EA Backs Off From Heavy DRM; Goes Old School

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MoUsE-WiZ

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[citation][nom]QEFX[/nom]I just wonder why none of the game publishers / developers have decided to use some sort of USB fob / hardened flash drive for game control, since it would be, slightly, harder to pirate hardware than software.[/citation]
I think the key there is your use of the word "slightly". It'd still be cracked, and now your legitimate customers have the inconvenience of carrying around/needing to plug in a USB device whenever they want to play. Really no better, and possibly worse, than securom BS.

But I don't care, I've been playing Blizzard games almost exclusively for the last 10 years and I'm not about to stop now. DRM doesn't really apply to mp-centric games.
 

duzcizgi

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[citation][nom]demonhorde665[/nom]the question you have to ask .. is EA getting rid of securom COMPLETELY NOW , for all new titles (of corsue it would e to clostly tor emove it from already released titles) . or is the the only new EA game that is revertign to cd key ?[/citation]

Nope. It wouldn't be costy. They should just download the already cracked versions from torrent and package them as legitimate versions. That's all. :p
 

juvealert

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I think instead of spending alot of money of anti-piracy measures,

it would be better for game developers to find other ways to make the game available at more cheaper prices, which will eventually motivate more users to buy rather then owning it illegally
 

xsamitt

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Because of invasive DRM and limited installs when ever a new title comes out first thing I do is check to see what kind of hassle I will have If I buy it.I believe EA if they return to CD key again will gain me back as a customer.As strange as it seems I like to buy when a game first comes out for the price they want for it.....It's my way of saying thanks.....But for that to happen I want my unlimited installs and no DRM thank you very much.
 

JonnyDough

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[citation][nom]kami3k[/nom]To anyone who thinks Sims getting pirated will hurt them, slap yourself real hard in the face.Spore was one of the most pirated games last year, yet it still sold what? Over 2 million copies? Probably a good amount more by now. Also you fail to realize this, people who pirate wouldn't have bought the game to begin with. So they lose little to no sales and in fact heavy DRM just makes it more likely to be pirated.[/citation]

That doesn't make it right or justify those that choose to get it for free when it's only right that they pay for it. If I came over to your house and stole your idea would you like it? It's one thing to ask, it's another to steal something. Just because it isn't taken out of a store doesn't mean it isn't intellectual property. We aren't communist China. Here, original thought and ideas have value.
 
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Honestly, nothing shows how incredably stupid PC gamers are quite like statements to the affect that some game sold 2 million copies at retail so who cares how many people pirated it as they made thier money already.

By that logic it should be perfectly within reason to go down to your local car lot and steal that honda you've been wanting once they hit the #1 car sales mark for the year. Hey they already made thier money right?

People seem to think that software, movies and music are some kind of different and seperate catagory to all other products sold. That in some crazy way theft of these items is not the same as stealing a hard item from a brick and mortar store. When in fact it is, these items are not produced for nothing.

There are many layers of workers that make thier living off producing these items. There are the programmers, artists, modelers, animators and others actually working on the game itself. Then there are the people in the supporting industries that press the cd/dvd, create the packaging, handle distribution. Then there are the people working retail at game stores and retail chains. The more people download the pirated games the more all the people working in all these supporting industries and the game studios themselves suffer.

There is not limit or magical number that a game crosses that says they have made their money so its ok to pirate now. That is just plain stupid and speaks volumes for the character of the people that actually defend thier actions as if there was any way to possible justify the outright theft of someone elses hard work.

The rule is simple if you want something then pay your money and enjoy it, if you aren't willing to pay for it then don't play the game. NOONE has ever forced anyone to pirate a game. I don't care what they charge for the game, how overrated it is, where it is avaiable from, what the system requirements are. That is not grounds for pirating the game.

The other big lie is that anyone that pirates a game would never buy the game anyways if they didn't pirate. There are a lot of people that will buy software if they don't find it at the pirate site that they frequent or if the MP part of the game requires an actual purchase.

These people have the resourses to do the right thing, they just choose to play it for nothing due to thier lack of character and the anonymous nature of the web. These same people wouldn't have the balls to walk into a WalMart and stick a game box in thier coat and walk out. The chicken shit assholes instead do the exact same thing from the privacy of their home, where they think noone will see them and there is no risk involved.





 
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What if you are living in a country where it is perfectly legal to pirate any intellectual property, but illegal to make copies and sell them or otherwise distribute them? How can you say that is stealing when it is LEGAL? What do you say to that?

And please don't be a motherless idiot by putting pirating software on the same level as stealing a Honda? A Honda have to be made with materials and workers' labors which becomes the Honda. Each Honda is a unique item, unlike a software, which is a COPY. Where are the labors and materials in a pirated COPY of a software?

That is why, the argument that 'people who pirates will not buy the software/music/movie anyway, so there is no loss in profit' is accurate. Each legal copies sold makes money for the developer, whereas each copy pirated is no loss since no money goes out to making the copy, AND the pirate will not buy it anyway if he/she did not pirate it.
 

inglburt

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I just hope that all the people that say they pirate because of drm will stand by their word and pay for the games. I think that a noticeable decrease in piracy would finally convince other companies that drm is the wrong way to go. And maybe we will get back more cutting edge, new gaming and graphics technology to the pc. It seems we used to get games all the time that would sress my pc to the max, but with graphics that no console could hope to match. Now we get way too many console ports with 2 year old graphics. The only games I know of out there that still stress my pc is Crysis and Stalker ClearSky.
 

giovanni86

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[citation][nom]etrnl_frost[/nom]Please look up Koroush Ghazi's essay on piracy, courtesy of TweakGuides. Learn a little bit more about the economics of what Piracy really does, and the true point of DRM, and then think about it for a second. If we don't pay the people in the industry, the industry suffers. If the industry suffers, we suffer. Whether it be quantity, quality, or choice of medium, the user, ultimately, suffers - if the industry suffers.It's a long read, but it's an incredibly good article, and it really makes some interesting points. http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html[/citation]

I totally agree with what you just said. Which is why i buy all my games whether they be for PC, 360, PSP. I support good and some times crappy games. They deserve to get paid, just like i would expect to get paid at my work for doing my job. Just imagine if you didn't get paid, but got fired.. All because of pirates your company falls. Sucks. My two cents.
 

giovanni86

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[citation][nom]demonhorde665[/nom]and yes i have played wow and i ddidn't like it , it was nothing new and liek 99% of it's genre it feels like something that is unfished. it really DID NOTHING to advance MMORPG's , and it certainly wasn't the first MMORPG so it cant even say that for it's self. a lot of dummies out ther say that every mmorpg clones WoW , but LETS FACE THE TRUTH WoW is a clone of another game it's self , just has warcraft's face painted on it !!![/citation]

WOW is an amazing game. No MMORPG game comes close to its dominance, it has a big, big amount of content, and a lot of repetition to it, but its a lot of fun if you got a group of friends whom play with you on your realm. The price a month if you equal it to days is about 50 cents a day to play which isn't too bad if you really think about it. The experiences you have can never be replaced. Its definitely not for everyone. Its an amazing game and no game can comes close, developers/publishers out there have been trying to clone a better one then what blizzard has made and have EPIC failed. There is no game like WOW. WOW brought everything that every other MMORPG had and just made it all into one GAME. Meaning, yes they got everything from other games but added it in one game and made simple to use, fun, and easy. It wasn't frustrating or anything like that, it was just so easy and simple to do things in the game that no other MMORPG can ever do. So did it advance MMORPG's. I think WOW is now and will be in the coming years still the best MMORPG out to date in my book it is. My 10 cents.
 

giovanni86

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[citation][nom]inglburt[/nom]I just hope that all the people that say they pirate because of drm will stand by their word and pay for the games. I think that a noticeable decrease in piracy would finally convince other companies that drm is the wrong way to go. And maybe we will get back more cutting edge, new gaming and graphics technology to the pc. It seems we used to get games all the time that would sress my pc to the max, but with graphics that no console could hope to match. Now we get way too many console ports with 2 year old graphics. The only game I know of out there that still stresses my pc is Crysis.[/citation]

I am riding on that same boat. Every game i try on my PC it just crushes it. I'm tired of seeing ports. I want see more game developers push the limits of the PC just like crysis did. It just stuns you when your PC machine just totally gets rocked by a stunning visually compelling game. Still to this day my machine can barely get 30FPS and sometimes around 4-12FPS in crysis, maxed out at 1680x1050 it just crys for more power needed. But i too am waiting on the next game to push the limits beyond what i can imagine. Yet i would say one thing a little off topic, the game crysis itself looked better in the in-game footage then it did when it retailed. I still think when i see crysis maxed out, there are plenty of places for a ton of improvement when you compare footage before its release to the actual game when it came out. My Two cents.
 

coolkev99

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[citation][nom]etrnl_frost[/nom]So unfortunately true. It's a lose lose situation for the industry.[/citation]

But a big win for those who actually buy the game.
 

coolkev99

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[citation][nom]etrnl_frost[/nom]So unfortunately true. It's a lose lose situation for the industry.[/citation]

But a big win for those who actually buy the game.
 

theJ

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[citation][nom]kami3k[/nom]Also you fail to realize this, people who pirate wouldn't have bought the game to begin with. So they lose little to no sales and in fact heavy DRM just makes it more likely to be pirated.[/citation]

Yup. I'll admit that i've pirated a few games just to try them out with no chance that i'll buy the full title. They usually end up in the "recycle" by day 4.

But any game that i've bought legally i've never even thought about pirating.

Ease of use is a big selling point. I know lots of people (me included) that wouldn't buy a game from a company if i've had trouble getting a game of theirs to work in the past.
 

bounty

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So we're supposed to be happy they're only using Safe Disk instead of securerom? I guess. Personally I'll still be buying the game and cracking it for operation w/o the disc as usual.

CD-Key is fine, 1 time Online activation is fine so long as it doesn't require registration, and a no-activation patch is realeased after a few years. For gods sake, stop it with the damn DVD in the drive thing. The interent has totally defeated that. It's only a PITA for paying customers.
The only thing that stops is burning a DVD and handing it to my non-technical friend. That's not what's destroying the PC gamming industry. All it takes is one cracker, and it will happen, to crack the protection and post an ISO. Then my less than honest 'friends' will just download it.

The difference between looking for a CD Key online and an ISO is now zero, so stop forcing me to DL hacked .EXE's and suffer getting new versions when patches come out, or buying fancy ISO mounting tools etc. I like playing different games constantly. I hate fumbling throught CD binders looking for scratched "play disc."
 

p05esto

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I always purchase the software and then go download and install the cracked version just to avoid the DRM hassles. The cracked versions are always so much easier, more compact,easier to store and install later etc (don't rely on internet connection).

If software/games just came down in price a little there would be much less pirating. $20 for a game is reasonable and I would pay that, $60 is not quick, impulsive purchase. Someone should release a good game for $20 and see if the additional sales make up the profit from the fewer $60 purchases. A risk worth taking I think. The publicity alone would make it a hit.
 

rocket_sauce

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[citation][nom]demonhorde665[/nom]main stream tards love sh!tty mediocre games, it's a fact , and further more such figures don't actually prove sh!t from what's agood game or not. Hell , millions of dogs like to sniff a-- and eat piles of sh-- doesn't mean sh-- is a gourmet meal. [/citation] LMAO, I love it!
 

grieve

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[citation][nom]Megamanx00[/nom]Guess they actually got alot of consumer complaints. Anyway the typical sims player isn't browsing the Pirate Bay as much as the FPS players, and they don't want to anger all the casual players who spend way to much on those games, so this move makes sense.[/citation]
You have made many assumptions in this statement…
 
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I didn't buy Spore because of the DRM, and I didn't pirate it either, just ignored it. I was looking forward to trying it out before I heard of its DRM woes.

I'm a big Sims fan, but was planning on NOT buying Sims 3 because of the DRM. Now that they are going back to the benign/light DRM solution of serial numbers, I plan on buying Sims 3.
 

cletus_slackjawd

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[citation][nom]Curnel_D[/nom]So far, I think Bethesda's trumps them all. Make games that kick so much ass that even if they're pirated a ton, they're still #1 blockbuster sellers for years to come.[/citation]
Didn't above name company make the awful Star Trek Legacy
 
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