Creative Rallies Against Custom Driver Creator, Reverses Decision (Updated)

This decision has been reversed. Some random forum moderator over at Creative has responded to all the negative publicity with an absolutely humiliating admission to how incompetent the entire company is, and letting Daniel_K know that he can still create the driver packages, as long as he doesn't profit from their IP.

All details of what he did - pretty interesting:

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi.html

i totally agree with the creative bashing as i too have had a horrible time with their drivers and shitty support. is there any chance the shack will try to interview someone from creative and ask them in some manner "do you assholes plan on doing anything supportive for your consumers, or are you going to let yourselves get fucked?" i'd honestly like to know about that, although you'll probably have to rephrase the question.

You know, the internet just proves that you can't win. Do nothing people hate you, try and protect your products and people hate you, make a mistake and then admit it and people hate you. It's like the people that still want blood over the RROD even though they extended the warranty to 3 years.

DISCLAIMER: The contents of this post in NO WAY should reflect upon my employer.
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Back when I was working on sound for a particular game, I was using Creative Labs cards for development purposes. This was back on Windows XP, and it was one of the first gen Audigy 2's or something IIRC.

The driver support was embarrassingly horrible and the installer had issues properly installing the right files. We had a person we were working with remotely, who had a dual core machine, and the particular card we were using did not support SMP, and would actually lock up the system. Long story short, we had to purchase and install a lesser Creative card that actually played nice with SMP.

Uninstalling the drivers, in many cases, would hose a system, forcing a complete OS reinstall. This happened to me on two occasions during the development of a game. There's nothing better, let me tell you, than having to be down for an entire day, prior to a milestone, because a hardware vendor could not get it's act together to write competent drivers.

That was over 5 years ago.

When Vista was first released, I could not use any of the old cards that worked under XP. That was enough of a glimpse of things to come to turn me off yet again.

As a sound designer, there is nothing more soul crushing than trying to do your job to the best of your abilities, only to be kneecapped by shoddy drivers, and bad attitudes, all around, from the manufacturer.

Since then, and you can feel free to laugh if you want, I've been quite happy with Realtek on-board stuff (sure they have some minor issues from time-to-time, but no-where NEAR the problems I have experienced in the past with Creative hardware)

For anything requiring more serious work, I drive the audio out of Digidesign or MOTU hardware.

This latest brouhaha with Daniel_K on the forums just further solidifies my view that Creative has learned nothing from it's past, and has actually become MORE EVIL now. Yes, I can see their point about IP issues, but the fact remains is that someone is doing a job that Creative either can't or won't undertake itself.

Creative now reversing their decision is simply back-pedaling and damage control that is, IMO, far too late.

O'Shaughnessy concluded: "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."

And we, as the people actually having that gimped hardware in our possession, have every right to make the fucking thing work.

Also, its our right to call you a bunch of dickmouths.

I'm happy to report that Creative pissed me off years ago with crappy support. (and buying my former favorite soundcard maker and shutting them down!) Last card I ever bought from them was the AWE64. Creative has sucked for a long time.

Wow, 2000 comments and counting over at the original thread; most of them have registered just to complain about this incident too.

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332

Has anybody actually used these drivers? I was getting horribly audio lag in Vista 64 with an X-Fi Platinum and had to revert back to onboard sound.

What really sucks is the card worked GREAT in XP but I'm in love with Vista.

I really hope this spirals out of control for creative. Bunch of assholes.

if they had any brains they'd allow it for all their cards. sure it might cost them a little more, but it's great pr.
then they should fire their current driver team and create a new one led by daniel_k

and since everyone's always bitching about how horrible onboard sound it, why the hell don't they make onboard sound? i'd definetly be tempted to pay $20 more for a mobo that had great sound and drivers.

I've owned Creative sound cards for the past few years. While the drivers are absolute crap, the sound quality is a lot better than what I'd get out of onboard sound, not to mention hiss, crack, pop, and buzz free.

Lately, though, Creative seems determined to remind me that there's plenty of other sound card companies out there.

A company not filled with fuckwits would have given him a job.

Damage done Creative. You can't just take back asshole moves, you have to actually stop being assholes.

It's too late Creative. You fucksticks just cost yourselves alot of customers. You should have hired the guy

It's like they took a gun and shot themselves right in the temple, just for spite. Utterly clueless and beyond even understanding why people would be mad about this.

I've never had the need for a sound card because I've always had on-board surround. But then, I never paid much attention to sound quality because I could never afford nice speakers anyway.

A nice sound card with crappy speakers is like putting the engine of a Porche in the body of a Hyundai. Dang, my analogies suck, can someone come up with one that works?

DIE creative DIE

I would really like a story on what other sound card alternatives are out there. I have always had trouble with Creative drivers but how do I know I am going to a better or worse soundcard.
Hell, between Windows and Creative I never could get 5.1 surround sound to work until last week when I installed Vista. Least Vista did one real good thing for me.