Sega Talks Alpha Protocol DRM

[mogamer]

A world without pirates is a world without DRM. I was holding out to see if it was going to be some kind of Ubisoft deal, pre-ordered now.

I don't believe that to be true. DRM is being used to control the software that a publisher sells, and to hurt second hand sales. More DRM in pc games has gone hand in hand with reduced second hand selling of pc games. A coincedence? I don't think so. And as you can see piracy hasn't been stopped. So why bother with ever more costly and complex solutions? A simple CD Key/Disc check will stop 99% of people from pirating a game. It won't stop the hardcore crackers, but what does?

As a side note, how come Obsidian is developing a game that doesn't have a "2" in it's name? It just doesn't seem right!

 

[MisterShine]

As a side note, how come Obsidian is developing a game that doesn't have a "2" in it's name? It just doesn't seem right!

And by "right", you mean, AWESOME?!

Also, a game by them that wasn't rushed out the door by the publisher! Oh happy day!

But about the topic.. I hope that this drm does some good in holding back the pirates, though I have little doubt in my mind that this will be so. It's essentially unlimited activations, can be done even offline with a bit more work, and will be removed entirely after a year or two. Sounds alright to me.

 

[Miral]

Well according to the DRM FAQ you can always just deactivate older codes. It seems, according to the faq anyway, to be an easy and a simple process.
One way is just to uninstall the game on a computer you don't want it on and as long as it is connected to the internet the code will be deactivated automatically and ready for use.
Conversely you can go to their website type in you activation code and deactivate codes manually.

This isn't as bad as most other limited activation systems. My biggest problem with those is that you can't get your activation back if you have a major hardware failure, or if you even forget to uninstall your game before reformatting. Really, you shouldn't have to worry about uninstalling 20 games or so every time you reformat, it's too much to ask. But this system allows you to deactivate older installs without having the older install on hand. Even if your computer catches fire and explodes, you can still use that activation on another computer in the future. Of course, you have the small problem of your house burning down, but nothing's perfect.

The thing is, that if this actually does work as advertised, the 5-install limit seems completely pointless. You could install it, activate, then revoke on the web, and if the game doesn't keep checking the activation it'll have no way to tell you're a lying cheating pirate. Granted, they could watch for suspicious activation patterns (like Microsoft do), but that'll only catch the dumb pirates. (Of course either way it won't affect the version on the torrents.)

It's certainly significantly better than Ubi's attempt. But only marginally better than the Spore/Bioshock travesty. And it worries me that people now seem to be feeling comfortable with Spore level DRM simply because it's better than Ubi's.