EA Is Now Officially On Steam, Spore Loses SecuROM 354
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.
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is DRM laden.
How can Steam fight DRM?
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?
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.
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.
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).
Re:This is good...Maybe. (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: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.
Re:No problem (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not complicated. It's a series of tubes. It's as simple as that!
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: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.
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.
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?
Re:AKA (Score:2, Insightful)
And all it takes is one database quirk to lose them all at once. Or one person to steal/guess your password. No thanks. I guess I've bought my last PC game from EA.
Re:AKA (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:3, Insightful)
Re:AKA (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: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.
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."
huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Ahem... Steam IS third party DRM you dolt.
Re:AKA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:AKA (Score:3, Insightful)
And then theres the ridiculous GTA4 bullshit.
Steam + GFW Live + Rockstar Social Club + SecureROM.
I mean FOR FUCKS SAKE ASSHOLES... enough already!
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."
Re:AKA (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why my ATM card isn't linked to my main checking account, it's on a secondary account with only a thousand or so in there. I'll risk the robbery for my games- the probability of being robbed and the robber taking video games are fairly low compared to the chance of a programming glitch. Or Valve going under. Or some employee at Valve deciding I'm a cheater. Or Valve deciding to start charging a monthly fee for access to Steam. DRM only causes problems, I will not support it in any form.
Re:AKA (Score:3, Insightful)
I sell PC games all the time. I just sold off Star Trek Dominion War for $40 via amazon.com
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.
Re:AKA (Score:3, Insightful)
Just think of it as a consumable, rather than an asset.
You don't expect to be able to re-sell a restaurant meal, or a pint of beer, or a night at the movies. Do you "own" them? Maybe not, but I don't see many people whining about that.
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.
Re:AKA (Score:2, Insightful)
Valve doesn't pretend that it's a first sale; it's treated as a license, and you're informed of that before purchasing the license
Then why does it say "Buy [Game Title]: 49.99" everywhere?
"License" or "Rent" would be far more appropriate verbs there.
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.
Re:European prices (Score:4, Insightful)
SecuROM contributed to piracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
...when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008...
Ok...I understand that people get mad about DRM (at least, those who even notice it), etc., etc. But how is this statement any different that the **AAs saying that piracy has contributed to their decline in profits? Everyone gets all pissy about that kind of claim, but here we have the same thing in reverse, and nobody notices the flaw.
I know the whole Spore/SecuROM thing was a big media piece in tech circles, but is there any validity to saying that SecuROM is actually responsible for increased piracy? Could it be that there were just more people that wanted to download/play the game for free? Could it be that the media that hyped up all this DRM vs. piracy about the game that maybe raised people's awareness/interest in pirating the game?
In all reasonableness, sure, there are some who have pirated it because they didn't want the DRM...but I think the game's popularity plus the not-wanting-to-pay factor probably has alot more to do with this than the fact that SecuROM was used. Further, if someone did pay for the game, then cracked the SecuROM functionality because it sucks, then I'm not sure that really counts as piracy, even if it is a violation of the DCMA in the US.
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.
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.
Re:AKA (Score:3, Insightful)