This is just too much! What's next, installing a webcam and doing a somersault in front of it to be authenticated?

What if I want to take the game on vacation with me?

IMO this borders on defectiveness. Defectiveness by design.

Taken from a poster on destructoid:
"http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=628375&forum=125&sp=3
Mass Effect and Spore will have a limited number of activations, similar to Bioshock before it. The number of these activations will be three. Every time Securom makes your game "cease to function" because it couldn't verify the legitimacy of the game, getting the game reactivated will blow an activation. Thus, after three such events, your game is bricked. Go buy a new copy, get a new CD-key." (or call tech support, possibly)

Well I would be very VERY pissed if the system doesn't work well. If it goes smoothly, I don't care. But if it ONCE screws up and doesn't verify, I'll complain for eternity.

All I'm saying is...it's not that annoying. You'll hardly notice it.

The only reason it pisses you off is because A) it feels like an invasion of privacy, and B) it requires an internet connection which is not always present.

It's not like you have to go through a huge process every time...I assume a little window pops up, verifies quickly, and the game starts. Annoying slightly, a little intrusive, but what the hell, if it stops piracy it doesn't seem like a huge issue.


You guys can boycott the game or whatever...I want to play Mass Effect on the PC and when it comes out, I'll be playing it with little hassle.

I can see how this wouldn't be a problem for some people. It's a matter of preference. I abhor these kinds of DRM tactics though, so my options for BOTH of these games (ME & Spore) are:

1)Don't buy the game

2)Buy the game, but use a crack that will no doubt be released on or before the day of release

3)Hope one of the suits in charge grows a brain and actually decides to use Steam as a distribution method. (while steam does check your games, it does have the benefit of an 'offline mode' once they are initially activated - I REALLY hope they do this with spore)

I have no clue why they think this is going to stop piracy though. They must have no common sense. A quick look at the comments on kotaku and destructoid shows that MOST of the people that say they were considering buying it are now going to pirate it, or not buy it at all.

@BenKenobi: You didn't address the "internet required" problem. Connection failures, places you don't have internet access at (vacation)...

A matter of principle alone is enough to prevent me from buying this.

I'm just pissed off at gamers in general right now.

OK, EA sucks, we know.

OK, you want to boycott them, sure...that's fine.

But pirate the games? You're making it worse. You're not just in the background, you're not just continuing the circle. You're showing EA that there's nothing they can do to prevent piracy, which will in turn cause EA to stop bringing games to the PC.

A crack after buying the game is fine with me though, I could totally understand that if you don't have constant internet.

But yeah, that's why I love Steam. It requires internet for the initial activation, but it's fine after that, except for a few instances where it tries to update itself, fails, and then I can't play any of my games (my internet died during a storm last week).  There was probably a way around it, but of course I couldn't search online how to do it :p

@BenKenobi: I kinda agree with you, but from EA's perspective there's not much difference between boycotting and pirating. In both cases, they get no money from that user.

Other than the cases where they discover massive amount of torrents and downloads of pirated games...they do search online and check those things.

It's not that EA will be upset about the low sales (though I'm sure they will), it's that they'll notice the massive pirating.  Maybe they'll be optimistic and realize people at least like their games, but more likely is that it'll be another nail in the coffin for PC games, to EA anyway. 

if history has shown, hacker groups will always find a way to break this.

by adding this, EA is just challenging the hacker groups, and they won't win. People who crack the games have an advantage in that they are reactive to whatever security comes out. EA can only be proactive about it, but its impossible to predict the methods a crack can be produced.

This is also making it hard on the legit consumer. whats going to end up happening is pirating will create the superior version because you won't have to authenticate every 10 days. When the pirated version is easier and better for the consumer than the legit version, you're going to have a problem. an example of this is the backlash of Sony's DRMs for music tracks.  people would rather have the downloaded song than the legitimately bought song, because you couldnt do something as simple as put it on a mp3 with the legit one.

However, what EA is doing is a good thing. Obviously this method method isn't going to work, but companies should experiment with a bunch of anti-piracy models. Collect data from these experiments, they might learn something interesting.

I can understand them being curious and annoyed by piracy, but the more important thing is whether they profit from the game or not. If they do, why wouldn't they continue making PC games even with piracy?