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EA Is Now Officially On Steam, Spore Loses SecuROM
Trevor DeRiza writes "Today, Valve and EA revealed that this week's earlier rumors were true: Spore (and other EA games) are coming to Steam. As of today, Spore, Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect, Need for Speed: Undercover, and FIFA Manager 2009 are all available for download on Steam. In the coming weeks, EA will add Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Red Alert 3. On the official Steam forums, when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008, a moderator replied, 'It does not have third party DRM.' EA has also finally launched a 'de-authorization tool' to free up limited installation slots."
Several readers have written to point out other news about Steam today: they've begun selling games priced in local currency for European customers. The only problem? Their conversion rate seems to be $1 per €1, somewhat less favorable than the current exchange rate, which is roughly $1.40 per €1.
Now I can buy Spore! I knew they'd drop it sooner or later and then I can finally buy it.
Wait... why would I?
Maybe the lesson here is, if you avoid DRM like the plague, you avoid buying overhyped games as a beneficial side effect.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can't do it legally. With steam, you know that it's legal because they're explicitly enumerating that right in the terms of your license and providing the mechanism to do it.
And that ignores the additional benefit that you don't have to worry about misplaced or damaged original media (free download is a lot cheaper than "cost of media plus nominal fee plus S&H" where available. And faster, too), or that nonsense about "insert disk to play" that other software uses.
Sure, it's DRM, but it's DRM done right: you get something in return for what you're giving up.
You can put it in offline mode. Don't criticize things if you don't even know how they work.
I see so much praise for Steam these days. Has it improved significantly over the monstrosity I swore off ~four years ago? I am talking about the years when you could not play a Steam game offline if you did not put yourself into offline mode while still online. Steam trying to authenticate itself killed the network at dozens of LAN parties, and that behavior could not be stopped without closing Steam.
"Yes, but Steam has assured us that in the eventuality of their auth servers going down, they'd give us ways to continue playing."
Oh, really? This 'assurance' covers an out-of-the-blue bankruptcy filing, where employees show up to work one day to find the doors locked, with no opportunity to remove the digital chains from the software you paid good money for?
At least, unlike boxed games that no chain will buy used, Valve doesn't pretend that it's a first sale; it's treated as a license, and you're informed of that before purchasing the license.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Actually, they mean none of the above. They mean that it will be using Steam's DRM, which is probably some of the most unintrusive DRM out there. Basically, the games you buy are tied to your account, can be redownloaded any time however many times you want, etc etc. It's only restrictive in events where, for instance, Steam's login servers go down (which has only happened once, and they've fixed the problem since then), and it can be a bit of a hassle on slow connections, due to the fact that setting a game to "Offline Mode" is unintuitive. But on the flip side it also adds a lot of convenience that tends to be associated with Digital Distribution, plus a community, friends list, IM client that functions in lots of Steam games, etc. Adding SecuROM or other DRMs on top of it would only make it less effective, and as far as I know, is against Valve's policy for games they allow on Steam.
The crysis binary you captured includes a hashing mechanism that will only allow the installer binary to run on that computer.
So yes, it will allow you to re-install, assuming you don't change whatever vital components they use to fingerprint the host.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
It may not be logical to you but that don't make it wrong.
Peace,
Mild Bill
bamph
You can play without an internet connection (within restrictions) after you have set up the machine using an internet connection. You can play at your friend's house, but not without an internet connection.
Most importantly, you cannot sell your games or loan them to your friends, as you don't own them. And if Valve decides you have violated their terms of service and cut off your account, you lose all the games you "owned".
If they can take it away, then I never really owned it.
Steam limits you a lot. You just apparently don't mind the limitations. That doesn't mean they don't exist though.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
No. Valve has stated multiple times, that THEY will release the "crack". If the publihser does it, it is not braeking the law in my opinion.
If you find a typo, you may keep it.
You don't have to worry about reinstalling, either. You want to change your installation directory? Copy the entire Steam folder off to somewhere else.
That's it.
I haven't once reinstalled Steam since I got it and it's always been on my E: drive after reformats. So if you want it somewhere else, install it, shut it down and do a good 'ol cut and paste. That simple. Games under it are pathed to be subdirectories from wherever the steam executable is. You won't lose anything and everything still works. You can just copy it straight over onto a thumbdrive or external USB HD, if you so please.
A night out can carry no expectations of being long lived whereas a video game only has artificial restrictions. I buy games to play off and on for as long as the hardware lasts. In 20 years time I might just want to play any of Valve's games. The same as it's been over 20 years since Mario Bros and I'll still play that on my real NES.
With PC games there should be a reasonable expectation that if something worked one day on one set of hardware/OS it should work forever even after the developers and publishers have long been fed to the lawyers.
When OSs change and don't run it any more, that's MY problem and I or someone smarter than me will figure out a solution (DosBox or vmware) but I won't buy anything where a third party holds all the cards.
Oh bugger. I've just checked, and they have turned the beta off. Now I can only buy in sterling and the prices are higher than normal retail! Screw that valve, you just lost a loyal customer.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.