So what exactly is this whole EA stuff about?

Online activation.

Bioshock/Mass Effect/Spore/whatever come with a rather retarded copy protection scheme. You have to activate your install online, sorta like Microsoft did with WindowsXP.

Spore and Mass Effect are limited to three activations before they say fuck off and you have to call tech support(EA tech support is an anathema) and ask for a new one. As long as you only install on one computer and never have something like hard drive failure wipe out your system before you manually uninstall it to regain the activation, you're just fine. Assuming they keep the activation server running, wouldn't be the first time someone shut down an authentication type server and fucked their customers over.

This thread explains it pretty well. Basically it is the same DRM that Windows Vista and XP come with, only that EA is more restrictive about giving out additional activations.

EA decided for Mass Effect+Spore to make you only be allowed to 'activate' your game 3 times (activation occurring when you install on a new computer or your current computer changes an unspecified amount). Furthermore they decided that you would have to connect to the internet to confirm your game was authentic every 5 days in addition to initially to install it, and if you failed to do this within 10 days you'd be prevented from playing it.
After a massive backlash they dropped the 5-10 day constant activation part, but kept the 3 limit activation bit.

In short, if you want to play these games for a long time and/or upgrade your computer frequently and/or have several computers you play on, then you're in trouble.

Wow, that sounds rather unfair, just seem to be blanketing every PC gamer as a criminal.

Thanks for the response btw.

pndrev, that thread you linked is pretty long. Does it include any mention of Spore possibly backing off this system? I'm very interested in that toy, but I won't go near that sort of "must be online to play" crap.

So far there's been no indication that Spore will not come with the same DRM/'copy protection'. Vote with your wallets, people.

I will. I'm just awfully tired of voting against things, whether with my wallet or in the real voting booth. Spore looks like soooo much fun, and this "massively single player online" thing is a really interesting notion...

I agree, GW. Hopefully the uproar with Mass Effect will have enough of an impact to get EA to back off with this DRM on their upcoming titles, but I'm not holding my breath. I was really looking forward to ME and Dragon Age (which is supposedly going to come out in Q4 this year), but with this DRM on it, I'm not buying.

Totally agree - its utterly stupid. There's no way they will stop it being cracked, and every way they will Hiss Off prospective customers. There are uncrackable ways to protect software, but they are not available to the general public and are insanely expensive, far too much for a mere game. The only way this pointless, useless and utterly irritating DRM saga will ever cease is not to buy DRM products. That will, finally, penetrate to the respective Games House Board Room that all is not well out there, and despite the briefings given to the contrary by Bonus motivated Staff, they are losing a shed full of cash and market share.

I have no truck with those who Crack software, a loathsome, petty, and selfish illegal activity. DRM though is not the answer "DRM is better than nothing " is a patently insane statement, as it goes no where near to resolving the real issue. Regrettably Bonus driven Clowns whose knowledge of this area is restricted to theoretical impacts on balance sheets, hold sway in those companies using it.

One day they will rejoin the Real World, however at the rate thats likely, it'll be too late - Stardock will own the MarketPlace via their very sensible approach to this daft issue :LOL:

*Sigh*

( A polite Rant is good for the Soul .... at least thats my excuse, and I'm sticking to it )

Regards
Zy

Or they could just interpret it as follows:
Sales are down, so people must be pirating it instead of buying it. We need harsher and more powerful DRM, stat!

That assesment is completly out of touch with reality, but I can see the corporate overlords going for it. It fits nicely with the "control the market by force" strategy that they seem to favour.

Also, it has the merit of excluding the notion that there is anything wrong with your product or your business management and places blame on faceless third parties. Come annual report time, that goes down a lot better with shareholders than "Yeah, we screwed up and lost you guys a lot of money, sorry".

Nice point - I would not put it past them! Its also classed as a Business Expense, so in effect when it works through the balance sheet its, in a practical sense, tax deductible. Talk about a double wammy in terms of paying for the cost of DRM .....

Regards
Zy

It's pretty sad that the Spore trial comes with some sort of DRM in which caused it to deactivate my install or disable my online account. I'm not sure what happened, but I can't use the online features anymore due to some sort of validation problem. This is a major issue when it comes to confidence in the final release. This is probably linked to spybot search and destroy (as well as spyware terminator) detecting an unauthorized attempt by a garbage-named dll file to make registry changes in the middle of the game which were blocked. Securom is doing something EA isn't telling us and it's bad enough to show up just like malicious software would.

I want to buy Mass Effect, but I won't support it's style of copy protection. I wanted to buy Bio Shock too, but the same situation popped up there. I have pirated neither game. Sadly, until they remove the copy protection, I will stand on principle and refuse to purchase these games.

I've been tracking this since BiowarEA announced they'll use that 10 day verification thing.

Currently there are quite a NUMBER of users upset with this, not just people who bought Mass Effect, but we're talking people who bought The Sims expansion packs and endured the horrors of SecuROM breaking their CD-writer drives, etc. etc. etc.

One particular user by the name of riftguy has already used up all 3 of his activations, and E.A. is giving him a hard time with him and he's just frustrated trying to prove that he really does indeed OWN the copy of the game.

Interestingly enough, E.A. Europe has been more lenient in giving out extra activations for those who need it. Not so for the North American market, because there just aren't as stringent consumer-protection laws as there are in Europe.

The brief Slashdot blurb is also available here. http://games.slashdot.org/games/08/06/17/1850222.shtml

I also read that Stardock plans to launch a digital distribution service called "Inpulse" Let's just hope that Stardock still holds strong to it's stance against DRM. It's HORRIBLE to punish users restrict what they do on their computer because of what is deemed "content paranoia".

That guy's a saint, IMO. I'm amazed at the hoops EA 'support' has made him jump through so far and he's done all they asked, and he still can't play his game (for those who don't know, he played the game for 2 days, left it for 10 days and when he tried to fire it up again, no go. And he's not been able to play it since). And the guy's not ranting or raving at all, although he's telling his story whenever he gets the chance. I take my hat off to him because by this time I'd be telling EA to shove that game box so far up their asses they could read the bar code from behind their eyes.

well.... that is just plain stupid... requiring a gamer to HAVE to register the game to make it simply work.... sickening... all those games looked fascinating, but they lost my money with that little stunt.


just sickening...

People like the OP represent the 99% of people who buy the game. They dont really know enough about DRM to hate it.

For those of you who are concerned about SecuROM's presence on Spore, I located the e-mail to forward your concerns / comments... It's not the actual Maxis employees' e-mail address, but I sent 'em a question regarding SecuROM and got a reply from them. So I'm going to post the e-mail here in hopes that it'll get more people to write in and cite their concerns. Who knows, it may force a change in policy... one can hope, but without trying, all it is, is a pipe dream.

e-mail at maxis ~at~ terraspore.com

EA has a habit of bad PR. Crippling DRM? Check. Kill games with expansion packs? Check. Release a sequel with only different models and names (think of pretty much all their sprts games)? Check. It's a miracle they've managed to survive for so long, but I guess they do that by buying out the competition. As someone mentioned before, Vote with your wallets. It might not help with the DRM and general crappyness, but maybe they'll run out of money . Imagine that: Waging war with a company with attrition. Sounds like some of the old sci-fi (think Rollerball). Either that or a conspiracy...

Actually with the current financial straits EA is in right now, that MIGHT actually be possible to wage a war of attrition. They've already spent craploads of money trying to acquire Take 2, they've withdrawn a billion dollar loan from the banks in order to buy Take 2... it IS possible.

I didnt buy Bioshock because of DRM, I didnt buy Mass Effect because of DRM, and it pains me greatly, but I will pass on Spore as well if it has this draconian DRM.  I don;t mind paying for my games, but I will not be treated so poorly by any company who preports to want my business.

EA wants to comment, they can call me at (347)Bug-Mike

Mike James

The whole situation is just so depressing - companies are actively paying money to reduce their sales and encourage piracy, and alienating all of their remaining customers, all in one stroke. Quite how they can possibly think that something that discourages legal purchasing of a game and encourages using a crack for it is a good thing I'll never know, I just hope that they pay a bit of attention to real figures instead of whatever they're currently basing their decisions on, and stop ruining all these great games (Bioshock, Spore, and Mass Effect - all 3 are games I'd want to buy, bioshock to a lesser extent, but Spore and Mass Effect I'd have been all but guaranteed to purchase. Now I'm not getting either, until maybe I've upgraded my computer and am confident I won't be upgrading again for a while, and even then...)

It is a terrible business decision though, and if EA and other companies keep on making such decisions then they will start to lose market share I think - companies like stardock will grow and attract dissatisfied EA customers, and EA will be forced to either adapt and change, or lose large amounts of profits. However to really hurt them over this issue awareness would have to be raised about it everywhere - after all EA are hardly going to promote DRM on their box saying 'this game comes with a revolutionary new anti-piracy method that will prevent you activating it more than 3 times', neither is the company selling the game, and only some game reviewers appear to give it much prominence either.

Maudlin raises a good issue, in all the reviews i have seen for the games not a single one has mentioned the issue of DRM or the SecuROM programs being contained by the games. Which as a gamer is quite shameful to see as perhaps the easiest way to find out about the best game to look out for in the next months is by reading such articles.

I was looking forward to Spore and both Mass Effect and Bioshock were games up there on my "to buy list" but now not so sure.

Well hopefully stardock will remain true on its stance over DRM, and continue to bring us games like Sins.

Peace. FNM

Looks like you've got two options. Either:

Stop playing the games you want to play.

Or:

Go buy an XBox and play them without the ridiculous copy protection.

In terms of DRM, the XBox is just a giant dongle.

You can't backup games, you can't even play a couple of XBL games if you registered your account in certain countries, you can't even CHANGE the address of your account(1), patches for games are far and between - instead they rather charge you ~5 Euros for a pack of bitmaps.

However, and you're right in that regard, games marketed for XBox simply run. No installation, no driver updates, noone messing around in your registry, easier for the developers (identical hardware everywhere)...

It just doesn't occur to the big companies that people are buying 60 Euro console games and pirating 40 Euro PC games so they have this 'easy' experience on both platforms. If PC games were as easy to install and run as console games (and Stardock games are, for example), people would buy them again.



(1) Address, yes, but not country. MS tells you that's not possible, you have to create a new account and purchase ALL content again. According to them 'people dont move between countries'. Yeah. Right.

Holy crap, you guys pay the equivelent of 90 USD for console games? That is robbery.