EA drops draconian DRM

ELECTRONIC ARTS HAS backed down from its plan to ship uber-draconian DRM software on two of its top PC releases for the year, Mass Effect and Spore.

[omni_atlas]

PC gaming is dying because of this. Say no to DRM. Save a kitten.

[Montrealien]

PC gaming has been dying since 1993, the oldest false assumption on the internet.

But I do agree, DRM sucks. What scares me most though is Sony DRM on my Blu ray player. They have been way too quiet about this since they won the format war and I am worried to see what they will do once the market is well established.

[shine1396]

a couple of years ago I would have agreed with you...sony's seems to be changing its tune with drm...they seem to 'want' to be seen as being more open and allow flexibilty between devices, sony ericsson walkman...psp...ps3...no need for drm at the moment... maybe I could be mistaken, piracy seems to be hitting hard but not even being able share with your friends is crap...remember ps3 is region free...and for the time being, quite a few bd movies are region free. still good comment. bubbles 4 you...

[Montrealien]

I also hope it stays clean and open.

I run a game store in a Very large Video Rental store here in MTL, the worries in the rental industry is that sony will start selling "rental" versions of their movies and "consumer" versions. But it is all assumptions at the moment so it is always a wait and see thing.

bubbles back at ya ;D

[ps1h1ch]

God bless them, they still have small portion of intelligence left.

I would definitely get a warez copy if they would force with this sxitty DRM . I got burned once not long ago with starforce protection which fuxked up my OS.

I don't understand why they just spend so much money in developing protections cause every single one up to date got cracked and usually it took crackers less than a week, instead they could lower the price of game and definitely get more sales of it.

[Horny Melon]

another month of bad press.

[MK_Red]

lol true. First the Bad Company scandal and now this. Seriously, what the heck were they thinking? Hackers would released DRM free and pirated copies of Spore and ME before their official release.

Now at least you know hat buy getting the legit copy, you won't need stupid confirmation / activing thing.

[gambare]

New DRM + Vista = unplayable games

that new DRM is a danger for legal copies, the minor change on the software, let's not say the hardware can bust a legal copy

[titntin]

The title reminded me of a favourite quote:-

'I've never been to Draconia, but it sounds like they've got the right idea'.

This kind of DRM can only be bead for the industry and the consumer. I'm gald they've seen the light.

[Tempist]

EA does still have some consideration to their customers and gamers. I'm back on track to these purchases.

[Lumbo]

I wouldn't be too sure there, EA just wants to avoid a month of ugly bad PR against the copy protection scheme that is a horror for honest customers, possibly endangering their system integrity cause of the hidden driver and blacklist nonsense and the constant call-home crap.

The pirates will have the premium version a week before the release anyways, premium as in "no need to infect your system with pointless SecuRom garbage".

[MK_Red]

Exactky what Lumbo said.

Ea just wants to distance itself from the nightmarish and crappy security systems that hurt sales more than anything.
And pirates indeed have a premium / no-activation-needed version a week before the game's release date. When you can get a free pirated version that's free of any disgusting and stupid DRM crap...

Still, glad to hear both Spore and ME are free of that crap. I'm definitly getting Spore now. As for ME, I already have it for 360.

[znu]

Did EA just do a good thing...

This settles it, i'll get either spore and mass effect. The last EA pc game i bought was the original sims 2 for my sisters birthday. It wasn't have bad. Just gets real boring real soon.

But which one to get...spore IS the next duke nukem forever. so, should i wait another 8 years?

but why remove DRM... EA is gonna screw us big time

[Jdoki]

What's the saying...?

'No such thing as bad publicity'.

EA get two upcoming games back in to the news. Well done EA, great marketing. Did they ever intend to even ship the games with SecuROM, or did they use the internet furore to make themselves look like the good guys who listen to their consumers!?

[Lumbo]

They WILL ship it with secuROM, just not with the "i call home every week and will disable myself if i feel like it" version.

And there is no guarantee that they won't ship with something similar. It is just to avoid the PR disaster that was Bioshocks crashed activation server on releaseday .. buy a game and not being able to play cause the distributor deemed it necessary to punish honest buyers with such nonsense is not the best thing to prevent warez .. actually it drives people into the arms of the warez nets.

And seemingly they STILL want to use the ridicules "online activation" version of SecuROM that crippled Bioshock until the Hackers provided a garbage free version.

[Alexander Roy]

This is a win for every honest consumer.