Were you ever forced to create an online account at a game publisher portal site, such as EA.com, or Ubisoft.com?  That is a stupid question... of course you were!

These sites are used to track all kinds of gamer information and interaction in order to eventually sell you stupid bullshit you don't need, or to at least sell your personal information to 3rd parties, etc.  In return, gamers usually get access to certain game features, or maybe an additional free map or weapon. 

Most gamers ignore these portal sites if possible, however the problem is they are getting harder and harder to avoid.  In some cases, you are forced to create accounts in order to take advantage of game features that are pictured right on the box, and/or used in advertising for the game.  This is a sneaky practice that is becoming increasingly prevalent among the major game publishers.

This isn't by accident, either.  Developers and publishers are intentionally linking game features to portal websites and external accounts so they can grab gamers by the balls and squeeze every last drop out of them.

Two recent examples are the games Skate. by EA, and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 by Ubisoft.  To take advantage of certain features in these games, you have to create accounts at their respective portal sites.  How complex this process is ranges from minor annoyance (in the case of Ubisoft), to downright hell (in the case of EA), but what is common to either of these is that once you have an account created, their shitty websites have so many bugs it makes it nearly impossible to accomplish anything worthwhile.

Let's take a look at Skate first.  In order for you to be able to view uploaded videos from the game (which I admit is a cool feature), you must first link your Xbox Live gamertag to an account that you create at EA.com.  Sounds simple enough, right?  This took me over 3 days to do.  Why?  Mostly because there were so many errors on EA's Skate portal webpages, that almost all of the account pages would not load.  When I did get them to load properly (I used both IE and Firefox, mind you), there was something drastically wrong with my online session, because it couldn't remember that I was logged in.  Ever.  After a few days of this, by chance it happened to link my gamertag to my EA account properly, and I could actually start using the site.

However, the curse of the expiring session persisted!  For every page that required some kind of personalized information, whether it was just displaying my gamertag, or trying to find my uploaded videos, I had to log in to the site, OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.  And then there were the rendering bugs...  Whether any thumbnails displayed was a complete crapshoot, as were any search results.  Sometimes the video search worked, sometimes it didn't.

To be fair, I waited a few months to see if they cleaned up the portal website code at all, and I gave it another run.

This time around things were a bit better.  Once I logged in, I had to select my region no less than 2 times, but it finally learned it.  You can't load any pages without JavaScript errors being silently reported, but at least the pages seem to load.  The site also seems a bit speedier, but that's probably because nobody is using it anymore.  Some of the most recent videos are from last year.  Ahh, but let's test some actual features...

Rather than automatically importing your friends list from Xbox Live (isn't that one of the points of linking your gamertag?), you are forced to manually find and add friends one by one, utilizing the portal website.  To my surprise, I had a friend request waiting for me.  I gladly accepted, and this person was added to my short list of "portal friends", however the friend request never went away.  I can click "accept" over and over and over.  It's awesome. 

The search feature is still hit and miss.  I couldn't find any of my videos, despite the fact that they have titles, and once you do get some results back and attempt to view them, you can't click the back button anymore because they expire the search results immediately.  Brilliant.

For shits (but not giggles), you can try to view one of my badass Skate videos at the link below.  It will most likely make you select a language, and once you do, it won't take you to my video.  Badass EA, way to test that code.  So thus, after you select a language, come back and click this link again to get to the video:

http://skate.share.ea.com/profiles/23039/posts/273314.aspx

Mess around with the site, especially if you don't already have an account.  I guarantee you will find bugs within your first 10 clicks.

All in all, I think my favorite bug is that I must "Select A Default Persona" almost every time I log into the site.  What's yours?

Enough about EA, let's move on to Ubisoft.  This experience was the far less excruciating one, but I'd hardly call it pleasurable.  I heard that you can download a free map (The Streets) in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 right from inside the game.  I proceeded to do this, only to be told that I must create a Ubisoft online account first.  Luckily, they let you do this right inside the game as well.  It doesn't use your Xbox Live gamertag, so you are forced to create and remember a new login name.  It verifies your email and birth date automatically, so that made text entry a bit easier.  Once I had completed all these steps, I was treated to a free download of The Streets, so the extra hassle paid off... Or so I thought.

The next day, Ubisoft launched a bunch of promotions surrounding RB6V2, and all that is required for you to participate is to log in to the portal website using your new Ubisoft login that you created in-game.  No such luck for me.  My username and password doesn't work.  My email address and password don't work either (you supposedly can use either combination to log in).  Odd.  I figured I must have mistyped my password (twice) inside the game, so I was happy to see a "forgot your password" link right next to the login box.  I clicked this link, and all I had to do was input my email address, along with my birth date, and they would send me an email with new password instructions.  I happily tried it, and got this:

"No account was found matching those entries. No email will been sent."

"For security reasons, we don't send passwords via email. You must reset your password. Enter your email address and Date Of Birth, to receive instructions on password resetting."

I know my own email address, and I know my own birthday.  This information is the same info that was confirmed for me when I created my Ubisoft account in-game, but for some reason it must not have stuck.  No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get past Ubisoft's lockdown security.  Note to Ubisoft: Requiring a birthday does NOTHING for your security, and when your data is screwed up (as it clearly is in this case), it freezes users out of their account, creating a customer service contact.  Every other site on the internet gets it right, including banks and credit card companies, but for some reason, it's just not secure enough for Ubisoft I guess.

So I was locked out.  No big deal, maybe my data didn't make it over (via the game) like I thought.  I'll just create a new account.  So, I put in my email address, chose a username, and behold, BOTH were already taken.  So Ubisoft did have my account info, I'm just locked out of it.  Who knows what mystery password and birth date they are using for my account.  I guess I have to contact customer service.  Guess what?  No email form for customer service (at least, none that I could find), you gotta call them up, and they are closed.  Wonderful.

So that was it for me.  I'd had enough game publisher website portal hell for a lifetime, yet I'm certain there will be more of this crap to come.  Don't even get me started on my Rock Band guitar replacement account nightmare that I hinted about in my open letter to EA.  Honestly if I even think about it, I'll get stressed out.

I realize that not everybody gets screwed like this.  Many gamers probably run into little or no issues, and these websites probably enhance their gaming experience greatly.  But for the handful of us that do get subject to what is tantamount to eternal purgatory, it really makes you hate life.  It also makes you wonder how these giant publishers can get it so wrong sometimes.  Did they even spend 2 days on website quality assurance?  It's like they don't even really care in the first place...

This point is driven home when you look at how extensive and wonderful these portals can be, with literally NO work required by the user, as is the case with Bungie's Halo 3 website.  This portal is truly integrated with your Xbox Live account, and it is done perfectly.  Look at how much is going on there (both on the portal, and from within the game), with users posting pictures, videos and custom maps - all with complete gamer stat tracking.  How much work did I have to put in to experience all of that extra content?  How many forms and agreements did I have to fill out?  Zero (or at least it was pleasurable enough that I don't remember it, and that is good enough for me).  Bungie did it right, and they also have the most features out of any other website portal out there.  Imagine that.

Some might say these portal sites are a fair trade, and if we don't like them, then we shouldn't use them.  We at TrustyGamer tend to think that is a load of bullshit.  Many games have a good 1/3rd of their menu interface dedicated to features tied to this type of interaction.  Call me crazy, but if I pay the same $60 as everybody else, then I think I am entitled to utilize all of these features without hassle.

Bungie nailed it, but both EA and Ubisoft have dropped the ball.  Holding game features hostage is a shitty move for publishers to begin with, and we shouldn't be forced to create accounts (or suffer interminable online torture) for anything.  However if you are going to make it a requirement, then you better make it seamless, ala the Halo 3 and Bungie approach. 

That being said, if you are still going to force us to create accounts and put in work at your crappy websites, make sure you have your QA departments do it first.  Assholes.