Spore and Mass Effect copyright protection discussion

[Husar]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52547

BioWare technical producer Derek French has said that the PC versions of both Mass Effect and Spore will make use of copy protection that will require online validation every ten days in order for the games to continue working.

My German news source also said you can install them on 3 PCs and that's it. Such things were lifted in BioShock, but will EA do that?

I wonder whether this will increase their income or whether the copy production will reduce sales by more than piracy would because this particular copy protection is one of the worst I can imagine.

[Martok]

Copy protection requiring online validation every ten days? Blech; forget that. Guess I won't be getting Spore now.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Validation every ten days!?

Sod that.

I guess i won't be getting it.

*mouse cursor idly wanders over to the address bar, and starts typing absolutely nothing illegal at all, and instead goes to hellokitty.com while thinking of possibly just boycotting Spore*

[Kekvit Irae]

I have Mass Effect on the 360, so I don't need it for the PC anyway. And as for Spore, why not? The only people who should really worry are those without legitimate copies. After all, Spore does use an internet connection anyway, so it's not like you're making an extra effort to validate.

[TB666]

I have Mass Effect on the 360, so I don't need it for the PC anyway. And as for Spore, why not? The only people who should really worry are those without legitimate copies. After all, Spore does use an internet connection anyway, so it's not like you're making an extra effort to validate.

However if you go on vacation or something for more then 10 days then well you can't play it when you get back.
These type of copy protection system are just stupid.
It only encourage people to pirate games.
Instead of punishing those that buy games how about actually rewarding them ??

Here is a nice interview with Chris Taylor and Brad Wardell CEO of Stardock
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/24/jo...h-of-pc-gaming

A highlighted bit

What's your response to the belief that PC gaming is dying?

BW - Oh absolutely. It's not just dying, it's already dead. Totally. In fact...all game developers that feel that way should quickly flee to the, um ... console market, right now. Don't worry about us, we'll guard you're back while you retreat. Nothing to see here. We'll shut the lights off when you're all gone. No, no, no need to thank us at all. We just want to make sure the developers who think PC gaming is dying are safe to flee to greener pastures. We're just that selfless.

CT – (Laughs) Okay, so I'll give a slightly more "serious" answer. I've said that PC Gaming "as we know it" is dying, but there is a new kind of PC gaming being born out the ashes. Brad is definitely leading this charge with his innovative approach, and I am 100% in support of this. It's like what Sam Walton once said when asked how to succeed, he said, "Do what everyone else isn't doing." And this is exactly the case here. Remove this awful copy protection, and give your customers the great experience they deserve. Brad has a model which bucks the old system, and it's time to buck the old system, because the old system wasn't working ... it is, in fact, dead.

[FactionHeir]

As I've said on various other fora, the best way to ensure people buy your games is to reward those that do rather than penalize everyone.

Anyone remember in the old days when any game you bought would be in a large box complete with a manual of a hundred or more pages, a color map, and generally nice layout of the box that you could be happy about each time you looked at it?

Nowadays, that seems to have become confined to extra expensive "collector's editions", and even those don't have the great manuals of old and replaced that with copy protection.

All this fuss about cutting costs and making profits and bringing out games that are at best in beta stage for an open, paid, beta test where not everything will even get fixed in the end. *sigh*

As for above copy protection, it sounds easier to beat than some of the others out there by the looks of it, so the companies are really just wasting money paying royalties for them rather than using that money to make customers happy or at least just fill their own purses.

[Zenicetus]

I have Mass Effect on the 360, so I don't need it for the PC anyway. And as for Spore, why not? The only people who should really worry are those without legitimate copies. After all, Spore does use an internet connection anyway, so it's not like you're making an extra effort to validate.

It's not about the idea in the abstract, it's about the exact mechanics of how they implement this. If the game "phones home" every ten days, and it only does that when I boot up the game, and there's no appreciable delay in loading, and there is no other impact on the integrity of my computer or personal data, then I can live with that. As you point out, it looks like Spore will need a live 'Net connection anyway.

Here's what I can't live with, and it's all about the implementation details:

• Does the game phone home and transfer any marketing data in the background?
  
• Does the game place hidden files on my system that won't be removed when the game is un-installed, and that can't be removed in any easy way by the user, and that cause problems with other programs or leave possible back doors open for hackers? This, of course, is what CA did with the Kingdoms expansion that uses SecureROM, and why a lot of us didn't buy it.
  
• If there is an arbitrary number of limited activations, is the number fewer than would be reasonable for the average gamer?

Until those questions are answered, I don't think I could consider buying these games, as much as I'm interested in them.

There is another issue too... the question of long-term replayability. A really good game is something I might finish and then come back to, a year or more down the road. Will the game company still be around then? Are they making any kind of committment to release a patch that removes the activation if, at some point, they're not able to keep their activation servers online? I don't usually keep shooters like Mass Effect on the hard drive that long, but it's a relevant question with something that has the potential to be a "classic" like Spore, if it lives up to the hype.

[drone]

You fire Mass Effect up on Monday, it checks in and does it's thing. You then take your laptop with you and go on a vacation the next week to, say, Alaska, and have no connection. Then the snows pile in, and you are stuck inside. So on Thursday, you decide to fight off the cabin fever with a little Mass Effect. Rescue workers find you and the bodies of your family members a few days later.

[Martok]

Well it looks like EA has backed off from the recently-announced protection schemes for both games, and is now going with the more standard SecuROM crap we're more familiar with.

A partial victory for anti-Orwellian forces, I suppose. Yay(?)!



(Note to FBE and Kekvit Irae: Feel free to merge this with the other thread if you think it's warranted.)

[pevergreen]

is now considering buying spore

[Zenicetus]

Yeah, there's a similar post on that kotaku site that they're also doing this for the PC version of Mass Effect.

What infuriates me is that nobody, in these Q&A posts with the devs, bothers to ask if the hidden, low-level copy protection will be removed when you uninstall the game. It's not just about the immediate hassles of what you have to do, to play the @#&$* game, it's about what crap they're going to leave behind on your system, at a very deep and hidden level of the OS, after you uninstall the game, and that could conflict with other software on your system, or open hidden back doors to malware.

Makes me crazy.

Also, notice how this is a big argument against cross-platform game titles. A publisher can afford to alienate a percentage of PC gamers, if they know they have secured revenue from console sales for the same title. It's a much bigger risk for a PC-only title.

I think many of us are at a breaking point with this nonsense, where we're hardcore PC gamers and we don't want to buy a console just to play something like Spore. There are still enough non-invasive PC games out there like The Witcher, GalCiv2, etc. to keep us busy. I'd like to play Spore, but not at this cost, and not if it's going to infect my computer with non-removable hidden software agents with access to the Internet.

I hope CA is watching these developments carefully, since (AFAIK) Empire: Total War is a PC-only game, right? It's not my favorite time period, but I'm looking forward to buying it... and only if it doesn't go down this massively invasive DRM road.