DRM Server Failure Knocks Out Dragon Age DLC for Days - UPDATED

[Andy Chalk]

DRM Server Failure Knocks Out Dragon Age DLC for Days - UPDATED

An as-yet-unidentified problem that cropped up over the past weekend continues to plague BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins [http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Age-Origins-Ultimate-Pc/dp/B0045ZB66I/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1302660696&sr=8-4] content servers, leaving gamers unable to access their downloadable content.

If you've been having trouble accessing your Dragon Age: Origins DLC over the past few days, don't fret because it's affecting everybody and BioWare is aware of the problem. Then again, maybe you should fret, because being aware of the problem doesn't appear to be doing a whole lot of good.

"Over the April 9, 2011 weekend, some of our Dragon Age: Origins content servers experienced an as yet unidentified failure. As a result, users began to experience error messages when attempting to access their downloadable content, indicating that the DLC was unauthorized," BioWare's Rob Bartel wrote on April 11 on the BioWare Social Network [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/7036701/1]. "We apologize for the inconvenience and are currently investigating and working to resolve the issue on our end. We will update this thread once we know more."

An update to the message was posted earlier this evening, but the news wasn't good: "We're continuing to investigate, both here and at EA," Bartel added. "We have some theories about what is occurring but no firm fix at this time."

Commenters in the 45-pages-and-growing thread on the topic are less than pleased, which is hardly a surprise given that the problem apparently first surfaced sometime during the night of April 8 and yet there's still no solution in sight. Many users, including Jon Stokes at Ars Technica [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/drm-run-amok-how-bioware-and-ea-are-screwing-users-right-now.ars], have sunk substantial amounts of time into futile troubleshooting before learning that the problem was entirely unrelated to their installations, primarily because, as Stokes explained, "DLC authorization issues have plagued DA:O users from the game's launch, so Google will point you to plenty of threads in various forums that describe in painstaking, mind-numbing, encyclopedic detail the many different hacks and tweaks that users have invented for solving this peculiar family of closely related DLC problems." Even more frustrating for many of them is that prior to Bartel's post yesterday, neither BioWare nor EA made any public announcement about the problem, leaving gamers struggling to figure things out for themselves.

The most obvious, and most reasonable, way to avoid this sort of fiasco in the future is to simply do away with online DRM entirely and a few optimists have expressed hope that EA will do just that in future releases like Mass Effect 3 [http://www.amazon.com/Mass-Effect-3-Xbox-360/dp/B004FYEZMQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302660866&sr=8-1]. I think that's a great idea, but I'm sure not going to hold my breath. In the meantime, we'll keep an eye on the situation and let you know when things are resolved.

UPDATE: Things are now resolved. BioWare's Fernando Melo posted a lengthy and detailed explanation [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/7036701/52#7058914] of what went wrong and why it took so long to get it fixed, but the short version is that it was a bit of a perfect storm: BioWare's attention and that of the volunteer forum staff over the weekend was on Dragon Age 2 forum threads due to an upcoming patch, while the initial reports of the problem that began coming in on Friday night appeared identical to a different, known DRM issue that affects a much smaller number of users and thus didn't raise any red flags. It wasn't until Monday's catch-up on forum activity that anyone realized something much more serious was going on.

Logging out and reconnecting should fix everything up; Melo said anyone still experiencing problems is "99 percent likely" to be suffering from the previous, known issue. A patch to address that problem is in the works and in the meantime, links to other solutions are provided in the thread.

via: Blue's [http://www.bluesnews.com/s/120668/dragon-age-drm-servers-down]


Permalink

 

[Irridium]

Isn't it funny how this isn't affecting pirates at all?

 

[Canadish]

So...I buy the game...and I don't get to play it...
But if I pirate it for free...I can?

Is this how the deal works? Okay, I'll be paying a visit to my favorite "shop" then.

Seriously though, Bioware. Get your act together. Your sucking lately.

 

[JET1971]

look at the comments on the ars technica story. 1 pirate blatantly stated it didnt affect him. DRM does not work against pirates.

 

[The Sane]

As if we needed more ammunition against draconian DRM.

Publishers obviously don't want DRM either, why else would they go to so much effort arming the opposition?

 

[Xanthious]

Isn't it funny how this isn't affecting pirates at all?

Indeed! After reading this article I dialed up my friend who's a shameless pirate when it comes to titles by EA and Ubisoft and their ilk and low and behold his copy of Dragon Age: Origins is working absolutely flawlessly, complete with every piece of additional content that has been released for the game. Funny that eh?

I've never understood the logic behind making people pay more for an obviously inferior product. That's what these publishers are doing when they sell you a game with ANY kind of DRM. 99 times out of 100 the pirates will deal with not a single one of the DRM issues that the paying customer will. If this doesn't tell you DRM is meant to do bugger all against piracy and exists to kill the secondhand market I can't fathom what will.

 

[Allonym]

Solution is simple to overcome actually. Locate your dragon age folder navigate into the settings subfolder and open 'addins.xml' as a notepad document replace all RequiresAuthorization="1" with RequiresAuthorization="0" and all of the DLC will be functional again.


*Edit*
Default location is: C: | User | | Documents | BioWare | Dragon Age | Settings | AddIns.xml

 

[Senrab]

Of course I discover this IMMEDIATELY AFTER I finished reinstalling DA:O for another playthrough. >.<

 

[CleverCover]

Thank God I don't have to worry about this on consoles.
I'd be freaking bored and twitchy until they fixed it.

 

[The Night Shade]

DRM=The Root Of All Evil

 

[Stormz]

This is why we shouldn't have online only DRM. But hey, we're criminals right bioware?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

ME2's DLC requires a one time check, then you could use it offline (with the 1.02 patch). This is a good way of handling it.

 

[Snotnarok]

I'm still confused how this got passed by anyone. "We'll make it so they have to log in to access all their content, that'll stop people from pirating." Uh..what about the fact that they're....um..pirating and will take all this protection out anyway. "Eh it'll surely stop them somehow! Right?"

Nope it doesn't. Anyone else miss when Expansion Packs came on a disc and it was yours?

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Just wait til one of the verification servers shuts down and people can't even start up the game.

 

[Catalyst6]

Ah, the DA:O DLC. I remember using that for a while... then I reinstalled the game after a bit of a hiatus, had to make a new account under a new email because it was rejecting the one I had, and Shale was lost to me forever.

A+.

 

[Xanthious]

sorry, I buy all of my software legally and not had one problem with DRM. Ever since I started playing PC games back in '98........


If you have problems with DRM on your legally purchased game or software, its because you cant read third-grade difficulty instructions.

Where you may have been lucky in not having to deal with headaches with DRM directly it doesn't change the fact that any PC title with DRM is inferior to a cracked copy. The inclusion of said DRM by simply being there makes it inferior. To me it seems like outright insanity that people choose to pay their hard earned money to be treated like criminals while the actual "criminals" enjoy a superior product for free. Where is the incentive beyond moral inclination to ever choose to pay for a PC title? If you remove what's "right" and whats "wrong" from the equation incentives simply don't exist to choose to lay down your money for what is likely going to be an inferior product when compared with one you could get for free.

Even with that being said technically savvy people are effected by DRM every day. They are effected when they are limited to the number of machines they are allowed to install their legally bought game on, or when they are unable to use their product because they are left without an internet connection and the game is unable to phone home. They are effected by DRM like SecuROM and Starforce which is more so malware than it is any sort of protection against piracy.

Ask yourself how many pirates are bothered by those things. You think a pirate is limited to how many machines he or she can put their free game on? You think a pirate ever has to worry about their game being unplayable because it's unable to connect to a server? They don't have to bother with any of it because their product isn't crippled because the very software that is meant to dissuade them from getting the game for free has most times been stripped entirely from the game.

Does this seem even the slightest bit sensible that paying honest customers are punished while the people who are supposedly the targets of these heavy handed tactics are left unscathed. It's because of this that my long held belief has been DRM hasn't been about stopping piracy in a long while. Instead it's been about shutting down the secondhand market. If you need proof simply ask yourself has piracy or used PC games declined over the past decade or so? I guess claiming you are screwing your customers to combat piracy sounds better than saying you are screwing them just to screw them.

 

[Xanthious]

double post bah!

 

[Frizzle]

sorry, I buy all of my software legally and not had one problem with DRM. Ever since I started playing PC games back in '98........


If you have problems with DRM on your legally purchased game or software, its because you cant read third-grade difficulty instructions.


OT: Im for DRM, but seriously Bioware, having the need to be online all the time in order to use the DLC that I paid for is a bit harsh....... no, fuck that, its straight stupid.


Take a note from other developers when it comes to DLC and let us play it when we are on a roadtrip or at a hotel a thousand miles away.


Of course I would be a bit more mad had I actually bought and played Dragon Age, but I have yet to see why it would interest me the slightest.

So because you didn't buy this game, it's okay to insult others that did, because DRM is messing up something that they legally paid for? Show me the logic there? Sure you may not have had problems personally. My friend owns a Toyota, and you know what? It didn't automatically accelerate to 80mph and crash him into a wall. But you know what, enough *other* people had that problem, and it was something that needed to be fixed.

I don't believe in pirating. I don't endorse, nor do I condone it. But when stuff like this happens I have no problem seeing why someone would pirate a game, and I can't blame them. There is absolutely no reason to require the internet to play a non-internet game. Notice how the console people aren't suffering?

 

[Irridium]

sorry, I buy all of my software legally and not had one problem with DRM. Ever since I started playing PC games back in '98........


If you have problems with DRM on your legally purchased game or software, its because you cant read third-grade difficulty instructions.

Well, good for you. But just because you never had any issue, doesn't mean its not a big issue. At all.

It is a big issue, for many people. DRM is a cancer upon this industry. It does nothing to stop pirates, it just inconveniences paying costomers(and sometimes even locks them out of their games because it thinks they're pirates), and is just pointless.

You must ask to play the game you already payed for. No other product in any other industry does this. At all. It it so anti-consumer its only passed by not being able to return PC games after you opened them.

The fact that so many people don't care how badly Publishers are treating them is just horrifying.