I really don't see a problem with this. It only checks twice, when you install it and ten days later. PC gaming is far from dead.

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.

What's that in the sky? Oh it's just PC Gaming falling to it's death.

Note to EA: This won't increase sales, pirates don't buy games anyways, you're just pissing people off who want to buy your game.

Note to Pirates: Suck it for giving developers and publishers an excuse to not develop for the PC, and making PC gaming a bigger pain in the ass than it already is.

I don't see this as a problem at all. Piracy of PC games is out of control to the point that you can easily get just about any PC game BEFORE it's release date. There are ways to get around any kind of copy protection, and people feel no guilt in stealing every single title that comes down the pipe.

PC gaming -will- die if things keep going the way that they currently are.

Time to take pirtes to work around this: 9 days
Time until honest buyers without internet to get screwed: 10


How will i play when the people i steal wireless from start protecting their connection?

The only way I will buy these games now is if they are released over Steam. I won't pirate them if they are not, I just won't play at all. I've stopped pirating games actually, I've stepped it up to $2k + software!

Something that game companies just haven't been able to wrap their minds around yet is that this doesn't stop piracy.

These games will be cracked DAYS before they come out, and then the cracks will be made freely available online for whomever wants them.

This is gonna screw customers that pay for the game, and ONLY those customers.

Every piracy conversation turns into "those damn buccaneers don't buy anything!" Fact of the matter is I wouldn't be into gaming if it wasn't for piracy, I had bought this many pc games before piracy: ZERO!

I bought a total of 6 games from Bioware but never again, not even on consoles. Not even the ones I was looking for like that Sony RPG on the DS.

So how is that for protecting your profits you idiots? I guarantee every single Raider is just like me.

People need to just not buy the game. If you don't like this "protection", don't buy the game and support these dicks. Unfortunately, nobody does that though, they buy the game anyway, so companies can still do whatever they want because people still buy it. Don't support them!

Defending piracy is plain dumb.

And defending copy protection by treating every potential customer as a pirate-wannabe is just as dumb.

so that means i'm screwed if I have to wait for silly internet services to fix my net connection? phail.

let alone this is just a stupid idea anyway.

@John B

Well duh.

I never defended it. Only gave the developer/publishers rationale behind this stupid decision. I'm not buying those games.

Well unless they go Steam like somebody mentioned.

PC Gaming is dead anyway.

I don't understand this. The people who pirate software weren't going to buy it in the first place. It's not like they'll sit back and say "CURSES. DEFEATED BY SECUROM. I SUPPOSE I'LL GIVE UP MY HARD EARNED CASH NOW.

I'll not-pirate something thats available just to play it. If I can't find a pirated version then I generally don't buy it. I'll continue to buy the titles I really want and really anticipate though.

I reiterate, the people who pirate weren't potential sales in the first place. They either lack the income or desire to purchase the product in question.

-1 Sale

The great thing is I know people who don't have net connections and just get their fix in internet cafes..WHAT ARE THEY MEANT TO DO?!

Chances are this is fixable via a simple host.txt hack to make the game call in to a fake "server" running on the machine of the game owner.

Shit, it's not even out and I just cracked their DRM.

Now, as for spore, I was going to buy it before because it looked fucking incredible. But I don't even think I'll PIRATE it now. Much less buy it. Way to be douchebags, EA.

*sigh*

PC Gaming is not dead, and those people that honestly think it is are just...well, stupid, I guess.

All this kind of idiocy does is encourage piracy. Pirates go out of their way to circumvent challenges like this. It may take a couple of days longer, but Mass Effect will get cracked just like everything else. Is it annoying? Obviously. Is it NECESSARY? Again, yes. Because PC game piracy is out of fucking control. EA/Microsoft/Vivendi/etc really need to invest a substantial amount of money (lets say several tens of millions combined) in developing a method of protecting their games from piracy, one which will take too much work to circumvent. Say, for example, encrypting all the data of a game with a randomized 4096 bit key, with pre-determined solutions that can only be obtained through registering the game. OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

Until they're willing to put enough money into it, all of these anti-piracy gimmicks they choose to force people to put up with is just completely pointless.

Fucking brilliant idea if they can get it to work without bugs.
I really love PC gaming and I want to make games one day. If the industry can get some control on the piracy, well maybe more developers might actually be willing to release their games onto the ol' personal computer.

congrats, this just convinced me to not get spore, one of my most anticipated games of the year. Thank you Bioware, for letting me keep my $50

I was actually going to buy those games, but now I'm not. I'm not buying a game when I can get a version that works BETTER for FREE.

Does EA not understand how this works? Give us a product worth paying for, and we will pay for it. Fuck us over, and you don't get shit, but we still get to play the game.

It's not rocket surgery.

Copyright protection that does more cockblocking than it actauly does protecting copyright is the cancer that is killing PC gaming.

Annoying Copy Protected games don't get bought... they get even. No, wait. They get copied, cracked, rinse-wash-repeat.

Happened with most Starforce protected games (some real gems on that list), and now with securerom.

Bio need to check out a little company called Stardock that made much more profit in proportion to its development, without invasive copy protection!

My comp isn't anywhere near being able to support either of these games, but I think I may pirate them out of spite and then pass around copies.

Fuck You

why is the dude on the right sporting feminine boobs?

It's the wrong solution for a real problem... Developers have tried to come up with a method to prevent piracy on PC since the "security codes" printed in the manuals already 20 years ago.

The activation every 10 days it's reasonable on paper (came on guys... we are in 2008, if you are in a place without internet you probably have no electricity as well :))

They always ended up pissing the honest buyer more than anything. When I buy a game the first thing I do is check for the (almost always readily available) crack, since it's the only way to avoid 30 seconds security checkings, cd scratching and the like.

But I CAN'T really blame the developers for doing that. PC gaming is not dead, but it's changing since the only really profitable games are becoming casual games (low price and low budget, and appeal to people with absolutely no knowledge of P2P and torrent) and MMORPG (that you cannot pirate by definition)... it's ironic really, since PC has always been the platform aimed at the most "hardcore" of gamers, with complex and cutting edge games.

I think the solution has to be radical, like hardware checking (like consoles), or content streamed directly from internet even for single player games. You would lose some customers, of course, but many more people that would have pirated the game would buying it... If a strong, PC only franchise like Stracraft 2 would start the trend than it would become normal for PC gamers to deal with it.

Seems to radical ? Maybe, but I love PC games, and I can't stand to see PC gaming as I knew it die a slow death. But I really think it's too late, strong "PC only" titles are scarce and given the choice they would buy the console equivalent.

Oh, and this idea is total bollocks, but you already knew that. Plenty of people are going to pirate this just out of spite of those twats at EA.

I'm not a PC gamer so much...and what I do enjoy playing on the PC I don't exactly need to buy. I can say I've never pirated console software...And I was thinking about spore...Both in buying it, or finding it...This kind of sounds like a ridiculous measure that will punish honest folks as opposed to those with my moral ambiguity when it comes to PC games...And that sucks...And I'd say that within 10 days there is a crack that will be done and both Spore and ME will become free. I'm not saying that is the right thing to do here...But at least you wouldn't have to worry about the potential for fucking up and getting screwed by EA b/c they lost your Key Validation.

It would work if you embed consistently the same chip on different graphic cards or CPU.

Of course it would require a big agreement between hardware manufacturers and developers, it's unrealistic I know... but the situation is dire.

Phuck PC Gaming.

You guys want to stick to your thousand dollar, liquid cooled, fan whurring, neon toating, "frag" boxes, deal with the DRM BS. This is coming from a PC gamer. If you want continued PC support for the few last remaining games available, here's some advice.

STFU, because you have NO pull. If EA pulls Madden, you better beleive no game is safe.

I will love to see how people will try tp play 3 years in the future when EA decide to shut down auth servers...