Is SecurROM what they used for the Medieval II expansion?
Because that refused to work on my PC because I had CD burning software on it.
Yup, it was on Kingdoms. Aren't you glad that you were pre-emptively prevented from becoming a filthy pirate?
Ok, I hate SecuROM.
I'm not fussed about Spore (although I'm glad people are making a stink about it, court case might not be successful but hopefully it'll make EA think twice about whether installing PR nightmares with their software is a good idea in the future). They better not put it on Empire though. I don't mind the concept of piracy prevention in principle, but trying to tell me that I can't play a game I bought because I have other software which I bought on my PC is fucking ridiculous.
My refusal to fuck with this kind of DRM comes down to one reason.
Honestly, 5 installations is probably more than I'll need, and odds are I'd have no problems with it on my system. But just the fact that it may affect me, I might use them all up meaning I'd have to call EA and ask them for more installations is bullshit.
As they mentioned on GFW Radio a couple weeks back when this was in the news, fuck EA for treating a paying customer like a potential criminal, so as long as they use this DRM I ain't buying their games.
By the way, for the record, SecurRom is never mentioned BY NAME in the EULA. I had to read through the whole goddamn thread and ignore one guy's post to make sure I didn't miss.
To divert things slightly, since i'm guessing you're wanting to be minimalist by using the classic theme you may also want to consider Foxit Reader rather than Adobe Reader. It's a hell of a lot less bloated PDF viewer. (uses a hell of a lot less memory/resources)
GrimReaper on
PSN | Steam
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
0
Options
TetraNitroCubaneThe DjinneratorAt the bottom of a bottleRegistered Userregular
This is very true, but I've ran into exactly 0 people that have installed the game on more than 5 PCs. It's not a limitation if I never hit it.
Like I said, my views are skewed on SecuROM, as I've never hit any negatives with it. I'm in the land of candy butterflies and unicorn popsicles perhaps, but I've yet to have a bad experience. My PC is clean as a whistle, if my Spybot and HiJack This are anything to go by.
I'm sorry, but you realize that activation is really just the newest problem with SecuROM, yes?
I agree on your first point: I could care less about the activation issue, considering unlimited installs are granted for each activated machine. The activation issue seems to have gotten people up in arms lately because it's the latest addition to the DRM, when in reality SecuROM is problematic for many additional reasons.
The thing that bothers the hell out of me is that you hand the keys to your computer over when SecuROM goes on your computer. And you're not even told about doing it! The fact that many people had no idea that SecuROM was installed with their game (or worse, demo) is a huge problem. The fact that it has high-level access is another. The fact that you haven't had Spybot or HiJack this come up with anything means pretty much zippo. Go run Rootkit Revealer*. You'll find the SecuROM entries with hidden nulls. That's why you can't see the SecuROM processes running at all. Doesn't software that's completely hidden, running in the background, and granted the highest level of privilege on your machine just the slightest bit unnerving? At all? What happens if and when someone who's NOT associated with SecuROM finds out who to exploit that infrastructure installed on your machine?
I'm thinking about dire possibilities, yes, but in my experience no software has even been secure or exploit free.
EDIT: Just to be clear, SecuROM has pretty much been declared 'not a rootkit' - I'm simply pointing out that Rootkit Revealer can be used to identify these registry entries.
The thing I don't understand about the spore DRM is it's existence in the first place. For a game that has such a huge online component why didn't it simply tie your CD key to your online account and be done with it? Why did the game even need anything beyond that?
And with Spore being the most pirated game ever pretty much, why the hell would EA want to pay licensing fees to use SecuRom in future products when it's clearly not doing it's intended job anyway?
I'll tell you guys a secret: EA's DRM is really not about piracy, it's about limiting second hand sales. It's all about limiting the legitimate customer. They're the enemy now too. Kind of how investment banks considered things like deposits an undue burden on their awesome business idea.
I'll tell you guys a secret: EA's DRM is really not about piracy, it's about limiting second hand sales. It's all about limiting the legitimate customer. They're the enemy now too. Kind of how investment banks considered things like deposits an undue burden on their awesome business idea.
I'll tell you guys a secret: EA's DRM is really not about piracy, it's about limiting second hand sales. It's all about limiting the legitimate customer. They're the enemy now too. Kind of how investment banks considered things like deposits an undue burden on their awesome business idea.
Well, a CD-key linked to an online account would prevent second hand sales too. The only way to sell it then is to also sell your account, which would probably be bound to your email.
Well, a CD-key linked to an online account would prevent second hand sales too. The only way to sell it then is to also sell your account, which would probably be bound to your email.
It's the age of throwaway email addresses, so they needed something stronger.
I just get extremely frustrated when people 'take a stand' and pirate the title simply to 'stick it' to EA, or wish that any company is taken down for something so ludicrous.
For the record, how many laws should EA be allowed to violate before someone calls them on it, simply because you like their games?
The fact that someone might break the law against you doesn't mean you get to break it yourself to stop them. To use the "you wouldn't steal a car" analogy that publishers so love, you're not allowed to put landmines all over your car dealership to stop people who might steal those cars.
I just get extremely frustrated when people 'take a stand' and pirate the title simply to 'stick it' to EA, or wish that any company is taken down for something so ludicrous.
For the record, how many laws should EA be allowed to violate before someone calls them on it, simply because you like their games?
The fact that someone might break the law against you doesn't mean you get to break it yourself to stop them. To use the "you wouldn't steal a car" analogy that publishers so love, you're not allowed to put landmines all over your car dealership to stop people who might steal those cars.
It's not putting landmines all over the dealership - it's packaging bombs into the cars you sell so even paying customers get them. Oh, and all the car thieves know how to disarm the bombs.
Actually, with the way it is now, it's 5 separate computers that you can install on. If you uninstall on that computer, it returns an installation token and you get that install back.
See, this is what I dont get.
5 PCs? Seriously?
That's 4 more PCs than I was expecting!
Yeah but it is sort of a pain in the ass. I have the same issue with iTunes. If my HD dies, I didn't de-authorize and it isn't really something I immediately think of when preparing to re-do my machine. It is now, of course, that I've accidentally run through 3 of my 5 activations but since I have a laptop and a desktop (at least) that I would want to access my music and (if they could communicate easily) other programs this is a realistic problem for me.
Offtopic but in iTunes you can reset the authorisation then reauthorise another 5 machines.
I just get extremely frustrated when people 'take a stand' and pirate the title simply to 'stick it' to EA, or wish that any company is taken down for something so ludicrous.
For the record, how many laws should EA be allowed to violate before someone calls them on it, simply because you like their games?
The fact that someone might break the law against you doesn't mean you get to break it yourself to stop them. To use the "you wouldn't steal a car" analogy that publishers so love, you're not allowed to put landmines all over your car dealership to stop people who might steal those cars.
It's not putting landmines all over the dealership - it's packaging bombs into the cars you sell so even paying customers get them. Oh, and all the car thieves know how to disarm the bombs.
If the installer stated exactly what SecuROM does and what it's incompatable with and gave some means of getting reimbursed for the purchase if you don't want to put up with the terms, and the uninstaller gave the option (in case you have other games that need it) to uninstall SecuROM when you uninstall Spore, would there still be a problem? I don't particularly mind the five installs, it seems like more than anyone would actually need even if they don't get any credit back for uninstalling the game.
I just get extremely frustrated when people 'take a stand' and pirate the title simply to 'stick it' to EA, or wish that any company is taken down for something so ludicrous.
For the record, how many laws should EA be allowed to violate before someone calls them on it, simply because you like their games?
The fact that someone might break the law against you doesn't mean you get to break it yourself to stop them. To use the "you wouldn't steal a car" analogy that publishers so love, you're not allowed to put landmines all over your car dealership to stop people who might steal those cars.
It's not putting landmines all over the dealership - it's packaging bombs into the cars you sell so even paying customers get them. Oh, and all the car thieves know how to disarm the bombs.
This is a beautiful analogy
Occasionally malfunctioning ignition deactivation chips might be a better analogy, but bombs has the sort of visceral, headline-grabbing, "EA is trying to kill your children"-type feel that we all know and love.
If the installer stated exactly what SecuROM does and what it's incompatable with and gave some means of getting reimbursed for the purchase if you don't want to put up with the terms, and the uninstaller gave the option (in case you have other games that need it) to uninstall SecuROM when you uninstall Spore, would there still be a problem? I don't particularly mind the five installs, it seems like more than anyone would actually need even if they don't get any credit back for uninstalling the game.
Of course there would still be a problem.
As long as there is DRM there will be complaints about it.
If the installer stated exactly what SecuROM does and what it's incompatable with and gave some means of getting reimbursed for the purchase if you don't want to put up with the terms, and the uninstaller gave the option (in case you have other games that need it) to uninstall SecuROM when you uninstall Spore, would there still be a problem? I don't particularly mind the five installs, it seems like more than anyone would actually need even if they don't get any credit back for uninstalling the game.
There'd still be complaining, but the lawsuit would have no chance and EA wouldn't potentially be on the hook for $150+ million.
I would like to take this opportunity to throw out a couple of points.
First, piracy has never, and can never, be directly linked to disrupting sales of a product. Every game, CD, movie, or program is cracked within the first week of release, and in most instances, well before it hits retail shelves. You can literally download anything consisting of 0s and 1s without ever spending a penny.
However, even though we have seen consistent growth in sales of every form of media over the past couple of decades, piracy is the scapegoat for just about everything. Something didn't perform as well as expected? Piracy. Movie flopped in the theaters? Piracy. Dog died? Piracy. Nobody ever blames piracy for massive sales, even though Spore was pirated just as much as Sins of a Solar Empire. So was Half-Life 2. And Halo (I remember seeing a screenshot of a torrent site where Halo had something like 6 million downloads). Same with GTA or Star Wars.
Sins of a Solar Empire topped sales charts for a couple weeks, as did Galactic Civilizations. We're talking retail charts here. Wal-Mart. Best Buy. Beating out all other games in all categories, even console games. That's relatively unheard of, especially when you consider it's a PC game from a relatively small company. No DRM.
Maybe it was a slow week of weak releases.
You know what? Half-Life 2 also topped sales charts when it was released. And Halo. Same with GTA and Star Wars. All of these games and movies had DRM. Pirates were playing these games at least a week after they were released, sometimes sooner.
Games with DRM top sales charts. Games without DRM top sales charts. Almost all are available before release, and all are available within a week of its release. Pirates are playing games weeks before I see them in stores, no matter what system. DS, Playstation, PSP, and Xbox games are pirated by the millions as well. PC games get more static due to not having the "we gotta mod this system/get a modchip/resolder this wire here" stipulation that the consoles have.
Blu-ray games and movies were available online before they were sold in stores. DVDs and CDs have been easily copied/had their info extracted for years now. Even the mighty Dreamcast, with its backward discs and copyright protection on the outer ring (causing easy DREs) and Nintendo's various systems and their proprietary formats were quickly broken due to bored pirates.
All of this typing leads me to this first point I'm trying to convey: Piracy will always exist, and in the history of copyright protection, piracy has won 100% of the time. Short of dragging a key across the disc or throwing the media in a fire, there will be copies of that media on the internet available for download.
The entire concept of putting games, music, and movies on disc (or tape/cartridges, for you older gents and ladies) is being able to cheaply purchase content without having to buy a dedicated, stand-alone system to display that media on with the media itself hard-wired into it's EEPROMs or whatever each time you want to experience anything.
That info has to travel from the disc (or hard drive, flash, ram, tape, record, punch card, paper, whatever) to the device displaying that media. You cannot protect info that has to move from one type of device to another. Once those 0s and 1s begin their trek from one location to the next, there is someone with the know-how to extrapolate the data for their own use. Somewhere in the world, there is someone smart enough with enough time on their hands to figure out how to decrypt anything. This is not hyperbole.
This leads me to my second point.
If copyright protection has never succeeded in thwarting those dastardly pirates from offering free/cheap versions of a media, why do it?
The reasons are not as obvious as one might think. Sure, you have the investors/board of directors in their top hats and monocles demanding that something be done to protect Britney Spears' new album from being stolen 18 hojillion times, but they have no clue how to deal with those compooters with their ultrahurtz and gigaramz simultaneously transmitting the CD to every person in the universe, so they go with a copyright protection company that promises to stop that shit from the get go. Something, anything to help that bottom line, because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Price doesn't matter when you're stopping millions of dirty thieves, costing you (according to some sources) trillions of dollars.
However, there's a situation where piracy can actually hurt companies that is both quantifiable and expensive. You see, companies have a tendency to release unplayable, buggy games, or at least try to at least get the game up and running enough to put it in a box and ship it out. They sell their initial copies, then try to use that money to patch in features or gameplay they promised a year earlier to get people excited to buy the game. It's a terrible practice that for some reason, has gone on unabated for over a decade now.
Since pirates end up releasing games that many times have not yet been released, they often send out these buggy messes (or even worse, a non-gold "final" version) to the general pirate population, who then end up calling the game company's tech support/complaining on the company's website/whining about the game in reviews, blogs, word of mouth, etc.
The manpower alone on tech support can cost a company quite a bit, and when the majority of complaints are from a "non-final" release, or when the program that bypasses the copyright protection causes bugs, all that manpower is wasted. I remember the company that made Sin had a lengthy explanation of this type of situation. The bad word of mouth and reviews due to a release of an unfinished pirate "release" can, and has, doomed a game before it has even come out.
On the other side of the coin, in the past decade alone, pirates have gone from being underground, secret thieves in dark corners to becoming the very saviors of the media that they pirate, often releasing patches or programs that actually make the glitchy crapfests that companies release on day 1 actually playable. Recently, there was company who released an "official" patch that fixed their game when, upon inspection, the code revealed that the patch was made by one of the more popular pirate groups.
Pirates have personally helped me on many occasions, from teaching me how to burn a DVD that wasn't playable on my DVD player (thanks to Disney DRM) to a blank DVD, releasing a patch that allowed me to play my store-bought copy of Civ 4 that normally would not load or hang, and giving us the oh-so-sweet no-cd cracks, ensuring our disc drives will live longer than two months.
Speaking of disc drives living longer than two months, it's pirates who almost exclusively offer means of ridding your computer from terrible DRM, spyware, rootkits, or whatever else companies decide to infect your computer with.
It's because of pirates that I never have to watch the "Don't be a fucking thief" ad and watch 30 minutes of unskippable commercials every time I want to watch a movie that I paid $20 for.
They also allow a much larger audience for a certain type of media to "see the goods" as it were, which could invariably make a person decide to actually go and purchase the actual product, which happens a LOT more than people would think. People enjoy pointing to a shelf lined with game boxes, DVD, or CDs, and they prominently display their goods like hunting trophies. Perusing shelves lined with pretty boxes seems to be more entertaining than looking at a hard drive with 15,000 games on it. As many companies have proven in the past, people will happily shell out cash for items that are readily available for free on the internet. All they have to do is offer.....you know....something. Anything. A pretty box, a little miniature, an in-game pet, a shiny case, literally anything will do. Mix this "hunting and gathering" mentality with the knowledge that a media is good, and people will happily buy a retail copy.
As we have seen, some companies know the value of making their product enticing.
Pirates offer clean, bug-free, ad-free, no-cost versions of games that can be transferred an unlimited amount of times to any type of media with little to no effort.
Some game companies offer the same content with DRM that cripple/hinder/slow your computer (or in Starforce's and the infamous "cd check" examples, destroy your disc drive), riddled with ads, outright accuse you of being a thief, no means of transferring the media to another device, impossible means of archiving or retrieving the data, all the while charging you a premium price.
Gee, and people pirate? I wonder why. The only thing that amazes me is that all media, from music to movies/tv shows to games have all had healthy growth in both income and sales continuously for the past 30 years, well before the internet was invented to destroy the economy by piracy.
NINJA EDIT: I started rambling and began running off on 50 tangents at the end, but the start was pretty coherent, i think. I blame being tired and having a bunch of phone calls constantly interrupting my train of thought.
You know what? Half-Life 2 also topped sales charts when it was released. And Halo. Same with GTA and Star Wars. All of these games and movies had DRM. Pirates were playing these games at least a week after they were released, sometimes sooner.
Games with DRM top sales charts. Games without DRM top sales charts. Almost all are available before release, and all are available within a week of its release. Pirates are playing games weeks before I see them in stores, no matter what system. DS, Playstation, PSP, and Xbox games are pirated by the millions as well. PC games get more static due to not having the "we gotta mod this system/get a modchip/resolder this wire here" stipulation that the consoles have.
While I agree with most of your points, it seems a little weird to claim that games topping sales charts means that piracy hasn't hurt sales. As you said, any game can and will be pirated, so you're comparing the sales of equally pirated games. Nobody's claiming that piracy means no one buys games anymore, but just that piracy means that sales will be less than they would have been with no piracy.
Rocketlex on
While you were asleep, your windows told me all your secrets.
You know what? Half-Life 2 also topped sales charts when it was released. And Halo. Same with GTA and Star Wars. All of these games and movies had DRM. Pirates were playing these games at least a week after they were released, sometimes sooner.
Games with DRM top sales charts. Games without DRM top sales charts. Almost all are available before release, and all are available within a week of its release. Pirates are playing games weeks before I see them in stores, no matter what system. DS, Playstation, PSP, and Xbox games are pirated by the millions as well. PC games get more static due to not having the "we gotta mod this system/get a modchip/resolder this wire here" stipulation that the consoles have.
While I agree with most of your points, it seems a little weird to claim that games topping sales charts means that piracy hasn't hurt sales. As you said, any game can and will be pirated, so you're comparing the sales of equally pirated games. Nobody's claiming that piracy means no one buys games anymore, but just that piracy means that sales will be less than they would have been with no piracy.
I think he was saying that regardless of DRM, games will top sales charts if they are awesome or at least highly anticipated.
I've always been LESS likely to buy games or music that feature a strict DRM system, but then I'm probably an outlier.
You know what? Half-Life 2 also topped sales charts when it was released. And Halo. Same with GTA and Star Wars. All of these games and movies had DRM. Pirates were playing these games at least a week after they were released, sometimes sooner.
Games with DRM top sales charts. Games without DRM top sales charts. Almost all are available before release, and all are available within a week of its release. Pirates are playing games weeks before I see them in stores, no matter what system. DS, Playstation, PSP, and Xbox games are pirated by the millions as well. PC games get more static due to not having the "we gotta mod this system/get a modchip/resolder this wire here" stipulation that the consoles have.
While I agree with most of your points, it seems a little weird to claim that games topping sales charts means that piracy hasn't hurt sales. As you said, any game can and will be pirated, so you're comparing the sales of equally pirated games. Nobody's claiming that piracy means no one buys games anymore, but just that piracy means that sales will be less than they would have been with no piracy.
I think he was saying that regardless of DRM, games will top sales charts if they are awesome or at least highly anticipated.
I've always been LESS likely to buy games or music that feature a strict DRM system, but then I'm probably an outlier.
I know that's what he's saying. I just meant that if all games are being pirated, one game outselling another doesn't mean that 10% (or whatever) hasn't been taken off the top of both.
Rocketlex on
While you were asleep, your windows told me all your secrets.
You know what? Half-Life 2 also topped sales charts when it was released. And Halo. Same with GTA and Star Wars. All of these games and movies had DRM. Pirates were playing these games at least a week after they were released, sometimes sooner.
Games with DRM top sales charts. Games without DRM top sales charts. Almost all are available before release, and all are available within a week of its release. Pirates are playing games weeks before I see them in stores, no matter what system. DS, Playstation, PSP, and Xbox games are pirated by the millions as well. PC games get more static due to not having the "we gotta mod this system/get a modchip/resolder this wire here" stipulation that the consoles have.
While I agree with most of your points, it seems a little weird to claim that games topping sales charts means that piracy hasn't hurt sales. As you said, any game can and will be pirated, so you're comparing the sales of equally pirated games. Nobody's claiming that piracy means no one buys games anymore, but just that piracy means that sales will be less than they would have been with no piracy.
I think he was saying that regardless of DRM, games will top sales charts if they are awesome or at least highly anticipated.
I've always been LESS likely to buy games or music that feature a strict DRM system, but then I'm probably an outlier.
I know that's what he's saying. I just meant that if all games are being pirated, one game outselling another doesn't mean that 10% (or whatever) hasn't been taken off the top of both.
But if both games lose the same number of sales to piracy regardless of DRM, doesn't that imply that the DRM is neither more nor less effective at preventing piracy than no safeguards at all?
There is altogether to much hurfing and durfing over Securom.
Class action lawsuits are 99% a cash grab.
Is Securom mentioned in the EULA you agree to before installing? Without checking I'm going to assume yes.
Have we known about Securom being in Spore prior to release. Yes.
In the eyes of the law there is no difference between Joe Bloggs on the street and J0e B7ogg5 the hardcore gamer who researches this shit months in advance.
If the information was publicly available then there is no case. End of story.
That's like saying you walked into a store and brought HDTV, turn it on and it give you a EULA that say "To be able to use the TV you need to agree to this EULA", and it is freaking 14 pages long with the smallest font possible.
Sure..... whatever, you just spent $1,000 pops on this TV, what you going to do? Disagree to it and never use the TV and leave it as a "decoration only?" Of course you just going to scroll all the way down and hit "Agree" with your remote.
After watching hours of high quality HDTV that you enjoyed, you invited your wife to watch with you, then suddenly the TV turned off itself. A pop up shown on the screen "Our built in heat sensor detected you valided your useragreement by having more than 1 person watching the TV at once".
Oh whatever, you can just move the TV to your room and make it your personal TV, you like the TV this much. However, when you trying to enjoy your TV in your personal room, it won't turn on, instead, a pop up show up saying "Our built in GPS system noticed you trying to use our TV in a different location, this is against our EULA which you agreed on".
You then go on and complains to the customer services, only answer you got is
"You agreed to the EULA",
"but I brought the TV, I OWN it",
"No! you only brought the license to use it, and the license is limited to our EULA",
"I want to return it",
"Sorry, open box TV is non-refundable",
"I'll sue you! I never read it in the box when I buy it",
"Sorry we already informed our customer by posting a news in our website, we even submitted them to Engadged and Kotaku! And this news is all over Penny-Arcade... hey, its even posted in Play Boy magazine!! We did our best informing our customer! THERE ARE NO WAY YOU CAN SUE US"
You sure this sounds right to you? and to court? My English suck so my presentation may not work so well, for a lawyer however, EA is in big trouble.
Out of all products you brought from store, how many of them only post the product details/hidden fees/limitation online only or newspaper only? NONE.
firekiun on
PSN ID : Kiunch
I play Blazblue, Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4 and soon Tekken 6... yeah... so add me if you want to play any of those.
to me this whole thing is about trust to some extent. I play a lot of games on steam, at some point i may have had issues with buying games without a hardcoppy but in the end i trust valve. its a company that actualy cares about their fans and customers .. so much so that they are delaying the updates for tf2 on xbox 360 simply because they arnt alowed to give them away and want to have enough that they think they are giving fans a good deal(or at least that is the way i heard it).
suffice to say i dont trust EA. (sorry i know you have all heard it a billion times but..) here is a company that sells games that shouldnt be out of early beta, that stuffs adds into their games to squeeze a few more bucks out of it. a company that buys well loved developers, cashes in on their fans and then wrecks the company and throws it away.
I bought spore because i wanted to try it That bad (sucker perhaps). not that i dont like it, its a good game in my opninion, but if maxis wern't owned by ea i believe that it would have been released later, more polished with more features not being reserved for later expansions etc..( speculation but waranted i think ) and posibly without the hatefull drm. ( i have yet to see a good game developer not under the leash of a publisher like ea release a game with copy protection that treats the player like a criminal ... tho il admit im not all that observant )
I havnt had any personal problems with the drm myself and it was only a slight issue when deciding to buy spore ( because spore apealed to me that much, on a game like red alert 3 for example ... well i'll just wait and read ) . my only real problem is that with ea's track record im not all that confident il be able to play it any amount of time down the road. they dont exactly have a history of continuing support for their games, and this game game just reeks to me of " i just payed 50$ to rent spore for a few years" if it turns into that il take it philisophicaly and simply remember it for future reference.
as far as being able to get ea to give more activations... i definitly wouldnt hold my breath, its been a long time but i had the experience of dealing with their support for some game .... populous the beginning i think... it was rather like looking at a brick wall with a generic teck support text painted on it and trying to change the text to something usefull by screaming at it.
they may support it now in their own fassion but a few years down the road? ... im no fortune teller but still i wont hold my breath.
maybe im just gullable but i feel prety confident that i'll still be able to play my steam games in the years to come. i know valve are just folks and not some holy altruists just aching to give away stuff for free, but i truely think they have the interest of their fans somewhere in mind.
to me 3 activations is pretty rediculous..... even 5 is. i know that as a demographic im nonexistant to ea.. i imagine their bread and butter to be folks who buy games based on the box art. but i own a Lot of pc games and they get cycled regularly. i bought spore with the atitude of "ok il just try this and see what happens if i get screwed il chalk it up as another learning experience. <shrug> i guess i will see what happens
On the subject of the EULA, you can't use that at all as justification for anything. So you have to agree to a contract that you can't see unless you buy and open the game, which makes the product unreturnable? If you don't agree to it, you're out the money you paid for it unless you can convince someone that you didn't actually play the opened game and sell it to them.
So when I buy this game, there is no indication on the box or display that I am buying a product that will install a program I didn't implicitly agree to install, that may cause system instability, and won't remove itself after I uninstall the game? I'm also supposed to be able to just "uninstall" this unwanted program despite never once being told it's name.
So if this "anti piracy" software (that doesn't exist in the pirated version of the game) does it's job as it was intended by its designers, it should install itself silently under the radar without the user ever knowing about it, yet they're supposed to be perfectly capable of removing it themselves? How is someone supposed to know they can uninstall a program they don't even know is on their computer?
There has to be a way to uninstall it somehow. Or at least disable it -- either killing the process or stopping the service in Administration.
What I wonder is -- can you install the game, then just remove SecuROM and go on your merry way? Or will the game somehow realize it's inoperative and choke on you?
I'd like to buy RA3, but not at the expense of hosing my hardware.
What I wonder is -- can you install the game, then just remove SecuROM and go on your merry way? Or will the game somehow realize it's inoperative and choke on you?
On a previous page somebody posted an official SecuROM removal tool. The included documentation states that, after removal, running the associated game will reinstall SecuROM.
Captain K on
0
Options
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
What I wonder is -- can you install the game, then just remove SecuROM and go on your merry way? Or will the game somehow realize it's inoperative and choke on you?
On a previous page somebody posted an official SecuROM removal tool. The included documentation states that, after removal, running the associated game will reinstall SecuROM.
Don't forget the guy who posted about how the removal tool stated it couldn't remove SecuROM because there was still a program that required it.
I bought spore because i wanted to try it That bad (sucker perhaps). not that i dont like it, its a good game in my opninion, but if maxis wern't owned by ea i believe that it would have been released later, more polished with more features
yea i know it took forever but its because it was a game that does things that havnt been done before not because of the crazy sorta stuff that delays duke nukem. its just a matter of what you'd rather have, a good game now or a better game later. not that im complaining either way, compared to a lot of games i've bought i've already dumped enough hours into spore to feel i've gotten my moneys worth. just an idle observation that i think ea is the sort of company that will nearly always release games too early (for that game) and intentionaly hold features back for an expansion that other folks might release in the original
On the subject of the EULA, you can't use that at all as justification for anything. So you have to agree to a contract that you can't see unless you buy and open the game, which makes the product unreturnable?
Perhaps im just more apt to remember the bad before the good, but im not sure what games they held back. Tho i hear mercenaries 2 was recently launched in a.. somewhat less than ideal state. Not as bad as ultima9 ugh but thats another era.
sorry not trying to be argumentative... im just not teribly inclined to believe EA has changed their ways without some extreme skeptisism.
Slurpeepoop, I read your entire post and agree completely.
Piracy is hopefully what will spur some change. Eventually these bozos will catch on that good games will still get sales.
I bought Spore. I bought Clear Sky. I bought Mercs 2.
I am disappointed in general, but the games in general are still fairly fun. I've played a lot of Clear Sky, as one could see.
I have nerd rage about things like this all the time.
I really hate the rush to release and (hopefully) patch later mentality so much.
On the subject of the EULA, you can't use that at all as justification for anything. So you have to agree to a contract that you can't see unless you buy and open the game, which makes the product unreturnable?
I realize that the EULA is online, and part of that is because of all the problems created by the EULA and all the media attention that the game is getting. Find another single game on that website that has a EULA readily availble to read on that website.
The fact still remains that the average person is going to buy the game from a brick and mortar store, not online. They're aren't going to be shown a contract before they buy the game. Imagine the response if the guy behind the counter pulls out an 29-page contract before selling you a game and asks you to sign it, telling you it will give EA complete control to do whatever they want to your computer and you can't stop them.
Posts
Ok, I hate SecuROM.
I'm not fussed about Spore (although I'm glad people are making a stink about it, court case might not be successful but hopefully it'll make EA think twice about whether installing PR nightmares with their software is a good idea in the future). They better not put it on Empire though. I don't mind the concept of piracy prevention in principle, but trying to tell me that I can't play a game I bought because I have other software which I bought on my PC is fucking ridiculous.
Honestly, 5 installations is probably more than I'll need, and odds are I'd have no problems with it on my system. But just the fact that it may affect me, I might use them all up meaning I'd have to call EA and ask them for more installations is bullshit.
As they mentioned on GFW Radio a couple weeks back when this was in the news, fuck EA for treating a paying customer like a potential criminal, so as long as they use this DRM I ain't buying their games.
To divert things slightly, since i'm guessing you're wanting to be minimalist by using the classic theme you may also want to consider Foxit Reader rather than Adobe Reader. It's a hell of a lot less bloated PDF viewer. (uses a hell of a lot less memory/resources)
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I'm sorry, but you realize that activation is really just the newest problem with SecuROM, yes?
I agree on your first point: I could care less about the activation issue, considering unlimited installs are granted for each activated machine. The activation issue seems to have gotten people up in arms lately because it's the latest addition to the DRM, when in reality SecuROM is problematic for many additional reasons.
The thing that bothers the hell out of me is that you hand the keys to your computer over when SecuROM goes on your computer. And you're not even told about doing it! The fact that many people had no idea that SecuROM was installed with their game (or worse, demo) is a huge problem. The fact that it has high-level access is another. The fact that you haven't had Spybot or HiJack this come up with anything means pretty much zippo. Go run Rootkit Revealer*. You'll find the SecuROM entries with hidden nulls. That's why you can't see the SecuROM processes running at all. Doesn't software that's completely hidden, running in the background, and granted the highest level of privilege on your machine just the slightest bit unnerving? At all? What happens if and when someone who's NOT associated with SecuROM finds out who to exploit that infrastructure installed on your machine?
I'm thinking about dire possibilities, yes, but in my experience no software has even been secure or exploit free.
EDIT: Just to be clear, SecuROM has pretty much been declared 'not a rootkit' - I'm simply pointing out that Rootkit Revealer can be used to identify these registry entries.
And with Spore being the most pirated game ever pretty much, why the hell would EA want to pay licensing fees to use SecuRom in future products when it's clearly not doing it's intended job anyway?
Ding ding ding, we have a winner.
Well, a CD-key linked to an online account would prevent second hand sales too. The only way to sell it then is to also sell your account, which would probably be bound to your email.
It's the age of throwaway email addresses, so they needed something stronger.
For the record, how many laws should EA be allowed to violate before someone calls them on it, simply because you like their games?
The fact that someone might break the law against you doesn't mean you get to break it yourself to stop them. To use the "you wouldn't steal a car" analogy that publishers so love, you're not allowed to put landmines all over your car dealership to stop people who might steal those cars.
It's not putting landmines all over the dealership - it's packaging bombs into the cars you sell so even paying customers get them. Oh, and all the car thieves know how to disarm the bombs.
Offtopic but in iTunes you can reset the authorisation then reauthorise another 5 machines.
This is a beautiful analogy
Occasionally malfunctioning ignition deactivation chips might be a better analogy, but bombs has the sort of visceral, headline-grabbing, "EA is trying to kill your children"-type feel that we all know and love.
Of course there would still be a problem.
As long as there is DRM there will be complaints about it.
I second that analogy for a report for awesome.
Steam Name: Dr.Oblivious
If you can't live for the now, at least live for the future.
There'd still be complaining, but the lawsuit would have no chance and EA wouldn't potentially be on the hook for $150+ million.
First, piracy has never, and can never, be directly linked to disrupting sales of a product. Every game, CD, movie, or program is cracked within the first week of release, and in most instances, well before it hits retail shelves. You can literally download anything consisting of 0s and 1s without ever spending a penny.
However, even though we have seen consistent growth in sales of every form of media over the past couple of decades, piracy is the scapegoat for just about everything. Something didn't perform as well as expected? Piracy. Movie flopped in the theaters? Piracy. Dog died? Piracy. Nobody ever blames piracy for massive sales, even though Spore was pirated just as much as Sins of a Solar Empire. So was Half-Life 2. And Halo (I remember seeing a screenshot of a torrent site where Halo had something like 6 million downloads). Same with GTA or Star Wars.
Sins of a Solar Empire topped sales charts for a couple weeks, as did Galactic Civilizations. We're talking retail charts here. Wal-Mart. Best Buy. Beating out all other games in all categories, even console games. That's relatively unheard of, especially when you consider it's a PC game from a relatively small company. No DRM.
Maybe it was a slow week of weak releases.
You know what? Half-Life 2 also topped sales charts when it was released. And Halo. Same with GTA and Star Wars. All of these games and movies had DRM. Pirates were playing these games at least a week after they were released, sometimes sooner.
Games with DRM top sales charts. Games without DRM top sales charts. Almost all are available before release, and all are available within a week of its release. Pirates are playing games weeks before I see them in stores, no matter what system. DS, Playstation, PSP, and Xbox games are pirated by the millions as well. PC games get more static due to not having the "we gotta mod this system/get a modchip/resolder this wire here" stipulation that the consoles have.
Blu-ray games and movies were available online before they were sold in stores. DVDs and CDs have been easily copied/had their info extracted for years now. Even the mighty Dreamcast, with its backward discs and copyright protection on the outer ring (causing easy DREs) and Nintendo's various systems and their proprietary formats were quickly broken due to bored pirates.
All of this typing leads me to this first point I'm trying to convey: Piracy will always exist, and in the history of copyright protection, piracy has won 100% of the time. Short of dragging a key across the disc or throwing the media in a fire, there will be copies of that media on the internet available for download.
The entire concept of putting games, music, and movies on disc (or tape/cartridges, for you older gents and ladies) is being able to cheaply purchase content without having to buy a dedicated, stand-alone system to display that media on with the media itself hard-wired into it's EEPROMs or whatever each time you want to experience anything.
That info has to travel from the disc (or hard drive, flash, ram, tape, record, punch card, paper, whatever) to the device displaying that media. You cannot protect info that has to move from one type of device to another. Once those 0s and 1s begin their trek from one location to the next, there is someone with the know-how to extrapolate the data for their own use. Somewhere in the world, there is someone smart enough with enough time on their hands to figure out how to decrypt anything. This is not hyperbole.
This leads me to my second point.
If copyright protection has never succeeded in thwarting those dastardly pirates from offering free/cheap versions of a media, why do it?
The reasons are not as obvious as one might think. Sure, you have the investors/board of directors in their top hats and monocles demanding that something be done to protect Britney Spears' new album from being stolen 18 hojillion times, but they have no clue how to deal with those compooters with their ultrahurtz and gigaramz simultaneously transmitting the CD to every person in the universe, so they go with a copyright protection company that promises to stop that shit from the get go. Something, anything to help that bottom line, because at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Price doesn't matter when you're stopping millions of dirty thieves, costing you (according to some sources) trillions of dollars.
However, there's a situation where piracy can actually hurt companies that is both quantifiable and expensive. You see, companies have a tendency to release unplayable, buggy games, or at least try to at least get the game up and running enough to put it in a box and ship it out. They sell their initial copies, then try to use that money to patch in features or gameplay they promised a year earlier to get people excited to buy the game. It's a terrible practice that for some reason, has gone on unabated for over a decade now.
Since pirates end up releasing games that many times have not yet been released, they often send out these buggy messes (or even worse, a non-gold "final" version) to the general pirate population, who then end up calling the game company's tech support/complaining on the company's website/whining about the game in reviews, blogs, word of mouth, etc.
The manpower alone on tech support can cost a company quite a bit, and when the majority of complaints are from a "non-final" release, or when the program that bypasses the copyright protection causes bugs, all that manpower is wasted. I remember the company that made Sin had a lengthy explanation of this type of situation. The bad word of mouth and reviews due to a release of an unfinished pirate "release" can, and has, doomed a game before it has even come out.
On the other side of the coin, in the past decade alone, pirates have gone from being underground, secret thieves in dark corners to becoming the very saviors of the media that they pirate, often releasing patches or programs that actually make the glitchy crapfests that companies release on day 1 actually playable. Recently, there was company who released an "official" patch that fixed their game when, upon inspection, the code revealed that the patch was made by one of the more popular pirate groups.
Pirates have personally helped me on many occasions, from teaching me how to burn a DVD that wasn't playable on my DVD player (thanks to Disney DRM) to a blank DVD, releasing a patch that allowed me to play my store-bought copy of Civ 4 that normally would not load or hang, and giving us the oh-so-sweet no-cd cracks, ensuring our disc drives will live longer than two months.
Speaking of disc drives living longer than two months, it's pirates who almost exclusively offer means of ridding your computer from terrible DRM, spyware, rootkits, or whatever else companies decide to infect your computer with.
It's because of pirates that I never have to watch the "Don't be a fucking thief" ad and watch 30 minutes of unskippable commercials every time I want to watch a movie that I paid $20 for.
They also allow a much larger audience for a certain type of media to "see the goods" as it were, which could invariably make a person decide to actually go and purchase the actual product, which happens a LOT more than people would think. People enjoy pointing to a shelf lined with game boxes, DVD, or CDs, and they prominently display their goods like hunting trophies. Perusing shelves lined with pretty boxes seems to be more entertaining than looking at a hard drive with 15,000 games on it. As many companies have proven in the past, people will happily shell out cash for items that are readily available for free on the internet. All they have to do is offer.....you know....something. Anything. A pretty box, a little miniature, an in-game pet, a shiny case, literally anything will do. Mix this "hunting and gathering" mentality with the knowledge that a media is good, and people will happily buy a retail copy.
As we have seen, some companies know the value of making their product enticing.
Pirates offer clean, bug-free, ad-free, no-cost versions of games that can be transferred an unlimited amount of times to any type of media with little to no effort.
Some game companies offer the same content with DRM that cripple/hinder/slow your computer (or in Starforce's and the infamous "cd check" examples, destroy your disc drive), riddled with ads, outright accuse you of being a thief, no means of transferring the media to another device, impossible means of archiving or retrieving the data, all the while charging you a premium price.
Gee, and people pirate? I wonder why. The only thing that amazes me is that all media, from music to movies/tv shows to games have all had healthy growth in both income and sales continuously for the past 30 years, well before the internet was invented to destroy the economy by piracy.
NINJA EDIT: I started rambling and began running off on 50 tangents at the end, but the start was pretty coherent, i think. I blame being tired and having a bunch of phone calls constantly interrupting my train of thought.
While I agree with most of your points, it seems a little weird to claim that games topping sales charts means that piracy hasn't hurt sales. As you said, any game can and will be pirated, so you're comparing the sales of equally pirated games. Nobody's claiming that piracy means no one buys games anymore, but just that piracy means that sales will be less than they would have been with no piracy.
I think he was saying that regardless of DRM, games will top sales charts if they are awesome or at least highly anticipated.
I've always been LESS likely to buy games or music that feature a strict DRM system, but then I'm probably an outlier.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
I know that's what he's saying. I just meant that if all games are being pirated, one game outselling another doesn't mean that 10% (or whatever) hasn't been taken off the top of both.
But if both games lose the same number of sales to piracy regardless of DRM, doesn't that imply that the DRM is neither more nor less effective at preventing piracy than no safeguards at all?
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
That's like saying you walked into a store and brought HDTV, turn it on and it give you a EULA that say "To be able to use the TV you need to agree to this EULA", and it is freaking 14 pages long with the smallest font possible.
Sure..... whatever, you just spent $1,000 pops on this TV, what you going to do? Disagree to it and never use the TV and leave it as a "decoration only?" Of course you just going to scroll all the way down and hit "Agree" with your remote.
After watching hours of high quality HDTV that you enjoyed, you invited your wife to watch with you, then suddenly the TV turned off itself. A pop up shown on the screen "Our built in heat sensor detected you valided your useragreement by having more than 1 person watching the TV at once".
Oh whatever, you can just move the TV to your room and make it your personal TV, you like the TV this much. However, when you trying to enjoy your TV in your personal room, it won't turn on, instead, a pop up show up saying "Our built in GPS system noticed you trying to use our TV in a different location, this is against our EULA which you agreed on".
You then go on and complains to the customer services, only answer you got is
"You agreed to the EULA",
"but I brought the TV, I OWN it",
"No! you only brought the license to use it, and the license is limited to our EULA",
"I want to return it",
"Sorry, open box TV is non-refundable",
"I'll sue you! I never read it in the box when I buy it",
"Sorry we already informed our customer by posting a news in our website, we even submitted them to Engadged and Kotaku! And this news is all over Penny-Arcade... hey, its even posted in Play Boy magazine!! We did our best informing our customer! THERE ARE NO WAY YOU CAN SUE US"
You sure this sounds right to you? and to court? My English suck so my presentation may not work so well, for a lawyer however, EA is in big trouble.
Out of all products you brought from store, how many of them only post the product details/hidden fees/limitation online only or newspaper only? NONE.
I play Blazblue, Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4 and soon Tekken 6... yeah... so add me if you want to play any of those.
schwa? isn't stardock the one drm that will bork your cd rom drives??
whups im wrong! ignore me!
to me this whole thing is about trust to some extent. I play a lot of games on steam, at some point i may have had issues with buying games without a hardcoppy but in the end i trust valve. its a company that actualy cares about their fans and customers .. so much so that they are delaying the updates for tf2 on xbox 360 simply because they arnt alowed to give them away and want to have enough that they think they are giving fans a good deal(or at least that is the way i heard it).
suffice to say i dont trust EA. (sorry i know you have all heard it a billion times but..) here is a company that sells games that shouldnt be out of early beta, that stuffs adds into their games to squeeze a few more bucks out of it. a company that buys well loved developers, cashes in on their fans and then wrecks the company and throws it away.
I bought spore because i wanted to try it That bad (sucker perhaps). not that i dont like it, its a good game in my opninion, but if maxis wern't owned by ea i believe that it would have been released later, more polished with more features not being reserved for later expansions etc..( speculation but waranted i think ) and posibly without the hatefull drm. ( i have yet to see a good game developer not under the leash of a publisher like ea release a game with copy protection that treats the player like a criminal ... tho il admit im not all that observant )
I havnt had any personal problems with the drm myself and it was only a slight issue when deciding to buy spore ( because spore apealed to me that much, on a game like red alert 3 for example ... well i'll just wait and read ) . my only real problem is that with ea's track record im not all that confident il be able to play it any amount of time down the road. they dont exactly have a history of continuing support for their games, and this game game just reeks to me of " i just payed 50$ to rent spore for a few years" if it turns into that il take it philisophicaly and simply remember it for future reference.
as far as being able to get ea to give more activations... i definitly wouldnt hold my breath, its been a long time but i had the experience of dealing with their support for some game .... populous the beginning i think... it was rather like looking at a brick wall with a generic teck support text painted on it and trying to change the text to something usefull by screaming at it.
they may support it now in their own fassion but a few years down the road? ... im no fortune teller but still i wont hold my breath.
maybe im just gullable but i feel prety confident that i'll still be able to play my steam games in the years to come. i know valve are just folks and not some holy altruists just aching to give away stuff for free, but i truely think they have the interest of their fans somewhere in mind.
to me 3 activations is pretty rediculous..... even 5 is. i know that as a demographic im nonexistant to ea.. i imagine their bread and butter to be folks who buy games based on the box art. but i own a Lot of pc games and they get cycled regularly. i bought spore with the atitude of "ok il just try this and see what happens if i get screwed il chalk it up as another learning experience. <shrug> i guess i will see what happens
So when I buy this game, there is no indication on the box or display that I am buying a product that will install a program I didn't implicitly agree to install, that may cause system instability, and won't remove itself after I uninstall the game? I'm also supposed to be able to just "uninstall" this unwanted program despite never once being told it's name.
So if this "anti piracy" software (that doesn't exist in the pirated version of the game) does it's job as it was intended by its designers, it should install itself silently under the radar without the user ever knowing about it, yet they're supposed to be perfectly capable of removing it themselves? How is someone supposed to know they can uninstall a program they don't even know is on their computer?
What I wonder is -- can you install the game, then just remove SecuROM and go on your merry way? Or will the game somehow realize it's inoperative and choke on you?
I'd like to buy RA3, but not at the expense of hosing my hardware.
On a previous page somebody posted an official SecuROM removal tool. The included documentation states that, after removal, running the associated game will reinstall SecuROM.
Don't forget the guy who posted about how the removal tool stated it couldn't remove SecuROM because there was still a program that required it.
Except in this case, it's "Too Long; but Did Read"
Because that's some intelligently-written shit by you, if a bit wordy.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Did you how long that game took already?
People were comparing it to Duke Nukem Forever.
http://www.gametreeonline.com/SporeEULA.pdf
The EULA is readily available online.
(Nothing against you, just pointing that out.)
sorry not trying to be argumentative... im just not teribly inclined to believe EA has changed their ways without some extreme skeptisism.
Piracy is hopefully what will spur some change. Eventually these bozos will catch on that good games will still get sales.
I bought Spore. I bought Clear Sky. I bought Mercs 2.
I am disappointed in general, but the games in general are still fairly fun. I've played a lot of Clear Sky, as one could see.
I have nerd rage about things like this all the time.
I really hate the rush to release and (hopefully) patch later mentality so much.
I realize that the EULA is online, and part of that is because of all the problems created by the EULA and all the media attention that the game is getting. Find another single game on that website that has a EULA readily availble to read on that website.
The fact still remains that the average person is going to buy the game from a brick and mortar store, not online. They're aren't going to be shown a contract before they buy the game. Imagine the response if the guy behind the counter pulls out an 29-page contract before selling you a game and asks you to sign it, telling you it will give EA complete control to do whatever they want to your computer and you can't stop them.