Game News Mass Effect (and Spore) copy protection PHUN

[MetalCraze]

that is a good move, but they still didn't remove the "3 windows reinstalls and you will never play the game" shit. so their back-pedalling is pointless.

 

[Texas Red]

I approve of governments mind-probing their citizens. Honest people would have nothing to fear.

 

[Human Shield]

"This solution allows gamers to authenticate their game on three different computers with the purchase of one disc. EA Customer Service is on hand to supply any additional authorizations that are warranted. This will be done on a case-by-case basis by contacting customer support."

WTF is this shit. Except when EA is gone and now the game is worthless.

Compared to Stardock in which you can register (only needed for patches and bonus content) as many times as you want but it tracks if multi ones are done at the same time in different locations.

"We’ve all had those times when the discs get lost or scratched and you can’t play a game you’ve bought because you need a working disc in the drive. With the new system players will no longer need the disc to play the game, but can instead simply retain the disc as back up for re-installation."

Compared to Stardock where you can redownload the game whenever you want and still don't need it for play.

 

[Noceur]

"To all the fans including our many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able re-authenticate as often as required, EA and BioWare want you to know that your feedback is important to us."

Wow... the US Military actually saved the day. o_o

EDIT: Or perhaps the Canadian military.

 

[Kraszu]

I approve of governments mind-probing their citizens. Honest people would have nothing to fear.

Yes if government, and people working for government were honest.

 

[Nicolai]

I approve of governments mind-probing their citizens. Honest people would have nothing to fear.

 

[WalterKinde]

Still limited to 3 installs and online activation so its just basically the bioshock drm reloaded.

 

[aries202]

Please understand that it is three activations, not installs. You can install the game as many times as you want - as long as it is on the same computer. Also, the securom and the game's .exe are tied to your hardware identification, not to the installer. Derek French, Bioware's Lead Programmer has stated several times that Bioware have written the installer themselves - probably to avoid a Bioshock reloaded moment.

 

[Norfleet]

No, because nobody reads whole books in a public library. Well, almost nobody...
But almost everyone can download games. At home. With only a few clicks and some basic understanding of how *.rars work...
This can in no way be compared...

Can too. I recently encountered a company that releases pirated versions of their OWN books specifically because they believe it actually helps their sales. And apparently, it does.

Games are a business, like it or not. And if you see you have 150.000 people buying your game and 1.000.000 people playing it, you will be somehow sad and/or angry about that.

Only if you're retarded. If you sell 150K copies of a game, and nobody pirates it, you are an obscure game only a few people have ever heard of. If you've managed to make money on this, awesome. But that's still not a million players. If you FAILED to make a profit, your game SUCKED, period. On the other hand, if you sell 150K copies, made a profit, and have a million players, you have an AUDIENCE. When you sell the NEXT game, or the expansion to that game, you can be certain you're gonna get better than last time. The argument that those 850K people would have paid for the game if you slap more DRM on it is absurd. Everyone knows pirate cat won't pay for his downloads. Those people were either going to buy it at some point, or they weren't, period. Perhaps the game isn't worth $50 to them, and they'll buy it when it hits bargain bin at $20. You won't make as much money, but you WILL make money. Any economist can tell you that this is a good thing. The point is that the user knows your product EXISTS and that he CAN pick up a copy if he wants it in the bargain bin. Compare that to something that you sell ONLY that many copies, no one else ever gets to try it, and thus, nobody else hears of it.

Consider also the community effect: Let's say 1% of your users will go online and talk about it. Your online presence at, say, 150K sales, is 1500 users. This is lame. Your community at a million users is 10000 users. This is much better, and may achieve the critical mass needed to launch a meaningful community. These people will then talk about the game to themselves, to others, etc. Now, as you know, piracy talk is pretty much always verboten. So these pirates are going to behave exactly like the regular customers, and recommend your game to people. But since they can't talk about pirating, they can't very well tell those other people online to also pirate the game. Some of those people will thus buy your game. It's all good.

Of course, people who claim that those 850.000 are lost copies are retards. Most of the time, if you download a game, you wouldn't buy it anyway. Most of the time!
But in those 850.000, there are surely about 50 - 100.000 lost copies. This is why I said that piracy always hurts devs, publishers, etc.

You're joking, right? A company researched this. Sales conversion on piracy is less than 0.01%, IIRC. This "correlation" was so low that it there is practically no connection. Pirates don't buy games. Period. Interestingly, the same study found that pirates are disproportionately larger contributors to the online community. Meaning that your online presence in a game is primarily due to pirates. If you don't have pirates, you don't have an online presence.

A more simply fact is: Is a game doesn't sell well enough, either the publisher, the dev, or both will have serious financial problems. In such a situation, even those "small" 50.000 additional sales could have been a saviour.

At a .01% conversion rate, to get another 50K additional sales, you'd need to have had at least 5 million pirated copies. No "unsuccessful" game has > 5 million pirated copies of it. What's more, under premise that piracy HELPS rather than HURTS sales, as the evidence currently supports, if your game didn't sell well enough, perhaps it wasn't pirated ENOUGH. And if even pirates won't touch it, you know what? Your game SUCKED. Companies that make shit games DESERVE to die.

You'd make a better point by bringing up the fact that when you pirate a game, you can burn it on a CD/DVD and keep it around as long as you like, where with a library, you have to return books. =p

You must have a different library than I do. I have this one book that I have renewed continuously for about 8 years now. I would have bought the damn thing by now if they *SOLD* it anywhere. You can pretty much keep a library item checked it to you indefinitely if you really try. And even if you don't, when you want it back, you just go back to the library and get it again.

In fact, this is pretty much exactly like a pirated game! And who the hell burns pirated games to CD/DVD anymore anyway? That's ridiculous. They don't even work if you do that. No, people just keep them on their hard drives, mount them in drive emulators, and when they get tired of them, they delete them, like returning them to the library.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

WTF is this shit. Except when EA is gone and now the game is worthless.

Compared to Stardock in which you can register (only needed for patches and bonus content) as many times as you want but it tracks if multi ones are done at the same time in different locations.

Or if they decide to abandon the game as mentioned previously in this thread. It's entirely possible that you can't brush off the game in the future and play it with this type of copy protection scheme.

The three installs on three computers is also ridiculous. I have two desk tops, two laptops, and a UMPC(Actually, I have two UMPCs, but I got sick of replacing the Sony UX280p's batteries every few months at $300 a pop). While I primarily just use three of those, that's all my installs burned away right there. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has a plethora of PCs scattered around all over the house.

 

[Norfleet]

IF they decide to abandon the game, SP? The death rate on EA games is currently standing at 100%. EA has abandoned or is abandoning EVERY single game they have EVER made that I can think of. A 100% death rate means that it's not an *IF*, it's a *WHEN*. They WILL abandon the game, and WHEN this happens, you WILL be left with an expensive $50 coaster.

 

[MetalCraze]

EA will abandon the game. it isn't a question.
look - bitches totally abandoned all Westwood games in 2005-2006. no official servers. and considering that the last RTS game from westwood was E:BfD released in 2001 - it took only 4 or 5 years to totally say "fuck you" to everyone.
now when EA Bioware will get killed in a few years (are you optimistic? well no devstudio survived under EA yet, and considering that EA's CEO today is the guy that killed all successful major devstudios like Origin and Westwood - Bioware is fucked) we will face the same thing - the only difference is that in this case we won't be able to play a legitimately owned game at all.

plus the fucking limit of 3 installations. SP - it doesn't mean it will limit you to 3 pcs which it must not do as you OWN the game (supposedly) - it means that if you will decide to remove or install a single memory stick or videocard - you're screwed as your PC will be considered new.
so I'm still saying fuck you to EA.