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EA Loosens Spore, Mass Effect DRM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the actually-listening-to-your-constituency dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In response to recent criticism, EA has decided to eliminate the periodic validation of Mass Effect and Spore. 'Specifically, EA's plan to dial in to game owner's computers every ten days to check whether they were running a legitimate version of their software has been scrapped, ShackNews reports. EA had planned to use the validation method for upcoming titles Mass Effect and Spore. EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game. Chief among the voices in opposition to this measure were members of the armed forces, who pointed out that they could not rely on having an internet connection every ten days.'"

4 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Horror by Moridineas · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Wow, talk about completely and utterly missing the point!

    Soldiers--and many thousands of US government personnel deployed aboard--frequently don't have continual internet usage. (btw, I've personally run into a number of US military people who play WoW...but anyway). They are a large block of people who buy video games and have downtime to play games irregularly.

    EA WOULD be stupid to ignore that block, but not for any of the tortured reasoning you attempt.

  2. mod parent up by CamoCoatJoe · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I think a good compromise for this would be if they limited installs within a given period of time. Like three within a month. That would massively curb a cd key being shared online in a large pirate ring but would effect very few customers.
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  3. Re:How about? by TheLink · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Why not complain beforehand so that they change their minds? Then you can buy it instead of not buying it because of some stupid DRM?

    After all it actually seems to have worked in this case.

    Your suggested approach has the following disadvantages:
    1) Buyer and Seller lose out
    2) Higher latency/lag in the feedback loop.

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  4. Solves nothing. 10 days wasn't the issue. by guidryp · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Well I now see the first step in the EA destruction of Bioware. I don't play many games but the majority of them have been Bioware starting with Original Baldurs Gate.

    This breaks a fundamental usage paradigm, it wasn't the 10 days, it was the remote authentication of any kind.

    I still play 10 year old games on occasion, something this would prohibit and I have loaned out my copies of BG/NWN that resulted in more people buying them.

    I will NOT buy a game that require an authentication servers to play standalone, because it is clearly evident that someday those servers will be decommissioned.

    A company can have so much cash they don't know what to do with it and still shutdown servers. Just look at the MSN music service.

    In short Bioware received the lions share of my gaming dollars in the past. In the future they will get none. Bravo EA, another company destroyed.