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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.
DRM in and of itself isn't evil, in fact Steam brings a lot of features that make it actually appealing to me.
No media, no serial numbers, just a single username and password for all my games.
No reselling of your games...
What?
It's getting more annoying as time goes on. For instance, I bought a few games for the kids to play on the laptop. Last night, I wanted to play Left4Dead but couldn't because Steam was logged in on another PC.
Steam should allow the client to run on multiple PCs and then just ensure the same game isn't being played.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
it can be perfectly legal without steam, it's just up to the distributer to be more reasonable with thier t&c's.
But they aren't, so Steam it is.
the question you need to ask yourself, is is piracy more or less of a problem now than before DRM? what's that, it's just as big of a problem??? that's right DRM isn't the solution. kthxbai.
The question you need to ask yourself, is piracy more or less of a problem now for Steam-only games than it is for non-Steam ones? and the answer is, from what I've seen, that it's much less of a problem now. Yes, pirated versions do exist but most of the people I've met who've played HL2 have done so on a legit copy, which I can't say for Crysis or CoD4 for example. Therefore, by your own argument, Steam *is* the solution.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Any game over $35 that I buy on steam, I put in it's own account. That way if I want to give it away or sell it, I'll just give away the one account.