Each activation will let you install the game an unlimited amount of times on the PC it was activated. That's how it will work for Mass Effect, so there's no worries from that part.

In Bioshock it was much worse because not only you could only activate it in just 3 PC's, but each activation only allowed you 3 installs.

How does it detect that it's the same PC? Will it still assume it's the same PC if you reinstall the OS and/or change the hardware?

I'll just crack my downloaded game and disable this "feature"... LOL @ plp that is going to buy it original.

THIS is how thinks works...      EA jerks should spent less money in anti-original-owners stuff and include their games in a STEAM-like system, steam realy helps with piracy, autentifications don't.

Ugh, I wasn't even going to respond to this level of ignorance, but it's too annoying to leave sitting there. First, I hate when people arbitrarily space out everything in their posts. It makes it impossible to read. Second, respect has to be earned, and posts like this are nowhere near helping you earn mine.

First of all, PC gaming is not in a decline. Not even close. There are many men far more knowledgeable than you who agree with me.

Did you ever notice the only people complaining about PC piracy are those who don't have their games on Steam? Kinda funny how that works. Epic hasn't bitched about it once since they joined. Of course that could also be because UT3's console sales were pathetic compared to the PC sales. In fact, they even mentioned in an interview on Gametrailers that they'd seen amazing success on Steam.

Crysis sold 1 million units in 3 months on PC as a super-high system requirements game. This is without digital distribution. That's far faster than any other game that's pushed tech has sold in the past. Which is kinda sad, because Crysis is a pretty shitty game, but that's beside the point.

NPD reported there were about 268 million games sold in 2007. About 36 million were PC games. 154 million were consoles. Let's just divide that number into fourths for the PS2, Wii, PS3, and 360. That's 38.5 million per console.

PC games, which are signifficnatly cheaper to develop than HD console games, sold almost the same amount in retail alone as each console would have individually. This isn't counting the hugely successful digital distrubtion market. Steam has more than 15 million active subscribers. People who log in often.

Many companies who don't have Steam sell their games over their websites or over other digital services like Gametap. Sins of a Solar Empire did amazing just from website sales according to their devs. Call of Duty 4 has topped sales on Steam almost every day since its release. Not to mention publishers make an estimated 2-3 times the amount per unit sold on Steam versus retail.

All this, and the US isn't even the PC's strongest market. It's nowhere near as big as Korea and Europe. Tell people in Korea that the PC market is dying and they'll just laugh at you and go play Starcraft. Oh, and you said small-name games don't have success? Take a look at audiosurf, Sam & Max, Popcap games, and the thousands of indie projects out there.

Now that we've talked about sales, let's talk about the gamers themselves. Xbox Live is the biggest place for online gaming right? Hah! Xbox Live has had 10 people even connect to it in its lifetime. Maybe 1/3 of those actually pay for a gold account to play online. Steam has more than 15 million active subscribers. Steam is by its very nature a totally free online gaming service, and it's just one in a dozen! There is Gametap, X-Fire, Gas Powered Games, EANation, Battle.net, many others for individual games, and that's not even counting 20 million plus active MMORPG accounts.

Online gaming is miniscule on consoles. No, I should say it's inconsequential compared to the PC market. PC is the place for online gaming, for competitive gaming, for FPS and RTS gaming, for indie games, and for anyone willing to use Steam to get their game out there. A well-built PC can outlast a console generation with nothing but a new graphics card every couple years. A smart PC gamer waits till a new generation starts (or a year after) to upgrade his rig.

Then you say PC gaming has no casuals. Have you never heard of Popcap games? They shipped 5 million copies of Bejeweled without a single unit showing up on NPD. The Sims? Peggle? Casual gaming thrives on PCs because they don't have high system reqs.

PC gaming provides more services, has more online gamers, and has equal sales to individual console sales. All of this with cheaper games, better (and free) online services, and digital distribution services that make XBL, PSN, and WiiWare look like jokes. It is a haven for hardcore and casual gamers, and it is a market that only grows as digital distribution and internet connectivity becomes stronger.

Dying? Please, don't spread that ignorant bs on these forums.

It detects hardware and internet connection changes. For the hardware is like this: when you activate the game on your PC, data of your PC's hardware is sent to EA, and every 10 days online authetication it'll check if the hardware is still the same (aka. if the PC is the same one). If there's a significant hardware change then your authentication is null and can't play anymore. Some guy from Bioware community forums stated that he had changed video card on his PC, and Mass Effect still authenticated his activation, so I guess it would require a big change in hardware for it to break (like change the motherboard).

I don't know how they're checking the internet connection though, but it might be just to see if the internet connection is still in the same IP.

OS reinstallation doesn't matter.

So let's say I buy the game, play it on my laptop, then buy a desktop a few months later and install the game there. From that point on, I can only upgrade my computer once before I'm left with a nice coaster saying "Mass Effect".

First of all, I'm not sure how this can be legal. Second of all, I'm not paying any money for a future coaster.

Naz, come on man. You banned me for a week and I didn't even use a personal insults like you just did.

I didn't say PC gaming was dying, I said it was in decline and that perhaps it was destined to become obsolete(which does not mean dead, it just means worse than console gaming) and I implied that it was in its twilight years, yes, but I doubt PC gaming will ever die as long as there is Blizzard and a few others. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe PC gaming is just getting warmed up. Doesn't appear that way with the new problems facing the industry going forward, but who knows. Point is, that is just my opinion. I read the article you posted with the Canadian survey, maybe it's true, who knows, but I certainly did feel those numbers were misleading when it comes to the overall direction of the gaming industry. Sure, plenty of people use the PC for gaming, but what are they playing? How many games do they buy? Anyway, that's not what I care to debate. I'm more concerned with the fact that when we both present opinions, you say "Well smarter people than you agree with me." Man, you know good and well I can link you blogs and crap from industry developers who degrade the PC gaming industry, and they'll point to NPD and other "studies" and they'll call the DLC reasoning damage control. If this was a console we wouldn't even be having this argument. It would be easily quantifiable. So, citing sources is fine, but don't tell me my opinion doesn't matter because more people agree with you. Why don't you read some of the comments on that story you linked as an example of how someone could refute it without me having to go into details here.

Speaking of Blizzard, they make up a huge portion of all that software and the MMO market. WoW is at 10 million or close to it at this point.

I love PC gaming. I do, however, find it disturbing that I can't even bring up the subject of its decline or share my opinions on it without you getting defensive, hostile, and insulting with your post man, that wasn't cool.

Pirating, System Requirements, and things like this(anti-pirating software or non-userfriendly installs) limit the market somewhat for PC games. That's a fact. Even the group trying to save computer gaming admits that in the challenges they face as PC developers.

I wish you would read my original post again and realize that it's not necessarily as hostile or as meanspirited towards PC gaming as you originally though.

When I see developers dropping the PC, or calling the Consoles "where its at" and btw these are long time developers on the PC that have historically gave the PC huge exclusives, then I can't help but feel that the PC gaming market is in decline. Certainly not dying, but it's not all rosey and happy like you seem to want to portrey it. There wouldn't need to be a group to revive computer gaming, if computer gaming was on the rise as a hot growing industry.

You don't have to respect me, I still respect you, but please don't talk to me like I'm an idiot.

Why is it people say PC gaming is in a decline? Here in Europe its at an all time high!

Does it decrement the installation counter when you uninstall it? If so, that's good, but not good enough. Let's say the hard drive dies, or the computer gets stolen, or some virus erases all my data...

Let's just say that this protection scheme sucks. If you want to accept it, go ahead, but it will get worse and worse if people keep accepting this stuff. All in the name of preventing piracy, which will occur anyway...