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Mass Effect DRM Still Causing Issues
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jun 17, 2008 04:56 PM
from the three-strikes-and-you're-out dept.
from the three-strikes-and-you're-out dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There was some discussion last month about the proposed DRM for Mass Effect and Spore that required the game to phone home every ten days. They backed down from that, but have left in that a user is only allowed 3 activations per license key. A license key is burned up when the O/S is reinstalled, when certain hardware is upgraded (EA refuses to disclose specifics of what), and possibly when a new user is set up in Windows. Only in its first month, some users are already locked out of their games from trying troubleshooting techniques to get the game running."
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Spore, Mass Effect DRM Phone Home For Single-Player Gaming 900 comments
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.
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EA Loosens Spore, Mass Effect DRM 249 comments
An anonymous reader writes "In response to recent criticism, EA has decided to eliminate the periodic validation of Mass Effect and Spore. 'Specifically, EA's plan to dial in to game owner's computers every ten days to check whether they were running a legitimate version of their software has been scrapped, ShackNews reports. EA had planned to use the validation method for upcoming titles Mass Effect and Spore. EA now says that validation will now only occur when a user attempts to download new content for either game. Chief among the voices in opposition to this measure were members of the armed forces, who pointed out that they could not rely on having an internet connection every ten days.'"
Firehose:Mass Effect DRM still causing issues by Anonymous Coward
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Thats what they get (Score:5, Insightful)
Protection like this certainly doesn't encourage paying for the game when the free version is better.
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Informative)
5 minutes and 3 no CD exes later my game runs even better.
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Interesting)
The radio in my car requires entering a code every time the battery is disconnected, as the legitimate owner of the car i have forgotten the code and gone to considerable expense to get it recoded...
The guy who recoded it didn't take very long, neither i suspect would a thief. So only the legitimate user gets inconvenienced, anyone who steals the radio will have a lot less problem with the "anti theft" mechanism than i have.
On the other hand, my radio is obsolete (1995), a nonstandard size, and riveted and bolted into the car so it's not likely to get stolen anyway.
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual problem with DRM is that, unlike with ordinary goods where I have an additional value when I buy something rather than hoping it "falls off a truck". I get warrenty, I get a manual, I get support, I may get cheap(er) addons. It's exactly reverse with DRMed goods. You get more value out of "stealing" it.
Yes, convenience is a value in a good. Actually, convenience has become a good in and of itself. Valet parking is nothing but a convenience, still people pay for it. The reason why Windows is still more in use than Linux with private users is the convenience of its use and the software for it. Convenience is a big selling point. And just this important key point is actually better when I copy&crack software rather than buying it?
That's why DRM will fail with the masses. Not because of the privacy invasion or the "phoning home". People don't care about that. But they do care about the loss of convenience.
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Interesting)
SecuROM, on the other hand...
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM isn't REALLY about software piracy. I haven't known one person that has said "Hey! It is difficult to pirate this. I may as well just go buy it!". It is about squeezing the most money out of you that they possibly can for the least amount of product.
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, as pointed out above, not only by me, if DRM accomplished anything, it's that people who got dicked over by DRMcrippled software they bought start looking for a way around DRM, find out about cracks and then you lost a customer. And unfortunately, not only the companies using DRM to harrass their customers lose them, everyone does. Someone who has found cracked soft doesn't discriminate anymore between "good" companies that employ either no DRM or less invasive DRM, and "bad" companies who try to enforce something as ridiculous as the crap we're discussing here.
He just sees free soft and starts grabbing.
If DRM accomplishes anything, it drives more people towards cracked software. You can't get those that download&crack on principle to buy your stuff. For many, it's a sport to avoid buying software, and you won't get them to buy yours. DRM now drives the rest away from buying as well by pretty much sending them towards cracks to regain the convenience and ease of use they enjoy about software they bought.
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Insightful)
I pirated a lot when I was younger and without disposable income. This lost the game companies little to nothing since there was no money to be had from me either way. I now have buckets of disposable income, but do not buy games with this sort of DRM. If they don't want my money, they don't get it. There are plenty of games without DRM for me to give my money for.
The fact games with no DRM whatsoever still turn a good profit (Stardock's titles are a prime example), proves beyond any doubt that tossing away DRM does not equal zero return on investment.
Chicken or egg? Not an interesting question, in my opinion. There has been piracy since the birth of the games industry. This hasn't prevented them from becoming so large they are now on par with the movie industry.
DRM is now an industry in itself. If not a single person on the planet pirated, the DRM industry would still somehow manage to sell their crippleware to game companies. It's not like they don't already produce fictional losses to rival that of the **AA.
Parent
Re:Thats what they get (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's worth pointing out that the two methods (purchasing and cracking) aren't mutually exclusive. When a company adopts draconian (or just plain stupid) licensing tactics, you can still purchase the software (for legal, moral, etc reasons) and then proceed to download a crack for your copy or just a cracked one via "the usual places". It's not ideal and not perfect, but at least you can run the software you paid for.
At my last job we had some software that required a hardware dongle attached to a license server. The problem was that the licensing software used some hacked-up bastardized version of NetBIOS which meant that only clients on the same subnet as the server could connect and authorize themselves. After weeks of haggling with the company and them refusing to fix their crappy licensing software ("It works for everyone else!") we just found a license crack online and applied it to all the client workstations.
Were we legal enough to survive an audit? I have no idea, but we we were fully licensed for all the clients connected and I think that's what mattered.
Parent
Don't buy DRM'd games! (Score:5, Informative)
Screw Piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I do this with all my games, mainly because I don't want to have to have the disk in the drive if there's no legitimate need for it.
I'll just keep on waiting. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, if Bioware never 'needed' DRM (outside of a license key) for earlier games such as the Baldur's Gate Series, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, etc, and made millions upon millions of dollars of revenue, why do they suddenly need such restrictive DRM? I guess it's to keep people like me from buying the game who probably otherwise would.
Publishers, pay attention: DRM doesn't generate more revenue, it costs you revenue. It's costly to develop and deploy, and to some extent, reduces your sales. I doubt a single person who would have pirated a non-DRM'ed version will actually pay because of the DRM, but it definitely goes the other way - some percentage, even if small, of potential customers who would have payed will be turned off by the DRM and will simply not purchase the game.
Also, DRM like this violates the Doctrine of First Sale [wikipedia.org] - you know, that little concept that if you buy a book, recording, or copy of a computer program, you can let your friends read it, listen to it, libraries can lend it out, etc. Any DRM which prevents lawful re-use of a legally purchased copy should itself be illegal, but of course our corrupt congress which only cares about pandering to rich lobbyists don't care about flushing a century of copyright law down the toilet.
Re:I'll just keep on waiting. . . (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Lesson I take away is... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure where they got the idea that treating their legitimate customers to a worse experience than the ones who steal their product was all that smart, but I'm pretty sure it was from the same think tank that told the RIAA that suing their customers would be good for business.
Re:Lesson I take away is... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the difference between you and me. I'm all for punishing dimwits who treat their customers as their enemies.
My solution is to simply avoid buying and using the product. I'm sure others will only omit the first part. But no game is worth stepping into illegality.
Parent
I just bought this game Sunday night... (Score:5, Informative)
I think it took 4 hours to decompress 9GB off of the DVD. I'm not sure, I ended up falling asleep before it completed.
So, Monday night, I came home from work to play it. What a pain in the ass.
a. needs new drivers, but
b. looks as good as BF 2142 (which worked on my older drivers and ran faster)
c. we're talkin' "high seas" choppy (12-16 fps) even on 800x600 with linear aliasing and no music.
d. OTOH BF2142 can run in 1600:900 widescreen at 60 fps.
Did I mention that it failed to load after (I kid you not) 10 minutes on the splash screen? Apparently, the SecuROM DRM blacklists SysInternal's Process Explorer. Yeah, major hacking tool. Whatever.
Ok, so, I upgraded drivers, turned off PE and rebooted (!), and fired it up again. Like I mentioned, choppy sound fx and graphics and crazy load times (we're talking no UI response for upwards of 10 minutes).
Eventually, I did get to "play" for about an hour or so before an uninterruptable cutsceen black-screened-of-death my computer. Why oh why aren't they using industry-standard works-forever Bink video? Or if they are, they've seriously misimplemented it.
It should go without saying that this game appears to have undergone the most lazy subcontracted porting job from the xbox to the PC.
Against my better judgement, I'm putting it on the shelf until they release a patch rather than returning it. (Mainly because I don't think Target accepts software returns...)
Bottom line: I got what I deserved for buying this game without doing any research beforehand. (Surely, this is 2008, and Big-Name games aren't released in a broken state, right? wrong.)
Behold! (Score:5, Insightful)
And it came to pass that the users gathered together and announced their lamentations unto the manufacturer, but the manufacturer heard their lamentations not declaring "For ours is to profit and yours is to consume, for the criminal he doth consume, but from that that the criminal consumes he also copies, and allow others to consume from the results of my minions labor. How doeth it profit us for a criminal to copy, and how doeth I as the provider of my minions labor know that you, and those gathered with you are not a criminals? Nay, not only is it safer for me to lock in the results of my minions by allowing not but three activations, it profits me even more if those activations are squander on unclean install and hardware not fit for supporting our products."
Then the users hearing this from the manufacturer brought their lamentations unto Slashdot, for Slashdot has a voice which carriers farther than just the voices of the users alone, but the manufactures still heard their lamentations not.
In the months that followed there was much casting of stones, but the fortress of the manufacturer had high walls and the stones cleared them not. The users then declared "We will trap them within their stone walls, and we will purchase their products not, and in time, when they hunger, they will come forth from their walls and allow us unlimited activations, for they will have empty wallets."
In this plan there was much wisdom, but the bulk of the users had not the courage to uphold this plan, for they were already committed and could survive without their games not. Among the users was a multitude for which the plan fell upon deaf ears, and money continued to flow to the manufacturer as water flows down a river.
And it came to pass that a band of users gathered together and gave their lamentations unto the pharacies, and they stated unto the pharacies that for the loss of their wages they were entitled a class action.
The spies of the manufacturer were many, and the spy among the pharacies reported back to the manufacturer of the news of class action. It was then that the manufacturer relented, not of wisdom, or of kindness, but of cowardice, for the manufacturer loves his purse and the money which it contains and wanted to part with that the he has already obtained not, prefer instead to risk the reduction of that which comes in by way of bandit interception.
The users upon hearing this declared that it was good, and their activations were good until the end of days.
It's EA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Note to John Riccitiello and the meatheads at EA: Take a page from Brad Wardell and the folks at Stardock Entertainment - DRM doesn't work - his words were....
"Blaming piracy is easy. But it hides other underlying causes. When Sins (of the Solar Empire) popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue."
I love SotSE and it's about as hassle-free of a game as it gets. WHY does nobody else other then Wardell and his group get this?
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
- Buy software.
- Install software.
- Get frustrated.
- Crack software.
you'll soon start to cut out steps 2 and 3, and then just cut out step 1.Parent
Re:Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
And it'll still be cracked
Since Spore is a single-player game
and mass effect too...
Parent
Re:Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference between copy protection that is a minor nuisance (i.e. having to have the disk in the drive to use the software) and a major nuisance (i.e. disabling the software altogether after a while). The first will be swallowed grungedly. The latter will cause people to find a way to get around it to use the software they legally bought again.
If this has any effect, it will make more people search for ways to disable copy protection. It will show people who didn't even think about copying how to do it, how to acquire "cracks" and how to download cracked software.
And once the initial "work" is done to get a hand on such software, the incentive to keep doing it is immense. It does take some time initially to dig up sources for cracked software, but once you have the source, getting more software without buying for it is fairly trivial.
So the net effect of crippling DRM methods like this is to drive more people towards cracked soft. Because once you know where to get it, it's easy to get more.
Parent
Re:Spore... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a pity, but a lot of people either are ignorant about the DRM, or don't care. Obviously they never bought music from an online store that since shut down.
Parent
Re:A solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you are doing, in effect, is accepting the fact you're renting a game, but still paying full price for it.
I for one won't accept that. Either slice the prices down to rental levels, or let me actually own the game I buy. They're doing a great job not getting my money. Not such a great job keeping me from enjoying the games. If they ever change their minds and want my money after all, they know what to do.
Parent