Mass Effect & Spore: Piracy Preventing Measures
Mass Effect & Spore: Piracy Preventing Measures
Many gamers out there were not really pleased last year by the fact that they were only allowed to activate their copy of "Bioshock" on the PC three times before having to contact the support to reactivate it, all thanks to the implemented SecuROM online activation system which was designed to prevent privacy. A big issue nowadays, which made Crytek announce very recently that they would stop developing PC-only games and which also 'caused Iron Lore Entertainment to shut down. And since a long time the following question is up: Will security measures like SecuROM really help or will they actually be more threatening to the popularity of the games than they could ever be to the issue of piracy?
We are probably about to find out very soon, because the security measures will now apparently even go further. In the upcoming pc-version of XBox360 smash-hit "Mass Effect", for example, the SecuROM-system will be implemented again, but its
[...] security goes one step further [...] by dialing in every five to ten days to double check that your current CD Key and computer info matches the data that was submitted when you first activated the game.
Derek French from developer Bioware confirms that the same system will also take effect with upcoming sandbox-game "Spore" in the community forum:
Yes, EA is ready for us and getting ready for Spore, which will use the same system. [...] For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play.
What do you global gamers think about that? I mean: The internet access should not be the big problem. Everyone with a pc decent enough to run "Mass Effect" or "Spore" on it will have internet access anyway. But still: I always bought my games legally, and having to encounter such security measures kind of makes me feel like the publishers and developers say: "Hey, I know you just spent several bucks on our game, but: that still doesn't mean that we trust you." I will most probably still buy the games, but it's the same awkward feeling I get when I buy a DVD and have to watch an "anti-piracy"-spot at the beginning which I can't even skip.
Is "customer-friendly" simply not an option anymore in the move against piracy?
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That's a very good question, I personally believe that all these attempts of copy-protection are futile, every piece of code that can be written, can also be removed, and the better you try to hide, encrypt and obfuscate the code, the more hackers will rise to the challenge.
What it really does is anger all the buyers that don't use the cracked version.
Ok, that's the one side of the argument, the other is that most of the uproar is just hot air, the article states that you could activate Bioshock 3 times, but I believe it was 5 times, and it's really a non-issue, I installed the game and deinstalled it about 6-8 Weeks later, it's a single player game, once you are through, you're done anyway. there is no need to reinstall it every few month on a completely new computer. (People who have to reinstall their Windows 5 times in the short time they need to play through Bioshock have bigger problems anyway).
And as Knurrunkulus said, the number of Gaming-PCs which aren't online is negligible.
My personal point of view is this: I don't like it, I don't like anything that is cutting into my personal freedom, but at the same time I have to acknowledge that Piracy is the biggest reason for the PC slowly dying as a gaming-platform, so if clicking on a connect button would save my favorite platform I would be all for it, but as I stated in the first sentence, it's a futile attempt, because the PC is an open system.
I don't think that piracy is the biggest threat to computer games, because there has always been piracy, and computer games have become more and more.
I buy most games I play, these are the games which I want to play more than once, Civ 4 for example, or for multiplayer like WOW. For short singleplayer stuff, I have found a third solution. Game Rental Stores. I don't know if this is usual in the US, but in Germany you can lend games for a few Euros a day. And if I need such games, I just get them for a weekend, and play them, and give them back.
I don't know how the "Install only 5 Times" policy of Bioshock works with these rental shops, though.
Of course you could copy these games as well, but after a week, they just take a lot of space on your hard drive, so what's the point?
"I don't think that piracy is the biggest threat to computer games, because there has always been piracy, and computer games have become more and more."
I see your logic, but keep in mind that back in the days you could develop a good C64 title in a few good coding weeks all on your own, or even a game like the first Simon the sorcerer was developed by only one person.
But nowadays it takes 10-100 Million Dollars to develop a AAA-title like Assassins Creed, Starcraft 2, GTAIV and so on, so it's very different.
With a C64 Game it didn't really matter if 100.000 people just copied your game, if only 1000 people bought it, you made some good cash, if something similar happens today, companies loose their funding for a next title, or switch as so many other developers to consoles, where piracy is not as big an issue.
stupid, crackers will do their thing anymway, so this mess will drive just more people towards black copies
why more? More effort, less people, I would say.
In short: Every protection has been disabled so far. I'm no cracker, but i guess the crackers only need to patch away this functionality and thats it. Or even easier: routing the request not into the net, but on the local machine.
I think u cannot secure singleplayergames if they should be offline playable. The only working system is having an account (like in MP games) which enables necessary functions.
I guess the developers should try to implement addicting features, which are only available for account-users (like scores in Audiosurf - this game is so much more fun when ur able to compete against global hiscores), so buying is the only option to get the full value.
Actually it wasn't the copy-protection SecuRom to blame when Bioshock launched. Take2 simply didn't except such a popularity of their title on the PC, so that servers were simply overloaded with users trying to register the genuity of their copy.
As well, it is really true that every form of copy protection can be broken - it's only a matter of time and money.
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