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Mass Effect DRM Still Causing Issues
An anonymous reader writes "There was some discussion last month about the proposed DRM for Mass Effect and Spore that required the game to phone home every ten days. They backed down from that, but have left in that a user is only allowed 3 activations per license key. A license key is burned up when the O/S is reinstalled, when certain hardware is upgraded (EA refuses to disclose specifics of what), and possibly when a new user is set up in Windows. Only in its first month, some users are already locked out of their games from trying troubleshooting techniques to get the game running."
I warned people about the same BS with Bioshock. You don't want to pay $50 to just hire a game, because anything that stops you from using what you buy is hiring.
Well, I was looking forward to getting Spore when it came out - if this DRM remains though there's no chance that I'm going to buy it.
I picked this up from Target Sunday night after a buddy of mine told me that it was out for the PC. I came home and installed it...
I think it took 4 hours to decompress 9GB off of the DVD. I'm not sure, I ended up falling asleep before it completed.
So, Monday night, I came home from work to play it. What a pain in the ass.
a. needs new drivers, but
b. looks as good as BF 2142 (which worked on my older drivers and ran faster)
c. we're talkin' "high seas" choppy (12-16 fps) even on 800x600 with linear aliasing and no music.
d. OTOH BF2142 can run in 1600:900 widescreen at 60 fps.
Did I mention that it failed to load after (I kid you not) 10 minutes on the splash screen? Apparently, the SecuROM DRM blacklists SysInternal's Process Explorer. Yeah, major hacking tool. Whatever.
Ok, so, I upgraded drivers, turned off PE and rebooted (!), and fired it up again. Like I mentioned, choppy sound fx and graphics and crazy load times (we're talking no UI response for upwards of 10 minutes).
Eventually, I did get to "play" for about an hour or so before an uninterruptable cutsceen black-screened-of-death my computer. Why oh why aren't they using industry-standard works-forever Bink video? Or if they are, they've seriously misimplemented it.
It should go without saying that this game appears to have undergone the most lazy subcontracted porting job from the xbox to the PC.
Against my better judgement, I'm putting it on the shelf until they release a patch rather than returning it. (Mainly because I don't think Target accepts software returns...)
Bottom line: I got what I deserved for buying this game without doing any research beforehand. (Surely, this is 2008, and Big-Name games aren't released in a broken state, right? wrong.)
Yep, I get that with Civ 4, which doesn't have cd keys for the game or the expansions, it has the old fashioned "disk in drive" copy protection.
5 minutes and 3 no CD exes later my game runs even better.
Erm... I hate to tell you this. The Stardock games all "have no copy protection" for the V1.0, but as soon as you install an update, it asks you for the key, and then it does product activation, much like BioShock and Mass Effect.
The Stardock product activation is much nicer than BioShock or ME; instead of a hard install limit, the install limit is rate based. In other words, you're only allowed [unspecified number] of installs per [unspecified time period]. There's also none of the "can't be running any debugging tools" nonsense that SecuROM comes with.
The "unspecified"s in there make me a bit uncomfortable, but it's a bit better than SecuROM.
(it's not stealing unless you pick a box off a shelf in a store)
;)
And its not piracy either. (Unless you take a ship at sea.)
What you evidently meant to say is that "There will always be those that choose to infringe copyrights."
If you are going to be pedantic about definitions then be pedantic about definitions
Only one PC can be logged in to a Steam account at a time.
Most singleplayer games under Steam can be played in offline mode, which somewhat resolves this.
The safest way around the problem is probably creating one Steam account per game, but that also removes a lot of the convenience in Steam - and convenience is our reason for accepting their Digital Restrictions Management.
On the whole, it's a pretty disgusting press technique EA's gotten away with here.
EA: Mass Effect and Spore will have invasive DRM that re-checks with a central server every 10 days!
Bad press happens
EA: We learned our lesson. Mass Effect and Spore won't use that invasive system we were thinking of using. We decided we had to listen to our customers, so we decided we'd use this less invasive method (which is still invasive, and is the same system used on Bioshock)
Good press happens, despite the fact that EA has just said it would use the same protection system as Bioshock, which got bad press for... having an invasive protection system that locked legitimate consumers out of their own games.
This is called the foot in the door technique, and at least up to this article, EA pulled it off masterfully.
Nice theory.
One flaw, you can't bypass copyright protection without violating EULA (and DMCA in the US)
Regardless of how fuzzy and warm you feel, software makers (microsoft being a prime example) mention in their EULAs that if you bypass the protection, your right to use the software is revoked (no money returns) and if you keep using it, you are no different from a person who didn't pay for it in the first place (maybe ethically or morally you are) but not according to the law.
... by calling EA's technical support line. Of course, if you actually get through to someone compatent enough to help you you deserve a medal. And a refund for the phone call (no, it's not free...)
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.