EA's anti piracy screwing up PC Mass Effect.

[shio]

ZenfoldorVGI said:

ihira said:
you can play your steam games without internet connection through 'offline mode'
for ME, you'll need internet connection every 10 days even though its an offline game.

Sure, activating is quick and easy and its not a big deal if you have 24/7 internet but it sounds annoying having to veryfy every 10 days. What I don't like is how the customers that bought their game legitly have to be trated like a suspect of pirate. Oh and it WILL get pirated sooner or later. People on this thread are already planning to crack it so they can bypass the 10day authentication. ha!

This different methodogy from ME but remember Bioshock PC had a load of verification problems? Like people that bought the game couldn't install it and the 2K servers were down etc...complaints after complaints. I wonder if it had any effects on sales?
They need to stop this kind of rediculous methods to secure their game.

Seriously, release it on Steam or something instead of this BS.

Someone in this post said that if your authentication messes up 3 times, then the game thinks it's pirated and you can never play it again, and will be forced to buy a new copy.

 

If that's true, then that is my only concern.

"If my PC blows up", "If lightning strikes my house", etc...

I doubt the authentication process would fail like that, or else EA wouldn't be risking so much on it.

As for your other post, for every Iron Lore there's several small developers that have a success story: CDProjekt with The Witcher selling over 600k for a unadvertised, unhyped, new IP RPG; Telltale Games leading the Adventure genre's salvation of digital distribution with Sam & Max; GSC Game World shooting through the roof with the new IP S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (which sold 1,65 million); Stardock with Galactic Civilizations; and Iron Tower with Sins of a Solar Empire, etc...

Besides, the demise of Iron Lore doesn't really prove anything.. maybe that piracy might be a problem for some companies, but definitely not the decline of PC gaming. Also its funny that you quoted a dev from Infinity Ward when COD4 is selling like crack on PC, on par with World of Warcraft and The Sims. If this continues, COD4 might even reach 10 millions copies sold on PC alone (more than PS3+360 combined), and the game is selling great in DD services, still being in the top-selling games of Steam 6 months after it's release...

So far you really haven't backed up your statements with facts, so I'll start supporting mine (if you even bothered to read my previous post) :

According to DFC, The online Market Growth: http://www.dfcint.com/game_article/may07article.html

So if the estimated value of 5.8 billions revenue of the online market is true, and since PC probably has atleast 90% of the cake, that would equal to 5.3 billions, which would be around 6 times bigger than the US PC retail market, and 60% of the entire US boxed retail market.

Also, another look at the boom of active subscriptions from MMOs:

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart4_files/Subscriptions_21524_image001.png

begining of:

1998 - 50 thousand(?) subscriptions

2000 - 1 million

2002 - 3 millions

2004 - 6,5 millions

2006 - 12 millions

2008 - 16 millions

PC has currently 16 million people paying 10/15$ each month, and the numbers will only increase with time. Basically, there's more paying MMO players than there are PS3 owners, and each one of them is spending money every month (unlike the PS3 owners).

DFC also stated (although very briefly) that PC has been increasing game sales in europe and the PC's online market is going strong. I even made a thread about it: http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=25390