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EA Is Now Officially On Steam, Spore Loses SecuROM
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Dec 19, 2008 09:13 PM
from the baby-steps dept.
from the baby-steps dept.
Trevor DeRiza writes "Today, Valve and EA revealed that this week's earlier rumors were true: Spore (and other EA games) are coming to Steam. As of today, Spore, Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect, Need for Speed: Undercover, and FIFA Manager 2009 are all available for download on Steam. In the coming weeks, EA will add Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Red Alert 3. On the official Steam forums, when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008, a moderator replied, 'It does not have third party DRM.' EA has also finally launched a 'de-authorization tool' to free up limited installation slots."
Several readers have written to point out other news about Steam today: they've begun selling games priced in local currency for European customers. The only problem? Their conversion rate seems to be $1 per €1, somewhat less favorable than the current exchange rate, which is roughly $1.40 per €1.
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<em>Spore</em> the Most Pirated Game of 2008 404 comments
TorrentFreak has posted some statistics on the most pirated games of the past year. Leading the list by a large margin is Spore, made infamous even before its release for the draconian DRM attached to the game. It was downloaded through BitTorrent roughly 1.7 million times, with The Sims 2 and Assassin's Creed following at just over a million each. (It's worth noting that Spore came out in September, so that figure is essentially for a mere three months.) GameSetWatch has posted a related piece discussing the countermeasures involved in dealing with piracy. It's the second article in a series about piracy; we discussed the first a couple days ago.
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AKA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AKA (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
From the summary of the article "'It does not have third party DRM.'".
A statement like this could mean anything like:
-EA has removed all DRM from the title
-EA has purchased the SecuROM code, and is still wrapping the game in this DRM
-EA has come up with some other DRM scheme on it's own, details to come
If this person was in HR, and was called for a reference, they would probably say something like "I would recommend nobody before this person for a job."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens in the year 2020?
Will the server still be up-and-running to "authorize" my playing of Spore? I doubt it. And even if it is still operational there's a possibility a new EA CEO decides to "change strategy" and revoke all licenses to the Steam corporation, thereby deauthorizing all Steam users from playing EA games.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S.
>>>Honestly, I don't understand this attitude
I don't understand the attitude that anything older than 5-10 years is not worthy of keeping. I still have favorite movies that are around three-quarters of a century old. "It's old" is not reason to discard good entertainment, and that applies to games as well as movies.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Balders Gate was released in 1998. I still play it and enjoy it about once a year.
Well there you go. I bet if it had DRM it wouldn't even work anymore, due to the server going down, or the owner of that game simply deciding "we don't want people playing BG anymore; let's make them buy it again".
Whoever holds the key controls your access, and they can withdraw the key whenever they feel like it. It's a perpetual rental, not ownership.
Parent
European prices (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why the slashdot editors have decided to combine two unrelated steam stories, effectively denying the localized price story its own discussion. Maybe nobody reads slashdot in Europe? I'd say that, for anyone interested in using Steam living in the EU, the huge price increases are much bigger news than the EA thing.
How huge? For example, Call of Duty 4 went from 49,99 US$ to 71.97 US$ overnight, according to TFA. As a result, for most (all?) games on Steam it is now cheaper to buy them in brick-and-mortar stores, and you get a box too!
It looks like the message is "If you want to be free from Securom, you'll have to pay more. Actually, scratch that, you'll just pay more regardless."
Parent
Re:European prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is DRM laden.
How can Steam fight DRM?
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is DRM laden.
How can Steam fight DRM?
Steam's DRM, in my opinion, is much less intrusive than SecuROM. Sure, it requires an authentication server. Sure, it runs in the background while you're playing the game. But it's much less intrusive and much more transparent than installing a device driver (or something along the lines of that) that's hard to remove and putting a hard limit on the number of times a game can be authenticated.
Think of it as a "gateway drug" to what I hope will be a DRM-free future, like what iTunes did with its less restrictive DRMing (and eventually, the lack of DRMing) of music downloads (yes, I know that iTunes still DRMs a majority of their content, but that's because Apple's deal with the RIAA restricts them from DRM-free sales).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The driver issue is the dealbreaker for me, i don't want ridiculous DRM code touching the kernel, ever. Using rootkits to prevent removal of kernel code is even more absurd.
Re:AKA (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, don't bring drugs into this. Drugs' spokesperson announces that drugs have no affiliation what so ever with DRM and do not wish to have their name tarnished by the association.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but DRM will never go away as long as piracy still exists. Zero-day and Day-one warez cannibalize PC game sales, and as long as DRM prevents that, they're golden.
Steam is really no better, it's just that it hasn't had the same sort of character assassination that SecuROM and Starforce have gone through because they happen to have made HL2.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Interesting)
DRM in and of itself isn't evil, in fact Steam brings a lot of features that make it actually appealing to me.
No media, no serial numbers, just a single username and password for all my games.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
No media, no serial numbers, just a single username and password for all my games.
Free unlimited downloads, relatively automatic updates, etc... Though changing the install directory could be good.
I bought Crysis through the EA store download method as an experiment. While I captured the download file that should allow me to reinstall, I'm not sure I'd be able to today. With steam, that wouldn't be a problem.
I have to agree, I like steam. They manage to do online download gaming right.
Parent
Steam doesn't suck any more? (Score:5, Informative)
I see so much praise for Steam these days. Has it improved significantly over the monstrosity I swore off ~four years ago? I am talking about the years when you could not play a Steam game offline if you did not put yourself into offline mode while still online. Steam trying to authenticate itself killed the network at dozens of LAN parties, and that behavior could not be stopped without closing Steam.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:4, Informative)
The crysis binary you captured includes a hashing mechanism that will only allow the installer binary to run on that computer.
So yes, it will allow you to re-install, assuming you don't change whatever vital components they use to fingerprint the host.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AKA (Score:5, Interesting)
No reselling of your games...
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Interesting)
Any game over $35 that I buy on steam, I put in it's own account. That way if I want to give it away or sell it, I'll just give away the one account.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM in and of itself isn't evil, in fact Steam brings a lot of features that make it actually appealing to me.
No media, no serial numbers, just a single username and password for all my games.
You forgot "no right of first sale".
If you can't sell it, is it really yours?
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that you can't resell it might matter it someone, put it doesn't to me. I can count on one hand the number of times I have sold my computer games... zero.
Even if you sold every single computer game it just means you are giving yourself a $10 discount in the future. Whoop-de-fucking-do. Personally, I find the fact that I can never lose a video game again to be vastly more useful than the fact that I can't pawn it off.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Only if you have a quacking fetish, which, after hearing about you using ducks to pickup girls, i have to wonder...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Spore's DRM is Half-life'd"?
It is an improvement, after all...
>.>
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Gordon Freeman would come busting through a vent and crowbar down some rentacops (for their ammo).. push a few buttons and BAM, steam games saved..
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
Steam is DRM. It controls what you can and can't do with a product you have bought and paid for. It's dependent on activation servers, which it contacts every time you launch a game, just like Spore was going to before the outcry.
In a very meaningful sense it's less abhorrent than SecuROM, as it doesn't go out of its way dig its tendrils into the OS, breaking random things and throwing hissy fits if it finds innocuous software it doesn't like. There's no bullshit "activations" to use up, and it doesn't leave bits of itself behind when you uninstall it.
But in other ways it's worse. You don't really own a Steam game. You can't loan a copy of a Steam game to a friend, or sell it to someone, or even give it away for free, except in specific cases where Valve decides to let you. If something happened to Valve, or they just decided they didn't like the cut of your jib and aren't going to let you play your game anymore, you'd be shit out of luck.
Parent
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor can more than one person play from your steam game list at a time. What if I want to play TF2 while another of my household plays another online game from my list? You can't. You can hack about with offline mode for single player games, but for multiplayer, only one person can play from your list at a time. This has become more of a problem as time goes on. Short of creating a new steam account for every single different game, they've very effectively tied your entire list of software to single-user only - it's even more restrictive than secuROM in it's way.
Now, steam makes up for it with the plus points in some ways, but we should be wary of cheering on putting more and more of our games at a single point of failure.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
Now I can buy Spore! I knew they'd drop it sooner or later and then I can finally buy it.
Wait... why would I?
Maybe the lesson here is, if you avoid DRM like the plague, you avoid buying overhyped games as a beneficial side effect.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well I was excited to try it, and I will now.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
And once people start buying the game, it stops being good. Haven't you ever heard the term "Sell out"?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Lets rephrase:
"we've replaced a very restrictive form of DRM with another form of DRM. How do you like it?"
opportunist (166417): "I LOVE IT! *hands cash*"
This is not the drm you are looking for.
Steam is DRM - its better, but still DRM.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is DRM - its better, but still DRM.
But maybe it'll convince EA that at least over restrictive DRM IS an issue - and SECUROM, limited installs, complicated activation schemes and all that is the incorrect method to go about doing DRM.
Or maybe a correct wording would be 'you can't get something for nothing' - you CAN get consumers to accept DRM as long as you offer true advantages to go along with it. I happen to like the idea that even if my house is struck by a meterorite and everything is destroyed I'd be able to play my games again as soon as I got a new computer and an internet connection.
Parent
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's getting more annoying as time goes on. For instance, I bought a few games for the kids to play on the laptop. Last night, I wanted to play Left4Dead but couldn't because Steam was logged in on another PC.
Steam should allow the client to run on multiple PCs and then just ensure the same game isn't being played.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I know you caught the sarcasm, thankfully.
I would like to just see the DRM dance end, really. When DRM that people don't notice is "perfected", the same situation as now will occur: The smart people will figure out how to get around it, and the rest will happily lap up.
I have portal on my steam account which I rarely if ever use; should you wish to play it you can use mine. Just leave me some comment with a way to contact you or something.
Well. (Score:3, Interesting)
No problem (Score:5, Funny)
The only problem? Their conversion rate seems to be $1 per â1, somewhat less favorable than the current exchange rate, which is roughly $1.40 per â1.
Yeah but they don't have to physically ship pixels when they change money. Pixels are heavy, bytes are dense.. it's a complicated system of pipes and transmission lines.
Is this really an improvement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its been widely hypothesized that EA's intent with the DRM on Spore was not really to prevent piracy, but to impede second-hand sales. Doesn't Steam do exactly the same thing? Can you feasibly resell a license/copy of a game purchased on Steam?
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am seeing praise here that they are dropping the SecureROM for Steam.
Why?
The way I see it, I still have to rely on some kind of authentication server in order to play my games. What if 10 years down the road I want to play some spore, and Steam is no longer online. What then?
Sorry, but I still refuse to buy until I have a hard copy in my hands that I can install at any place any time.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:4, Interesting)
I find that very unlikely though. Steam would be bought out and passed around before it would go away. Its like trying to imagine a once popular website going away. Think about the sites from the '90s you dont use anymore, like excite.com or ubid.com. They're STILL there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
EA was only partially at fault. Dice just designed the game badly and didn't test worth a damn against Vista clients before releasing it to the masses. Now whether or not that EA forced them to release early is something else, but just look at the SIZE of the patches for BF2 and BF2142. 512MB for the last BF2 patch...compared to the smaller 16-30MB patches for CoD4. It just screams bad early design.
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Digital download. Ability to download your games on as many machines as you want (and play on one at a time, which I consider fair). Integrated grouping/friends-lists with Steam Friends and a built-in matchmaker.
It's pretty excellent.
Parent
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
it can be perfectly legal without steam, it's just up to the distributer to be more reasonable with thier t&c's.
But they aren't, so Steam it is.
the question you need to ask yourself, is is piracy more or less of a problem now than before DRM? what's that, it's just as big of a problem??? that's right DRM isn't the solution. kthxbai.
The question you need to ask yourself, is piracy more or less of a problem now for Steam-only games than it is for non-Steam ones? and the answer is, from what I've seen, that it's much less of a problem now. Yes, pirated versions do exist but most of the people I've met who've played HL2 have done so on a legit copy, which I can't say for Crysis or CoD4 for example. Therefore, by your own argument, Steam *is* the solution.
Parent
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
Is there any other kind?
Back in my day we only had analog downloads! And we were glad to have any at all! Why, if we wanted to play a video game one of us had to mentally interpret and reconstruct the current running through our hands back into the original binary! Then we had to crack the DRM - by slamming our heads just right against a stone wall to purge it from our memory. And we were grateful for the opportunity!
...
Then our father would cut us in two wit' a bread knife.
Parent
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:4, Interesting)
I know I'm being a douche but radio stations used to transmit programs over the air that I would record on cassette for my Commodore 64.
If anything is an analog download that would be it.
Parent
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
i prefer analog downloads using real steam. unfortunately, it took me several ruined hard drives to realize that analog steam downloads are incompatible with digital storage media. but i finally got a water tank installed in my computer, and it's been working great ever since.
see, whenever you download something the steam travels through a network of pressurized pipes--a series of tubes, if you will--until it finally reaches the computer, at which point it has to go through the Steam Condenser System Interface (SCSI) before it's finally written to the liquid state drive.
it is quite dangerous since the pipes are filled with highly pressurized scalding hot steam. if the network link ever becomes oversaturated it can easily result in packet loss and 3rd degree burns. but i think it's worth the risk. analog steam is perfect for cloud applications and downloading vaporware.
Parent
Re:Nice Try, but No (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is claiming anything about steam.
It is what it is.
A service that allows you to buy(rent), download your game to any computer with the client, and play. It has a functional offline mode that works for every valve developed or published title I have played. It has introduced me a to few indie games that were fun. The prices are good, and I've bought most of my games on discount. It has community features that I find useful. It keeps my game up to date.
It is the only authentication system that actually gives you something in return for authenticating your game, and it doesn't bitch about me having virtual drive software.
The only major issues I've had with a game on steam was when a publisher(THQ not Valve) decided that the steam authentication wasn't good enough and decided it needed another DRM solution on top of steam, and it didn't let me actually play the game while their authentication severs were buggered.
Steam is what it is. Nothing more nothing less.
Parent