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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.
I hate how publishers have finally used technological measures to achieve what the courts won't grant them. This should be flat out explicitly illegal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
Steam's a bit different - you can switch it to 'offline mode' (which happens automatically if it can't connect to the Steam servers), and it won't need to phone back again. You only need to be online to initially decrypt and update the game.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I always buy my games (who needs to download multiple Gb files anyway, it's boring), but I hate these stupid copy protection schemes.
Most of the time I find someone posts a crack or workaround to gamecopyworld though, and they tend to work.
Not for freetards though, not one of them comes with a serial, you still have to buy the games.
I'll try Spore just as soon as the drm is bypassed, not before. I refuse to believe that I, as a legally purchasing game player, need to be watched by the content owner.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Update, as I read farther into TFA:
"just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after"
Now it's saying something different!
Also:
Commenter: "Sure, I have an always-on net connection but what happens if I don't play for 11 days and the moment I want to play my connection is down? Are you saying I'm not going to be able to play my perfectly legitimate purchased copy of the game, even the retail version, until I get permission?"
BioShock rep: "That is correct. And I would suggest that you contact EA Support the moment this happens (once you get your internet back) to report the issue. If there are people having problems with the system as designed, then Support needs to hear about it so they can help us evaluate it for the next game title."
dont forget air/sea travel, airports, bus stations, cabins, e-mail-less vacations.
I need my games most when I CAN'T get to the network...
As a Netflix user, I can affirm that you do not know what you are talking about. Netflix's instant view capabilities are an added bonus to an already nice system. They don't even charge extra for it. The whole point of Netflix is that you are renting movies, so no one thinks they are "buying" a movie when they watch it instantly. You don't even pay per view, you pay a monthly fee, and that fee can be really low if you want to mainly watch the instant view movies. I don't know of a better way to legally watch movies cheaply. If Netflix suddenly goes down, all you lose is the last few days of that month's subscription.
Now, this system in TFA that is being described is a Bad Thing, because when those servers go down I can't play the game I paid $50.00 for. This is the first thing I've heard that makes me second guess buying Spore as soon as it comes out. Then again, I play plenty of Steam games, so I guess I'm not really that worried.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
Making an unauthorized copy is a violation of the copyright holders rights.
Even in America, where copyright is more heavily imbalanced in favor of owners and at the expense of the public than any other nation in the world - even here, you're wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Fair use exists to protect many actions that a purchaser of a copyrighted work might take, even if it's unauthorized. The DMCA may have warped some of that, but it's already eroding under court challenges, and it will continue to do so.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I just cancelled my pre-order for mass effect PC in the UK. I went through the new securom nightmare with Bioshock, and ended up returning my game for a refund. I'm not going through this again.
Here's the problems:
Bioshock didn't ship with a complete game on disc, leading to hours waiting for overloaded servers to connect and deliver up the missing parts on launch day. EA servers are well known for struggling when there's heavy load so I expect there to be similar problems.
Bioshock securom shipped with two lifetime activations. Reinstall windows? New activation. Replace motherboard? New activation. New user account? New activation. Every time after that, ring up tech support, spend a while on hold, then proving you own a legitimate copy by sending a digital photo of disc plus serial number to tech support in the US, while from the UK. Expensive, slow and very very frustrating, especially since the techs initially wouldn't even help for the first few days. It tooks months in the end for the 'release an activation' tool to come out, and that's a nightmare in itself.
3 activations? Given the amount I upgrade my gaming PC and reinstall windows, I'll be out of those in months if not weeks. I'm *not* jumping through hoops on the phone every time to reinstall my legitimate owned game because I've upgraded hardware and reinstalled windows more than 3 times in the lifetime of owning the game. And before you ask, my legit copy of windows is VLK licenced, and doesn't require activation.
Now the new and worse activation nightmare. Activation every 10 days? So I decide to install on a gaming laptop. If that laptop doesn't have an internet connection at the time I want to play, I won't be able to, because it's been sat unpowered in the bag for a fortnight, and I don't have an internet connection. Heaven forbid I want to play mass effect on the train, or on holiday.
Putting 'internet required' on the box does not excuse this rediculous scheme. They're going to massively inconvenience thousands of legitimate gamers wanting to play their own property when they choose, and they simply won't be able to. I won't buy a single player game that's deliberately crippled to stop me playing it unless I check in with the licence servers before I play. I've better ways to spend my money.
Pirates, on the other hand, will be playing a completely unencumbered game without any problems. It took less than 9 days for the bioshock DRM to be patched out and the cracked version to hit the internet. Legitimate paying customers are still massively inconvenienced by the DRM and stupid hoop-jumping, while pirates get a simple and easy experience.
I can't think of a better way to kill sales of the game and drive people to piracy than this new even worse version of securom than Bioshock.
And spore? I was really looking forward to that game, even more than mass effect. But I'm not going through the frustration I had with securom on bioshock again. No damn way.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.