Mass Effect, Spore to have nasty DRM

croxis

[url]http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52547[/url]

In short, running the game for the first time will cause the game to phone EA SecureROM servers for activation. If the game is unable to phone home every 10 days it will disable the game. The "perk" of this is that the cd/dvd will not need to be in the drive to play the game.

Lord Refa

Captain Obvious: "I am not sure if they've thought that through." :)

WORF

Those of you on IRC will remember how much trouble I had getting Bioshock to run because of their silly copy protection scheme. In the end I had to use an illegal crack even though I bought a perfectly legitimate copy of the game.

I imagine this will be like that but worse. Especially with Spore if it sells as well as I expect on the first day or so.

Worf

ShadowDancer

Well we all knew EA are a bunch of retards, this just confirms it!

It would seriously put me off getting either.....tho I probably will anyway

C_Mon

It's annoying stuff indeed, but the PC gaming is really hurting due to piracy. Cry-tech announced some days ago they will not make any more games for the PC only because piracy is so big on the PC platform. Some even think that the only future for games on PC are mmo types of game where you pay per month and has to log in every time you play. So I do understand why they do include these copy protections. But I still bet this protection will also be cracked.

Messiah

What? Just disallowing users who dont use the interweb? Thanks kind of pompous of them.

WORF

Sins of a Solar Empire sold decently and the only copy protection it has is not letting unregistered users get the updates.

Worf

croxis

The head guy of Stardock (publisher of SIns and Gal Civ) said the reason why sales are poor for PC games isn't because of piracy, but because not many people can play the games. He based this on his observation of high end game machine sales and high end video card sales.(Farcry and Crisis were very demanding games and only few could run them. My dad's 4 year old machine can run Sins moderatly well.

Another common comment is that all piracy is lost sales is not a strong claim. How many people who pirated the game would have bought it if the pirate version was not availible?

Vorlons in my Head

Once upon a time you could run games with out the CD/DVD in the drive and not need online validation either. I also agree while pirating might has some impact on game sales it's not as huge as every copy pirated is a lost sale. PC gaming is dying because having an up to date system is an expensive proposition that also tends to require a fairly strong technical know-how to get things to work. It's just a smaller market. Until onboard video becomes a reasonable alternative to run good games at low cost and the cost of a competent gaming system drops drastically PC gaming will continue the downward spiral. The days of the $500-$800 video card need to come to an end.

wiseguy

copy protections.. it's with every technology: you have a team of 100 people developing something and a team of 100(0)s with nothing better to do than find the backdoor. i would be surprised if mass effect and spore would be an exception to that.

pc gaming has been on that downward spiral for a long time.. in my opinion also because not that many games are innovative enough or have enough content to justify 40-60€ and a high-end gaming rig :(

C_Mon

I'm not saying PC gaming is hurting due to piracy because of sales. I ment it's suffering because most publishers are blaming piracy for almost anything. :p

wiseguy

i wonder if

gamers = violent killers

does it mean that

piracy gamers = ninjas?

:rolleyes:

Seafroggys

David, you're shitting me.......internet validation every 10 days?

Has anyone sent EA a letter saying they have no internet but want to purchase the game? And the fact that EA has lost sales because of that?

The last sentance in that paragraph will surely perk them up.

croxis

As Firefly and Ron Paul supporters found out, the voice of the internet is a minority of the market. Actual sales will have to be impacted and large customer service fiascos. And supporting stardock (you still need to buy FA!)

ShadowDancer

croxis: well if you have to validate every 10 days via the internet, then surely it will make up a large part of the market for this game? :p

Akrovah

Apparently there has been ehough of an internet hooplah that they are back tracking a little.

[URL="http://pc.ign.com/articles/873/873025p1.html"]http://pc.ign.com/articles/873/873025p1.html[/URL]

croxis

Or as Biggles suggested, they are toying with us so they can make themselves look like the good guys.

Biggles

Since he appears to be referring to something from IRC, here's some context:

[quote]
Biggles: you know, this was probably all a scam
Biggles: "how can we make them happy with only being allowed to install the game three times?"
Biggles: "i know, let's first start with an even worse scheme! then we can fall back to this still-very-evil one and they'll be happy!"[/quote]

Messiah

You know, only being able to install three times would not be so bad, if they automatically removed that limit after 2 years time.

Biggles

I don't remember where I read this, but someone suggested they should make it a limited number of installs within a certain time-frame. So something like a maximum of 3 installs within 3 months. That would cover most people (two desktops at home and a laptop) and allow for reinstalls after formats. The number of people who would have problems serious enough to require installing more often would be small enough that (decent) customer service would be able to handle it.

Of course, personally I think they shouldn't bother limiting at all since it just gets cracked within days...

croxis

[url]http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/5/9/[/url]

Tyvar

Eh, I'll just wait 5 or 6 years after release when PC processors have advanced enough to run a freaking emulator of whatever console and then play the game on my PC anyways, with PIRATED copies of the console games!! BUWHAHAHA!!

/goes back to playing FF XII and Front Mission 4 on his PC.


Seriously though I was going to get mass effect but now? no way, especially not with this "limit of 3 installs" thing.. How the hell does the DVD know anyways?

Biggles

It doesn't. You still have to authenticate with their servers when you install.

Chaosed

I remember something like this not going so well for MS. (Why did they name there corporation after a major disease?)

Tyvar

Biggles: greaaat so I can buy it, install it, and then after about 27 months install a hacked version? (given the amount of time that goes on between my reinstalls of XP)

A2597

yea, DRM = teh suck

Vorlons in my Head

[QUOTE=Chaosed;172976]I remember something like this not going so well for MS. (Why did they name there corporation after a major disease?)[/QUOTE]
I don't know if it really hurt them in any significant way. Certainly didn't help them but I do blame MS for introducing the widespread practice of online validation.

Biggles

[QUOTE=Tyvar;172982]Biggles: greaaat so I can buy it, install it, and then after about 27 months install a hacked version? (given the amount of time that goes on between my reinstalls of XP)[/QUOTE]

You could probably get away with installing the hacked version straight away. :)

croxis

The installer doesn't do the authentication, just the first run of the game. So you can install as many times as you wish, but just not be able ot play it :/

WORF

You'll probably need the hacked version to play it even on launch day.

Worf

Akrovah

By 3 isntalls, doent they mean 3 different machines? so if you install, and run it for the "first-time", it on 1 machine 20 times, it should still work I would think. Thats the impression I got from it.