A terrible deal for a terrible company with a terrible product.
RealNetwork and Herr Amerika sound made for each other.
Real would resort to even more disgusting (and probably illegal) tricks. One page in the process would show the user some very legitimate choices above the "fold" (the bottom of the area of a web page that can be shown in a window without forcing the user to scroll). However, beneath the fold, Real had options for additional plug-ins with dubious value such as sound enhancers and web accelerators, that were selected BY DEFAULT. If a user did not scroll down (and the design cleverly did not signal to the user that they had any reason to do so) they would not see that there were choosing to purchase around $50 in additional software. Real told us that this page alone was responsible for driving their average order up by $25. They even told us that most people didn't even know they were buying the additional software. When we told them that we found these tactics user un-friendly, unsustainable, and bad for the brand, they agreed. But they also told us that they were "hooked on it like heroin!" and didn't want to change anything for fear of loosing revenue.