Spore, Mass Effect DRM Phone Home For Single-Player Gaming

Tridus writes "The PC version of Mass Effect is going to require Internet access to play (despite being a single-player game), as its DRM system requires that it phone home every 10 days. Sadly, Spore will use the same system. This will do nothing to stop piracy of course, but it will do a heck of a good job of stopping EA's new arch-enemy: people playing their single player games offline." Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play? Update: 05/07 17:17 GMT by T : According to a message from Technical Producer Derek French (may require a scroll-down) on the Bioware forums, there is indeed an internet connection required, but only for activation, not for all future play. Update: 05/08 04:10 GMT by T : Mea culpa. As reader David Houk points out, the 10-day window is in fact correct as initially described, so don't count on playing this on any machine without at least some Internet connectivity.

My worry

I worry that this portends a day when consoles (and even blu-ray movie players) will REQUIRE an internet connection and do something similar to verify their games/movies. While piracy isn't as big an issue with console games/DVD's/Blu-ray's, it could set the precenent for a world where every piece of media we play would have the equivalent of a "Windows Genuine Advantage" check to function.

And, of course, this isn't unprecented (on the DVD side, at least). Something very similar was done with the evil DIVX format [wikipedia.org] in the late 90's

Re:My worry

I worry that this portends a day when consoles (and even blu-ray movie players) will REQUIRE an internet connection and do something similar to verify their games/movies

I worry about the same thing, but there's a counter-movement right now from many media companies where they're trying to add convenience and features rather than regulate them through DRM. These companies realize that DRM just means they're product is inferior to what pirates can put out with a minimum of effort and are trying to combat that.

DRM is always going to be around because companies are always going to try to protect themselves from unauthorized copying. When the measures they take get to onerous, they tend to be scaled back or changed so that people can use the products again. We're at or nearing a peak in DRM technologies, and pretty soon more companies will be giving up DRM than are taking it up. In three years time I expect us to be reading headlines about one of the last companies giving up strenuous DRM in favor of more lax restrictions or no restrictions at all.

Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD.

Back door or not, this could be exploited almost more easily than other DRM just by setting up your own computer as the answering server, or for more advanced people, setting up a network box as the server. I can see whole floors of college dorm rooms sharing pirated copies and having the answering server set up in the nerd's room.

Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD.

And there may be your solution for when a company dies and takes their DRM with them, along with your purchase's bought-and-paid-for usefulness.

Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD.

Exactly what I was thinking. What happens 10 years down the line when I try to play a game or watch a Movie that has some funky DRM on it, but I can't because the company is out of business or has shutdown the DRM server.

This sounds like a horrid idea.

Re:My worry

That analogy is completely flawed. People have been renting videos for decades. People are well aware that when they stop paying, the video goes away. I really doubt there are any Netflix subscribers who believe that Netflix are selling the movies to them.

Re:My worry

As a Netflix user, I can affirm that you do not know what you are talking about. Netflix's instant view capabilities are an added bonus to an already nice system. They don't even charge extra for it. The whole point of Netflix is that you are renting movies, so no one thinks they are "buying" a movie when they watch it instantly. You don't even pay per view, you pay a monthly fee, and that fee can be really low if you want to mainly watch the instant view movies. I don't know of a better way to legally watch movies cheaply. If Netflix suddenly goes down, all you lose is the last few days of that month's subscription.

Now, this system in TFA that is being described is a Bad Thing, because when those servers go down I can't play the game I paid $50.00 for. This is the first thing I've heard that makes me second guess buying Spore as soon as it comes out. Then again, I play plenty of Steam games, so I guess I'm not really that worried.

Re:My worry

Just like nobody plays games from the 70s and 80s?

My kids play SNES games on the emulator every bit as much as they play their Wii. That's not nostalgia, because they weren't around to play the games in the first place. They are just good games.

FFS

For goodness' sake, you must be joking! I've pre-ordered the game but now I'm considering leaving it on the shelf and playing a pirated version. Sounds way easier!

Re:FFS

And they've just ensured that I will NOT be purchasing a copy. Not buying and then playing a pirated copy (which I tend to do with a lot of my existing games for a similar reason), but a transfer of $0 from myself to them in exchange for a copy of the game.

You hear that, EA? You just ensured that I will not be purchasing Spore, which up until this news was at the top of my buy list.

I'll keep the money set aside for when you change your mind. In the meantime, I'll be playing a Swedish [thepiratebay.org] version.

Re:FFS

While I pretty much agree, it is worth noting that Spore is essentially a network game. You're not really supposed to play it offline. A major point of the game is getting a totally new selection of user created content everytime you play. Playing Spore offline would take a lot away from the game as it's been described. Still, this plan doesn't sound too great.

Turn everyone into criminals?

It will just make the people who would normally not look for cracks go and find them. These people will then see that they didn't have to buy the game in the first place and EA will turn their paying customers into non-paying ones. Great job!

Re:Turn everyone into criminals?

You're right. Before I read this, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Spore.

Now I'm eagerly awaiting the release of a crack for Spore.

Worse.

It's worse than requiring a CD. I can easily carry a CD with me. I can't easily carry my network connection with me. And since I had been thinking about getting rid of my home network connection, it may mean I won't buy the game, or can only play it at work. What's the point in that?

Yet another brain-dead attempt to prevent piracy...

Annoying

Mostly because it won't do a thing to prevent piracy. I really don't understand how they can keep coming back to this idea of requiring a CD in the drive or an active internet connection for single-player games. It makes no sense and only inconveniences their customers. The pirates just replace the executable with a cracked version and have no trouble at all.

Re:Annoying

Never mind, if my past experience with SecuRom is any indication, replacing the executable with the cracked version is going to be SecuRom's solution to any bugs in their DRM scheme. I know when I had problems with SecuROM not authorizing my copy of NWN, and wrote to them about it, they shipped me a little reporting tool (my box was almost exclusively used for NWN at this time), analysed the data, and sent me a link to a patched .exe and told me to replace my nwn.exe with that. What a waste, I could have downloaded the crack (which was probably SecuROM's own patched .exe) and ran that.

I've never seen a more useless company than SecuROM.

Worse.

Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play?

Worse. The state of my CD/DVD drive is my business and basically under my control, while my Internet connection is dependent upon staying in the good graces of a ISP company that may or may not have their shit together on any given day.

agreed Re:Worse.

dont forget air/sea travel, airports, bus stations, cabins, e-mail-less vacations.

I need my games most when I CAN'T get to the network...

Doctrine of first sale

I hate how publishers have finally used technological measures to achieve what the courts won't grant them. This should be flat out explicitly illegal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine [wikipedia.org]

gamecopyworld is your friend

I always buy my games (who needs to download multiple Gb files anyway, it's boring), but I hate these stupid copy protection schemes.

Most of the time I find someone posts a crack or workaround to gamecopyworld though, and they tend to work.

Not for freetards though, not one of them comes with a serial, you still have to buy the games.

I'll try Spore just as soon as the drm is bypassed, not before. I refuse to believe that I, as a legally purchasing game player, need to be watched by the content owner.

Stardock shows how to do this properly

Stardock has this stuff figured out. Here's how life works if you buy Sins of a Solar Empire:

- You can install it from the original media, a copy of the original media, downloaded from Stardock, or whatever. The game works without a disk, and without a key. It doesn't phone home. It treats you like a customer, not a criminal.

- Registering with Stardock (putting your key in once) gets you access to updates on the website. Oh, if your CD gets lost, you can also download the entire game again for free from Stardock.

- You need the CD key once to create an online multiplayer account. Unless you want to play LAN, in fact two players are allowed to play LAN games with only one copy of the game between them. (You can probably do more then that without technical hurdles, the license just explictly allows it for two people.)

Take a good game and put all that on top of it, and as a paying customer I feel good about buying it. I like buying games, it means more games get made.

In the case of Mass Effect, buying the game means I can't use it while I'm moving, when I'll have no Internet. Of course the whole point of buying it is to play a single player game while I'm moving, since I won't have World of Warcraft due to having no Internet.

But the pirated version will work just fine for me. So as a paying customer, I get treated WORSE then someone who pirates the game. I'm failing to see how this does anything but encourage me to pirate the game.

Re:Steam

Steam's a bit different - you can switch it to 'offline mode' (which happens automatically if it can't connect to the Steam servers), and it won't need to phone back again. You only need to be online to initially decrypt and update the game.

Re:Summary has it a bit wrong, again

Sounds like it only re-checks *once*, not once every ten days, ad infinitum.

No, it rechecks every 10 days according to the mods at the main Mass Effect forum. http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=628724&forum=125 [bioware.com]

A: You cannot play MEPC without an internet connection. MEPC must authenticate when it is initially run and every 10 days thereafter.

Re:Summary has it a bit wrong, again

Update, as I read farther into TFA:

"just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after"

Now it's saying something different!

Also:
Commenter: "Sure, I have an always-on net connection but what happens if I don't play for 11 days and the moment I want to play my connection is down? Are you saying I'm not going to be able to play my perfectly legitimate purchased copy of the game, even the retail version, until I get permission?"
BioShock rep: "That is correct. And I would suggest that you contact EA Support the moment this happens (once you get your internet back) to report the issue. If there are people having problems with the system as designed, then Support needs to hear about it so they can help us evaluate it for the next game title."

Re:Summary has it a bit wrong, again

So they want you to report the fact that their licensing system is defective? Sounds to me like they already know.