DRM Broke Dragon Age: Origins For Days

Martey writes "Ars Technica reports that a server problem with the DRM authentication servers has caused Dragon Age: Origins players to be locked out of any saved games that include downloadable content. Quoting: 'Thanks to a combination of DRM idiocy and technical and communications failures on the part of EA and Bioware, I (along with thousands of fellow EA/Bioware customers) spent my free time this past weekend needlessly trapped in troubleshooting hell, in a vain attempt to get my single-player game to load. The problem, it turns out, was the Bioware's DRM authorization servers.'" An update to the article indicates the problems have finally been resolved.

Comments

I too have resolved the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Even before it began, I just refused to buy malware laden FUD.

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[Gadget_Guy]

I am lucky that I didn't get screwed with this. I normally do a quick google search on what the DRM of a game is before I buy, and most of the matches were of the announcements that this EA title didn't have SecureROM DRM. There was no mention of the DLC having it. Is this a tactic to look like they are listening to their users' complaints while stabbing them in the back once they have made their purchase?

If you look at the game on Steam (yes, I know that adds its own DRM), there is no mention of the usual EA DRM text on the Ultimate Edition that includes the DLC. They sell that version cheaper than the vanilla edition to suck you in (your local prices may vary). It is obvious which version EA want you to buy!

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[Kjella]

They sell that version cheaper than the vanilla edition to suck you in (your local prices may vary). It is obvious which version EA want you to buy!

That's just how Steam makes money, they don't lower the prices as other retailers do. Oh, the 50-75% off prices may be good, but the full retail price is often *far* higher than other places.

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[peragrin]

For most products there is a Manufacturers listed retail price. This price is almost always obscenely high. Like 2-3 times what the market will actually buy the product or sometimes 100 times higher.

manufacturerers then give a retail/wholesale cost to retailers. who markup the product to cover their own expenses, etc.

the trick is if you ever see a manufacturers suggested price being displayed with a deep discount, just walk away. it means they are screwing you and not bothering to kiss you first.

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[PopeRatzo]

That's just how Steam makes money, they don't lower the prices as other retailers do. Oh, the 50-75% off prices may be good, but

I've purchased GTA IV on Steam for $4.95. If you keep an eye out, you'll find top-level games for $10 or under quite often. I've found some of my favorite games that way: where I didn't think I'd be interested and then it came out for under $10 so I thought I'd give it a try.

That's how I got hooked on Mass Effect, for example. Yes, Mass Effect was a $10 and under game.

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[Halifax Samuels]

I got Bioshock and Mass Effect for $5 each during the year-end sale before last. I was really hoping to get Mass Effect 2 or Bioshock 2 (personally wouldn't buy this one for more than $5) for the same price this last sale, but it looks like I'll have to wait for the mid-year or year-end sale this year.

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[emuls]

Bioshock 2 was on sale 2 days ago for $5. There is a 4 day 2k games sale going on right now. Today you can get borderlands for $5

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[HiddenCamper]

there is some kind of goofy DRM even if you buy it on steam. before I can play any DRM, my EA account needs to be logged in through dragon age. it's kind of shobby. Every once in a while i cant load my saved games, so i log out of the ea account and back in and it works.

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[X3J11]

Bioshock 2 was on sale 2 days ago for $5. There is a 4 day 2k games sale going on right now. Today you can get borderlands for $5

Thanks for the heads-up. I usually only run Steam when I want to play something, and only buy games when they're on sale because I'm a cheap bugger. Already own Borderlands and the first 2 DLC after buying the DVD versions, and later kicked myself in the arse for not purchasing it through Steam. The $7.95 US I paid for the GOTY Edition (which includes all 4 DLC) is likely cheaper than what I would have to pay if I wanted the additional 2 DLC I didn't yet own.

Not that it's a great game or anything, but it's enjoyable enough to fire up and blast things for an hour or two.

Re:I too have resolved the problem

[PopeRatzo]

I usually only run Steam when I want to play something

I can't imagine running it for any other reason. You mean there are people who always keep it open?

Once again...

[exomondo]

...legitimate *customers* get screwed. What's the bet the pirated version didn't have this problem?

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a good bet. The pirate version never connects to the servers.

Re:Once again...

[Kokuyo]

Errr... TFS says it's about savegames with download content activated. If you have a pirated version, you obviously won't have download content in them (at least I'd assume).

OTOH, if you have no download content, TFS implies that everything should have been fine, even with a legitimate copy.

Now I know what the submitter felt. I've had the same problem with my Settlers 7 easter weekend, where the servers sucked donkey ass. OTOH, one must lay part of the blame at our own feet. First we bought the stuff. Then we wasted hours trying to get it to work and getting annoyed instead of doing the right thing: Do something else while the problem gets fixed. It's not like Settlers 7 or in this case DA:O is the only game out there. It's also not like we're sealed into our rooms and couldn't go outside doing something that involves no computers.

Sure, we bought it and are thus entitled to being able to play it. BUT the way we react to it (being whiny crybabies vs. adults with lives [I know, I know... Slashdot...]) says a lot about our characters and often, it isn't good (not excluding myself from that, obviously).

Re:Once again...

[Mashiki]

No they did not. Neither did those of us who were smart enough to snag the keys to decrypt the dlc, decrypt it, and set the DLC so it wouldn't be reauthorized.

Re:Once again...

[exomondo]

Errr... TFS says it's about savegames with download content activated.

Errr...you think DLCs don't/can't get pirated?

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

BUT the way we react to it (being whiny crybabies vs. adults with lives [I know, I know... Slashdot...]) says a lot about our characters and often, it isn't good (not excluding myself from that, obviously).

Being an adult also means responding to criticism without resorting to name-calling. I see no evidence of "whining" in TFA, so what does that say about you?

Re:Once again...

[RsG]

Obvious question though: Does the pirate version include the game's DLC?

TFA notes the problem was with savegames containing DLC content. Put another was, legitimate customers who own "DA:O vanilla" were fine, legit customers who owned "DA:O deluxe" were screwed.

Of course this highlights the real problem. Dragon Age is a single player game. It doesn't need an online component, except for patches and achievements, neither of which should involve any risk of savegame lockout when the servers crash. The sole reason for having severs that can render savegames unloadable in the first place was copy protection for the DLC (not copy protection for the basic campaign), and a fundamental rule all game developers should follow is: Don't let anti-piracy measures get in the way of playing or enjoying the game. Any anti-piracy measure that can fail in this manner should not be included in the first place.

Also, frankly, they'd have never included DLC savegame lockout as a feature if EA hadn't made it company policy to focus on DLC as their financial holy grail. If they wanted to, they could easily make single player DLC work on a machine that isn't connected to the internet. Do they really need additional copy protection for additional content? Are there really paying customers out there who'll buy the game for $40 and pirate the DLC to save less than $5?

Re:Once again...

[cheekyjohnson]

Being an adult also means responding to criticism without resorting to name-calling.

I thought that that's what being logical is about, not what being an adult is about. The two really aren't the same as far as I've seen.

Re:Once again...

[Kjella]

Errr... TFS says it's about savegames with download content activated. If you have a pirated version, you obviously won't have download content in them (at least I'd assume).

You assume wrong. As usual only the legitimate customers are screwed...

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you can get the DLC's on the pirated version. I got DAO legitimately, but I'm not going to fund the DLC business.

"Are there really paying customers out there who'll buy the game for $40 and pirate the DLC to save less than $5?"
It is a silly question, there is more than one DLC, whose combined value doesn't worth $5. But you learn that only when you got them all.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by previous Bioware games, I believe the savegame lockout is just a sideeffect. It's more likely that the DRM just makes the DLC disappear and the game locks savegames with data from uninstalled DLCs.
Mass Effect 1 had the DLC even language dependent, because it was saved by name. When I reinstalled Mass Effect 1 in English, the game locked me out of my old saves, because I didn't have the "Kollisionskurs" DLC. Similarly, when I again reinstalled in German for my little brother to play, it complained that I didn't have "Bring Down the Sky".

Re:Once again...

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

"being an adult" can mean two things. One is having survived on the planet until you reach some age determined to be adulthood by your culture. The other is being some form of ideal adult, within which there can be broad variation but there are behaviors we expect in the ideal adult that are not present in the most annoying characteristics of children. Like name-calling.

Re:Once again...

[headLITE]

This is correct, however both DAO and DA2 have a number of DLC that comes for free either with the game, or other games you buy, so chances that a legitimate customer has at least one DLC are quite high. And of course, pre-order customers are automatically affected too.

The only people who aren't affected by this are customers who either never bother to register their game or buy it used, and pirates, in other words, the more you are willing to pay the more you get screwed...

Re:Once again...

[Dhalka226]

Obvious question though: Does the pirate version include the game's DLC?

It certainly can, yes. And since step #1 for pirated DLC is "don't let it phone home," it obviously wouldn't have a problem when the auth servers go down.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

But did you decrypt it?

Re:Once again...

[Rennt]

If you have a pirated version, you obviously won't have download content in them (at least I'd assume).

Well, yes and no. Popular torrents of a given game usually contain the complete DLC, and this game is no exception. You can always torrent the DLC at a later date if you want, but I can't imagine any self-respecting pirate seeking out a copy with less content and slower downloads.

Of course, without any need for activation servers, the pirates would have been playing their illegitimate DLC quite happily during the unfortunate incident.

Re:Once again...

[PortaDiFerro]

Wife pre-purchased the game and was excitedly looking forward to it, then 2 weeks after the release when she still couldn't access the game I had to dowload a crack for her after which she's been playing it "happily". Dunno if they've still fixed it though.

Re:Once again...

[PortaDiFerro]

Oh nm, this was about Origins.. I was talking about DA2 :) Should read the stuff before posting!

Re:Once again...

[hedwards]

I'm getting to the point where I won't buy anything with DRM in it at all. So far I refuse to buy games that contain significant DRM. And Steam games only when they're ridiculously cheap, typically under $3 or so, with the knowledge that I may live to regret it. And even then it's usually with knowledge that I can use the game files without reactivating them.

Re:Once again...

[cheekyjohnson]

The other is being some form of ideal adult, within which there can be broad variation but there are behaviors we expect in the ideal adult that are not present in the most annoying characteristics of children. Like name-calling.

I guess that is a characteristic of many children, yes. But, again, that also seems to be a characteristic of many adults. I guess those adults don't quite meet the second definition.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a 1st day pirate, no we did not have the problems. In fact, all of the "downloadable content" was easily accessible as part of the crack, available in the first few hours of it being out. People who legitimately bought it were screwed, while pirates were enjoying all the game had to offer. Posting as AC for obvious reasons.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

(...) everything should have been fine, even with a legitimate copy.

This sums up everything wrong about DRM.

Re:Once again...

[gl4ss]

who would be stupid enough to take such a bet?

since there's no online aspect.. well, that's the friggin way to go of course, and maybe custom mods. even if you're a legit customer and happened to be a fan of the series(dunno why) then you'd want to get the cracked packs anyways for the simple reason of being able to play the game again in a few years once the business case of keeping the servers running has dried out totally.

but there's this thing.. that the publisher is using these dlc's as a way to keep used games sales out, so that once the 30 hours of decent playtime is extracted, you wouldn't sell the game or god forbid give it to someone else. it wouldn't be so bad if that wasn't the ONLY online aspect of the game(even betrayal at krondor has more online content, as that there's web pages that have maps and such, da needs no maps since the levels are just tunnels).

btw DA is just shitty nwn levelpacks with a face-gen attached. and loads of blur since the artists didn't bother with scenery and thought they're making a small budget film(a large budget film doesn't need to blur everything 5 meters away from the actors..). oh and they did place some sex and gay sex possibilities in there. too bad they don't make the story. and actually, the dlc descriptions were so lame that I didn't think they had any actual new compelling content.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

My limit is actually STILL at 'I won't buy games that I can't get on physical media.'

Mostly so that the box and disc double as my proof of purchase.

Although given the sturdiness of some of those dvd cases you can buy nowadays I might start considering GOG, a printout of my receipt/cdkey, a burned cd of my game, and call it 'close enough' :)

The fact that it has gotten to this point is ridiculously sad to me though.

Re:Once again...

[gl4ss]

to even think that dlc's wouldn't be warezed easily, even easier than the original game, is just stupid executive daydreaming. it never ever had any proof in the pudding. added datafiles, you see, with one added drm check. there's a dozen ways to approach how to defeat it, but the real purpose is just to screw over people buying used games.

and you're just saying that it's ok that they create shitty games with shitty drm and advetise the fuck out of them and assume we'd buy them and wouldn't be bothered when they don't even manage to run the shitty drm server. it's not ok, they suck, the game money should have gone to someone else.

why need running water when we can just take golden showers? yeah, why indeed.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious question though: Does the pirate version include the game's DLC?

Yep! The DA DLCs are "protected" by blowfish with 8 numeric characters as a key (brute forcing on a modern PC takes ~1 second), once decrypted they can be used on any installation of the game (pirated/legit) without any online authentication.
DA2 dlcs use somewhat better keys, though they all were cracked within hours of release anyway.

Re:Once again...

[Midnight Thunder]

That is really crazy. I suppose that's the influence of a Windows centric world where you only get access to one language per install. Then again, it is probably more of a question of localization being an after-thought independent to the OS at play, as they would probably have screwed this up on the Mac too - multilingual installations of software is the norm.

Re:Once again...

[Midnight Thunder]

Sure, we bought it and are thus entitled to being able to play it. BUT the way we react to it (being whiny crybabies vs. adults with lives [I know, I know... Slashdot...]) says a lot about our characters and often, it isn't good (not excluding myself from that, obviously).

Certainly, but sometimes one person's cry is a way of warning others what they are letting themselves into. Maybe the way it was presented was not the best, but at least people now know that certain aspects of the game require an online connection to work - which kinda sucks if you were planning to play the game on your laptop while away from an Internet connection on a rainy day.

Re:Once again...

[Midnight Thunder]

The sad thing is that more and more games will end up only being available online. One thing great thing about physical media is that you can at least sell it again, which makes the $60 price tag feel less bad - at least that is true for console games.

I would love to see a law being introduced that would force companies to allow the transfer of a game license. The only question is how the software could ensure you are using a copy that you still hold a license for, without requiring an online connection every time it starts?

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

...legitimate *customers* get screwed. What's the bet the pirated version didn't have this problem?

It didn't, and I speak from experience.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

"As usual" is right. Isn't that how it works in real life? How many bank robbers or money counterfeiters get fired, made redundant, or miss out on a promotion? Jobs are for chumps, therefore the only choice left is to copy money.
Meanwhile, I bet you continue to lock your car and house like a fool. Hint: those locks won't stop a criminal. Only you, as the legitimate car/home owner are disadvantaged by locks.

Re:Once again...

[jaymz666]

> Do something else while the problem gets fixed.

Was it announced anywhere that there was a problem on EA's side? I loaded up the game and it told me I couldn't play my saves. There was no notice on the forums or in the game itself that said that there were problems with auth servers. So how was I to know the problem wasn't on my end?

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Locking my car and my house when I leave either of them ensures I get proper help from the insurance companies when bad stuff happens. That's an advantage to me. I get some *benefit* from using the locks. They are there for *my* using. DRM and shit like that are very much *not* there for *my* benefit. Apples and oranges...as is *always* the case when someone tries to paint DRM, or anything like it, as something even remotely useful, which it most certainly is not.

Re:Once again...

[drinkypoo]

No they did not. Neither did those of us who were smart enough to snag the keys to decrypt the dlc, decrypt it, and set the DLC so it wouldn't be reauthorized.

"Smart enough"? I'm a pretty old school gamer and hard core nerd who has recommended CLI fixes for Linux problems to noobs and I still think that's something you shouldn't have to worry about with a game. It's a whole new class of problem, really, this "advanced" DRM. Of course, I think anyone who buys a game and then proceeds to buy a bunch of DLC is part of the problem in gaming today and deserves problems of their own.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy would be to compare DRM to older turnstiles as found in subway stations to stop people without a ticket from riding. At a certain (past) point in time, turnstiles were typically simple devices that only let people out, and not in - because they would only turn one way - unless you swiped your card.

Legitimate customers were expected to pull their subway card out of the wallet and swipe it into a card slot to make the turnstile unlock so they could get through. Free-riders would just turn the turnstile cross back far enough so that they can slip past it easily. It got to the point that whenever I rode the subway I would just pull the turnstile back and slip past it to get past it, because it was easier and quicker than fishing the card up and swiping it. (I have never cheated the company running the subway once in my life. I realize that whenever I get on it, I'm consuming a limited resource, the power required to move the train increases as its payload increases - not to mention the fact that more trains are needed to handle increased traffic - unlike copying software.)

After that, they added infrared sensors that would lock the turnstile going both forwards and backwards if nobody was detected to be standing in the right place. Free-riders defeated this quite easily using readily available free newspapers (found on every subway station) to trip the sensor on the other side and proceeded as usual). At this point I started swiping my card again - because swiping the card was more convenient than tricking the sensor. But I was still inconvenienced for a security measure that was trivial to circumvent.

After that, they switched to an electrically operated sliding-door system. The newspaper trick worked for those too for a time, as did simply jumping the barrier, until they raised the height of the doors to make it impractical to easily jump, and made the sensors wiser. Even so, you can still just tailgate behind people quite easilly.

While these security gates still required swipe cards, I would tailgate whenever the opportunity presented itself. I got "caught" a few times, but since I had a valid ticket, nothing happened, and I saved more time and effort than I lost.

These days, the system has been switched to a contact-less card system, and it's sufficient just to take out your wallet and lay it against the sensor to get the doors to open - and I'm older, so I don't bother with stupid tricks any more. The legitimate method of access is easier than circumventing the security. But even so, defeating the security remains very easy for those who want a free ride.

The situation I described is the situation in Stockholm. Now let's compare and contrast to the system that was operational while I lived in Brussels (I don't know if it still works like that, though). In Brussels there are no turnstiles or security gates. If you cross the red "ticket line" you're expected to have a valid ticket. Instead, ticket checks were more frequent (but not frequent enough to be inconvenient) and fines for cheating were a lot steeper - and increased for repeat offenders. This is a far more effective system to ensure payment for services rendered, and does not inconvenience legitimate users, nor does it line the pockets of companies selling ineffective security equipment.

The way I'd prefer for public transport to work is the same as the way I prefer software to work - free. Public transport, like Free Software has societal advantages - either where it is reducing your carbon footprint, ensuring easy mobility of labor where this is necessary or by ensuring that software is freely customizable by those who need such customization. I'm not opposed to taxes to finance this, in Stockholm, public transport is already 50% subsidized as it is. People that still need to use cars for whatever reasons have the advantage of emptier roads, because it's hard to compete with free. At the same time, software companies who work with open source software have to provide a service more valuable than tha

Re:Once again...

[billcopc]

I haven't checked for this particular game, but pirated DLC is a very common sight. I know for a fact that every single expansion for Fallout 3 has been cracked, heck I think someone released a tool that unlocks any DLC for that game - even on legit installs!

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH, one must lay part of the blame at our own feet. First we bought the stuff. Then we wasted hours trying to get it to work and getting annoyed instead of doing the right thing: Do something else while the problem gets fixed.

You're assuming that it was obvious that the problem was on the server side. If you'd bothered to read any of the article, you'd see that there have been numerous previous DRM issues with the game that involved client-side tweaks. There's no way for someone to know that they just have to wait until they've already wasted their time trying to solve the problem.

Sure, we bought it and are thus entitled to being able to play it. BUT the way we react to it (being whiny crybabies vs. adults with lives [I know, I know... Slashdot...]) says a lot about our characters and often, it isn't good (not excluding myself from that, obviously).

Really? Whiny crybabies? Because they aired a legitimate grievance about Bioware's broken DRM system?

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam isn't scary, though. The servers basically always work, you can turn on offline mode if you need to go out, and the DRM is unnoticeable (unlike games with X activations and silly shit like that)

Re:Once again...

[Mashiki]

Nah I screwed up and reencrypted it. Damn ROT13.

Re:Once again...

[Mashiki]

Gotta remember we're a minority of a minority of people who know how to do this stuff. Me? I picked up the ultimate edition for $21 and went happily on my way not getting screwed over by being nickeled with buying DLC.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do something else while the problem gets fixed? How do you know that the problem is going to fix itself before the company admits that the problem was caused by them? It's natural that any person is going to assume the issue is with their installation and try to diagnose it unless they find evidence of a widespread problem.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good bet. I've got both a legit copy of DA:O and a pirate copy on a different computer... Never had a problem with the Pirated copy while the legit was locked out. And they both have the same DLC added.

Re:Once again...

[scot4875]

Isn't it great that we've reached a point in our society that expecting to be able to use something you purchased makes you a "whiny crybaby" in the eyes of some?

--Jeremy

Re:Once again...

[praxis]

Steam *is* scary. When someone wants to take my money in exchange for a game that they can revoke at any time without providing a reason or change the terms of my using the game at any time for any reason without notifying me; that's pretty fucking scary.

Re:Once again...

[praxis]

Sorry, about replying to myself, apparently the agreement is not as horrible as I thought. Yes, they can still revoke your access at any time; yes, your only remedy for any dispute is to cancel your account; yes, they can change the terms at any time and if you disagree you are free to cancel your account; but, they *do* in fact notify you that they change the terms! Sorry to have been wrong.

12. AMENDMENTS TO THIS AGREEMENT

Valve may amend this Agreement at any time in its sole discretion. As a Subscriber, you agree that Valve may amend the terms of this Agreement. If Valve amends the Agreement, such amendment shall be effective thirty (30) days after your receiving notice of the amended Agreement, either via e-mail or as a notification within the Software. You can view the Agreement at any time at http://www.steampowered.com/. Your failure to cancel your Account thirty (30) days after receiving notification of an amended Agreement will mean that you accept all such amendments. If you don't agree to the amendments or to any of the terms in this Agreement, your only remedy is to cancel your Account or a particular Subscription.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess its time to inform you that high def TV uses a significant amount of DRM, as anything with an HDMI cable is required to use HDCP. DRM is just unavoidable these days.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

True, it's not like our water services were turned off. But it's reasonable to assume that someone who buys a game, is able to play that game, at their own convenience - not at the convenience of the company. If it were an actual service, with a service agreement, such as a web server, or power, you would expect some compensation in the form of lower bills at the end of the month. Since it's "just" a game, there is no such reciprocation on the part of the company. Feels sleezy, and should never have happened. I think we should expect more when we pay 60$ for the game, and 10$ for add on content. If I pay 40$ for a concert and halfway through the power goes out and they send people home, you can bet that people would be expecting a refund.

I don't think anyone expects a refund here. But damnit if we don't deserve at least an apology and some consideration of this kind of thing in the future.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why I have started playing free games / indie games recently.

They work better, and have no DRM generally.

Warzone 2100 is one such game in which I have spent a bunch of hours on. Great RTS with a twist in research. I will probably donate money to the free games I end up having fun in.

Re:Once again...

[silvalen]

> Do something else while the problem gets fixed.

Was it announced anywhere that there was a problem on EA's side? I loaded up the game and it told me I couldn't play my saves. There was no notice on the forums or in the game itself that said that there were problems with auth servers. So how was I to know the problem wasn't on my end?

This. I wouldn't have had a problem with EA on this *if* they had bothered to make some sort of announcement while they were having the server issues. I know DA:O has DRM and find it annoying and counter-productive, but I really enjoy the game. For me, it's worth it. However, I spent a few frustrating hours going through the forums, trying all of the various solutions that exist for this problem. Had there been some indication that it wasn't anything I could fix on my end, I would have been able to spend those hours actually playing the game rather than getting more and more irritated. Eventually, I simply played the game logged out and didn't have any problems. DLC was still available and I had no problem accessing my saved games. Maybe I was one of the lucky few. But really, EA, at least let your paying customers know that there's an issue that is being resolved and let them know there's a workaround.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, someone who isn't me recently bought Dragon Age Origins on steam but didn't buy the Complete Edition because he didn't know if he'd like the game or not and didn't want to get boned if the game sucked. Well the game turned out to be one of the best games this person ever played and when he went to buy the DLC and expansion he learned that it was going to cost much more than the original game cost so he downloaded the DLC and expansion from a torrent site. It worked perfectly and didn't go down at all this weekend.

Re:Once again...

[WNight]

What do all the guards on the transit system cost? I think if you ditched the fare machines, the accountants, the enforcement guards (on Vancouver's system, they aren't the ones who arrest criminals), the signage, stopped inflicting the time-wasting hassle, etc, that you'd end up ahead in the big picture. I'd agree we should do it anyways, but I think it makes sense in a strict economic point of view too.

Similarly, instead of the patent system, government agencies, lawyers, lobbyists, judges, juries, bailiffs, marshals, we could just take all the resources it wasted and give them to the people the industry voted had actually produced the tools that advanced them. Do this retrospectively so that we have a better idea of what was actually useful and what was a flash in the pan. And who did the best job of teaching the new methods, not just the guy who discovered, documented, and moved on.

Not only would this remove the huge drag on innovators and industry but it'd actually come close to rewarding the people responsible instead of the guy who filed the paperwork.

RMS proposed a similar copyright system, if we must have one. We all voluntarily self-report (with some auditing to interpret the wider results) what media we have, and consume, and the pool of tax money for rewarding creative people is split accordingly. The joy of this system is that it encourages copying. If you want your favorite artist to get paid more you give their music to more people, hoping they'll like it and increase the artist's share.

If we found a way to leverage the power of computers we'd be unstoppable, instead our governments insist on trying futilely legislating them away.

Re:Once again...

[WNight]

In fact, posting the truth about something like this on official company forums is likely to get you banned.

Re:Once again...

[WorBlux]

I guess its time to inform you that high def TV uses a significant amount of DRM, as anything with an HDMI cable is required to use HDCP. DRM is just unavoidable these days.

No it's not. It's perfectly possible to use HDMI unencrypted. Anything liscenced to play BlueRay or other AACS encrypted media is required to export HDCP, but there are boxes that can strip it, and ways you can mod hardware to hook directly into the signal.

Re:Once again...

[WorBlux]

There is a humble bundle going on right now.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have realised it long ago. Heck. I don't think I've ever bought anything with DRM. You have to be stupid or technically incompetent to knowingly purchase something with DRM unless it is unadvertised. Admitingly it generally is unadvertised. Which then makes you beg the question why are you paying for non-free software? I'm of the mind of the source is non-free don't pay for it. If you pay for the content fine. But not the proprietary code.

Re:Once again...

[cheekyjohnson]

What? As the car/home owner, you can do whatever you please. If you want less security, alright. However, with DRM, you're hurting actually customers. People that bought the product. In other words, the product is entirely theirs, and the DRM is hurting them. It doesn't even affect the 'pirates' (installing a crack is far easier than getting past a lock). All this just to stop some people who copy data.

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

The porn companies would never allow a copyright system based on self-reporting. I mean, who's going to self-report their porn collection?

Re:Once again...

[Kalriath]

"It costed more than I was willing to pay so I'm entitled to pirate it".

See, this is why noone takes pirates seriously. It's all well and good to push for law reforms or business model changes, but unless you're willing to put your money where your mouth is and simply not play it unless it's available on acceptable terms, you're part of the problem.

Re:Once again...

[mcvos]

"Just" a side effect? It's still every bit an effect, and quite a serious one at that. Locking existing save games means that they must have known that they were going to screw players with this.

Re:Once again...

[mcvos]

Now I know what the submitter felt. I've had the same problem with my Settlers 7 easter weekend, where the servers sucked donkey ass. OTOH, one must lay part of the blame at our own feet. First we bought the stuff.

Are you saying we should never buy stuff EA ever again? That would be a sensible response, I admit. I guess a lot of people still trusted Bioware. They did some good stuff in the past. For them, I think this is the first real betrayal. It's a "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" situation. We are to blame if we ever buy anything from Bioware ever again, now that we have learned that they suck.

Then we wasted hours trying to get it to work and getting annoyed instead of doing the right thing: Do something else while the problem gets fixed.

That doesn't make the original breakdown any more acceptable. When I buy a car and it doesn't work, sure, I could take a bike instead. But I still paid for that car. I have every right to be upset when something I paid money for breaks due to the manufacturer's destructive policies.

Re:Once again...

[mcvos]

No, the real problem is that he was rewarded for being a cheap-ass dirty pirate. Had he bought the DLC + expansion over steam, he'd probably have been locked out of his game this weekend. As a pirate, he gets the superior product. That is the real problem here.

Re:Once again...

[mcvos]

You need to man up and spend your disposable income on broken crap like our corporate overlords intended. It's good for the economy. Or do you hate your country?

Re:Once again...

[mcvos]

It's still relevant to the point that Bioware DRM sucks, though.

Not new...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought the original for my girlfriend and she had serious issues when the DRM server went down. It was so bad she stopped playing entirely.

If you tried to load a savegame with DLC when the server was experiencing problems, it would silently remove DLC and characters from the game and allow you to continue playing without it. The trouble came when you saved again. The new savegame would be created without your characters or DLC from the originally loaded game.

Well, when you play a dozen hours of the game before realizing that that character you weren't playing at the time and those neat items you picked up poofed 12 hours ago, it turns out you're not really inclined to keep playing.

EA: No thanks. You got me once with your useless support for Battlefield 2, and you got me again with Dragon Age. I won't be buying another of your products.

Re:Not new...

[Anonymous Coward]

I also remember that sometimes if the game lost connection to the server during play it would completely break the DLC character Shale - not removing her from the game but making you *permanently* unable to speak to her. Now if (like me) you did not habitually speak to every companion all the time and do not keep too many savegames, you would only notice the bug after some 5-10 hours of gameplay...

I did not buy (neither downloaded) Dragon Age 2.

Re:Not new...

[Anonymous Coward]

I played during this weekend when the EA auth servers were down and had Shale (a DLC npc) in my party the whole time and also my DLC armor didn't disappear. Just sayin'.

Re:Not new...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh someone remembers Battlefield 2. Remember when the demo worked perfectly but when the real game came out two weeks later it ran like complete garbage? Remember how their president at the time or whatever told everyone that their graphic settings were too high yet the same settings used on the demo ran the game perfectly? Remember when they recalled a patch due to a memory leak and forced you to reinstall the game to a lower version?

I think they finally fixed the issues by like patch 4 but by then most of us had been turned away. And the worst part was those who started playing by the later patches never knew how bad the support was. I think they took the entire team off the project and moved them to Battlefield 2142 which caused a lot of the issues to linger.

Such a disappointment.

"There is no right to play"

[rumith]

The game corporations will claim that there is no right to play, and maybe even insert a clause that means roughly that into the EULA. It is their right: if you don't agree with their offer, don't buy it! There are more good games around than you can possibly play in your free time, and there is no lack of other entertainment options either, so please stop whining.
There have always been (and there will always be) shitty or crippled products. Or even otherwise wonderful products that have one huge defect. There will always be stupid managers and lazy engineers. Just walk the other way, don't stick to them - life's too short. In this particular case, every single slashdotter knows that DRM is bad (if you don't, please hand in your geek card on your way out). Do we really need to revel in its failure every single time a major game studio screws its customers?

Re:"There is no right to play"

[MisterJohnny]

Do we really need to revel in its failure every single time a major game studio screws its customers?

Yes.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[davester666]

Yeah, good luck with that.

Exactly how many games print their licensing terms on the outside? Or permit you to return the game for a refund once you open the box enough to actually read the terms?

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

It is their right: if you don't agree with their offer, don't buy it! There are more good games around than you can possibly play in your free time, and there is no lack of other entertainment options either, so please stop whining.

Waaa... waaa... stop whining! ... waaa... I'm serious, you guys! *sniffle* .... stop it!!!... waaa.... waaa.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[rumith]

The mighty and terrible Electronic Arts has a whole goddamn page on the intertubes that has links to EULAs of apparently all of their games. You don't even need to go to a game shop to read the license, if you really wanted to. Now did you?

Re:"There is no right to play"

[meerling]

The bigger they are, the more we bitch when they screw us.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Sabriel]

The game corporations will claim that there is no right to play, and maybe even insert a clause that means roughly that into the EULA. It is their right: if you don't agree with their offer, don't buy it!

Don't know which country you're in, but mine has a law concerning "fitness for purpose" that overrides anything a business puts in its EULA.

Do we really need to revel in its [DRM's] failure every single time a major game studio screws its customers?

(a) Yes. It focuses attention on the problem.
(b) No. But hey, schadenfreude.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

The game corporations will claim that there is no right to play, and maybe even insert a clause that means roughly that into the EULA. It is their right

Depends what they try to do with that clause, if they attempt to prevent someone from returning the game for cash with it: then too bad eulas like that are unenforcable, they might aswell be requiring you to sacrifice your firstborn at the altar of bioware

Re:"There is no right to play"

[LainTouko]

The game corporations will claim that there is no right to play, and maybe even insert a clause that means roughly that into the EULA. It is their right: if you don't agree with their offer, don't buy it!

You shouldn't have to decrypt a load of legalese (which you may not even have access to) in order to work out whether an offer to sell a game is genuine. Purporting to sell a product but designing it so that it refuses to work in certain situations should just be illegal.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[bky1701]

I don't agree that they have that right. The law might say so, currently - but laws come and go. They certainly do not have the moral right to deprive you of your purchase, especially when you might not have known the terms in the first place. A law which is neither moral nor in the public interest is tyranny.

Behavior like this from EA only hastens the inevitable abolition of copyright as a whole. DRM only leads to paying customers having an inferior product compared to the nonpaying customers. A law is worth nothing if everyone violates it, and we're more or less on the honor system already with copyright. On top of that, people are getting fed up with this behavior and the smart ones are figuring out what is wrong with the system.

If I were a fanboy like you, I'd stop complaining on slashdot and revel in the good old days of companies like EA ripping everyone off, because they're ending soon.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Urkki]

they might aswell be requiring you to sacrifice your firstborn at the altar of bioware

You'll get some really nice armor by doing that though... And get this, you'll have it in every future game Bioware too! Pretty sweet, isn't it?

Re:"There is no right to play"

[wvmarle]

The more these failures are in the news - particularly when it may be noted that people who legitimately bought their games are prevented from playing it, while the pirates were happily playing the game - the better chance that these companies will stop building those restrictions in their games.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

You bought a game, not a service. When they lock you out of your game, it's not poor service, it's theft.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we really need to revel in its failure every single time a major game studio screws its customers?

Yes, for the simple reason that potential customers have to be warned about companies like EA and Bioware.

I bought Mass Effect and had my fair share of trouble with the DLC. I recently bought Mass Effect 2 and considered buying its DLC. However with my previous experience and news like this I'll just pirate the DLC and get a crack for the game itself. Pirated DLC is superior in every aspect: no activation, no online-dependency, no restrictions on which DLC you can get, you don't have to provide copious amounts of personal information, etc.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

We needn't revel, but we must advertise, to ensure people aren't buying these or similarly crippled games in the future. Eventually, hopefully, these companies will either learn or go out of business.

We must let people know.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Bert64]

So what your basically saying, is that for your money you get "a piece of shiny plastic and the possibility that at random points for a limited time the supplier of that shiny piece of plastic may allow you to play a game"...

If people knew what they were really getting for their money, they probably wouldn't pay. The problem is that these companies spend a lot of money on advertising and try to hide the true nature of what your paying for.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Bert64]

And how do you read that page when you are *in* the game shop reading the back of the box? And do advertisements provide a link to these terms?

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Bert64]

Only if the DRM servers are up to authorize your armor...

Re:"There is no right to play"

[VickiM]

I'm glad to see it. I did not know there were DRM issues with this game, and was considering a purchase since I've heard good things about the original. It's part of why I never preorder a PC game.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[SharpFang]

There's unfortunately a huge gap between what should be and what is, and the gap is defended by a bunch of rabid lawyers who will do everything in their power to prevent making them obsolete.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we really need to revel in its [DRM's] failure every single time a major game studio screws its customers?

(b) No. But hey, schadenfreude.

I find your writing insightful, please add me to your newsletter.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you somehow trying to redefine the customer-seller relationship? I don't see how having EA's auth systems muck up past and present gameplay is good for either EA, or someone who bought into what was being sold. And, since this is an 'ongoing' relationship, and EA needs customers else it closes shop, events like these aren't going to wash the taste out soon, and as we all know, the Internet never forgets.

And as for 'revelling in failure' .... My personal expectation of corporate responsibility w/ regard to its customers, especially tech companies, is extremely high. There's a reason I haven't bought a PC or console game in almost a decade. Your wondering if these failure make a difference? Well, I'm certainly not rushing to the store to purchase a game after this event, am I!

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Anonymous Coward]

isnt this exactly how mmos operate. U purchased the physical stuff(the disk), and lease the right to use your character, but u are not guaranteed that ability at all times and any items or progress can be taken from you at any time for any or no reason. If i remember right blizzard had some big legal deal with if u buy the game it is your right to play, and they won. Its been awhile and my memory is hazy, i think it went to legal level, if not they just said it and noone challenged.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[scot4875]

MMOs are not single-player games. The problem is that every major publisher wants to start treating single-player games like MMOs.

I will agree with you that shelling out $50 for a MMO and then having to spend $15/month to play it is kind of bullshit, but that's just how it is with most MMOs. There's no mystery or deception about the fact that it requires an internet connection and to be able to talk to the game's servers to play.

--Jeremy

Re:"There is no right to play"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

It is their right: if you don't agree with their offer, don't buy it!

I wish you lot would shut up about this. They need to know about their customer dissatisfaction. If they don't buy it, then they assume their lack of sales was due to piracy.

The next time you decide to post another stupid vote-with-your-dollars rant, go look up what happened with Spore and Amazon.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Darinbob]

Yes, I think we do need to revel in it's failure. Why? Because we still have plenty of DRM fans, and fans of games who don't even know what DRM is. This is even on Slashdot. Everytime someone says "I don't care about copy protection since I'm not a pirate, I just like the convenience of downloading" DRM becomes more entrenched.

DRM is not about piracy. It's about turning ownership into rentals. DRM prevents you from reselling games, giving them away, trading with friends, and in some cases even having multiple installs over time. The goal is to keep the prices and profits up. Downloadable content has become a market, and they want to sell you DLCs not have some third party fan give away add-ons for free like a commie. They want to sell you advertisements, so that every time you start or end the game you get a pop up of all the sales at their store. And this approach works for the game players who only want to play a game for a week and then move on to the next thing, or who don't really care that they no longer own their own purchases anymore.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Darinbob]

There's some truth here I think. When the majority of people see nothing wrong with this approach to making games, losing a few dissatisfied customers won't be noticed. Especially where there's no alternative.

Voting with your wallet works when you can purchase a competing product instead. When people buy Lemon Scented dishwashing detergent instead of Swine Scented detergent, the manufacturers figure this out. But when every single competitor is also doing the same thing it's difficult to make a purchasing decision be noticed. The maker of the biggest name games on the planet isn't going to notice that you didn't buy and are instead playing through your ten year old Thief fan missions. What would make them notice is when a competing game without DRM starts to make big sales, but that's unlikely since you need to be one of the big boys to distribute a game or at least get into bed with them so they can include your game into their online store.

That's why it's important to make a stink when this stuff happens. Otherwise the users get complacent or offer platitudes about some DRM not being as evil as others, and game companies start to think that no one cares what they do.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[rumith]

Don't know which country you're in, but mine has a law concerning "fitness for purpose" that overrides anything a business puts in its EULA.

So basically all of that banners in FOSS that claim that "this software comes without any implied warranty, not even a warranty of fitness for a particular purpose" have little legal sense, if any? IANAL, just really curious.

Yes. It focuses attention on the problem.

Whose attention? Nerds already know about it, it's not news for nerds. If someone somehow manages to get the attention of the masses and to make them reaaaally hate DRM and refuse to buy anything infested with it, that's quite a feat. However I honestly doubt that it is a realistic goal, because there's an army of specialists in arts, design, and human psychology employed by the entertainment corporations that work to achieve the opposite result.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[lostros]

it's actually really common for businesses to put unenforceable clauses into their agreements, on the basis that you don't know they can't enforce it, and will therefor quit demanding them to stop screwing you or give you your money back when the clause is pointed out. A more common one is something along the lines of "company x reserves the right to change this agreement when needed." But anytime they change it, the contract is null and void. Try it with your cellphone company sometime, they update their agreement very often, and might claim you can't get out of it for free, but if you keep at them that it isn't the contract you signed, they'll let you out with no termination fee because they have to.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[Sabriel]

So basically all of that banners in FOSS that claim that "this software comes without any implied warranty, not even a warranty of fitness for a particular purpose" have little legal sense, if any? IANAL, just really curious.

IANAL either; my lay understanding is that FOSS can do that only because there's no consideration involved (no exchange of value is required to obtain the software).

Basically, it's legalese for "you paid us nothing, we owe you nothing".

Whose attention? Nerds already know about it, it's not news for nerds. If someone somehow manages to get the attention of the masses [...] the entertainment corporations [...] work to achieve the opposite result

The trouble ahead for the entertainment corporations is that their market isn't just the nerds anymore - it's also the mainstream public who are now following in the nerds footsteps. That's good for profits if everything goes well, but it also means games are becoming newsworthy. And little attracts TV coverage more these days than bad news...

Re:"There is no right to play"

[rumith]

How often do you go to a game shop not knowing what exactly are you planning to buy? Besides, you do have a smartphone, don't you? But once again, the main problem here is not that you can't access the EULA text: the problem is that even if the staff in the shop could give you a printed copy in 5 seconds, the absolute majority of gamers would not request it, and out of those who did, most wouldn't be educated in the law enough to understand everything that's written there properly. And most of the tiny percentage of those who did understand the license and its implications would most certainly go into "crap, it's just a game, not a house. I'm buying it and will get my fun anyways" mode.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[rumith]

They need to know about their customer dissatisfaction

An excellent point, although one could argue that the bosses of the entertainment industry must have somehow already figured it out that people don't like DRM, it's been shown over and over again for many years that not only DRM is ineffective against piracy, it can actually worsen the situation. Since nothing changes, I must conclude that either those guys aren't listening, or they know about the customer dissatisfaction, but want DRM in their products no matter what. In the former case, there is a faint hope that one day they will pay attention if we yell loud enough. In the latter one, complaining about the restrictions is pretty much useless.

P.S. Do everyone a favor and drop your aggressive tone, okay? No one is forcing you to have this conversation, feel free to leave any time.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Since nothing changes, I must conclude that either those guys aren't listening, or they know about the customer dissatisfaction, but want DRM in their products no matter what. In the former case, there is a faint hope that one day they will pay attention if we yell loud enough. In the latter one, complaining about the restrictions is pretty much useless.

Remember when I said "go look up Spore and Amazon"? You didn't, so now I have to explain it. Here's the short version: EA announced Spore would only be unlocked 3 times, a thousand or so people gave it a 1 star review on Amazon, they loosened their restrictions. Simple, effective, and it happened right around launch time. The best part? It only took a small fraction of the number of people who actually bought the game to get them to change.

P.S. Do everyone a favor and drop your aggressive tone, okay? No one is forcing you to have this conversation, feel free to leave any time.

Tell me how you think your own tone comes across.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[rumith]

Actually, I do remember the controversy around Spore's launch quite well. Sure, they raised the limit from 3 PCs to 5. A great victory indeed - they just slightly changed the rules to make the most loud guys shut up in a "Do you really own so many computers?" way. The core principles remained unchanged. And yes, I also know about the Steam version, which is another type of DRM (although I admit it makes many people much less nervous than e.g. SecuROM). And it's the same EA that's involved in the controversy around Dragon Age, so it was a lesson wasted, not learned.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Oh, please. They found a way to fight back, they just didn't stick to it. Those 1100 people did a lot more to fight DRM than any boycott.

Re:"There is no right to play"

[mcvos]

The Witcher 2 is DRM-free if you buy it on gog.com. Possibly not if you buy it through some other route, though, so the real test here is how many people will go to gog.com for it. Though I expect many people will still want the physical CD, and that probably comes with DRM.

It took 5 days to fix

[Kuruk]

Very poor response for a single player game. Lock customers out for 5 days.

Re:It took 5 days to fix

[masterwit]

Imagine if this happened to wow... man the chaos that would ensue...

Re:It took 5 days to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in WoW, they can issue a credit. What's Bioware doing for the customers it screwed in this case?

Re:It took 5 days to fix

[DarkXale]

Outages have lasted in excess of a day in the past. In those cases the lost time was reimbursed by several days. This has been done even on a per-server basis.

Re:It took 5 days to fix

[arth1]

Very poor response for a single player game. Lock customers out for 5 days.

In a few short years, it will be worse. The customers will be locked out forever, as the servers are taken down for good.

Since this is slashdot, a car analogy is in order: Imagine buying a car that authorizes through OnStar before you're allowed to drive it, or use any of the luxury features like the 7-speaker stereo, sun roof or headlight washers. Every time you want to use them. And where disabling this feature is a federal crime.
Can you think of possible ways this could go wrong?

If you live outside the US, you might not know how customers reacted when GM dropped analog OnStar in favor of digital, without providing existing customer an upgrade path. And that was just the service itself. Imagine if that had affected the car or its features.

So, why do we accept it for software? Because we can afford to lose $60 for a game plus five times $2-10 for DLC? Can afford to is one thing, but willing to? That just makes us stupid.

wait wut?

[kvvbassboy]

Wait, in todays games, you need to "check in" online to play in single player mode? That's highly retarded!

Re:wait wut?

[tantaliz3]

We don't own our big blockbuster games any more. They're pay to play. In light of this, prices should go down. Way down...

Re:wait wut?

[md65536]

Key word is "should". But do you think game companies make choices like this in order to get LESS money from you???

Re:wait wut?

[SharpFang]

Actually, prices of the -games- went down. As well as amount of content in the games. This is recuperated in premium with DLC which makes the price seriously exceed that of the old, while returning content amount to standard levels.

Re:wait wut?

[Darinbob]

But the prices stay up! People were willing to pay $60 for crap just because their friends had it, so that's the price point. Just drop that ever so slightly to make all new games $40-50, or give a %10 discount to pre-orders to make people think there's a bargain. Online distributors don't drop the prices either, in face it seems like games distributed only online drop prices much more slowly than retail games. That's because there's no inventory pressures forcing them to clear out the shelves of old games, and there's no competitor selling the same title at half price, and no bargain bins. Cutting out the middle-man of publishing and distributing physical games doesn't mean they'll chop that off of the price, they'll just add it to their margins.

Re:wait wut?

[Darinbob]

Old games you'd get add-on content for free, make by fans. New stuff with DRM means it's more common that you can only use official DLC.

Re:wait wut?

[Anonymous Coward]

there is another level to this. The ones that keep the saved games (including single player) on the company's servers, so even saving /loading needs a working connection, not just a call home check to see if your account/serial number is still valid.

It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[Kwami]

More than one month after release, many players still can't launch Dragon Age II because of a bug in the EA DRM software. Since the first few days, BioWare has ignored the problem entirely and provided us with no fixes or updates. More information: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/300/index/6442590

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[Stormwatch]

Meanwhile, pirates can play it just fine. Except most of them won't bother because the game is crap. The controls and camera system are so bad, it's almost unplayable.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[Eivind]

The controls aren't the bad part.

The bad part is, the game isn't about anything.

The first Dragonage had a point. There's a blight, you need to assemble an army, enlisting cooperation from various factions, then go fight it. Fine.

But DragonAge II ? What is it about ? What are you trying to acomplish ? Why ? How many of the quests are even related to the goal ?

I get that they're setting things up for the third, since it's planned as a trilogy. But an -entire- game that is *nothing* more than setting the stage for a sequel ? i.e. the game itself, taken for itself, isn't actually about anything, and doesn't even have a goal ?

No thanks.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those aren't even its worst problems, the whole first phase of the game is appallingly "plotted" and sees you doing things Just Because with little to no narrative or dialogue clues as to what the fuck is going on. It gets a little better by the midgame but still isn't good. Once again, console inspired dumbing-down ruins a core game mechanic that was praised in the original - I mean why do you need characterisation and plot in an RPG, right? You just want to kill stuff ... oh wait they broke the combat too, with streams of teleporting enemies making any sort of strategy impossible.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[SuiteSisterMary]

You've never played Dragon Age 2, have you? It has, at the beginning, a very clear goal; escape the Blight, make it to Kirkwall, and find a way to establish you and your family as something other than utterly destitute refugees selling handjobs in the alleys. Once you've completed that goal,other goals grow rather organically out of it. Sure, that's differnet than DA:O, where you're given an overreaching goal fairly quickly, and a task list of things to achieve said goal. But it's no less valid. That said, I do agree with the 'way too many completely unrelated sidequests.'

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[Legion303]

And if you WANT to play destitute refugees selling handjobs in the alleys...well, look elsewhere, because DA2 isn't the handjob simulator I was hoping for.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

You've never played Dragon Age 2, have you? It has, at the beginning, a very clear goal; escape the Blight, make it to Kirkwall, and find a way to establish you and your family as something other than utterly destitute refugees selling handjobs in the alleys. Once you've completed that goal,other goals grow rather organically out of it. Sure, that's differnet than DA:O,
Yes, but unlike say Planescape:Torment, I just don't give a fig about Hawke, or most of his companions, and the drudgery of combat makes it hard to plow through to the end. Having played a mage most often in DA:O, I know now how playing a 2h warrior must have felt. Hopefully, EA/Bioware will learn from this mistake and not streamline the next DA title. Oh and spend a little more time on development.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[shutdown -p now]

But DragonAge II ? What is it about ? What are you trying to acomplish ? Why ? How many of the quests are even related to the goal ?

I haven't played DA2, but what you describe actually sounds like a good thing to me. It's a typical trait of a "sandbox" RPG, where the main quest exists but can be ignored as there are many other interesting things to bother with. This usually corresponds to excellent RPGs with high replayability value, such as Fallout or Morrowind.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yes, well, that's one of the situations where the Wii or the Move actually has the advantage over the Kinect.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[SuiteSisterMary]

Well, not being interested is something completely different. I'll say that they serious screwed up the beginning of the game; same problem I had with Fallout: New Vegas. There's so many random side quests and what not that the story doesn't seem to go anywhere at all. I was more or less forcing myself to play until I finished griding all those little side quests and got to the finale of Act 1. The game really picked up from there.

Re:It broke Dragon Age II as well!

[Eivind]

That part is okay. I mean, I too find it a good thing that the game doesn't force you to do only the main quests in a linear fashion.

But DA2 sadly, isn't that. It's just a mess. It's a good-thing to be non-linear, but not a good thing to consist of on the order of 100 quests that overwhelmingly don't have anything to do with anything.

It's not a sandbox, it's "pick which sequence to do this finite set of quests in", and being allowed to pick the sequence isn't the problem, but the fact that the quests fail to add up to one overall narrative, is a significant shortcoming.

It's common for sequels of great games to be somewhat poorer, offcourse, but in this case the decline was particularily severe. Seems the general critics agree with my assessment too, seeing as Dragon Age I scored 91% on metacritic whereas the II scored only 79%

Only affected the PC version

[CronoCloud]

Nuff said. Perhaps playing the game on the PS3 or 360 would be a better thing

Re:Only affected the PC version

[RoFLKOPTr]

Nuff said. Perhaps playing the game on the PS3 or 360 would be a better thing

That's the stupidest thing I've ever read.

Re:Only affected the PC version

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

The PC version was only broken because they broke it.

Re:Only affected the PC version

[arkhan_jg]

Well, he does have a point. I personally have largely switched to console gaming, despite the inferior graphics to my gaming PC, the imprecise controller and the noise, simply for less hassle.

I can play single player games offline as much as I like. Even the DLC, bundled or not, works offline. I can even resell my game after I'm finished with it, instead of it being permanently associated with my email address! Imagine that. Legitimate PC gaming is absolutely riddled with DRM. Even steam games come with extra DRM on top, in addition to steam's stopping me sharing games with my wife while I also want to play.

It takes real business genius to make the paid product worth LESS than the free version you can grab from the pirate bay.

Re:Only affected the PC version

[Inda]

This is what I thought when I bought EA's Sims 3 for the Xbox 360!

Turns out that myself and many others couldn't save games if the save-game was corrupted. It'd load, but not save after seconds of play time. *facepalm*

"Delete your save!" said EA.

Still not patched since November 2010.

EA - failing every game

Re:Only affected the PC version

[sorak]

The PC version was only broken because they broke it.

Ok, now that's the stupidest thing I've ever read.

Re:Only affected the PC version

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Nuff said. Perhaps playing the game on the PS3 or 360 would be a better thing

That's the stupidest thing I've ever read.

Only if it's a shooty game... which... well if it's on the PC, let's face it, it probably is.

Re:Only affected the PC version

[VeNoM0619]

Until the new PS4 is released and bricks your system with a patch (or makes it less functional).

Kind of like how my windows 98 system was slowly breaking more and more things with each "windows update" after windows xp got released (however, I am seeing few problems after the win 7 release so praise for that). How else would they force you to pay for the next thing? Obsolete their old product.

DRM should come with an SLA

[Marble68]

When a software company embeds DRM into an application, there ought to be an SLA they are held to.
Things like:
1) Availability of DRM servers
2) A warning that unavailability of DRM servers could prevent gameplay

If we must have DRM, can we at least have some level of service with that DRM so we can actually *use* the product?

Re:DRM should come with an SLA

[griffo]

I would add a mandatory third clause:

3) DRM cannot be used unless a method is made available to remove it through a certified third party in case DRM fails, whatever the reason. (Failure to meet SLA, software company ceases to exist, etc)

Re:DRM should come with an SLA

[delinear]

The problem is most gamers wouldn't read the SLA, so it would just give game companies an excuse to set the bar even lower by writing in terms in their favour. That way when the authentication servers are down, instead of having to react to public complaints they'd just put out a press release indicating that they only promised a 60% uptime.

Re:DRM should come with an SLA

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

4) Your product is not guaranteed to work in 5 years when the servers are taken down.

Re:DRM should come with an SLA

[Darinbob]

And most players don't care. The vast army of apathy is winning the war. They don't care if the game servers are down when they can go play other games. They won't care if they finish the content over a weekend and start looking for the next fad to play. Few people care about game ownership anymore or in playing older games. Welcome to the new mass market and say good bye to the niche.

I Don't and Won't

[DrugCheese]

I don't and won't buy software with this kind of DRM on it.

Re:I Don't and Won't

[Hultis]

This. If a game has terrible DRM I simply pirate it (or ignore it completely), I wouldn't support the game maker even if the game was awesome. This game isn't for me anyway, but if Ubisoft hadn't messed AC2 up completely I would definitely have bought it.

Seeing that Ubisoft dropped a lot of the DRM in AC3 it seems like they at least get the message.

Re:I Don't and Won't

[Anonymous Coward]

They patched it out of AC2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction.

Already beaten the game

[Anonymous Coward]

And while legitimate customers got screwed, I've already played a cracked version over at a friend's house and beaten the game.
I got my enjoyment DOUBLED by simply not paying for the game - I got to play it AND I got to watch legitimate customers get fucked without lube.

They didn't know it was down...

[Anonymous Coward]

What is interesting about this article is he wrote it during the fire-fighting. He makes an assumption as he writes it that EA/Bioware knew the servers were down the whole time and didn't tell anyone.

I think THEY DIDN'T KNOW!

I am pretty sure EA does not have a fully staffed NOC with people watching all of their games 24/7 to ensure maximum uptime. EA doesn't make millions hiring SysAdmins. More likely, there are two guys who run the auth server somewhere who went home for the weekend. Tech support didn't report the outage because they believed it was a bug, and the servers probably continued to operate in such a way that whatever monitoring tools they have, weren't triggered. Since most hard core gamers don't call tech support (as correctly stated in the article) there wasn't enough call volume to trigger a WTF response on the part of EA.

Re:They didn't know it was down...

[malkavian]

EA area games company. They sell a service, which is playable games. Keeping games working for paying customers should be what they do.
So, they deliberately introduce a single point of failure (i.e. DRM servers) for a large part of content. If you do this, you better make sure it doesn't fail. If you do, then complete liability lies with you. It's not an inadvertent mistake that couldn't be predicted as a bug in the software that affects some people, it's a decision, made with intent, to deliberately introduct that single point of failure. No passing the buck, no excuses. It's in the design by intent.
As they're the guys who actually wrote the login code, then, as a first step to monitoring the service, I'd suggest they write code to say "this minute, can I successfully log into the authentication servers". A "yes" indicates that things are probably fine. A value of "no" means something went wrong.
A whole series of "no" for an extended period (say, every minute for 15 minutes) most likely means "Something is VERY badly wrong". At this point, send the alarm out to all the required staff to get a fix in place.
Probably the reason most people didn't call was because there was no error that said "The servers are experiencing a problem". The amount of things that could conceivably have gone wrong is astounding (including file corruption, registry changes, a whole host of things you think of before "Oh, the DRM server must be lying").
If they didn't know, then they were that careless with their introduction of a failure point that they were negligent in design (hey, when did you last see a doctor getting off free from a botched surgery because he didn't know that cutting internal organ A would cripple the patient for months, and wasn't looking out for it, even though he'd put "cut organ A" into his surgical plan?).
I'm very sorry, but they are responsible for the game. They're responsible for the operation of the single point of failure they introduced and its continuity of service. They should have known.
There are two options here:
1) They knew and didn't do anything about it: This means that they simply don't care about product maintenance and keeping a service running that people had paid for (sounds like decent grounds for compensation based on incompetence and denial of service)
2) They didn't know, which means they're incompetent at the management of the staff levels required to maintain a service. If you're incapable of maintaining a service, you shouldn't offer it for sale. If you do, expect the compensation claims that come in when you fail to maintain your end of the bargain.

Took me all of 60 second to fix

[dieth]

sed -i addins.xml 's/RequiresAuthorization="1"/RequiresAuthorization="0"/g Launch DA, continue playing.

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

A hacker!!! Quick, the torches and pitchforks!

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Skuto]

Sadly, it's an obvious DMCA violation that could put the poster in trouble, isn't it?

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Krneki]

Only if he is a citizen of an e-fascist country.

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[The Moof]

Well, EA's support was the original source for disabling the DRM as a fix. I personally wouldn't mind seeing EA sue itself into oblivion. It'd be the only way they'd learn...

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

In the united states you are now guilty of circumventing copy protection under the DMCA. In the rest of the world that is a good solution (for now).

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

You play dragon age in linux?

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because the average gamer totally knows how to do this. Also, it's completely just to essentially leave them on their own to figure this crap out or Google up the one solution that actually works among all the chaffe.

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

sed -i addins.xml '/RequiresAuthorization/s/1/0/'

is a bit simpler...

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully this gets modded up as it's probably the only useful comment in this article.

I just bought DA:O this past weekend and can't say I was impressed with having to troubleshoot their fscking DRM after installation, especially for a game that's been out for well over a year....

Re:Took me all of 60 second to fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I did the same but it begs the question, if you're going to add a configuration parameter that the user can change in an XML file stored on the client machine, why use such a parameter at all?

vote with your money.

[rax313]

As I have read a dozen times here in /. vote with your wallet to make corporations like EA stops this sort of policy for their games. Old games didn't have this sort of issues and yet they sold a lot because they were really good , Besides if you really are into games or a "gamer" you would still buy the original even after playing/beating the game from a pirated version since you would get tons of free stuff nowadays that isn't included in a pirated game. To me that's the one edge of legal games over pirated one's

resolved

[Anonymous Coward]

An update to the article indicates the problems have finally been resolved.

It has not been resloved. They may have corrected the issue that brought down the DRM authorization servers, but the problem is still exists. They have *DRM authorization servers*.

play offline

[Anonymous Coward]

I also had that issue, but once I singned out of my EA account, the DLC content started working again.

New form of extreme masochism?

[Mathinker]

> if you really wanted to. Now did you?

Want to read the EULAs of every EA game? Wow, someone should invent a new classification in the DSM for that compulsion, maybe we should call it "eulamania"?

Re:New form of extreme masochism?

[rumith]

While I agree with your sentiment, GP did complain on the inability to read the EULA before opening the game's box. My argument here is exclusively to prove him wrong, not to conduct psychiatric research. Still, if you do publish a paper on this subject in a peer-reviewed journal, please post a follow-up story here on Slashdot!

Re:New form of extreme masochism?

[hedwards]

The issue though is that if you're in a game shop and you see a cool game, is it really reasonable to expect you to pull out a smartphone, navigate to EA's website and read it on that screen? I personally don't think that's realistic. And ultimately even if you do go to the trouble, good luck actually understanding what if any of it is actually enforceable in court.

Re:New form of extreme masochism?

[rumith]

good luck actually understanding what if any of it is actually enforceable in court.

That's a much stronger point than any other one made in this thread. Even an ordinary gamer can read a EULA in the most comfortable conditions, and even if he does read the license, it will do him no good because he is not a lawyer.

It was the DLC

[Mascot]

Gotto love the fact the DRM wasn't actually in DA:O, but in the DLC for it. So if you just bought the main game, you were fine. If you had given them _even more_ money, you got screwed.

Re:It was the DLC

[tudsworth]

Thing is, a retail boxed copy of the game comes bundled with DLC. About $15 worth of it, no less. And when you're already paying $50 for a game, I can't think of a reason to not download the $15 of content they're withholding from you otherwise. Not that I've bought anything by Bioware in a good few years. I was half-tempted to buy DA:O, too, but so much for that.

Re:It was the DLC

[SQL Error]

The really annoying thing is that they completely ignored it for three days because the DLC system is so bug-ridden that they couldn't tell the difference between the normal level of complaints and the entire system having fallen over.

Excellent!

[ZeRu]

Excellent, now I have one less reason to buy Dragon Age 2 (which puts it at -1 reasons), or any other game from EA or BioWare.

Yes, they do

[Anonymous Coward]

I got the legit collectors edition but run a pirate version with ALL the dlc even the promotion offers from other shops that I can't buy from.

Yes, truly the pirate version IS the supreme version. And thanks to Bioware lack luster patches, it is 100% up to date.

Re:Yes, they do

[IICV]

I got the legit collectors edition but run a pirate version with ALL the dlc even the promotion offers from other shops that I can't buy from.

Yes, truly the pirate version IS the supreme version. And thanks to Bioware lack luster patches, it is 100% up to date.

That really bears repeating: there is content that paying customer cannot access, unless they're willing to buy the game at full price multiple times from various different stores! In some cases, there's even content that's locked unless you buy other, mostly unrelated games.

Now, to be fair, this content is generally restricted to just some shiny items and not much else, but still - pirates get the complete game experience, which is inaccessible to most reasonable legitimate players.

Honestly, it's almost like EA wants you to pirate the game; they certainly treat pirates better than the paying customers.

Re:Yes, they do

[mcvos]

Honestly, it's almost like EA wants you to pirate the game; they certainly treat pirates better than the paying customers.

I was actually considering buying DA:O sometime in the near future. This news is really just in time for me. I think I'll take EA/Bioware's advice and get the full, working version.

Was going to purchase this series

[Ice Tiger]

But now I won't as the DRM is broken by design.

Re:Was going to purchase this series

[wvmarle]

Anything with DRM is broken by design. The DRM is the intentionally built-in failure point.

Mind that if DRM did not break anything for anyone, there would be no use for incorporating it to begin with!

Re:Was going to purchase this series

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there still is no use for incorporating DRM since:

ALL DRM
ALWAYS GET CRACKED
QUICKLY
BY PIRATES

As a paying customer (who made the mistake of buying DAO) the way I see it DRM does nothing against pirates and only inconveniences those who purchase games.
DAO was my last purchase from EA, I won't buy again from them until they stop using DRM entirely, publicly apologize for previous use of DRM, and make patches that remove DRM from all games that currently have them.

Re:Was going to purchase this series

[Anonymous Coward]

I was inches from buying Bioshock 2 when it was on sale for $4.99 the other day, but all the DRM Securom (not to mention Games for Windows) crap that they have baked into it stopped me. Why is that even needed in a steam game?? I'll be buying The Potato Sack (steam indie bundle) when I get paid tomorrow instead

You get what you pay for

[kawabago]

Unless it's entertainment. For that it's 'yo pays yo money an yo takes yo chances, sucka!'

Once again

[McTickles]

Warez is king in the land of fail legal offers.

Why do people even bother paying for such high profile games, they know they will either be disappointed, DRM'd to hell or buggy or all...

After 5 years or so....

[devent]

And after 5 years or so EA will shut down the servers because they are bankrupt/bought out/waste money and all your games are worthless. There is an easy solution to this: Don't buy DRM'd games. There are plenty of games with don't have DRM and they cost much less, too. Like in http://gog.com/ Or just buy a older game for 10$ and apply a no-cd crack. You won't miss much, I just saw Crysis for just 5 Euro.

Re:After 5 years or so....

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, there are LEGITIMATE no-cd patches for some older games, like the v1.12 patch for Diablo 2.

Re:After 5 years or so....

[demonbug]

Heck, there are LEGITIMATE no-cd patches for some older games, like the v1.12 patch for Diablo 2.

Even EA has been known to do this... the last update for Battlefield 2 added all the content of the expansion pack(s), and I believe also removes the CD check.

Re:After 5 years or so....

[jaymz666]

Kind of. Cyrsis for $5 doesn't matter to me when I want to play a great immersive RPG

I really don't care

[frrrp]

I really don't care. I still play DooM.

Re:I really don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations. Some people like to play games with depth.

From the desk of EA Corporate:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, shouldn't everyone be playing Dragon Age 2 now?

This is why we have DRM

[Murdoch5]

Does anyone really think that DRM is a good idea? From the company standpoint it is, protect your assets, for the customer it's not because it limits access to the assets you bought.

DRM Quote from Wiki

DRM technologies have enabled publishers to enforce access policies that not only disallow copyright infringements, but also prevent lawful fair use of copyrighted works

Just like the quote, DRM prevents fair and lawful use of copyrighted work, meaning the end user gets screwed all to make a dollar.

I don't have sympathy aymore

[Truekaiser]

To anyone who buys a drm infected game and then complains about it later. There is ample information now before a game is ever released on if it will have drm and what kind. So if you don't like drm buy games that don't have it like many independent ones, or don't buy them at all. IF you MUST have it and seem to have the disposable income of a high end gamer just buy a console and that version of the game if you don't want the drm on your computer.

Re:I don't have sympathy aymore

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the console version of DA:O was crippled right? It lacked the camera views most people prefer when using actual strategy to play on higher difficulties (among other things). Not to mention fanmade patches and mods won't work on your console version. Mike Laidlaw, who just screwed up DA2 for everyone, was the person responsible for the DA:O console version and he made really sure it was much worse than the PC version.

Not to mention, while Prototype and Batman AA will play fine on a console, neither shooters nor RTS games play the same (and indeed the latter are hardly available for this very reason).

Re:I don't have sympathy aymore

[Truekaiser]

The don't play them. By buying them and playing them you support them treating you like this. So your stuck with two rather undesirable but legal choices.
1. play the 'crippled' console version.
2. don't buy the game. spend your money elsewhere.

Gamecopyworld.

[unity100]

They would fix the sheer, despicable incompetence those failure of a companies had had brought upon you.

Fallout New Vegas had similar problems

[elrous0]

Certain missions in Fallout New Vegas would glitch on a downloadable content DRM check, causing the saves to be corrupted if the software couldn't find some non-existent DLC. It took them months to fix it. AFAIK, it happened across all versions of the game. It would seem that this sort of glitching is becoming more common, even on consoles.

You can still play all DLC...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if you just log out of their server. It's non needed anyway after the content has been authorized the first time. The only people this really affected are either those that bought the DLC while the server was down (since you can't register the content without the server) and those that have no clue that the DRM server isn't needed after the install and still log in anyway. While I'm not pro-DRM, this really is a non-story blown out of proportion.

Fan of Bioware, but even that is not enough...

[nitehawk214]

The DRM horror stories have chased me away from the Dragon Age series. Instead I went to GOG.com and bought the full Baldur's Gate II collection. I own it on a bunch of cds (somewhere); but for 10 bucks I get the classic gameplay with no DRM, not even a cd check, and online download and installation.

Vicious Cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad thing is that there is a vicious cycle at play here. Customers are getting sick of DRM and buying their games less, so they see lower sales and blame piracy for it, and therefore think more DRM to prevent piracy (as if it ever could) is the solution.

Re:Vicious Cycle

[praxis]

Nope, that's a virtuous cycle. More DRM leading to lower profits. Despite their logical fallacy that we can all recognize and ignore, in the end they get what they deserve.

Re:Simple solution

[Travelsonic]

Bullshit. [BTW Illegal and unauthorized aren't necessarily synonymous - copying a music CD you own for example is unauthorized, but legal for example].

EA has been useless for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough Already (EA) has been DRM'ing games for years and generally being evil. The solution is simple, don't waste your money on them. If you did give them money and get screwed for it consider it a learning experience you can share with your friends. Don't buy EA.

Erm....

[DavidTC]

...you guys know that all you had to do was log out of your EA account inside Dragon Age and you could play, right?

I managed to figure that out without even looking online.

The real problem was people attempting to install, as I believe they couldn't activate their copy.

But I started Dragon Age, tried to load a game, got a message about DLC's not being activated on my account, so I, duh, just logged out, and hey, tada, I could load my game. (Yes, with all the content.)

Publishers Inevitably Always Take the Servers Down

[Fraser]

I have the Ultimate Edition of Origins -- I got it from Steam. (I really like Steam -- you can use it offline and I never have any problems with playing the games I've bought). However -- DA:O is awful: often the log in lags behind the DLC loading, so it doesn't work first time, so you have to do it again. Very irritating. Also, it clearly means that when EA eventually, inevitably take the authentication servers down, I will lose my DLC and associated saves.

You just have to head over to the Neverwinter Nights forums (now closed) to see what happens in these cases -- all of the Premium Modules for Neverwinter Nights called home when they were launched, and now no-one can play them because Atari took the servers down. Since they took them down without patching the modules so they could still be played, they knew what they were doing and did it cynically.

F

EA? no surprise.

[Anonymous Coward]

my worst gaming experience was with ea games.

Re:Publishers Inevitably Always Take the Servers D

[Cito]

But all the premium modules are still playable on neverwinter nights for us pirates :P

very happy

[Anonymous Coward]

play this game ,you will very happy.
HREF="http://www.anyincn.com/sub_of_brand.aspx?cat_id=29&bra_id=212&bra_name=Omega+Watchs&cat_name=Watches">Omega Watchs,A