SecuRom does not do what it was designed to do. Games are still pirated. Also, the installation of this just makes it a PITA to play!

I think they should really look o do this a bit differently, like they do with software licenses for other corporate programs. Whether this is a license server that you need to log onto to get confirmation of authenticity, or trial periods, it does not matter.

This would not check to see if your game was a real copy or not, just what its serial was. If it detects more than one serial on at any one time, guess what, your friend you lene the game to who said he uninstalled it is playing it now and you should call him up and tell him to get the frick offline so you can play.

None of this 3 machine BS. Install it as many times as you want, lend it to a friend, whatever you want to do, but, depending on the game, different rules would apply.

Games like Bioshock? One player online at a time. Multiplayer games? You can ONLY play if you are given a guest pass from the "owner" AND they are online at the time (kind of like having someone over to play at your place)

All this other crap is just that... crap.

They can still have these programs out there so long as they keep in mind that they should NEVER be an inconvenience to those that purchase the game legit.

Ninjahedge

RodolfoPony

I really want to play but I refuse to willingly load DRM to my PC. (Other than the shitty DRM already in Vista.)

axiomatic

Sullyville

It is not the same as steam.

Steam requires an internet connection. But assuming you got online; activated your copy then if your internet connection dies.

Your single player game still works

Thats the important difference.

Steam is almost as bad in the always checking stakes, but at the end of the day they let you play your single-player and offline games if you are offline for as long as you want.

EA (not bioware, this is the kind of thing people were worried about when EA bought bioware) with the initially announced system, would have stopped you playing your offline single player game after 10 days if you didn't have an internet connection. THAT is the difference between steam and securom, THAT is the problem.
Not the checking.
Not the internet used to do the checking.
Not the fact it is an anti-piracy technique.
But the Requirement that, after purchase (or initial activation), forced you without alternative to be online (a minimum of)every 10 days or you get barred from playing the game you paid for.
Steam does not do this.
The moment Steam does this, we will complain just as loudly.

MeateaW

Melonfodder

...

I know its not typical but I got 3 computers at this desk alone and like 8 active ones in my household.

I mean piracy is an issue for Hollywood & the movie industry as well but you don't see them implementing a "you can only watch this movie on 3 DVD players" thing.

Ario Reads Kotaku, Seems Pleased

um yes we would, securerom really does nothing too stop pirates

like at all

not even a little bit

actually securerom helps piracy

Dao2SKP

Dao2SKP

Guess how many of those companies are still around?

...Not to mention how bloody hard it is to find patches and/or support, given that the official game sites are gone at this point (or link to dead servers). Even taking third-party websites into account, trying to find support and/or XP fixes for X-Com 2 is practically impossible, to say nothing of something as old as Master of Magic.

Hell, if EA were to crash and burn, I really have doubts that a patch that removed online authentication would be easy to find on the internet, if only because the servers wouldn't be bloody UP anymore.

Seriously. Hell, if you want quick and easy proof, check out interplay.com. Do you see support links to old Interplay games? No. Because they're DEAD.
[Granted, most old Interplay games are pretty decently supported, but try looking for, say, Star Reach. I'll grant that it's a terrible game, but I'm just sayin' it's been only about ten years.]

Alkanshel

I made the shift in January to be "piracy free" and I already feel a lot better about myself.

FLYBOY611

[img399.imageshack.us]

DrMatta

I made this comic a few hours ago.
Thought i'd post it here aswel.

[img399.imageshack.us]

DrMatta

worlann

We wanted to let you know that we've been hearing your concerns about the online authentication mentioned earlier this week. I didn't want to head into the weekend without getting back to you with some information about how Spore is planning on using this new system.

A few things we wanted you to know:

* We authenticate your game online when you install and launch it the first time.
* We'll re-authenticate when a player uses online features, downloads new content or a patch for their game.
* The new system means you don't have to play with the disc in your computer. And if you are like me, always losing discs, this will be a huge benefit.
* You'll still be able to install and play on multiple computers.
* You can play offline.

We do hope that players will play online - sharing creatures, buildings and vehicles with other players is something that is unique to Spore and one of the coolest features of the game. Every day, when I play the Creature Stage, I get to see wacky and awesome new creatures from my Buddies on the team coming over the hill at me and I can't wait to see what happens when our creative, passionate community starts sharing their creations.

I'd love to write more - but I need to get back to work. We've got a game to finish.

-caryl"

Petreak

Or just quit pissing off normal buyers and they might stop pirating the games just to get around the DRM.

Ignatius

EloraHRanma

@Gort23: But game development is more expensive now. I-War was developed by a group of five people. But, at the same time, 10 years ago games did not reach such a massive client base. So, you're right, piracy was always there.
Maybe the difference is the big companies are in it only for the money now? Before, apart from a bussiness, people working with VG related stuff where there because they loved them. Too many suits in EA and such might have changed the benefits expectations.

@justhesh: Yeah, that's the solution. If you start calling "minor inconveniences" they will stop right there. For sure. Oh, yeah.

@DaveKap: The game STILL uses SecuROM. That's the trick! It is as bad as BioShock, but now you are happy?

EloraHRanma

But SecuROM actually hamstrings your computer's performance, and yeah having to be online to play an offline game is totally bullshit. SecuRom wasn't a problem when I bought NWN, but then, I got one of the Diamond editions that had a bad cd-key. Let me tell you, it happens, and guess what? SecuROM was the problem, according to tech support. This is faulty software that encourages people to find a way around it.

SecuROM is like locking your food and water in an airtight titanium bin to keep out locusts, but starving to death in the process.

alienmastermind

NealDadgits

Even without the 10-day thing, this is still worse than Bioshock's anti-piracy measure, and suddenly everyone's all 'yay EA'.

Uranium-235

A: Only if the player chooses to download new game content.

So every patch I need to whip out the CD key? Still draconian...

fumar

@loud: Tell me where I said that I would pirate the game.

@loud: Protecting your content is not insulting. What is insulting is basically telling your paying customers that they can't be trusted with the game they paid you good money for.

I have in my bookshelf right now three cardboard boxes containing legally bought Amiga games. I own about 30 VCS 2600 games. My brother still regularly plays Diablo 2. I like the fact that I can pick up a 20-years-old game and still play it, and I regularly do exactly that. I bought these games with my own money, and I have the right to play them.

I will not be able to play the PC version of Mass effect in 20 years. In fact, I most likely won't be able to play it in even 5 years, given how often I change my computer. Were I to simply download the game, I could easily play the game however long I wanted to. Hence, I will not pay with my money for an inferior experience. If the PC gaming industry wants my money, they should start treating me like a paying customer, instead of like a liability and a potential copyright violator.

That doesn't mean I will pirate the game, and I never said I would. It simply means I will not buy the game at all, I won't be recommending it to my friends, and I will write scathing comments on Internet sites about it :-)

L_K_M

Jilkon

Honestly, the limit of three installs bothers me as much as SecuROM.

Kenuudar

OrsonHelmer

Also, the only way we can encourage EA to continue relaxing its SecureROM policies is to buy Mass Effect when it comes out (which I originally intended), yet this is a game that numerous people already bought on the Xbox 360, so I'm not sure how we can guarantee its sales. If we fail to make them a profit, the 10-day reactivation may be re-introduced as a standard. If we succeed, they will call the current measures a success and refuse to go back to 2004 levels. Our only hope is that the current influx of cheap high-end computer components will increase the proportion of the PC install base that can actually play a new game, rather than waiting 2-3 years until an upgrade.

I really do believe that EA helped its business greatly by relaxing its meaures. The amount of people who logged on to the last thread saying that they now won't buy Mass Effect was staggering. EA is not a PC monopoly yet - Mass Effect still has The Witcher, Fallout 3, etc to compete against.

All in all, thanks to everyone for their support and to EA for relaxing its measures. Cheers.

mcderek3000

Piracy isn't the problem.

It is NVIDIA, Intel, ATI, AMD, and Microsoft.

Consoles are sold at a loss or without much profit because the company selling it makes a profit on each individual game-- that's why consoles are so cheap.

With PC gaming, there is a profit-- usually a fairly large one-- made on every single component you buy. Driving up the price. Then, greedy companies work hard to ensure that you have to upgrade as quickly as possible.

NVIDIA is an absolute villain at this. Old cards perform worse and worse over time as the drivers are no longer optimized around them.

And drivers are the biggest bitch of all. NVIDIA, ATI, and game developers don't do enough QA. You don't know if you're going to ever find a set of drivers that will work with every game you want to play. Most people don't know how to install them properly, and put simply-- don't feel like bothering!

All of our obnoxious PC hardware needs to find a way to get Steamed-- we should have the option to allow our hardware to intelligently update itself from the internet, like almost everything else does in this day and age. And the QA should be good enough that we don't have to worry about the update breaking everything.

PC gaming is hard to do. That's the problem. NVIDIA and Co. need to unify a little, and get their fucking act together. That's what I hope the PCGA will do.

Piracy isn't the issue; its a scapegoat. DRM only compounds the problem by adding another hurdle to the legitimate customer-- a hurdle that might be just as obnoxious as applying the effort to find a decent torrent.

Harmatia

el_rezzo

I think ehlaren has made a response to this. For many poor families, even a mid-range computer ($500-700) is a pretty big investment for their kid, and it's often not meant for gaming as it is for their general purpose use. That being said, I can easily understand his stance on the issue with the poor and such.

Why any of you would deny even the remote possibility of something like this is beyond me.

Nettacki

...eh, works for me.

man in gauze is king ramses II, silly.

who cares

I think the internet authentication allows the ability for a company to simply decide when you can no longer play their game. This ends up being more than just copy protection, it becomes total control over your use of what you've purchased. Look at all the Microsoft Musicy Store people who are now pretty much screwed.

~SK

SurrealKitten

Well Done

NeoXY

senote

CCCombobreaker

Hmm, I wonder why they decided to go with EA's logo, and not Bioware's...

Antiterra

ProjectGSX

I may still crack it, but this is not so heinous I can't let it anywhere near my machine.

sarusa

Basically, make your product better than the pirate copy.

Evangel

Now you know why the having to reauthenticate every 10 days (i.e. you only have to be online on those days) was a better idea rather than having have to be connected to internet all the time before you can play the game

Leepox

1) Remove the need for continual re-authentication (the every 10 days stuff).

2) Remove the need to have the DVD in the drive.

What's still in Mass Effect include:

1) Initial on-line authorization
2) A limit of three installs
3) SecuROM

Yes, SecuROM is still in Mass Effect.

Kenuudar

Leepox

What happens when, 12 months down the track, you want to play this game and EA's taken down their authentication servers? You're shit out of luck then.

Also, No-CD cracks are not piracy.

People who will pirate the game, will pirate it and get a far better experience than those who don't. People who will buy the game, will buy the game and get fucked over.

Me? I'm not buying this game at all. Online authentication meant I couldn't play Bioshock when I bought it at launch because their servers were overloaded and it means I can't play it now because they've taken down the their authentication servers.

No offense meant to anyone, but I'm sure someone will get pissed.

Evangel

ryanfrost13

Krumm

Leon31

Just put it up on steam or something.

Altima NEO

maraxusofk

This new system still has absolutely zero effect on the pirates too just as before.

My cancelled pre-order is going to stay cancelled.

MattB

Woylez

Seriously, you or anyone else have no right to play the game without paying for it. PERIOD! Pirating makes you nothing other than a thief, and your digital fingers should be removed.

loud

P.S. Stop pirating you fools! You'll ruin your own industry. L_K_M people like you drive me insane.

loud

I can't remember how many it has now, but it started at 3 and I have put one copy of Bioshock on 5 or 6 PC's now. Without issue.

homernoy

Knukleur

Even if they *say* they won't turn off the validation servers, you're having to count on EA's sense of fair play and integrity to let you play a game you already purchased.

* Will they keep the validation servers up after a sequel (or two) comes out?

* Will they keep the validation servers up after they close an unprofitable division?

* Will they keep the validation servers up when they figure out it can save them $$$ to turn them off?

* Will they keep the validation servers up when they've moved on to another DRM scheme?

Will you give money to EA to play a game that has an expiration date? When does it expire? When they decide it costs them more for your valid install than you're worth. And, once you buy the game, they are no longer deriving money from it. Might be less time than you think...

stesmo

Bottom line is that the only people complaining about the PC market are the companies that make games that people DON'T want to buy.

SigmaHyperion

"Show me a game company that there PC game sales have been gang buster."

It's a lot more than you'd think. In fact, it's a lot more than even the industry would have you think.

The NPD numbers would have you believe that PC game sales are "only" 14% of the market. And that's true. But there's 2 HUGE caveats to that number.

1> NPD data only counts brick-and-mortars NOT including Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is one of the few retail stores that even carry any real selection of PC games. So it's no big surprise that the market is showing a decline when the only retailers that are polled continually shrink their inventory, while the online distribution model becomes a huge portion of PC game sales and is completely ignored.

2> Ignoring #1, PC game sales STILL accounted for 14% of the market last year. One single platform accounted for 1 in 6 game sales in the entire industry. That's FAR from a "sinking ship", in fact that's a higher ratio than most individual platforms reach.

It sounds pretty bad when you say "only 14%", but you're comparing a single platform to the REST OF THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY. Any platform would look bad when compared that way. In fact, in 2006 (I haven't seen a platform-breakdown of 2007 numbers yet) the only platform that had a larger percentage of the game market was the PS2. And I imagine with the Xbox, the 360, the PS2, the PS3, the DS, the Wii, a and the GBA all fighting over the remaining 86% for 2007, it's about the same thing -- the PC holds it's own in terms of market share for a given platform.

That figure also doesn't count subscription income (which it shouldn't). But figure that in, and the PC platform generates almost 1 out of every 3 dollars that the entire video game software industry develops. That is HARDLY a dying industry. A changing model maybe -- to online distribution of some games and subscription models of others.

Bottom line is that the only people complaining about the PC market are the companies that make games that people want to buy. And they are quick to point the finger at piracy when their game doesnt' sell. Like Hollywood pointing to Halo 3 when some Ben Stiller movie flops.

These people need to learn a very simple yet important idea -- Correlation does not imply Causation.

SigmaHyperion

I defeated SECUROM!

Uranium-235

RosalieEndeis

I wrote: "fairly high-end", and that basically means a descrete graphics card with enough system memory that the PC can run most games.

I will say this one more time. I hate DRM. I build my own PC's and I tend to go with high-end parts. The last thing I want is to load a bunch of malware onto my machine, not knowing if I will ever get rid of it without formatting my HDD. Make no mistake, I would not have purchased Mass Effect, or Spore with the DRM they had planned on using.

homernoy

RosalieEndeis

Everyone hates you.

kkthxbye!

-Ax

axiomatic

In fact they've paid so little attention that Sins of a Solar Empire was only THE BEST RATED PC GAME THIS YEAR. And has only managed to be outsold by Call of Duty 4.

As for doubting their profits -- Stardock as a whole NINE programmers. And on top of that the majority of their sales are made through their own online distribution portal, so they get 100% of the revenues rather than the fraction of that companies get when using the retail model. It's not hard to believe that the game has been IMMENSELY profitable for them. They generate exponentially more revenues per copy sold and have exponentially less costs to cover.

SigmaHyperion

DS makes no money?... Ps1 and 2 sold no games? half life 2 bombed?... they all cracked and pirated like mad

tell me, nobody bought GTA4 for the 360? hell it was all over the news that the crap was up for download.

You think everyone has broadband to download 4 gigs of crap?... or that Torrents download at max soeed of your service? if you have 5 or 6 seeds you will be there for ever

THIS IS BS IT IS A WAY TO HAVE AN "END LIFE" for a license you payed for!

adolfo-gomez

This is sheer guesswork on your part."

Indeed this is speculation, but the same assumption is speculation on the industry's part as well. It would hold up better if we were talking about business software or operating systems, as such things are sold officially in nearly everywhere they can be obtained illegally (as they're essential to the running of a computer or a business), but we're talking about games.

As you said, gaming is a luxury, and if a luxury is unattainable easily or cheaply, most would not bother. Not every pirate becomes a customer if unable to pirate.

The entire point is that the figures are mostly guesswork on ALL fronts. The exact impact of piracy is not well known, and for that fact draconian DRM cannot be easily justified. Publishers can't treat customers as "guilty unless proven innocent". It's not good policy, nor is it good business.

The assumption that high-end PCs are needed to play games is also partially bullshit. The PC gaming industry does not consist solely of Crysis and other card-breaking exercises in graphical wank. A PC with wisely selected components can easily last as long as a console's expected lifespan without much tradeoff in quality for performance.

As you write your next comment, keep in mind that we aren't attempting to justify piracy, we're noting that publisher attempts to combat it through moronic DRM only harms their user base.

unangbangkay

what happened next was a flock of 'help' did arrive on the forums but that help arrived and immediately began berating and telling people to 'shut up and like it' because of the awesomeness that god had wrought on earth in the form of a corridor shooter.

every single thread discussing rootkits and limited installs became cesspools of junior mods/shills yelling PIRATE every other word to PAYING CUSTOMERS..

junior mods got caught telling paying customers the limited installs were needed because 'Why should your brother play for free'..

that one junior mod was more honest than any 2k rep that whole year..

muddy the water with piracy claims while limiting the lifespan of a users game license is most likely the real goal. no one will buy your used Mass Effect, Spore or Bioshock game since the installs may all be gone..

you're buying a one person 3 time use license...

this is what they are changing and there won't be any going back if you agree now...

railskins

(1) They're still using SecuROM (with all the bad things that implies).

(2) They're still requiring online activation (which means that once EA -- a company with an established history of shutting down activation and multiplayer servers -- shuts down the activation servers you can no longer play your game).

(3) They're still limiting the number of times you can install the game, which means that system crashes and hardware upgrades have now become your worst nightmare. (And even though they say they'll give you additional activations, history has proven that this will never actually happen.)

I mean, they've basically said, "We're going to implement the exact same draconian, anti-consumer DRM measures featured in the PC version of Bioshock." And they're being lauded for it.

Madness.

My preorders remain cancelled for both MASS EFFECT and SPORE.

hamlet9000

At least you went over the boarder to purchase games. I am happy to hear that the situation is getting better in Mexico. Those prices sound brutal.

homernoy

Murrytmds

Clearly, an effective model to protect revenues.

Koztah

A great point indeed. One of things about that, though, is Steam uses Digital Distribution which is nearly impossible to crack. Since a large percentage of titles using Steam are downloaded directly no one really complains about their intrusions. But yes, it is also because Valve is viewed as God right now.

Lazlo

There's no way they didn't notice the backlash that Securom always gets, especially after the Bioshock episode.

EA annouced they were going to use Secu to get people talking about the games and what not and if no one said anything they would just stick with it. Either way win win for EA I suppose. Still, I'm going to have to go with the camp that says, here's worst case scenario, then WAIT, it's a little better than that.

I'm not so pissed about the copy protection as I am that the console version didn't have the good inventory system. They should have got it right the first time.

WasabiJoe

If someone is so poor they cannot afford a PC game, then they would not have a PC powerful enough to run it. And how does someone this poor afford high speed internet to download their torrents?

Sometimes high speed internet is included with a phone line.

And sometimes, idiotic sales and import taxes drive the price way up. Don't get me started on Mexico... Would you rather pay $100 USD for Half-Life 2 in a store, or $5 USD for the game in a flea market?

I've never bought any game here because of that. I'd rather hop the border and buy the games in the US of A, then smuggle it back into Mexico. The prices aren't that bad these days, but ten years ago it was impossible for anyone but the richest people in the country to buy legitimate software.

Dave Silva

dhlt25

mightyg

Publishers ARE acknowledging it. By adding restrictive DRM.

willsueforfood

MehGinla

Steam people. STEAAAAM!

Damn it.

Woodwater

That's incredibly easy and naive for you to say. Games will forever be pirated. Publishers need to start acknowledging that.

crice

I hate DRM as much as anyone. I am simply frustrated at all the people who pirate games and defend it for whatever reason comes to their mind. This type of thinking is killing PC gaming.

Just the defense of it by many has to be seen by publishers and devs looking at gaming sites as proof of a huge belligerent group of people that will never stop, until stopped.

If I were in that business, that would make me feel like I was in between a rock and a hard place.

homernoy

"Saying poor people choose to steal because their poor is so insensitive. Extremely insulting to poverty stricken people." I've lived in one of the poorest areas in the country. I'm not insulting anyone I'm giving first hand experience evidence on what happens *in the real world*. Something a lot of all of you *gaming experts* lack yet want to comment on 24/7 when anyone mentions the P word.

ehlaren

wirebrain

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I won't pay if paying gets me a user experience that is worse than what I can get for free.

L_K_M

homernoy

If someone is so poor they cannot afford a PC game, then they would not have a PC powerful enough to run it. And how does someone this poor afford high speed internet to download their torrents?

This is a luxery anyway my friend. PC gaming is not a right, it is something fun to do if you can affort to do so.

Saying poor people choose to steal because their poor is so insensitive. Extremely insulting to poverty stricken people.

homernoy

MehGinla

Oh, for it to be the early 1990's again, when making games were more about a hobbyist having fun and delivering quality games, than earning six figures.

malio

"With todays PC games, you need a fairly expensive PC to play them."

Incorrect.

ehlaren

@homernoy:
You are so full of shit I can smell it through my computer.

"Anyone saying pirates would not buy a game if it couldn't be downloaded for free is full of shit."

You obviously have not lived around poor people!

ehlaren

"that flawed assumption that a pirated game is equal to a lost sale"

This is sheer guesswork on your part. Unless we did a social experiment that could be controlled completely, this is just opinion and speculation. It's logical to think that the publishers aren't losing %100 of downloaded games, but somwhere between all and none is the truth. Even if the number of lost sales is 15-25% of downloaded games, it is substantial, and that is development costs that will never be recovered.

homernoy

MehGinla

MehGinla

MasterSauce

durrem

I graduated in 1983. These were Apple ][+ games. The download sites were BBSes run off Apples with 300 baud modems.

Piracy has been going on at a massive scale throughout the entire history of PC gaming. Piracy is not what is killing PC gaming today. It's always been there, and always at the same levels.

Gort23

Bullshit. Well, half of it anyway. Without a doubt piracy DOES cause losses, but the EFFECT is way overblown by that flawed assumption that a pirated game is equal to a lost sale.

If a game couldn't be downloaded for free immediately, many would wait as long as necessary. The others wouldn't have been able to buy it anyway.

At best the game would see a token increase in sales in North America and Europe, where it's a really valid option to walk to a game store and pony up the cash once you're tired of waiting for a torrent to pop up.

unangbangkay

_LarZen_

treegoat

Me? I am worried the double threat of piracy, and DRM. These two things are really sinking the ship which is PC gaming. People won't buy games with DRM, and when it's not used for big releases piracy runs rampant.

Anyone saying pirates would not buy a game if it couldn't be downloaded for free is full of shit. After a few months went buy without a torrent of a game worth owning, PC game sales would start to rise. No doubt. It's simply cause and effect.

homernoy

justhesh

Giolon

Let me ask you something, have you ever played Phantasy Star Universe? If you haven't then please find yourself a copy and try to tell me having to have internet to play it every time you start it up isn't annoying. Had I known PSU's stupid GameGuard BS wanted an internet connection, even for offline, whenever I wanted to run it I would have never bought the game to begin with.

MantisDragon

Q: How often will you be offerring new game content?

A: "Every 10 days."

boopadoo

wirebrain

"On the subject of people saying "I don't blame the Devs for trying to protect their IP":

Nobody is angry at the game companies for wanting to protect their profits. We're angry at them for being idiots that make our lives more difficult, and in turn, may very well CAUSE some of the reduction in the size of their market.

On the subject of using piracy as the justification for the death of PC gaming:

The general point is: the PC market is the size of the group that is willing to pay for a PC title. That's what a market is. If EA chooses to inflate their idea of the potential market when making their cost/benefit analysis, I blame them, not pirates, for causing it to be untrue.

Now, perfectly valid: if the market of people willing to pay is not large enough to justify development for the platform, then stop developing for it. Don't blame piracy. In the current setup, the trade-off between lost sales due to excessive DRM and lost sales due to people that would've paid were it not for the piratable version (IMO) is a wash. They could save themselves licensing fees on SecuROM, and maybe eke out a little bit more (the pirates would still pirate, but at least they wouldn't be losing sales to actual paying customers, or paying the licensing fee). But, they're deluding themselves if they think all of the pirated copies equate to lost sales, which they then subtract from their bottom line. Those sales were never part of their bottom line to begin with."

unangbangkay

wirebrain

Sure it's a reaction to piracy, but the arguments that uphold draconian DRM are flawed.

"Every pirated game = lost sale."

Bullshit. If piracy were somehow made completely impossible, most of the people in places where the most piracy happens would simply end up not playing said games. Why? Those games aren't sold in those countries, or are sold at prohibitive prices. Many violent games end up in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia because they get there via pirates, not because they're sold through a local Gamestop.

Stealing is never justified, but the figures used by the industry to inflate their presumed losses and justify ineffective punishments for legitimate buyers are overblown at the least.

unangbangkay

Lazlo

"The Sims 3 will be an exact clone of The Sims 2, except you'll have to pay us $5 real money for each piece of furniture. The base product will cost $2000, and there'll be a $500 monthly fee. In addition to this, you will have to arrange for a man to visit your house twice a week to ensure you are using the product in a legal fashion. To further protect the software, the box will contain a live bear that will likely maul whoever opens the box, just to show how serious we are."

"Just kidding, it's going to be a marginal improvement over The Sims 2, will ship for $70, and each piece of furniture will only cost $2! Look at how much we care about the gaming community!"

Weaselfingers

See Jindujun's post on a fine example of this.

wirebrain

Sins only requires you to register your CD key to obtain patches and updates from their system, Impulse. Registering also activates an anytime full installation download in case you lose it.

Mass Effect PC's system is the same, except that there's no free download option (yet), an initial check, and a check whenever you patch (which would usually require you to go online anyway).

I'm a little happier now.

unangbangkay

This is not a chicken and the egg debate. We all know this is a reaction to piracy. Rationalize it all you want. Turn it upside down, sidways and spin it all around. The facts are facts. Stealing is stealing. Period.

And there are repercussions. All PC gamers pay the price that the pirates refuse to pay.

And what sucks is, I have to pay for these assholes to cheap to buy a fucking game. "Yea, I can afford a high-end PC to play Crysis on. What? I can't afford to pay $50! Torrents FTW!"

Bunch of BS.

homernoy

By removing even the need to have the disk in the tray to play, that gets rid of the ENTIRE no-CD cracks, which is the entire white-market supplier of pirated copies of a game. No group out there who cares about its integrity, or any website who hosts no-CD cracks, will even consider hosting or working on such a crack, if the protection being used isn't an inconveniencing factor.

By doing this, they've actually cut down the amount of piracy for these 2 games by a huge amount.

SilverStar95

The_nub_next_door

They still limit the amount of installs you can do. So what happens when your installs are up, and you live in a country where it's really expensive to call EA and ask for a new install code? :(

Maybe this is okay for US/Canadians, but the rest of the world, not so much...

Dave Silva

MehGinla

I am now going to my ORIGINAL plan; buying this game legally.

Covert_Knight

Hey! I sent them an impassioned letter mentioning soldiers who were lucky to get online once a month! I'd like to think I helped with that bit.

Now here's a long long post I made with a long long argument against someone pulling this bullshit again.

Read it so I can feel internet-happy.

[www.destructoid.com]

unangbangkay

Metropolis

wirebrain

Remember before how I said I wouldn't buy this game because of SecuROM? You've changed my mind! I will most definitely buy Mass Effect for my PC now. Thank you for changing your minds!

Although, of more interesting concern is that the armed forces are a big proponent in causing this change. I never realized the military allowed our troops to have laptops with them. That's a GREAT reason not to allow this kind of stupid authentication!

Hilariously, in the end, EA is probably happy to back down from the 10-day auth as it will massively decrease load on their auth servers. "What? It saves us money to do this? Sure!"

DaveKap

Several companies have taken the "no software protection" route, and their sales have done gang busters. This whole "OH NOES PIRACY!" business reeks of passing the blame, like a movie theater blaming the movie makers of lousy films after having ushers check tickets every ten minutes during the film and bumping the price to 20 bucks a seat.

wirebrain

Arttemis

While that may be the case (god knows I fully agree with it), the day publishers just say "Fuck it" in regards to piracy protections and write it off as a complete waste, they will be giving up on PC game publishing altogether, and from the sound of it, none of you want that. Granted, the PC as a platform would probably benefit from dissolution into a flash game and online poker only machine, as now it just has ports and crap MMOs, but thats another argument.

usfslacker

It's stupid not too.

Woodwater

For all those people praising Bioware / EA for listening to the internet community, consider this: If it had gone through with it's intended plans, 90% of us would have never gone near the damn thing, hence they lose out on profits. They didn't do it out of the kindness in their hearts, it was a business decision - a matter of money.

What baffles me all the more is the fact that they have not mentioned the removal of SecuROM - which I assume is left intact. To anyone who has never experienced SecuROM before, prepare to have your computer 'raped'.

Acklan

Nobody will complain about DRM they never see.

Apreche

[consumerist.com]

they pretty much just took one scoop of poop out of the drm shit sandwich is all..

no sale. securom is not allowed in my house..

railskins

wicko

NoahIdea

MehGinla

Should be an interesting read to the people who havent read it yet.

The point is as long as they punish their customers by using a copy protection i wont support them. Certainly not when they even limit my installations, granted i would never user more than one anyways.

Jindujun

Those who want to play a game but don't want to pay for it will get their hands on s