280°

Mass Effect PC forces draconian copy protection.

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According to Derek French, Mass Effect, scheduled to arrive on the PC this 28th, will employ the same SecuROM online activation system that was initially put into Bioshock, allowing the buyer to activate his copy of Mass Effect for 3 times before politely asking to him / her to go to hell, that is, contact the customer service "helpline" to get it reactivated. And while the game itself wouldn't require the DVD to be physically present in the drive, it goes one step further and phones home every 10 days and re-authenticates just to make sure legit customers are not the worst form of criminal scum publishers swear we are.
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enoonmai - contributor
Published: 603 days 4 hours ago | News | PC
 
 

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gamesR4fun - 603 days 5 hours ago
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1 -
sooo putting painfully restrictive copyright on this is gonna make me want to buy it when i can get a hassel free version for free?

Personally I already got this on our 360 but when it comes to this crud I tend to side with the pirates.
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Neurotoxin - 603 days 5 hours ago
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Well if Your a legitimate PC gamer you have nothing to worry about. This complaining is pointless, there is no other way to stop people pirating games, and even with this method it will probably be cracked within a week of being out.
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theox2g7 - 603 days 4 hours ago
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2.1 -
say that all you want, but bioshock was a disaster, an utter failure, They didn't expect loyal pc gamers to be that many and were probably going by sales estimates of crappy games, but in fact Bioshock was a good game with a good optimized demo, As a result, they were overwhelmed with client requests for activation, their servers crashed, legit users got shafted with an unplayable game, you don't treat your loyal paying customers like that, the game is still going to be cracked anyway and some legit users will end up getting cracked versions alongside their original copies to avoid these headaches, Good games sell very well despite piracy, the main thing is to eliminate day zero piracy which is main trouble to potential sales, the rest is ambiguous,
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Kakkoii - 603 days 4 hours ago
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2.2 -
"there is no other way to stop people pirating games"

Probably in less time than that. Which makes your statement invalid.

This hurts their sales. And has no effect on piracy whatsoever.
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Charlie2688 - 603 days 4 hours ago
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2.3 -
@Neurotoxin: let me guess you either don't have Bioschok for the PC or were one of the lucky ones, that "copy protection" system is probably THE worst possible and people actually got SO angry and frustrated with it many either cracked there legit copy to avoid it or simply got a pirated version to avoid it entirely (a common joke among forums members was that this system was SO effective it didn't even let the legit owner play it)

for example me, legit collectors edition one and yet I lost 2 activations for completely random reasons, one was encrypted as activated and yet the game asked for an activation and the second one again got encrypted and even after uninstalling or trying to deactivate it it was still registered as activated

the best and yet most simple answer you can get against pirates is simple...what Stardock did..simply ask people to buy the legit copy and hey like them you can even remove ALL kinds of copy protection software and we have ALL seen how great they are doing despite this
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DomUltra - 603 days 4 hours ago
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The debacle that was Bioshock, people still got pirated versions. This doesn't stop pirating but it sure is a great deterrent.
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Kakkoii - 603 days 2 hours ago
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How exactly is it a deterrent lol?

If anything it's an incentive. Because people will say.. Well hey.. I can get a version of the game that has no hassles... and for free!

So why should I choose the version with hassles?

It's a very bad choice for the company.

Even the most infamous copyright protection gets cracked. Called Starforce. Which f*cks up your computer if your doing something bad lol.

I don't believe there has been a single copy protection to date that hasn't been cracked.

Copy protection is actually incentive to game crackers. Because it's like the company is saying. "Oh look, you can't pirate our game. NA NA, NA BOO BOO!!!" So the crackers come in and say.. "Ya right! We can crack anything!"

So they take up the challenge and they always succeed. They enjoy the challenge because they LEARN from it. Increasing their knowledge in cracking protections. Only making it easier for them to crack future protections each time.
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MK_Red - 603 days 4 hours ago
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I don't get it. The pirated version is gonna cost about 10 or less bucks and doesn't require any of the stupid steps above. Shouldn't PC companies be trying to get customers to buy the legin copies of their games instead of pirated versions?

I have the game on 360 but if I was a PC only gamer and wanted to get Mass Effect, I'd have probably gone with the pirated copy. WTF is wrong with publishers? All those crazy security / protection for what? Alienating the customers?
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Kakkoii - 603 days 1 hour ago
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4.1 -
Since when do people in this day and age pay for physical pirated media anymore?

The internet is the main way to get pirated media now, because it doesn't cost money.

Unless of course you count the cost for the blank DVD's to burn the media to lol. Which are quite cheap these days XD.

Only place physical pirated copies have survived really is places like China and some 3rd world countries.
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MK_Red - 603 days ago
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It doesn't matter wether it's physical or from the net / downloaded. The thing is that it's cheaper and easier to play than the legit one and it's just stupid.
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Kakkoii - 602 days 21 hours ago
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Yeah I know. I was just pointing that out cause I found it odd :P.
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Scerick - 603 days 4 hours ago
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I already have it on 360, but as stated above all this does is hurt sales. I buy every single game I play. All of them. I don't pirate anything. That being said, I would pirate this game just to avoid dealing with this copy protection.

Stardock has the right idea.
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Arriemo - 603 days 4 hours ago
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6 - Agreed
If i'd knew this before then I wouldn't have pre-ordered it. I dont want to pirate ME, but what choice do I have if i wont have the internet when I leave home next month.
Online activation the first time you use it is bad enough but at least its bearable. But this is something else. Its sad that bioware think that pissing off paying customers is worth delaying pirates for a month.
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Scerick - 603 days 4 hours ago
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A month? I bet this will be cracked just as fast as any other game.
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tamd - 603 days 3 hours ago
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battle for piracy is on
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Jdoki - 603 days 3 hours ago
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Your average consumer will have little idea what anti-piracy measure the game employs and won't care, unless it becomes intrusive.

With BioShock a large number of legitimate owners of the game got frustrated by the demand on the authentication servers. In effect they couldn't play the game they had paid for. This punishes legit owners while thieves get their software for free and with out the hassle of SecuROM or whatever.

We know for a fact:

- The copy protection WILL be broken, and probably before, or with in hours of release.

- Some people have zero intention of buying the game, and will steal a copy by downloading it regardless of what anti-piracy measure is employed.

Very few people who intend to buy the game will be pushed to downloading the game just because it uses SecuROM. Anyone who claims they are downloading it because of SecuROM is just making excuses to justify their theft.

Anti-piracy measures are almost pointless. So unless a 100% secure system can be created (unlikely!) there's little or even no point devs spending money on measures which do not work.
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Lotto - 603 days 3 hours ago
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9 -
This is so stupid. Nothing pisses me of like this. This does not hurt the pirates all it hurts the honest customer. I for one wont be buying this game even tho im a great fan of Bioware. On the bright side I will save 80 dollar even tho im sure the game would have been worth more then that.
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Alexander Roy - 603 days 3 hours ago
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I am all against pirating, since good games deserve money, but this kind of copy protection is anti-consumer and utter c***, IMO.
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f789790 - 603 days 3 hours ago
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11 - I'm pirating it
I'll still buy the game legally but when I reformat my computer every six months I dont want to forget to uninstall it.
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theox2g7 - 603 days 2 hours ago
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plus this totally alienates pc gamers without an internet connection or those who have problems with their connection, the same thing happened with ut3 single player requiring internet, my roomates don't have internet yet in their apartment but they had a LAN and all wanted to buy ut3, they ended up getting orange box retail instead,

The best kind of protection is either no protection at all, or very little dvd protection which is unnoticeable and trouble-free to the legit user, What these developers have to work hard against is day zero piracy

If you want to fight all those lost sales due to piracy, target day zero, stop the game from being leaked when it is gone gold, that is where the potential sales are, anything after that is just negligible, any pirates after launch would likely never have bought the game, gold pre leaks is where most gamers cancel their pre-orders since they don't want to wait for launch date, If you can't completely stop the leak, make sure the leaked version is defective by setting up a decoy, it is way cheaper and easier to do that and it is much more efficient, Ubisoft did this with Assassin's Creed and the game is selling very well on Steam, most people got frustrated with the leaked version and pre-ordered the game, they even got people who didn't care for the game in the first place to place pre-orders thanks to the leak
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CadDad - 603 days 2 hours ago
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13 - As a power PC user...
I can honestly say that I didn't buy Bioshock because of this copy protection.

I didn't play it either, after wanting to for awhile before release. I will not be purchasing Mass Effect either, due to the copy protection it employs, even though I was looking very strongly at it.

My reasonings are as simple as my PC use habits. I format at least twice a year for freshness and to keep my CAD software running smooth.

As a avid game collector I'll often install old games to play again on a whim and I'm not interested in paying retail price for a game I get to install 3 times max.

I've always been a firm believer in protection from copying games, but I'm also a firm believer in he who holds the retail disk, should have unlimited use of said disk, be it game, movie, or other. If I own something, I want to own it.

-1 for sales, and i was really looking forward to it, since I've heard nothing but good things from my 360 owning friends.

-CadDad
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hay - 603 days 2 hours ago
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I'll give Mass Effet one week. It'll be cracked in no time so what's the point? I'm not much into piracy and would buy the game if it would be good enough but honestly, I hate SecuROM, online activations and 3 times install. As a customer, would love to install the game and play without screwing around. It's just dumb for me. You may not agree with me and... Who cares.
It'll be pirated fast. Really fast. Lightning fast.
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eborring - 603 days ago
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This sounds stupid but I buy the game then download the illegal version. I do feel guilty downloading stuff and I think you should support companies that make good products. But I don't have the patience to sit through the headaches that are DRM because they decide to knee-cap me because I was nice enough to buy it.

edit: @hay, i bet it is a lot sooner than a week. my experience has been that games are cracked and released before the official street date.
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Solotov - 602 days 23 hours ago
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That's just the price PC gamers have to pay for the widespread piracy.
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potenquatro - 602 days 22 hours ago
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my 8600(soon to be 8800) can run bioshock but not as good as xbox so i never knew it was that bad on pc. what to do with those pirates? what to do. what to do. d2d and steam give games for free for a limited time and very easy to download,if u like it u buy it.does anybody know if thats been working out?
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skimming - 602 days 21 hours ago
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18 - need more piracy prevention
Don't know why this is considered "Draconian." Most non-game based commercial software only allows you to install on one computer. With this one, you can install on three computers.

I think these guys deserve the money. Personally, I would have priced these games much lower $25 or so as to make it an impulse buy. With the games at $40 - $50, you may be making more money per unit but higher likelihood of piracy and lower likelihood of building a larger install/fan/repeat business base.

If going for $50 or so then at least include some tangible goodie like a doll or something.
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