EA: Making DRM Disappear in One Easy Step

[ramox]

But seriously, why does EA still think that we gamers are bunch of retarded, gullible idiots? We are not your average braindead soap-opera crowd, you know, we are MIT dropouts m'kay?

Because frankly, they are. Let's be realistic here. As much as we all here seem to agree on that this is bull and that it should be boycotted there is one big flaw in the argument here.
Your average game costumer is not reading this site is, does not care about DRM and has absolutely no idea (and doesn't care) if his desired game xy is published by a "bad" publisher like EA or UBI. And most important...he is not the odd kid which doesn't effect overal sales, on the contrary...we are the minority.

And another point: No offence but i doubt even half of the people yelling here how they will never games from those publishers again will stay true to their words the moment the next game arrives they really want.

So in a nutshell: They win, we loose

 

[Atmos Duality]

Are they seriously doing this?

It is AMAZING at how they are trying to market this nonsense! It's like watching a marketer put a pile of shit on a plate and call it 'food' because it "Technically is food. *WINK WINK*"

This is beyond insulting. That they treat everyone first like a criminal, and then like a complete idiot, all with a smile on their face saying "buy our shit". Such a bold marketing move EA, I'm glad to see you have so little faith in your own business model that you have to stoop to flat out LYING to the customer.

I'm all about legitimate business, but it only works if the person/entity selling the product is being legitimate to start with, lest it undermines the entire concept before we even start. The PC market is one-sided already, now it's being invasive with this "We need to make sure you're the wallet who rented our game" nonsense.

 

[Wolfiesden]

Assassins Creed 2: Not cracked and missions aren't playable.

Someone on this forum says they know someone who's played it without problems (they pirated it obviously).

My Assassins Creed 2 is perfectly playable. On my Xbox

I will NOT be buying any more EA DRM BS for the PC. Shifting DRM from a physical environment (SafeDisk) to an electronic one like EA is doing is a FULL OUT LIE. DRM is DRM whatever form it comes in.

I was actually looking forward to CnC4 having been a LEGIT owner of every other version of it as well as RA all the way back to the original from Westwood. EA pissed me off with what they did to Earth & Beyond and I had already curbed my EA purchases since. This DRM BS was the FULL STOP trigger. NO more EA purchases for the PC for me. I will continue to purchase XB titles until they try DRM restrictions there too (like locking it to a console for instance) then its BYBY EA completely for me.

 

[TitsMcGee1804]

If someone were to ask me, legal rammifications aside, why they should not pirate games now, I'm not sure I could tell them. Whether they do or don't they're going to be treated as a criminal, they may as well be treated as a criminal with a larger bank balance.

QFT.

getting a bit bored of this 'DRM COMPLETELY SUCKS' argument every single writer on here has...
...yes DRM sucks but it has potential to be beneficial to all parties involved excluding the pirates, developers just need to do it the right way
what is the right way? who knows but they sure as hell havent found it yet

Getting a bit bored with this kind of argument.
Yes, DRM has the potential to be beneficial, but until one comes along that actually does something good the statement "DRM COMPLETELY SUCKS" is also completely valid.

OT: Well, that means that my "Buy" list just shrank again, and that I might have to dust off the old "Pirate" list from the garbage pile. I'll be a total f*cking asshole for doing it, but with about 60% of my game time occurring when I'm offline, I'd rather be a f*cking asshole than not play.

I disagree, regardless of whether the content is 'worth' paying for, if people can get it free, with all features, no drawbacks, and completely discretely (i.e. nobody would find out), who in their right mind would spend money on it?

p.s. good for you, you 'shrank' your buy list, you looked at the DRM, said NO THANKS and didnt buy! this is what people should do instead of constantly whinging about unfair DRM

nobody forces you to buy the games! do your research, spend your money where you think it belongs!

 

[raankh]

"See, digital rights management is an intrusive form of intellectual property rights protection that maximizes the inconvenience of legitimate game buyers while having absolutely no measurable impact whatsoever on videogame piracy."

That is not true.

That is not at all the definition of DRM.

DRM is, quite simply, any technology that stops people from using technology illegally. It doesn't work as well as people would like, but it does work. There's a pretty neat guide on the subject here [http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html].

SNIP

That was sarcastic.

And that guide is bullshit in large contents.

On the one hand:

In the absence of piracy [the consumer] may have purchased the game at a discount several months after its release, or bought it second-hand for example. So the existence of piracy results in some loss of income to PC game developers, publishers, retailers and even other consumers.

but

[...]there's no evidence to suggest that positive word of mouth from pirates results in anything other than more people pirating a particularly popular game.

and this is to prove piracy has a real, measurable (negative) effect.

There is no evidence of the first either, of course, since it's a future proposition.

Lots of "economic logic" in there. Beware of bullshit.

 

[koriantor]

"See, digital rights management is an intrusive form of intellectual property rights protection that maximizes the inconvenience of legitimate game buyers while having absolutely no measurable impact whatsoever on videogame piracy."

That is not true.

That is not at all the definition of DRM.

DRM is, quite simply, any technology that stops people from using technology illegally. It doesn't work as well as people would like, but it does work. There's a pretty neat guide on the subject here [http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html]

-SNIP-

I read that guide thinking, alright, seems well written. I went in trying to forget my anti-DRM rampages. The guide had decent points and was well written. Kudos to the writer for writing it (what he calls neutral) from the eyes of a developer. It makes me see the publisher point of view, and also makes me think, how there are better ways of DRM.

According to the article, DRM is designed to delay the crack as long as possible giving "casual" pirates uncertainty of when the crack comes out. This uncertainty could end up to them just buying the game, providing increase in sales. That's a fair enough point, but do you have to keep it? Once it gets cracked, would you kindly disable the DRM some how, or would that be too dificult? () What would the practicality of that be?

I know that you aren't going to stop pirates, as time goes on, the pirates crack games. Once the crack is out, Casual pirates can once again pirate games. The point of the DRM (apparently) is to delay that time period to allow greater launch time sales.

I'd love for developers to not worry about DRM and focus on the game, but I'd make the sacrifice for a limited DRM to allow the publishers to stay on the PC platform (My PC is too important to me). I don't mind buying a game through steam anymore because steam provides so many neat goodies. Steam is easy, one steam account, all my games anywhere I want. However, I don't want to jump through all these hoops of having twenty accounts for all these different publishers, and then have them ask me to have a constant internet connection. I'm a paying customer, I shouldn't have to deal with companies treating me like a pirate! (I do have to point out though, what would you do in that situation? If you were the developer and it's you're game that's being pirated.)

I don't mind disk checks. I don't mind having to online activate as long as they develop a patch for it in case the servers have issues or are shut down (I love you valve). I DO mind installation limits and constant internet connection (if it's a single player game. If it's multiplayer, which I don't do often anyway, then I don't mind it). I should not have to be connected to the internet to play a single-player game!

Oh, and EA, I was never really a fan of C&C so you wouldn't get my sale anyway. I'd rather play starcraft.

Dear Blizzard,
So um.... where's my beta invite?

 

[koriantor]

"See, digital rights management is an intrusive form of intellectual property rights protection that maximizes the inconvenience of legitimate game buyers while having absolutely no measurable impact whatsoever on videogame piracy."

That is not true.

That is not at all the definition of DRM.

DRM is, quite simply, any technology that stops people from using technology illegally. It doesn't work as well as people would like, but it does work. There's a pretty neat guide on the subject here [http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html]

-SNIP-

I read that guide thinking, alright, seems well written. I went in trying to forget my anti-DRM rampages. The guide had decent points and was well written. Kudos to the writer for writing it (what he calls neutral) from the eyes of a developer. It makes me see the publisher point of view, and also makes me think, how there are better ways of DRM.

According to the article, DRM is designed to delay the crack as long as possible giving "casual" pirates uncertainty of when the crack comes out. This uncertainty could end up to them just buying the game, providing increase in sales. That's a fair enough point, but do you have to keep it? Once it gets cracked, would you kindly disable the DRM some how, or would that be too dificult? () What would the practicality of that be?

I know that you aren't going to stop pirates, as time goes on, the pirates crack games. Once the crack is out, Casual pirates can once again pirate games. The point of the DRM (apparently) is to delay that time period to allow greater launch time sales.

I'd love for developers to not worry about DRM and focus on the game, but I'd make the sacrifice for a limited DRM to allow the publishers to stay on the PC platform (My PC is too important to me). I don't mind buying a game through steam anymore because steam provides so many neat goodies. Steam is easy, one steam account, all my games anywhere I want. However, I don't want to jump through all these hoops of having twenty accounts for all these different publishers, and then have them ask me to have a constant internet connection. I'm a paying customer, I shouldn't have to deal with companies treating me like a pirate! (I do have to point out though, what would you do in that situation? If you were the developer and it's you're game that's being pirated.)

I don't mind disk checks. I don't mind having to online activate as long as they develop a patch for it in case the servers have issues or are shut down (I love you valve). I DO mind installation limits and constant internet connection (if it's a single player game. If it's multiplayer, which I don't do often anyway, then I don't mind it). I should not have to be connected to the internet to play a single-player game!

Oh, and EA, I was never really a fan of C&C so you wouldn't get my sale anyway. I'd rather play starcraft.

Dear Blizzard,
So um.... where's my beta invite?

 

[koriantor]

EDIT: Double post. Oops, sorry

 

[namako]

The best part is recent changes to the EA EULA (http://www.ea.com/1/product-eulas) where they can retire online features "after 30 days". The same is in their online ToS. It also appears on EA games in steam, so that's at least two completely different online DRM systems if you buy via steam.
I seriously doubt they will be considerate and recall all unsold boxes once they retire online functionality either...

Fairly recent in my memory horrible online-related DRM experiences:
BioShock couldn't activate on the first day. Or the second.
Bioshock's ridiculously named securom files broke a hard drive recovery program I had to use a month later.
Dragon Age's DLC service is unstable as hell - it regularly crashes, and it generally fails to connect to the activation server the first time I start the game. Furthermore, it couldn't install the DLC first time. My sister got a copy too, and the same thing happened X(.
Steam goes up and down like a yoyo, which is a pain for any steam cloud games (mostly TF2 for me).
The WGA firefox plugin is awful.

Activision's next, surely! I can't wait to see what they'll bundle into Starcraft 2.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

In other news, Jack the Ripper turned out not to be a crazed serial killer, but in fact a benevolent surgeon, prowling London at night, and surgically removing the internal organs of lucky streetwalkers, to prevent them getting such things as heart disease or lung cancer later on.

The shame is, they've done part of it right, tie it to an online account, then give a bunch of extra features to be used while online. Offline tho, when playing a single player game, if you've paid your money you should be left the hell alone.

The best part is recent changes to the EA EULA (http://www.ea.com/1/product-eulas) where they can retire online features "after 30 days". The same is in their online ToS. It also appears on EA games in steam, so that's at least two completely different online DRM systems if you buy via steam.
I seriously doubt they will be considerate and recall all unsold boxes once they retire online functionality either...

Fairly recent in my memory horrible online-related DRM experiences:
BioShock couldn't activate on the first day. Or the second.
Bioshock's ridiculously named securom files broke a hard drive recovery program I had to use a month later.
Dragon Age's DLC service is unstable as hell - it regularly crashes, and it generally fails to connect to the activation server the first time I start the game. Furthermore, it couldn't install the DLC first time. My sister got a copy too, and the same thing happened X(.
Steam goes up and down like a yoyo, which is a pain for any steam cloud games (mostly TF2 for me).
The WGA firefox plugin is awful.

Activision's next, surely! I can't wait to see what they'll bundle into Starcraft 2.

I sense Starcraft 2 will come with the need for a Battle Net account and not much else. I think Blizz realise that, like C&C4, the vast majority of play will be online, so a simple Battle net account will cover them.

 

[Serioli]

It's not DRM?

Cool, this is not a swift kick to the nuts then!

(It's a 'sharp punt to the nadbags'[TM] )

 

[Bretty]

Ah good, nice of EA to go back to the old template we know and love after all that 'release quality games and respect your customers' bullshit. That's for communists!

Yep, it's good to see them doing what they do best, relentlessly talking down to their customers and being about as far from passionate and creative development as Kim Jong il is from mental health.

On a serious note, I shall not be buying C&C4. The DRM does play a factor, but mainly because it looks like it's going to be a soggy condom of a game.

It is a horrible game, do not buy. Shame EA killed the series too.

 

[Kouen]

so ea are making there own kinda steam service of sorts in short?

 

[lostzombies.com]

Meh i (and I think the vast majority of people) would never buy a game which I would only be able to play if I was connected to the internet. EA while disgustingly evil, are not stupid and will eventually realise this.

Seriously what is wrong with unique serial code? The vast, vast majority of people won't start downloading key generating software and cracks etc. Gaming is supposed to be enjoyable, if i have to go hunting down software it's not enjoyable.

My friend gave me a copy of the last decade of C&C last year, i started to install it and found out you needed to put in long serial codes..wasn't worth the time or effort to download the software etc to generate something. So I bought the game instead.