no reply to my e-mail so I called them today. 'Roger' (clearly his phone name as the guy couldn't be anymore Indian if he tried), read of a series of stupid questions, put me on hold for 5 minutes then told me to return the game to the point of sale. Great troubleshooting, eh!

[[AK]Clay]

Hey Nuts, here's a little history of Vivendi for you.

Vivendi was formed by a guy name John Messier, originally from General des Eaux. General Des Eaux is a French untilities specializing in water/wastewater treatment. Messier bought General des Eaux and a few other French utility companies in the 90's. He then used that size to leverage a buyout of my company - USFilter. (More of a sellout really. Messier offered a crapload of cash to our founder - who grabbed and ran. Not that I blame him.).

He then used these resources to buy his dream - telecomunications and media. He bought Sierra, He bought Blizzard, he bought cell phone companys, he bought media librarys, he bought MP3.com, he bought one of the major record labels, he bought Universal studios. With these he formed a company with "two legs" which was Vivendi - the company that does water and waterwater on one leg, and telecom/media on the other. I remember sitting with a banquet hall full of suits in Chicago to hear this clowns self praising BS. On the ride back, we calculated just how much that meeting cost - somewhere around $2-$3 million was what we were later told - for a YEA ME meeting!! I sat next to some guys from Sierra - we looked at each other and wondered... wtf? "Hi, I'm Clay, I do research on a speciality process for treating toxic waste". "Hi, I'm bob, I design linux router systems - or somesuch." I don't think anybody bought into this "two legs". How can someone possibly manage to complete different business like this? I did get a sweet deal on games for a while though. I even got to be one of the beta testers for DiabloII through that divisions VP. Pretty cool - but from a buisiness standpoint, it made absolutly no sense.

One thing that always bugged me. When I was talking to the Vivendi VP, the VP in charge of all the media/telecom stuff, he says people who play these games are big timewasters. And when I asked to be a beta tester, he said I was a time waster. Not what you want to hear from the guy who's supposed to be in charge of this stuff. Excellent choice for VP there.

I remember reading up about Messiers new $12million dollar apartment in NY. That's when it became clear to me this guy hasn't a clue - he wants to be the next Ted Turner. He's not realizing a realistice vision, he just wants to swing with the big boys.

So Messier managed to make a disaster of it all. Every chance he had to make a buisiness decision, he made the wrong one. Before long, people started noticing the money wasn't rolling in afterall. So then it went to scramble mode. He started selling off divisions to keep this sinking ship afloat. Thing is, he had a ton of loser companys too by now. So he could only actually sell the ones that were profitable. He started dumping/consolidating and so forth to raise the cash he needed. But the more he sold, the worse was what he had left. Finally he sold off USFilter to someone else. We're ecstatic - about time we got to leave that sinking ship. But he split off a part of USFilter and kept it. Parts that frankly, after having worked with them - buh bye - don't forget to write.

In the meantime, his management of Blizzard and Sierra has obviously been somewhere around disaster on the quality management level. Blizzard hasn't turned out a good groundbreaking game since the orginal Diablo 1 and Warcraft II days. Sierra, well, you see what he's done to them.

Last I heard, Messier is wanted by the French authorities for financial irregulaties.

Viva la France.

(whew, thank God I hit Ctrl-C before trying to post this the first time)

[Katanas Blade]

So.. anyone read much about the new Vampire: The Masquerade game?

It's looking mighty tasty, if Vivendi would let Valve release HL2 already so I can get my hands on V:TM..

Friggen Vivendi and their anti-technological stance on steam's usage.

[[AK]Squidly]

One look at the vampire schoolgirl was all it took. I'm in.