Slashdot Mirror
EA Loosens Spore, Mass Effect DRM
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.'"
of common sense?
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
> EA had planned to use the validation method for upcoming titles Mass Effect and Spore (pictured).
Those games look a lot like a joystick.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
The original story on this garnered attention from quite a large crowd (even just in the scope of Slashdot). It would have been foolish on their part to plug ahead when, as was pointed out by a poster on the original thread, their customer service was already trained with what to tell people who didn't like the model: 'complain so that we don't make the same mistake with our next game release.'
I was worried I'd have to actually buy Spore.
1939/45... Troops freeze through the Battle of the Bulge, across Russia.
2008... Access to certain videogames sometimes limited in certain situations for a few days until net access can be resecured.
I know "Won't anybody think of the troops!" is second only to "Won't anybody think of the children!" and can thus never be questioned unless you're a terrorist as well as a paedophile.. but there comes a point where the rallying cry is used for such ludicrously trivial things that it just devalues everyone involved.
EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game. Spore is built on downloadable content. Throughout the game, the creatures you encounter, the worlds you visit, the buildings you see--they are all player-created objects and will all be downloaded in the background while the game is running. Spore is a game that only works well with downloadable content, and if I have to enter a validation code every time the game decides to download a creature or a planet, I'm not sure the promising gameplay will be worth the hassle.
You don't like their policies or practices then don't fucking buy it. Thats the loudest thing you can say.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
In a drunk fit last night I actually sent a rant to them about it, I don't remember what I said exactly but I pointed out that DRM has actually driven me to download games instead of pay for them and if I couldn't expect to defeat the copy protection bullshit then I just wouldn't play the game.
Nothing no one's thought or said before, but I'm sure if enough gaming curmudgeons drank enough smirnoff ice at the same time while listening to EBM then there would surely be a rival to the mass mailing botnets that don't actually have anything useful to tell anyone.
It's freaking hot in here and Qwerty pisses me off. I'm going to drink some vinegar and go to bed.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
A wise decision would be to forgo the DRM altogether, and apply the savings to reducing the retail price of the games. I guarantee that will have a far greater effect on sales than any DRM scheme ever would.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
One of the things about being god awful bad at something is you can improve a lot and still stink.
The DRM still only allows three total installs for the lifetime of the game (although you can call EA tech support and ask for more, no guarantee though). I have many games that have existed on more than three of my personal computers. Just glancing at my shelf I see 1830, Star Fleet Command, Transport Tycoon, Starcraft, Rome Total War and the list goes on. I don't want to have to beg tech support every time I upgrade my game machine, many of these companies don't even exist anymore.
The fact of the matter is that DRM that limits the total number of times you can install the game is unacceptable. They may have fixed other problems with the DRM, but this issue remains.
The 10-day thing is required. Here's where it comes from.
BioShock released with an earlier version of this system; SecuROM with Product Activation. After outcry from people then, publisher 2K Games promised a "deactivation" tool (which isn't enough for me to rent their game, but I guess it was enough for some). The problem with this tool goes a little something like this:
Step 1: Install BioShock
Step 2: Activate BioShock. SecuROM server now thinks you have "n-1" activations left. Your game is activated, and BioShock will never phone home again.
Step 3: Ghost/clone your hard drive image.
Step 4: Deactivate BioShock. SecuROM server goes back up to "n" activations left. Your game is deactivated.
Step 5: Restore your harddrive from the image you created in step 3. Now your game is activated again, but the server doesn't know that, and still thinks you have "n" activations left.
This is obviously a bit of an onerous process to go through, but it isn't hard to imagine someone automating this process (or even just automating the important part; finding where the activation is stored on your drive, backing it up, and then restoring it after the deactivation process is finished updating the server).
I strongly suspect the "phone home every 10 days" was an attempt to "fix" this. If 30 different machines are all phoning home every few days with the same key, then you know people are using this (or a similar technique) to pirate the game, so you can ban the key and kill all those installs. Without the phone home part, this activation scheme is essentially worthless.
The CORRECT fix, of course, is to get rid of product activation, because it's stupid, invasive, and is pushing your formerly paying customers into circumventing your copy protection.