Creative is the leader of high-end soundcards for computers. Their products are commonly bought by computer builders to achieve the highest level of sound quality.

With the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their cards to be “Vista Ready”. Unfortunately, as many customers discovered this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers.

So a proactive Creative user (under the name of Daniel_K) took it upon himself to rewrite the drivers for these soundcards enabling them full functionality (even adding features not offered by Creative) on Windows Vista. But what does he get for trying to support a company with a crippled IT department? A slap in the face.

This is the letter posted by a forum moderator under directions from the VP of Communications:

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.

Link to the original forum thread

This letter has since caused outrage on the Internet, making it to the front page of Digg, reddit, slashdot, buzz, etc. The forum where this message was originally posted saw a wave of new registered users vowing never to purchase a Creative product ever again. What a PR nightmare!

The common response on the creative forum goes like so:

I like everybody else have only come here & registered to Laugh in the face of Creative & ALL there Products. Never again will a buy/promote or recommend a single item you sell. Your attitude Disgusts me & being Very active on a number of tech sites will make sure everybody gets to read your original post.

The longer creative waits to put out an announcement or apology, the greater impact this PR nightmare will go. But a general conclusion to this: An end of an era. So long Creative…