Spore, Mass Effect DRM Phone Home For Single-Player Gaming

Tridus writes "The PC version of Mass Effect is going to require Internet access to play (despite being a single-player game), as its DRM system requires that it phone home every 10 days. Sadly, Spore will use the same system. This will do nothing to stop piracy of course, but it will do a heck of a good job of stopping EA's new arch-enemy: people playing their single player games offline." Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play? Update: 05/07 17:17 GMT by T : According to a message from Technical Producer Derek French (may require a scroll-down) on the Bioware forums, there is indeed an internet connection required, but only for activation, not for all future play. Update: 05/08 04:10 GMT by T : Mea culpa. As reader David Houk points out, the 10-day window is in fact correct as initially described, so don't count on playing this on any machine without at least some Internet connectivity.

Comments

Re:This has been a critical feature of Spore?

[dualboot]

This just in!

World of Warcraft requires you to "phone home" to play! Damned anti-piracy measures!

You are the cause of all this pal..

[cliffski]

How do you think pirating Bioshock helped? You just lost ALL moral authority to whine about the action of anyone here. If A developer spends 5 million dollars making a game, you bet their ass its up to THEM the terms on which they sell it. If you dislike the copy protection and fear you will have a seizure and your head will explode if you have securom installed, then DON'T BUY THE GAME. But do not be under ANY illusion that you are IN ANY WAY entitled to play the game anyway.
People with your attitude (I don't like the terms of sale, so I'll just take it) are the entire reason DRM exists. Honest gamers like me have securom installed by their purchased games because people like you will pirate them at the first opportunity.
Yet I bet in your head, nothing is your fault, its all those evil bastard game devs making games you want so badly you will steal them rather than stick to your principles.

I bought Bioshock, it installed securom, it works fine, I wouldn't even know or care that it was there. Anything that stops leechers pirating games is fine with me.

Re:My worry

[n0nsensical]

Splitting hairs isn't contributing to the conversation, especially when there's no functional difference for most people, who are really quite ignorant. fixed.