Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mass Effect DRM Still Causing Issues

Posted by kdawson on from the three-strikes-and-you're-out dept.

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."

2 of 593 comments (clear)

  1. I just bought this game Sunday night... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.)

  2. Re:Thats what they get by Winckle · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.