This Is Why You Should Hate Product Activation

**drone** · 07-25-2008, 16:00

Originally Posted by Andres

I simply refuse to buy anything that requires online activation. A shame since I really want to play Mass Effect, but apparently, it requires online activation, so no Mass Effect for me

No Mass Effect (or Bioshock) for me, either. It's the ultimate slap in the face to a customer. "You can pay full price for a product, but we control whether you can use it or not."

As the article says, this same thing happened to the Microsoft's MSN Music store this year, although public outcry forced them to keep the servers going. And that was big, solvent, swimming in money Microsoft. With music DRM, it's more of a format war than piracy prevention (and the losers end up like Betamax).

**TevashSzat** · 07-25-2008, 21:36

The sad thing is that piraters don't need to worry about all of this product activation at all since the crackers have already removed them

**CrossLOPER** · 07-25-2008, 23:13

Originally Posted by drone

No Mass Effect (or Bioshock) for me, either.

Didn't Bioshock's validation thingy take a trip out the window?

**drone** · 07-25-2008, 23:32

Originally Posted by CrossLOPER

Didn't Bioshock's validation thingy take a trip out the window?

Not that I know of, although I haven't been following it closely. They did increase the number of validations possible after the release, but I haven't heard anything about a patch to remove it altogether.