EA Is Now Officially On Steam, Spore Loses SecuROM

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.

This is good...Maybe.

[peculium.infirmus]

Maybe I will purchase EA games again. I gave up on them after I tried to no end to get Battlefield 2142 to run just half way decently. I now buy most of my games through Steam, which means I miss out on a few titles, but the advantages of Steam far out weigh missing out on them for me.

Well.

[Warll]

Well about time. About what two years ago I bought BattleField 21**, they had released it with their then new downloading service. It was, annoying to say the least, your account had to match the email you had used to buy, not that this was well sated. After that things only got worse, on my end at least, the service went through two other names till a year or so later I come back and try to play the game I bought. Guess what? They donâ(TM)t even have my account anymore! Turns out at some point in time they decided that I would only be able to download my purchase X amount of days after I bought it, oh and it was retroactive. Of course they never sent me a check for the money they stole. Well at least they're smartening up now.

Re:Finally!

[narcberry]

Well I was excited to try it, and I will now.

Run as Admin

[Anonymous Coward]

Now why, why on earth would Mass Effect be required to Run as Administrator?

For most of the games it also says "INTERNET CONNECTION AND END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY." Well, yeah, Steam games already require that. Are they trying to say that Offline mode is disabled for that particular game? There an extra EULA hand-crafted by EA on top of the Steam one?

This all sounds very suspicious to me.

Re:AKA

[binaryspiral]

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.

Re:AKA

[GuldKalle]

No reselling of your games...

Re:Finally!

[Bios_Hakr]

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.

Re:Wait a minute...

[JimboFBX]

If steam went under, someone would probably release a hacked steam client that lets you play without authentication (similar to offline mode in steam but without the week-long or whatever it is timelimit). They might also do a client update that would do the same.

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.

Re:This is good...Maybe.

[Draek]

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.

Re:This is good...Maybe.

[Frogbert]

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.

Re:European prices

[FlyveHest]

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!

This is actually not new behaviour.

Before the change, some of the larger AAA titles were cheaper to buy in a brick and mortar store also, this has just made it true for most, if not all, games on Steam.

I love Steam, its easy, clean and "Just Works"(TM), but, I will not be paying a significant markup, just because Valve have decided to make a 1:1 conversion rate, where the rest of the world have not.

Its just sad, really

Re:AKA

[Joe U]

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.