Spore and Mass Effect PC forces players to stay online

Well jokes on them, the only reason to play Mass Effect past 10 days is to do their shitty planet hopping/resource mining sidequests.

SO FUCK YOU SecuRom!

Worst idea since StarForce. 10 days of Spore should be enough to see all that's there to see though :P

This is what is killing PC gaming, just put the game on steam and get it over with. Bioware made plenty of money selling this game on the 360.

@Eschatos:

No problem. They should have clarified that themselves in the article. It was only by going to their forums (which was linked from their site) and searching around that I saw the "official" post that stated that this is a mandatory, repeating issue.

Hopefully, enough of a firestorm can be brewed by this (it hit Digg as well) that BioWare will realize what a bunch of dicks they're being about this.

WELCOME BACK TO EA!

YOUR ROOM IS JUST LIKE IT WAS, WE HAVEN'T CHANGED IT!

*SMOOOOOOOOCH*

y don't they just release this through steam or steam only download, then you can't really pirate it.

and to think i was thinking about getting the pc version. oh well theres always the good old 360 version.

The best way to reduce piracy is too make sure the game is worth paying for.

Anyone remember when some guy tried to leak HalfLife2 code?

yeah pc gaming is not dying. i dont see the point in this anyways, anything is crackable and this will just piss off people who buy it legally. i give it a week max until it is cracked.

I agree, this could be blamed on pirates, but the reality is that once these games are released, there will be hacks that authenticate your game without connecting to the central server, probably within a few days.

DRM seems to do a better job at pissing off those of us that don't pirate games than it does at preserving a companies profit margins.

Does Jim ever have anything good to say? Or at least without ego.

Nice, I'm sure this will help sell more copies.

"Blame it on rampant piracy."

Wow, thanks for that RIAA/MPAA spokesperson. Just ignore the fact that piracy creates more future consumers than any free sample that any company gives out. Ignore the free brand awareness and future sale. Ignore that teens and students who pirate it for a lack of money can turn into big spending consumers when they get a job.

Also just ignore that games can make a profit easily without any protection and that the movies can get huge awareness through piracy.

Now I can understand why you would want to have some kind of piracy protection on a PC game, but this is just a load of crap. Every 10 days? What if you are on vacation? What if you moved and have to wait for ISP activation? What if you are routed through Cogent and their network sucks balls like it has been? Seriously, I find it all very stupid. This is as bad as being accused of a DMCA violation, only now, you are paying $50-$60 for the chance to be labeled a pirate. Being guilty until proven innocent rocks!

Wait. Does that mean if I didn't play it every ten days while being online that I wouldn't be able to play it anymore? 'Cause that's super ultra mega gay.

Well just to let you know being online won't work, there been tons of games that have already done that. Hell you can pirate Half-life 2 off of steam. I mean come on. There nothing that can stop a person determined and all you do is get the ENTIRE world on you back if you say you can not do something. Other than that I'll pay for Spore, mass effect will suffer for being on the xbox and not the PS3 however. SUFFER!

Ah the fruits of EA's Bioware buyout. And here I was about to start believing the rumors that EA changed from its old wicked ways.

Thanks EA, you made Spore a definite "buy" into a definite "pirate" for me.

BioWare, these are your new roommates. Allow me to introduce you to Origin, Westwood Studios, and Bullfrog.

I don't ever pirate games, and I'm tempted to pirate Spore now, or just not play it altogether.

HEAR THAT EA???

I HATE consoletards commenting about how PC gaming is dead.

STARCRAFT 2!

Suck eggs!

I'm not buying either now. I refuse to spend my hard earned money on something I can't use at my own discretion. There's no reason I should have to validate ANY game with EA, Jesus, George Bush, my mom, or ANYONE more than once. Also, I should be able to install the game(s) on as many god damned PCs as I'd like to. What if I own all the PCs? What if they're all in my house? What if EA gets obliterated by an earthquake and I've gone over the install limit? Does that mean I'm shit-outta-luck?

Seriously, fuck Mass Effect, fuck Spore, and most of all fuck you EA.

I somehow doubt that this'll prevent piracy anyway, even in the long run. It's just going to fuel the fire. Limited installs, online validations, and oddball methods of copy protection in which the consumer is given no sense of tengibility are what drove me away from PC gaming. If the same happens to consoles I'll be done with gaming in general.

Sad but true.

Oh, don't any of you find it a bit shitty that the people that make these boneheaded decisions make $100,000-$200,000 per year? At least!

I don't see the big deal of this being a huge negative.

I can see it being a hassle if you have internet connection issues and are subsequently jonesing for some Mass Effect.

But otherwise, alot of PC users have some means of connecting to the internet, and moreso those that game, I think.

Its a new way of trying to do something, but I can definitely see this being something that, in even less than optimal implementation, won't have a negative effect on the end consumer.

Unless its a hack piece-of-shit software like StarForce was. In which case, screw this. Only reason I didn't play City Life.

Anyone who complains and says "I'm going to pirate now instead" is obviously short tempered. They have a right to protect their product, and chances are you would've just pirated it anyways. I'm no different, I pirate too but Bioware deserves my money on this one and if I have to do a short validation every 10 days I can deal with that. I can also understand your frustration and they should definitely look into how they are going to pull this off before they do it.

Looks like I'll have to head out to Californiway and find me some internet.