EA “More Lenient” With Red Alert 3 DRM – FIVE Activations Instead of Three

It’s a corporate shafting dressed up like an act of goodwill. Following the Spore DRM backlash, EA had the smarts to head off any possible speculation about Red Alert 3. It will feature the same SecuROM protection, but give owners two extra activations before they have to ring up EA customers services and try their best not to sound like a pirate.

Chris Corry, Red Alert 3 premier executive producer, posted on the EA forums earlier today:

In the case of Red Alert 3 (and all PC titles coming out of EA), we will use SecuROM – the same copy protection that the EALA RTS group has used on our last three titles. This time around, however, the copy protection will be configured to be more lenient than we’ve supported in the past.

In a separate post, he added:

You can uninstall/reinstall on the same machine multiple times (no OS change, no hardware change) without risking anything. And in fact simply reinstalling your operating system would not generally require you to use an additional license either.

But if you reinstalled the OS and made a variety of other hardware changes all at the same time, that would appear to the SecuROM system like a new machine and you would need to use a new license at that point.

So good news if you like keeping your hard drive free of games you don’t want to play. But lets say that – as Corry puts it – life happens, and you max out your five installs. On several occasions he promises that customer service will grant additional authorizations on a case-by-case basis with good reason. The problem is customer services aren’t paid to think, they’re paid to follow a script.

The larger question looms – should consumers have to risk anything after they’ve paid full price for a game? The concept of ownership here is being translated into one of extended rental – while pirates keep the DRM-free version as long as they choose.

For EA’s part, the announcement is rather smart. Everyone who cares about being treated like a pirate or concerned about the invasive nature of SecuROM will get their ire out of the way early – probably leaving sites like Amazon free of the damning reviews plaguing Spore.

Source: EA forums

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  • greeneggsnsam

    I actually want Red Alert 3, unlike Spore, so DRM is really pissing me off. I don’t want to pay full price for a game that I can only have 5 times, especially as my computer is getting old. I feel like buying the game and leaving it on the shelf, free to download a backup so I don’t have DRM issues. EA are lucky I want to pay for this game.

  • http://www.barackobama.com/ DavidGX

    Wow, EA just doesn’t get it, do they?

  • Nathan

    Their “protected-from-piracy” game is available on the Internet now, one day after release and the free pirated copy does not have securom malware in it nor does it have limited activations. The limited activations are so that down the road you will have to re-buy the game, it has nothing to do with piracy as the pirates simply don’t have to deal with it. I for one really wanted to buy and play this game but I don’t want to install securom on my computer.