Yesterday we brought news that the PC version of Mass Effect would have a DRM feature that would phone home every 10 days to make sure you weren’t playing with a pirated copy. It’s a sucky system and people were upset.
EA, though, listened to us bloggers and other gaming fans and has announced that when the game ships it won’t have the craptastic DRM system. There will still be some, sure, but it’ll be far less restrictive and far more fair.
Well done, EA.
Fair to whom, exactly? The people pirating the game? How does this effect people using a legitimate copy?
People with dialup, people without a regular internet connection, people on laptops at cafes… anywhere you’re not connected, you’re in violation. That sucks. There was a guy who commented at Digg who was in the navy, he and lots of others spent lots of time at sea, and he liked to keep long single-player games on his nice laptop to play. He’d be out of luck too. This just isn’t a good solution.
Good point. I guess they figured most gamers have a broadband connection at this point, but you’re definitely right.
The other problem is if the game has to “phone home” then it needs to phone home to something. What happens if in a few years the servers it needs to authenticate against aren’t online any more. The game you paid money for is then worthless.