Slashdot Mirror
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.
The fight against DRM gains Steam.
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.
The only problem? Their conversion rate seems to be $1 per â1, somewhat less favorable than the current exchange rate, which is roughly $1.40 per â1.
Yeah but they don't have to physically ship pixels when they change money. Pixels are heavy, bytes are dense.. it's a complicated system of pipes and transmission lines.
I record my sleeptalking
Its been widely hypothesized that EA's intent with the DRM on Spore was not really to prevent piracy, but to impede second-hand sales. Doesn't Steam do exactly the same thing? Can you feasibly resell a license/copy of a game purchased on Steam?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Digital download. Ability to download your games on as many machines as you want (and play on one at a time, which I consider fair). Integrated grouping/friends-lists with Steam Friends and a built-in matchmaker.
It's pretty excellent.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
No one is claiming anything about steam.
It is what it is.
A service that allows you to buy(rent), download your game to any computer with the client, and play. It has a functional offline mode that works for every valve developed or published title I have played. It has introduced me a to few indie games that were fun. The prices are good, and I've bought most of my games on discount. It has community features that I find useful. It keeps my game up to date.
It is the only authentication system that actually gives you something in return for authenticating your game, and it doesn't bitch about me having virtual drive software.
The only major issues I've had with a game on steam was when a publisher(THQ not Valve) decided that the steam authentication wasn't good enough and decided it needed another DRM solution on top of steam, and it didn't let me actually play the game while their authentication severs were buggered.
Steam is what it is. Nothing more nothing less.
You mad
I am seeing praise here that they are dropping the SecureROM for Steam.
Why?
The way I see it, I still have to rely on some kind of authentication server in order to play my games. What if 10 years down the road I want to play some spore, and Steam is no longer online. What then?
Sorry, but I still refuse to buy until I have a hard copy in my hands that I can install at any place any time.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
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.
Is there any other kind?
Back in my day we only had analog downloads! And we were glad to have any at all! Why, if we wanted to play a video game one of us had to mentally interpret and reconstruct the current running through our hands back into the original binary! Then we had to crack the DRM - by slamming our heads just right against a stone wall to purge it from our memory. And we were grateful for the opportunity!
...
Then our father would cut us in two wit' a bread knife.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
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.
i prefer analog downloads using real steam. unfortunately, it took me several ruined hard drives to realize that analog steam downloads are incompatible with digital storage media. but i finally got a water tank installed in my computer, and it's been working great ever since.
see, whenever you download something the steam travels through a network of pressurized pipes--a series of tubes, if you will--until it finally reaches the computer, at which point it has to go through the Steam Condenser System Interface (SCSI) before it's finally written to the liquid state drive.
it is quite dangerous since the pipes are filled with highly pressurized scalding hot steam. if the network link ever becomes oversaturated it can easily result in packet loss and 3rd degree burns. but i think it's worth the risk. analog steam is perfect for cloud applications and downloading vaporware.
And Europeans got burned when it vented.
I'm not sure why the slashdot editors have decided to combine two unrelated steam stories, effectively denying the localized price story its own discussion. Maybe nobody reads slashdot in Europe? I'd say that, for anyone interested in using Steam living in the EU, the huge price increases are much bigger news than the EA thing.
How huge? For example, Call of Duty 4 went from 49,99 US$ to 71.97 US$ overnight, according to TFA. As a result, for most (all?) games on Steam it is now cheaper to buy them in brick-and-mortar stores, and you get a box too!
It looks like the message is "If you want to be free from Securom, you'll have to pay more. Actually, scratch that, you'll just pay more regardless."