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Forums - PC Discussion - So why do people hate the dreaded Spore DRM (or any DRM) again?

Final-Fan on 13 September 2008
twesterm said:
greenmedic88 said:
Conroy said:
With this interface, I can't tell whether to click on the "quote" button above or below the post I'm trying to reply to without scrolling to the top or bottom of the page. Yuck.

twesterm said:
Wow, how my little thread has grown (now of I only had the time read the 70 or so replies I've missed)!

Anyways, copy protection was a huge problem in 1994, so much so that they had something even worse than the dreade DRM.

Every time you started your game they made you look up a specific page, paragraph, and character in the manuel or ask you some very specific question about something in the manual.

That was far worse than any DRM since this was in the days before the internet and you couldn't just look it up.  If you lost your manual you were screwed.
Oh I remember those days.. I would actually prefer that kind of copy protection to this DRM.

1) Nothing extra gets installed onto my machine
2) I can do whatever I want to my machine and the game will still run
3) I don't have to be online to install the game.  (Does SecuROM require you to be online to install or play? I haven't received my copy yet)
4) I don't have to worry about the company shutting down or no longer supporting the game.

Actually, if it's going to require you to be online anyway, why don't they just require a login using a cd key to play the game?  This seems more reasonable and less intrusive to me.
I suspect it's because the real reason for the limited install form of DRM has less to do with preventing piracy, and more to do with preventing the game from being loaned, shared, traded, sold, given away or anything that could potentially prevent another legitimate sale.

I'm beginning to think that the anti-piracy excuse is a more or less a screen to conceal this intent.
You "loaning" the game without uninstalling it is piracy and that is what DRM is made to stop.  Everyone knows it isn't going to stop people from cracking the DRM and downloading it.

Requiring the disk to be in the drive would stop that problem much less intrusively, and that doesn't address the question of the install limit doing nothing about the problem. 

And BTW, I've installed Diablo II and Starcraft four times each on four computers and I wouldn't be surprised if I do it again.  Will EA still have those extra activations ready if I call their number (for a FEE) in a decade?

[edit:  I think they should be legally responsible to make additional activations available for eternity and for free to legitimate owners for as long as the company exists.  That might dampen these sudden hardons for install limits.]



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IllegalPaladin on 13 September 2008
Zuhyc said:

If Red Alert 3 also does this, I'm not going to buy it. Fuck EA.

 

You might want to hold off then. They said that they'll be making some changes with Red Alert 3, one of them being 5 installs instead of 3 (is that supposed to be THAT much better?).



Nickelbackro on 13 September 2008

This is just horrid, I cannot believe this, I still run games like Wolfenstein 3D in Dos. 3 computers (or OS reinstalls) down the road i don't have a game anymore. It's like every form of protectionism in software, it only hurts legal owners.

I bet 5 years down the road "normal" owners of this game are gonna have to learn to apply illegal patches to the game and this will get them introduced to software piracy which will hurt the industry more than if they released a normal locked to original CD type of installer.

For example, I love to support music artists, but due to DRM on downloadable MP3's I will never download an MP3 legally (among other reasons) so I rip from CD to MP3 that way I have MP3's and I support the artists. If they start putting DRM on music CD's (like they already tried to do) and stop MP3 ripping software, guess what, i will no longer support the music industry at all, I have other sources for that media that I'm sure your all aware of.



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