May 8, 2008

[EA's Totalitarian Protection Scheme]

So... new EA PC games (like Spore and Mass Effect) will be coming out with this ScureROM 'copy-protection' thing. Details thus:

This new version is causing controversy due to an online verification system connected to its CD key. The system requires a connection to the internet during installation… After this the game will try to re-check the CD key every 5-10 days… If the game can’t verify the key… it will continue to try for a further 10 days, after which it will stop working… The protection will also only allow the game to be installed three times.

Awesome. What genius in EA actually thought this would be a good idea?

EDIT: Apparently EA has backed down after hordes of angry Spore fans threatened them with pitchforks. It doesn't mention whether the 'Only three installs before you have to buy a new copy of the game' part is still in effect, though.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hate this. It's all the same crap. Companies continue ramping up their (useless) copy protection, one particularly bad feature catches the eye of gamers, they roll it back, and then they continue ramping up the proprietary features but more subtly this time.

It's so frustrating because I feel like no one cares. Gamers get outraged over the feature, but they are unable to see (refuse to see?) the greater pattern. Even if they do see the greater pattern, they don't care enough to do anything about it.

Why aren't any of the big gaming sites making a bigger stink about this? Why are they treating it as if it's some outside incident. But I suppose the wankers over at Kotaku are too busy figuring out how to insert inappropriate sexual references to women in their stories to care about real news that affects gamers. ._.

Pai said...

Gamers can't resist buying the game they love and have been waiting for... it's a sad fact that the companies just blatantly take advantage of. As a demographic, we need to 'grow up' and start demanding to be treated like proper customers, instead of potential criminals.