RipTen Videogame Blog » DRM

Ubisoft’s PC DRM Leaves Anno 2070 and Driver: San Francisco Unplayable

Sam Naylor — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:30:19 +0000

Ubisoft recently performed a server switch which led to some of its games being rendered unplayable (to paying customers only).

Two of the games which were left unplayable were Anno 2070 and Driver: San Francisco.

The company’s twitter account has apologised for the problems the server switch caused:

We apologize for the inconvenience, it seems some of you can’t connect to games announced as playable during migration.

Before the server switch Ubisoft had said that both Anno 2070 and Driver: San Francisco would not be affected. Of course, for pirates who do not experience DRM, they were right. Those players got better treatment than the paying ones.

If You Pirate Serious Sam 3, Croteam Will Kill You (In Game)

Sam Naylor — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:42:41 +0000

The DRM (Digital Rights Management) in most games forces players to be online and such, but not Serious Sam 3. Instead, the game sends an invincible scorpion after you. Yes, you read that right.

The pirated version of the game includes a super-fast and unkillable scorpion that chases you through the game. It’s a funny and excellent way of dealing with pirates without punishing real buyers (false positives notwithstanding).

There’s a video below which shows the pink beast in action. Don’t read that last sentence without proper context.

This is pretty actually similar to what From Software did with Dark Souls earlier this year. Either way, prepare to die.

via [DSOGaming]

EA’s Origin Not Required For The Old Republic

Catherine Cai — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:14:38 +0000

Origin, EA’s “new” download service (and I say new dubiously, as the software is simply a re-wrapped version of the original EA store), has been plagued with controversy ever since its beta launched earlier this summer. Speculators wondered if EA intended on elbowing into the already-crowding digital publishing medium to try and compete directly with Steam. However, as EA has yet to add other publishers’ games into Origin, it’s fairly obvious that EA doesn’t intend, for the immediate future anyway, to expand Origin beyond EA-published games, which are still a fairly wide expanse of games.

Just as such speculation was beginning to die down, the Origin-vs.-Steam rumors popped up again when various EA-published titles began disappearing from Steam, such as Crysis 2, Alice: Madness Returns, and Dragon Age II. Battlefield 3, which is already available for pre-order on Origin and popular distribution services, has yet to appear on the Steam store, again stirring the rumor shit pot. EA explained that games pulled from Steam violated the terms of service, as Steam requires all DLCs and updates to be made available in the Steam store.

This week, EA landed itself and Origin again in controversy when Dirty Hipsters pointed out on The Escapist forums that the Origin EULA gave EA the right to monitor all customer activity and gives EA the right to sell or share collected information with third parties. Creepy? Very.

EA obviously gave the EA store a virtual paint job because they want to profit from digitally publishing their own games. Certainly they’ve publicized Origin well enough through a summer of news controversy splashes, but not all press is good press. The controversies surrounding Origin have so far, in my opinion, only sealed Origin’s fate in never really taking a foothold in the publishing market. It’ll stay as relevant as the EA store has. Although the Origin client has quite a few things going for it that will attract customers, such as special digital limited editions of popular EA-published titles, namely Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3 as well as exclusive digital distribution of The Old Republic, it will never succeed in being a gaming client as Steam has. Originally (no puns, I promise), I felt that the only reason I would ever get Origin was to buy The Old Republic and the sheer popularity of a Bioware Star Wars MMO might be enough to force push the client on EA’s customers, but StephenReld, a TOR community manager, revealed that Origin would not be required in order to play the game, which has effectively killed any chance of Origin’s success.

Certainly, forcing the Origin client on TOR players is a bit of a dick move, but it’s certainly no worse than the always-online DRM that Ubisoft and Blizzard are imposing on their games. Requiring Origin will mean that users may hate on the client, but will have to eventually, however begrudgingly, use the client’s interface and if the client is well-designed, perhaps they’ll begin to actually enjoy using the application. What EA’s failed at that Valve has succeeded at to make Steam so popular is gaining customer trust. I know I was certainly wary when I first began using Steam, mostly for fear that I was going to be somehow screwed over and lose all of my games. However, I have yet to encounter problems with the Steam client, besides a few bugs in the client here and there, whereas I’ve seen proof of EA’s disastrous handling of distributing games to their clients and their customer “support” thereafter. The recent controversy that EA’s been involved in certainly doesn’t help with EA’s image.

Yes, I’m saying that EA pulling a dick move with Origin makes business sense. It certainly wouldn’t be much of a change in their pace, given some of their other business choices. This is, after all, EA we’re talking about.

[Via GamerZines ]

This Fat Dude Is Pretty Pissed At Blizzard…

Dave Oshry — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:30:23 +0000

As you may have heard, Diablo III is going to see some interesting changes to the franchise that include things like always on DRM.

Well, that doesn’t seem to be sitting to well with some “former” Blizzard fans like Francis here. Francis is pissed. Francis is seriously pissed off… you guys:

If you want his real opinion, check this out, although it’s far less entertaining.

Stay tuned to RipTen for continued coverage of fat angry nerds.

Diablo III Cannot Be Played Offline

Catherine Cai — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:50:10 +0000

As an avid PC gamer, nothing makes my brows drop into the snarl of a rage face like ridiculous digital rights management on games. Take Ubisoft’s always-online DRM, for instance. Perhaps I’m on a plane somewhere and I don’t quite feel like watching the B movies or listening to the pre-recorded “radio stations” that cheap planes come equipped with. I decide to whip out my laptop so I can play some Assassin’s Creed 2… oh wait, no I can’t. Nothing makes me want to pirate more than the fact that I can’t play the games I want without internet access. Ubisoft, despite dropping the always-online DRM due to complaints, recently decided to bring it back for Driver and claimed that it did deter piracy. I don’t see how this is the case, particularly because various warez groups have figured out how to bypass the always-online DRM.

Maybe Ubisoft’s high claims have reached Activision-Blizzard’s ears, because something possessed Blizzard to make Diablo III online only. However, Blizzard claims that the online-only play isn’t just for DRM but to protect players from cheating, as Diablo III will feature an auction house where items can be paid for with real money.

Anybody else see a flaw in that logic? Why not just follow the same format that Diablo II did and separate single player from multiplayer to deter cheating? Blizzard’s response?

“We thought about this quite a bit. One of the things that we felt was really import was that if you did play offline, if we allowed for that experience, you’d start a character, you’d get him all the way to level 20 or level 30 or level 40 or what have you, and then at that point you might decide to want to venture onto Battle.net. But you’d have to start a character from scratch, because there’d be no way for us to guarantee no cheats were involved, if we let you play on the client and then take that character online.” -Rob Pardo, Executive Vice President of Game Design at Blizzard

So essentially, Blizzard feels that players are too lazy to create a second account for multiplayer. Lies and slander, Blizzard, I know that the real reason is to prevent piracy. Learn from Ubisoft’s example… always-online DRM has already been cracked by pirates. You’re not deterring anybody from pirating the game, but you certainly are deterring your fans from wanting to play. I’m one of them.

Driver San Francisco on PC to Require a Constant Internet Connection

Matt Reyna — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:52:19 +0000

Oh my. Ubisoft have announced through Driver’s official Twitter account that the next installment of the Driver franchise will require a constant Internet connection for PC gamers.

We’ve seen this type of heavy handed Digital Rights Management (DRM) before with Assassin’s Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction, but in the past Ubisoft has backed away from this position after player backlash. For those games they instead opted for requiring an Internet connection upon startup.

With AC: 2, players with an inconsistent Internet connection found themselves unceremoniously booted from the game without the opportunity to save their progress whenever their Internet hiccuped. Additionally, players found themselves unable to play at all when Ubisoft’s game servers were experiencing difficulties. At this time it is unclear whether they’ll make their constant connection DRM any more elegant than it’s been in the past.

Personally, I haven’t played a Driver game since Driv3r destroyed my trust in the franchise. And if that game from 2004 is any indication as to the quality of the upcoming title, I’d say you wouldn’t be missing much by skipping this title entirely.

PC Version of Bulletstorm Requires Persistent Internet Connection (Or Maybe Not?)

Sam Naylor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:49:38 +0000

UPDATE: Apparently you won’t need a persistent internet connection to play – only to install and play online. People Can Fly has said whoever fucked up the product disclosures page will be shot in the balls for extra points.

The PC version of Bulletstorm will require a persistent Internet connection, according to EA’s product disclosures page.

The document reads as follows:

“PERSISTENT INTERNET CONNECTION AND ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY. ”

Those evil, evil words are underlined in blood by the need to install Games For Windows Live, a service which no sane person has ever had a good word to say about.

I hear that for their next game EA are planning to literally kick all paying customers in the balls and give all the software pirates a free cake.

Via Dtoid

Pre-Order The Witcher 2 Now – Don’t Pay A Penny Until Release

Dave Oshry — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 23:22:36 +0000

You read right. In keeping with their awesome tradition of being awesome, CDProjekt and GoG.com have started taking pre-orders for The Witcher 2 – and you won’t have to pay them for it.

Better yet, if you pre-order from GoG, you’ll immediately be able to download music from the soundtrack, HD wallpapers, avatars and behind the scenes photos from the dev team . . . I love these guys.

Here are the full details from CDP and GoG:

The ‘net’s best collection of classic PC games without copy protection, announced its pre-order offer for The Witcher 2 Digital Premium Edition today, available at http://www.gog.com/tw2. The announcement, which was made during the CD Projekt Autumn Conference, brings an incredible one-time offer of a 100% DRM-free title, fair worldwide pricing, and exclusive additional content to GOG.com users.

Starting immediately, GOG.com is accepting free pre-orders for The Witcher 2 Digital Premium Edition. “Part of what makes pre-ordering The Witcher 2 on GOG.com such an incredible deal is that it won’t cost you a penny, and you’ll get instant, free access to unreleased music from the soundtrack, HD wallpapers, avatars, and behind-the-scenes photos of the development team at work,” said Guillaume Rambourg, Managing Director of GOG.com. “No other retailer has this exclusive content that we’re offering on GOG for our preorder, and no other retailer has our GOG.com Fair Price Package either. Whether you’re a fan of the Witcher franchise or just looking for the easiest place to pre-order The Witcher 2 on the Internet, GOG.com’s unbeatable offer is something you should be sure to check out.”

In addition to the game, the Digital Premium Edition will contain a wealth of digital content, including in-game soundtracks, a digital art book, a game guide, papercraft figurines, and much more. Everyone buying The Witcher 2 on GOG.com will get to choose one of the following RPG classics for free when they complete their pre-order on release day: Gothic 2 Gold, Realms of Arkania 1+2, Realms of Arkania 3, Divine Divinity, and Beyond Divinity.

The game is scheduled for release on or around May 17, 2011, and is priced at €49.99 for EU citizens, £34.99 GBP for UK citizens, and $49.99 USD for the rest of the world. Customers who pre-order the game will receive 10% off their purchase, bringing the price for a pre-order down to €44.99 EU, £31.49 GBP, and $44.99 USD respectively. Because the price in Euros is almost $16 USD more than the price in dollars, and the price in GBP is roughly $6 more than the price in dollars, GOG.com is making its pricing fair by giving EU purchasers a $16 USD GOG.com store credit and UK customers a $6 USD GOG.com store credit to spend on any game at GOG.com after they finalize their pre-order.

Rambourg continued. “This one-time offer is a great opportunity to help promote this highly-anticipated RPG by our sister company, CD Projekt RED. Further, by pre-ordering and purchasing their copy of The Witcher 2 from GOG.com, gamers will be supporting the developer more directly, since we’re sister companies. This offer reflects the principles that have made GOG.com so popular to our users, such as quality gaming, great value, and DRM-free downloads. The opportunity to bring this to our community and the internet at large was one that we couldn’t pass up, and we hope that you won’t be able to pass it up either.”

The pre-order offer for The Witcher 2 Digital Premium Edition is now available at GOG.com. It’s as simple as, “Pre-order now, pay later,” and get instant access to free digital content when you do. Go to www.gog.com/tw2 to pre-order now.

Now while this may be cool for people who are interested in the Digital Premium Edition – Hardcore Witcher fans such as myself will settle for nothing less than the epic collector’s edition which was announced a few days ago.

The Witcher 2 is set for release on May 17th – Pre-Order today and you won’t have to pay!! (Hey, that rhymes)

R.U.S.E Wont Use Ubisoft DRM

Bryce Wilson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:10:52 +0000

The Ubisoft DRM is by no means a bad thing, I welcome it with open arms. Unfortunately something that seems to plague every PC gamer is constant whining about one thing or another. If they haven’t got frame rates to cry about, they will of course cry about something else, and so the vicious circle continues.

Well one thing that PC gamers (including myself at one point) love to whine about is Ubisoft’s DRM, that doesn’t allow you to play their games whilst not connected to the internet. RUSE, an innovative and unique RTS set for release shortly was set to use said DRM, but now that the title is shipping with Steamworks, it will be using Valves Steamworks API. Community Manager Wuzzi said:

“This news is destined to our PC players audience, so please spread the information if you know some. When R.U.S.E. is released in September, it will benefit from Valve’s Steamworks API to offer the best community experience to players. Consequently, a Steam account and Internet connection will be required to activate the game, as per Steam policy. For this reason, R.U.S.E. will not use the Ubisoft protection. Single player can be played offline.”

I welcome this with open arms although I wouldn’t of been that upset if it shipped with Ubisofts DRM. This could actually pave the way for more of Ubisoft’s titles to ditch the controversial DRM in place of using Valve’s much praised and loved Steamworks system. What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know.

Editorial: Codemasters CEO Publicly Embraces the Worst Idea Ever

Gavin Bard — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:44:43 +0000

Excuse me if this article doesn’t flow quite correctly, but I’m actually so filled with rage over a recent CVG feature revolving around Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens’ and his idea for a piracy proof business model that I had to go punch a bag of kittens just to abate some of my bloodthirst.

In said CVG article, Cousens states that the “middle ground” for publishers to prevent their products from being pirated is to release an incomplete product at retail and charge consumers extra for the rest of the game in an incremental fashion. This is exactly the worst case scenario that every single gamer on the planet was talking about a few years ago when everybody started shifting to the DLC model. I specifically remember a Penny-Arcade post that I’m too filled with hatred to look up where Jerry Holkins discussed his fears of this very thing. I remember reading it and going “no company will ever be so stupid that they will openly embrace a model that is so decidedly anti-consumer. If they ever did, gamers would riot in the streets.”

And now, here we are, with this great and unspeakable horror staring down at us with its thousand young. ~~Shub-Niggurath~~
Rod Cousens;

The video games industry has to learn to operate in a different way. My answer is for us as publishers is to actually sell unfinished games – and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience.

I should point out that the writing for this has been on the walls for a while anyway. Codemasters wouldn’t be the first company to release important parts of the game in an incremental fashion in order to bleed more money out of their fans like a huge capitalist vampire, but as far as I know, they are the first company to openly discuss and support selling us incomplete games. Of course, Cousens and other publishers will feed us that this is all to combat the horrible and world ending threat that is piracy, much the same way the RIAA suing grandmothers over Britney Spears albums is just them making sure they all keep food on their solid gold tables, but it isn’t. It is an excuse.

Look, I understand piracy is an evil thing, and I understand that companies aren’t making endless amounts of money right now, but to even fathom that it’s piracy that is crippling everything is something that has no real statistical fact backing it. I won’t rehash the same arguments you always hear “defending” piracy, but they are still legitimate points. Nobody has any idea what the actual amount of money lost to piracy is, they can only assume. What piracy is to these companies isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity to take advantage of consumers. There is no way that selling consumers an incomplete product and then holding the rest of it ransom at gun point is a positive thing. It’s an absolute scumbag business model. It will certainly make these companies more money, but so will coming into our houses and stealing our fucking wallets.

But, of course all the soulless rich old white guys that run this world are going to try and get the most money out of us. It’s been that way since the cavemen gave all their power over to the shamans and the traders. The real problem I see with this is that nobody is even acting a little bit outraged. A CEO of a video game company has come out and said selling you an unfinished product is the best thing it can do to make sure they don’t fall victim to piracy, and the vast majority of game journalists and commenters are sitting around acting like this is just another day at the office. This is like if Mike Tyson told you he was going to “fuck you until you love me” and you said “that sounds reasonable, sir.”

I’ll admit that I’m being rather fatalist here, and that maybe I’m wrong and Codemasters and the other game companies that are going to embrace this model with charge us a fair price for the complete game, and everybody will live happily ever after. The rest of the Ripten team doesn’t share my staggeringly jaded view on the corporate world, as you will hear in the impromptu Ripten podcast on the subject, but somebody has to pretend their Mario Savio. Even if the companies that theoretically move to this model start off innocent enough, they will eventually realize that they can make infinite dollars by charging us more and more for less and less. As a business model, they would be idiotic not to. You know why they would be idiotic not to?

Because everybody will pay it anyway. Look no further than the Stockholm Syndrome journalists and some gamers seem to have about this subject for proof of this. We can all pretend that these companies are going to be kind to us, just like we did when the DLC model started becoming prolific. Look where that got us. Even I defended Bethesda over horse armor and told people to just calm down when the initial raising of the voices happened over paid content and microtransacions. Don’t worry about it, I said, these companies need us as much as we need them- they won’t fuck us over. Well I’m not making that mistake again. I’m putting myself in league with the malcontents who think this is an awful idea.

I don’t really hide my political beliefs, and one of the reasons I’m so passionate about politics is a simple one- because when everything goes to shit and we’re worshiping at the alter of some supreme potentate, I can look myself in the mirror and say at least it wasn’t my fault. Well, I’m applying that to this. I will put myself on record right now that, and I want you all to remember this five years from now when we’re chained together and running from our corporate overlords, I will never purchase or review a game that uses this business model. This is beyond episodic, microtransactions, or DLC. I will not contribute to incomplete products being sold to consumers.

Neither should you.

[Source: CVG]

Bioshock PC DRM “Scaled Back”

Sam Naylor — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:35:18 +0000

A post on the official Cult of Rapture blog has outlined the precise plans for the DRM of Bioshock 2 on the PC. “There will be no SecuROM install limits for either the retail or digital editions of BioShock 2,” the post notes, “and SecuROM will be used only to verify the game’s executable and check the date.”

The post also makes mention that the GFW Live activation limit is 15, which can be reset with a call to Microsoft. That’s fine on a practical basis, I think, but I still feel that any limit on a paying customer is a bad thing. If you get to 15 activations, and have to make the call to Microsoft, that’s 100% more hassle than the experience a software pirate will have with their “unlimited activations” version of the game.

Also, I will never be happy with a game that installs SecuROM on my computer. Obviously I’m a gamer and I put up with these things, but I still get pissed off with it. Not that it’s that much of a pain, but just the principle that by buying it I’ve gotten the ‘worse’ version of the game; the one with all the nasty bits added.

Bioshock 2 System Requirements: Go Away SecuROM, You’re Not Welcome Here

Sam Naylor — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:29:39 +0000

Bioshock 2′s system requirements have been published today, and guess what? Our little friend SecuROM is hidden away, cackling to itself in a way only the most evil beings know how. Alright, there’s no limit on installations this time, but honestly I won’t be happy until SecuROM goes away for good.

By the way, you can pre-order Bioshock 2 on Steam here. It’s 10% off, and comes with a free version of Bioshock (which you can gift to a friend if you already have).

Hit the jump for the (pretty reasonable) System requirements.

Minimum:

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ 2.4Ghz or better, Intel Pentium 4 530 3.0Ghz Processor or better
* Memory: 2GB
* Graphics: NVIDIA 7800GT 256MB graphics card or better, ATI Radeon X1900 256MB graphics card or better
* Hard Drive: 11GB
* Sound: 100% DirectX 9.0C compliant sound card or onboard sound
* OS: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
* DirectX: DirectX 9.0c

Recommended:

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Dual Core 2.60Ghz, Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Dual Core 2.13Ghz
* Memory: 3GB
* Graphics: NVIDIA 8800GT 512MB graphics card or better, ATI Radeon HD4830 512MB graphics card or better

Other Requirements:

* Initial installation requires one-time internet connection.
* Ability to save game, earn achievements, receive title updates and online play requires log-in to Games for Windows LIVE.
* Software installations required including Microsoft Visual C++2008 Runtime Libraries, Games for Windows LIVE client, Games for Windows LIVE Client Patch, Sony DADC SecuROM, Microsoft DirectX.

DRM Prevents “Accidental” Borderlands PC Sales from Activating Before Official Release

Chad Lakkis — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:54:32 +0000

Yes, you may be one of the few people posting pictures and video of yourself holding a PC version of Borderlands on the web, but the laugh’s on you if you actually try to play it. It seems that a few retailers out there jumped the gun and “accidentally” sold the title to PC hungry gamers (and maybe a few unsuspecting parents with good intentions) before its scheduled October 26th North America and October 30th International release dates.

In response to this news, 2K Community Manager Elizabeth Tobey, wrote the following on the company’s official forum:

Hey guys,

Yesterday we learned that a fraction of the PC copies of Borderlands were accidentally sold to consumers in some countries but that gamers could not activate their copies yet. Since we learned of this problem, we have been looking into the issue to find the best possible solution for everyone.

I’m going to be completely honest with you guys right now. It is not possible for us to move the planned release date of the game forward. We could not possibly get the games into stores worldwide and out for digital distribution any earlier than planned. Less than 1% of all copies were sold, and if we unlocked the game today, illegal versions would most likely appear on torrents by the evening. I am sure all of you want our PC launch to be as successful as possible, and we simply won’t be able to manage that any earlier than already planned.

I want to apologize for those of you who have gotten the game ahead of our release date, and ask for your patience and understanding. The game will be ready in the US and Canada at midnight eastern standard time on Monday, October 26th, and internationally by Friday, October 30th.

-Elizabeth

This is truly unfortunate if you believe the majority of the consumers who forked over the cash were clueless to the actual PC release date. I personally don’t but hey — to each their own. Moving forward, we should push to implement rights managed payment options. Money that doesn’t become spendable until we are satisfied with our purchases. Sounds good to me.

Source: forums.2kgames.com

No, you’re not dreaming: EA pulls Sims 3 DRM

Sam Naylor — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:35:23 +0000

EDGE reports the impossible today: EA taking DRM out of a game. The Sims 3 will reportedly ship with just a serial code and no online activation needed, and no restrictive and unnecessary DRM. The head of the Sims 3 studio, Rod Humble, described DRM as “overly invasive”, and added that serial-based verification is “a good, time-proven solution” to basic piracy.

Obviously, the Sims 3 will be pirated, there’s no doubt about that- but in light of the Spore controversy, people are less likely to be downloading it simply to say “fuck you” to EA this time. In a way, I’m glad that Spore was pirated so much; it seems to have shown EA that DRM just makes things worse for everyone.

Gears of War PC digital certificate expires, kills the game

Sam Naylor — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:27:03 +0000

Users on the Gears of War official forums are reporting that the digital certificates for the game have expired, as of 28th January 2009. This means that the game will not launch at a system date post-28th Jan. Obviously, this is awful news for those people who enjoy playing the game on the PC, since unless they keep their system date before the 28th, they cannot play the game.

This is what all the fuss about DRM (Digital Rights Management) is about; people who bought this game are essentially not allowed to play it. Ironically, the people who pirated the game, who the DRM is supposedly trying to stop, won’t be affected by this. The more that stuff like this happens due to DRM, the more the games are going to be pirated- only the customers are being punished. Anyway- bad show on Epic’s part; this needs to be fixed.

Meet the Most Pirated Game of 2008

Keane Ng — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:45:24 +0000

It’s Spore. Were you surprised, really? All that DRM nonsense, all those lackluster reviews, all those pirates urging folks to fight the power by pirating this game. Rounding out the list of the year’s most stolen are Assassin’s Creed, The Sims 2, Crysis (still? come on guys), and more. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at number seven? That seems random.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s a damn shame that what a lot of us will remember Spore for is for being downloaded hella much. Then again, there are people who will say that EA deserved every dollar they didn’t get for this game. What’s your guys’ take? Does Spore deserve the decidedly undesirable title of “most pirated game of the year”?

Source: Torrent Freak

EA Turns DRM Into A Guessing Mini-Game

Chelsea Thompson — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:39:50 +0000

DRM is still one of the biggest topics this year. Some people hate it, some people don’t care, and a few people are sympathetic to the fight against piracy.

Well, it seems like EA decided to make DRM unbelievably obnoxious fun by making the game’s registration a cute little number puzzle. And by “cute little number puzzle,” I mean a bunch of copies of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 were shipped out with only 19 characters in what is supposed to be a 20-digit serial number. EA’s first word of advice? Why, just try guessing the last number of course!

There is currently a work around that may allow you to bypass this issue. Since you have the first 19 characters of the code already, you can basically try “guessing” the last character. To do this, simply enter your existing code, and then for the last character, try the letters A-Z, and then the numbers 0-9. You should eventually get the right combination, and be able to play the game. If this does not work, you can follow the instructions below.

The instructions they refer to are other ways of contacting them (such as phone or email). So while the first reaction to EA’s “solution” might be WTF? it seems that they’re at least offering a something besides going through a half hour of pre-recorded customer service messages. In fact, you could even sit there trying to plug in numbers while you’re waiting on the line to speak to a customer service rep.

So readers, do you think this is a viable solution or a cop out? How many of you will be puzzling over the mysterious 20th digit?

Source: Gizmodo via EA

Will Wright on Spore DRM controversy. “Something I Should Have Tuned into More.”

Justin Arnold — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:52:59 +0000

Game auteur Will Wright attended the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards ceremony in New York, and Jim Reilly of Kotaku was there to ask him what he thought about the controversy surrounding his game.

“It was something I probably should have tuned into more. It was a corporate decision to go with DRM on Spore. They had a plan and the parameters, but now we’re allowing more authentications and working with players to de-authenticate which makes it more in line like an iTunes.

I think one of the most valid concerns about it was you could only install it so many times. For most players it’s not an issue, it’s a pretty small percentage, but some people do like wiping their hard disk and installing it 20 times or they want to play it 10 years later.”

Spore and distributor Electronic Arts came under fire for the perceived draconian tactics employed by the software’s DRM. SecuROM software essentially limiting Spore to one install.

Incensed gamers rallied around Spore, citing SecuROM as little better than malware which led to a grassroots boycott of the game.

Source: kotaku.com

Fallout 3 Falls Victim to Piracy

Chelsea Thompson — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:54:18 +0000

Eat lead, you dirty pirates!

Fallout 3, one of the most highly anticipated titles for Xbox 360 and PS3, is already available for illegal download. It seems that PC games are not the only ones to fall prey to the digital cutlasses of piracy.

With only three weeks until the game’s official release (Oct. 28), the leak will only serve as bragging rights to asshole gamers who simply need to play the game before anyone else does. The pirated version of the game is brought to you by the same people that ruined Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

The strange thing about this is that only the 360 version is available to torrent. With all of the controversy surrounding DRM on PC games, a pirated PC version would have caused a much more explosive outcry in the gaming community. Where it stands now, it just makes people feel awkward and upset. Like when you find out your girlfriend’s been cheating on you with a furry.

Pete Hines responded to inquiries by saying, “We’re looking into it. Since we haven’t sent out a single disc, it greatly reduces the number of places this might have come from.”

Hopefully this won’t have too much of an effect on sales. Seeing as you would need a modded 360 to play the pirated version, those who which to enlarge their e-dick Gamer Score will have to wait for the official version.

ECA Prez: Spore DRM a “Giant Leap Backwards”

Keane Ng — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:25:12 +0000

Hal Halpin, the president of the Entertainment Consumers Association, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization for gamers, has spoken out against EA’s DRM policies for Spore, calling the game’s restrictive DRM a breeding ground for future generations of pirates and a “giant leap backwards” for anti-piracy initiatives.In a guest column at GameDaily, Halpin wrote:

This DRM did nothing to combat the cracking of the game. In fact, it essentially helped in training legions of customers how to become pirates and legitimized their rationalization in the process. With each additional negative story – which seem to be released hourly – you can almost hear the collective cringing of anti-piracy executives who know that they have all been forced to take a giant leap backwards due to this fiasco.

Whether you agree or not with Halpin, I think we can all agree that it’s a damn shame that such an interesting and important game has been overshadowed by all this.