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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.
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.
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."
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
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.