Creative stops 3rd party Vista drivers for legacy product

[Harper]

Message to Daniel_K - Sound Blaster - Creative Labs

In a nutshell, creative labs have been discontinuing / crippling driver support for their older products. However there has been this one guy, Daniel_K, who has been continuing the developent the older drivers with all the card features.

From Creative Labs

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.

Daniel_K's Reply

I do know what is right, so I'll stop developing and distributing Creative softwares and drivers.

I'll leave a comment, though.

The funny thing is that you are faster "protecting" your technologies and intelectual properties than providing improved drivers and softwares for your customers.

You purposedly crippled and ruined the Audigy/Live! (Emu10kx) and the Audigy LS/SE/Value/Live!24-bit (P17) drivers for Windows Vista.

This just proves you don't really care about what your customers and what people think about you.

It pretty much proves that creative is more interested in selling new products as appose to supporting the ones that are all ready currently out there.

Currently, i am having 2nd thoughts about whether or not i purchase another creative product after seeing what creative's attitude towards supporting older products.

 

[Drizzt]

Put me down as not purchasing any products from them because of this. If there is a list.

 

[Harper]

Yeah. Well I am currently a little annoyied that my Creative Zen Xtra has rather limited driver support under vista.

And I only purchased that thing back in christmas 2004. So I have only had it for about 3 years.

As I remember, there is a law out there that says that a company needs to support an IT product for at least 7 years.

And here's a thread where creative is doing damage control
A message from Creative to the Sound Blaster forum participants - Sound Blaster - Creative Labs

 

[Apokalipse]

I heard about this.
daniel_k's drivers for the Audigy sound cards are not only more stable and allow better compatibility, but actually unlocked several features that Creative didn't want people to use without paying more for a higher-end card.
I think that's what Creative actually has a problem with (rather than just third party drivers themselves).

But, even so, if Creative is going to lock features and force people to pay more when they really shouldn't, then I say bring on the better drivers.

I downloaded a copy of the Audigy series drivers from daniel_k, and plan on using them on an Audigy 2 (which I already have).

But, when I buy another card in future, I will consider cards other than Creative's

 

[Jorsoft]

I think they're just not happy about all of those old SB Live! and 1st gen Audigy cards out there. I used a SB Live! for like 4 years, most people probly use it for longer. IT's not like Creative is very good about driver support, though. I think my Audigy 2 hasn't had a driver update since 2006! They just want to force people to buy a new gen card so they're pulling the plug on the old stuff. I'm not surprised, though, Creative has a reputation for being very lean on the customer support and this is just an excuse to force people to spend more money with them. Not impressed.

 

[Harper]

DailyTech - Creative Says Custom Drivers Are "Stealing," Gets Rocked by Protests

I downloaded a copy of the Audigy series drivers from daniel_k, and plan on using them on an Audigy 2 (which I already have).

Any chance that you could stick them up on Mega Upload or some thing like that.

 

[Drizzt]

Judging from that article, it doesn't seem like Creative needs this kind of thing. They look like they are going to die....

 

[Apokalipse]

Any chance that you could stick them up on Mega Upload or some thing like that.

I would if uploads weren't counted towards Telstra's download limit.

It's around 700MB, including an .iso
compressed with WinRAR, it's 487MB

 

[Wildside]

i got my sound card back around early Jan. I have to say, the card was awesome until i updated BIOS n i couldnt plug in my speakers in the sound card because it doesnt even recognize its own ports lol. When i tried downloading the latest drivers for Vista, some worm viruses came, Kaspersky asked about it, n since it wasnt the first time i noticed it, i let it in thinking that the whole driver wasnt downloading right or something..........BAD IDEA.

current im gonna try to burn the gparted thing to format my HDD right because Vista is having an error installing on it. Ask Nosboost n Bugg, the know about it.

 

[Harper]

I would if uploads weren't counted towards Telstra's download limit.

It's around 700MB, including an .iso
compressed with WinRAR, it's 487MB

Okay, how about i DD $5 you some money for a CD rom, postage and your time.