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EA Editor Criticizes Command & Conquer 4 DRM
Command & Conquer 4's DRM hasn't garnered Electronic Arts as much bad press and fan outrage as Ubisoft's scheme, despite being very similar. Nevertheless, it's been causing problems and frustrations for some users, including EA.com's own editor-in-chief, Jeff Green. An anonymous reader points this out:
"Green wrote on his Twitter account late last week: 'Booted twice — and progress lost — on my single-player C&C4 game because my DSL connection blinked. DRM fail. We need new solutions.' He continued later, 'Well. I've tried to be open-minded. But my 'net connection is finicky — and the constant disruption of my C&C4 SP game makes this unplayable. The story is fun, the gameplay is interesting and different at least — but if you suffer from shaky/unreliable DSL — you've been warned.'"
I was in my local games shop the other day and I brought this title to the counter. In the queue I noticed it said "requires online connection". So I asked the clerk if it was an online game but he said no. I subsequently put it back in the shelf and walked out of the store.
That's one lost sale EA. I'll buy it when you loose the funky DRM. (I have bought almost every other C&C title)
I highly doubt he got a "modchip" for a PS3, unless he got ties in the underground.
There is nothing publicity available about being able to load PS3 Games from images yet.
It's been years since they enabled the PS3 to make backups from your games, but there still isn't a way to run those images.
Not public anyway.
I've heard rumours some of the underground groups have successfully ran certain images, but nothing ready to the public.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
You damn well can notice DRM on the Xbox 360. I recently had mine die and I sent it back to MS for repair. They sent back a referb unit as per their usual policy. Along with the Xbox was a note telling me to redownload all my DLC so that the licenses on my hard drive would be updated to work with the new console. Well that only works if the jack asses at MS remember to actually transfer the licenses to the new Xbox on their servers, which they failed to do in my case.
It took a lot of poking around but I eventually found xbox.com/drm which gave me proof that they indeed forgot to transfer the licenses and also gave me a way to transfer the licenses to the new Xbox, though you can only do this once per year.
While I was having these DRM issues I could only play DLC games when I was on the account they were purchased on and logged on to Xbox live. As soon as I lost my internet connection (which happened to be having issues around this time) all my DLC games would get the word trial added beside their name. I did a test and brought up the list of all my DLC games, pulled the network cable out of the Xbox and saw the word "Trial" added to the name of every one of my games, top to bottom, one at a time. Event my damn wallpaper disappeared because that was DRMed too.
That said at least they have a tool like xbox.com/drm and at least they do allow you to link your games to a console so they can be played offline once that is achieved. Still, I'm sure this isn't the last I'll see of these issues.
So it's practically useless
No different to the retail version then?
I understand that there are save packs doing the rounds that work around these issues, but to be honest that is besides the point. This is not a win for DRM, its a loss for the consumer.
there are simply too many problems related to software piracy to sustain the PC as a viable platform for much longer.
Yet surprisingly indie gamers, seem to be doing OK releasing PC-only games.
Frankly, I would like the "big boys" to stay out of PC gaming. Let them buy the arguments from their accountants that it's just "not worth" developing or porting to the PC (especially when they have switched over most of their production to producing for consoles first). These large corporations are only milking the same concepts they invented or purchased long ago, in endless boring sequels.
The beauty of the PC is that ANYONE with a compiler can write games. By definition, it will always be among the first platforms to receive truly innovative concepts - because the amount of people who CAN write a game for the PC is so much greater. The "barrier to entry" is much lower. You need no specialized equipment or software. Hell Microsoft even gives away "free trials" of its compilers nowadays. All you need is an idea, and the patience to code it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I don't think it would work.
People can still modify the software to not check for a dongle, or create fake dongles. Dongles work well in a big companies because if the company is caught using unlicensed software it can mean hundreds of millions of dollars. However, some companies will still work around, or demand work arounds, dongles. I wish I could remember where I read a post on this. I read someone talking about an application they developed that used a dongle, but the customer used laptops and dongles were frequently lost in the field so the customer demanded the software without the dongles. The developer company was able to turn the dongle requirement off just for this "special case". If one person can turn off the requirement then so can others.
Individuals are (or at least think) they're more anonymous and don't have that kind of capital anyway. That being said, we've all heard about the cases where the *IAA has taken someone to court and won some X hundred thousand dollars.
The only difference here is that while Ubisoft succeeded (so far) at keeping (fully playable) pirated copies from surfacing, EA has not. If you look around, you will even find a scene release of C&C4 which from what I read, uses a server emulator to handle all the basic requests/calls made by the C&C4 game client. Assassin's Creed 2 on the other hand has the DRM integrated into the maps and mission data thereby making it far more tedious and time consuming to crack.
This suggests that EA did not implement the DRM nearly as well as Ubisoft. Not only that, but with Ubisoft's DRM, your game will literally save-state if the connection drops so you can pick up where you left off. You don't lose any progress whatsoever (I've even had the game crash to desktop from a Vsync bug and I didn't lose any progress since auto-saving is so frequent). This really makes EA's DRM seem like a "cheap knockoff" of what Ubisoft has done.
The funny thing that occurs to me is that, part and parcel with the game is the understanding that the purchase price buys a service from EA. That service is EA keeping the activation servers up and insuring that the game talks properly to the server.
In my view, you paid for a service and are not being provided that service. This opens the door to all kinds of things on your end, least of which is issuing a chargeback if you paid using a credit card.
All that being said, I am not a lawyer.
Really? Isohunt search seems to disagree. In fact the torrent seems to be 3 weeks old. The "official" torrent for the crack has been up for 6 weeks. The crack's also up at GameFix.
So... what are you talking about?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.