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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.
Never mind, if my past experience with SecuRom is any indication, replacing the executable with the cracked version is going to be SecuRom's solution to any bugs in their DRM scheme. I know when I had problems with SecuROM not authorizing my copy of NWN, and wrote to them about it, they shipped me a little reporting tool (my box was almost exclusively used for NWN at this time), analysed the data, and sent me a link to a patched .exe and told me to replace my nwn.exe with that. What a waste, I could have downloaded the crack (which was probably SecuROM's own patched .exe) and ran that.
I've never seen a more useless company than SecuROM.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Now I'm eagerly awaiting the release of a crack for Spore.
This space available.
Clearly, you're not allowed to do that. The company went out of business because you and the rest of their traitorous customers failed to buy enough of their software to keep them afloat. Obviously, if you can't even be loyal enough to do a little thing like keep a company in business forever, then you don't deserve to play their games.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Rem SPORE.BAT
@ECHO OFF
DATE (DATE-10)
SPORE.EXE
DATE (DATE+10)
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Airport Security: Someone's subtly transporting 'Spores' eh? If you'll just step this way, sir..
which is totally what she said
I am altering the EULA. Pray I do not alter it any further.
</vader>