- Sunday, 12 July 2009
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The dross always floats to the top in IT companies - A tall Scandinavian
EA drops draconian DRM
ELECTRONIC ARTS HAS backed down from its plan to ship uber-draconian DRM software on two of its top PC releases for the year, Mass Effect and Spore.
We previously brought you the details on the software here. The gist is that Securom's latest software not only phones home to activate when you install, it re-authenticates every ten days thereafter - and if it suspects anything is up, it will happily nobble itself.
Unsurprisingly, the interwibblers went absolutely nuts over the suggestion that they might actually be required to have their internet connections active whilst on the PC. Or at least, to be using their always-on connection for something other than downloading warez.
EA has 'fessed up and Bioware, maker of Mass Effect, said:"We made this decision to ensure we are delivering the best possible experience," although we suspect that the standard Securom software now included isn't exactly a breeze, either.
The games will now only authenticate with internet servers once upon installation. This obviously won't solve the problem where gamers want to be able to install the game on multiple machines at once, and also won't solve the 'Bioshock' issue, where the launch day traffic to activation servers takes them down, resulting in lots of gamers unable to play.
The full statement from Bioware is over here. A more controversial hack than we might suggest is that it is just simpler to play Mass Effect on Xbox 360. µ
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So back in the day, they used to go on about how each game downloaded is a "lost sale".
Ironically, now that nobody can pirate the game, they're losing actual sales by pissing off customers.

Just goes to show: police the masses until they abide every law. Now the police is redundant and your cash cow is crippled.
DRM only pisses those off that pay for the game. It will be available to download, cracked, before general release.

Why won't they learn?!
Every game released, regardless of DRM used, if cracked and on the P2P sites within hours. So as I see it ALL DRM is completely useless. The only people who suffer are the legitimate users who end up with it on their system causing problems. I don't believe for a minute that DRM has stopped ANYTHING from being copied and shared. I always buy my software and yet always go straight to find a crack or patch that will strip out the DRM as it is nothing but trouble.
Wake up companies, DRM is a con you are being sold by the likes of SecuROM to make them money. They don't help you at all.
Lets just hope that the existing independents' can learn by this, and focus on making great games and improving gaming technology instead of p'ing off their best customers and facilities which actively promote the industry.

and EA - if you were spending resources on improving your actual server infrastructure, this would be time better served - in my modest opinion.
I love how they still claim "giving the best experience"...

because its always fun to have your very expensive new game blocked and disabled by its protection scheme!!
So now its just the problems (listed below) that some BiShock buyers have reportedly had (reproduced from a forum post):

Has anyone [MBA at EA?] that decided on this read the threads at the Bioshock forums about the "3 computers" means things like 1 is used for each user account that plays the game even when on the same system? Has anyone read about the situations when the deactivation tools that was eventually released to reclaim activation failed to work for some users? Has anyone noticed that if your drive crashes you cannot deactivate?
"ELECTRONIC ARTS HAS backed down"

Darling's correct. They haven't. The 3 install issue was allways the major one afaik and it remains intact.
EA is cutting back on the servers they are running for games they have out now. Players of BF2 are now unable to stay logged-on because EA has cut back on the number of online players their servers will handle. If EA thinks that we are going to buy another EA game are they in for a drop in stock price. Doent piss off the tens of thousands of gamers that buy their games becuase we will make you pay EA!!!!
Then I'll buy Mass Effect and Spore when they drop to bargin bin $10 titles. That way, the company will have made their money off of people who enjoy DRM hassles, the pirates will have lost interest because it's not the latest thing and the budget version won't have SecurRom.

So, nothing's changed for me. I'd like to buy both when they first come out, though LOTR Online's the big time waster for me right now.

The way it's going, the only games where companies can make their money and won't have to worry about pirates are MMORPG's. If I had time for two or three of them at a time, I'd experience Piracy the legal way, with Pirates Online.

Piracy and DRM equal criminals and crooked police IMHO, they're killing single player PC games big time.
..and I use to hate my new Counter-Strike: Source online game. 

Now the only thing I hate more is my ATi
running with Dot.net just to load my personal config setting yes another Wal-MarT dumb design on the users end! Btw Dot net doesn't work! I have to Mod the damm ATi GC drivers to have any access tothe feature options. 


They still have the 3-install limit. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell not paying $40-60 for a glorified rental.