Spore, Mass Effect DRM Phone Home For Single-Player Gaming 900
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.
Doctrine of first sale (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine [wikipedia.org]
Re:Steam (Score:5, Informative)
gamecopyworld is your friend (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Summary has it a bit wrong, again (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Summary has it a bit wrong, again (Score:5, Informative)
"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:Steam (Score:2, Informative)
agreed Re:Worse. (Score:5, Informative)
I need my games most when I CAN'T get to the network...
Re:The article says nothing about Spore (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Summary has it a bit wrong, again (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My worry (Score:5, Informative)
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:Worse- Look at the PlayForSure debacle. (Score:3, Informative)
I got burned on Half Life 2. I bought the game on release, and was unable to play the game for 2 days because steam was down. I made a decision at that time to never buy another product that requires online activation.
I have not played bioshock, or the orange box due to this.
I will not play spore or mass effect due to this either.
Re:FFS (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I wouldn't mind (Score:3, Informative)
These are just the facts of life, and the game publishers are simply pissing people off with these stupid attempts to prevent something that they can't prevent. They aren't even making it harder for anyone really, except maybe the cracking groups, but they love this stuff and compete with each other. It's the legitimate customers that have to put up with all the crap, not the pirates.
They should look to Stardock as an example. Create a good game, and ask your users for their support so that you can continue to create good games. Treat your customers with respect and decency, and they'll respond to that. Especially for niche games, Stardock's titles have done very well with no intrusive DRM. They have a key that you use that gives you access to updates, that's it.
Re:Annoying (Score:4, Informative)
The person this is going to hurt is some guy who goes out and buys the game but doesn't have an Internet connection. He won't be able to play, but there'll be a dozen downloads on BitTorrent and hundreds of pirates will be playing just fine.
Re:Where's the 'every 10 days'? (Score:3, Informative)
"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."
Every 10 days after. The game will be checking every 10 days. If you've been 10 days since its last check and it can't get online, it won't run.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
Even in America, where copyright is more heavily imbalanced in favor of owners and at the expense of the public than any other nation in the world - even here, you're wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use [wikipedia.org]
Fair use exists to protect many actions that a purchaser of a copyrighted work might take, even if it's unauthorized. The DMCA may have warped some of that, but it's already eroding under court challenges, and it will continue to do so.
- David Stein
Re:FFS (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure why this is modded as funny (Score:3, Informative)
I've had similar problems, Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword said my disc wasn't valid. I took it back to Target in case there was a problem with that particular disc (media errors do happen) but no, it just didn't like my DVD drive. Ya well, a patch from GCW fixed that.
You'll also notice that many trainers/cheat programs tell you that you need to get a no-cd patch. The reason is that the copyprotection these days gets real paranoid and if something tries to debug the program (which is how many trainers work) it'll halt execution. So just patch the protection out and the trainer works fine.
Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD. (Score:2, Informative)
It's happened [slashdot.org] before [slashdot.org].
Re:My worry (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to read the entire USC 17 instead of stopping at Â106. Making a copy without authorization from the copyright holder is a violation in many circumstances but not in all.
For starters, there's Â107.
Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My worry (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the problems:
Bioshock didn't ship with a complete game on disc, leading to hours waiting for overloaded servers to connect and deliver up the missing parts on launch day. EA servers are well known for struggling when there's heavy load so I expect there to be similar problems.
Bioshock securom shipped with two lifetime activations. Reinstall windows? New activation. Replace motherboard? New activation. New user account? New activation. Every time after that, ring up tech support, spend a while on hold, then proving you own a legitimate copy by sending a digital photo of disc plus serial number to tech support in the US, while from the UK. Expensive, slow and very very frustrating, especially since the techs initially wouldn't even help for the first few days. It tooks months in the end for the 'release an activation' tool to come out, and that's a nightmare in itself.
3 activations? Given the amount I upgrade my gaming PC and reinstall windows, I'll be out of those in months if not weeks. I'm *not* jumping through hoops on the phone every time to reinstall my legitimate owned game because I've upgraded hardware and reinstalled windows more than 3 times in the lifetime of owning the game. And before you ask, my legit copy of windows is VLK licenced, and doesn't require activation.
Now the new and worse activation nightmare. Activation every 10 days? So I decide to install on a gaming laptop. If that laptop doesn't have an internet connection at the time I want to play, I won't be able to, because it's been sat unpowered in the bag for a fortnight, and I don't have an internet connection. Heaven forbid I want to play mass effect on the train, or on holiday.
Putting 'internet required' on the box does not excuse this rediculous scheme. They're going to massively inconvenience thousands of legitimate gamers wanting to play their own property when they choose, and they simply won't be able to. I won't buy a single player game that's deliberately crippled to stop me playing it unless I check in with the licence servers before I play. I've better ways to spend my money.
Pirates, on the other hand, will be playing a completely unencumbered game without any problems. It took less than 9 days for the bioshock DRM to be patched out and the cracked version to hit the internet. Legitimate paying customers are still massively inconvenienced by the DRM and stupid hoop-jumping, while pirates get a simple and easy experience.
I can't think of a better way to kill sales of the game and drive people to piracy than this new even worse version of securom than Bioshock.
And spore? I was really looking forward to that game, even more than mass effect. But I'm not going through the frustration I had with securom on bioshock again. No damn way.
Re:My worry (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My worry (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bigger Worry: A backdoor is worse than a CD. (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a list of thier dozens of titles including 2006 and later games they've disabled online services for already:
http://www.ea.com/information.jsp [ea.com]