As Verkinix noted, BioWare is most certainly owned by EA. It was big news not that long ago when they were bought by EA and there was a huge uproar on the BioWare boards after the news was announced. Many people were predicting the downfall/demise of BioWare at that time. I was skeptical, but recent events re the Mass Effect DRM crap has made me think all the doomsayers were right.

Remind me again what's invasive about not being required to have the CD in your drive and a one-time internet activation.

I'll wait.

How about having the game keyed to your hardware profile? Too much change (not yet defined by EA/BioWare) and you have to reactivate.

How about only 3 activations before you have to phone Big Brother EA and ask if they pretty please would let you install the game again?

How about the use of SecuROM 7 which can allow them to collect information about your hardware and software (and will refuse to let you have some programs installed)?

here are some of your answer.
alot of game company really don't fixed their games after they release it by thinking it's over and done with.
some game developers don't have the money to do it and their not paid to do it unlike stardock, so why should they do it? even if they did get a patch for it, it would be the usually patch" help pervent crush, help stablize the game, fix some critical bugs and problems otherwish their customer will kick their "ass" these patch shouldn't even be needed if they didn't send out unfinished games.
I buys a lot of games and I really mean A Lots. Most of the games I got their patch won't even appear for months when they was release. the game's sever is a problems causing games not able for online play.




I honors those programmers that slaves over months working on their games and really put alot of efforts on them like those here in SD, but why should we honor those game companys trying rip off our money by selling unfinished game with tons of bugs or sells part of their new games and than sell the other parts as expensions? to make things worst they keep adding junk programs to run in the background, prevent other software to run normally, causing internet and computer speed to go down. (I don't want to feel like I'm in house arrest just from buying a game)


blame on piracy? lol they need a life. who would someone spend $40-$60 dollars on a lowly rated unfinish games with junks and than get soo mad and couldn't even get a refund because the box is open? now days more people can afford internet and can simply check the game's rating on game websit like gamespot.




you make it sound like it's all black and white.
do those companies feel sad for their customers when they wasted $50 hard earn cash on their poorly rated, full of bugs, and unfinished games? if they do feel sad about it, shouldn't they at least do somethings about it and make their customers happy instead of making them runnning away. Customers are more important than those scapegoat piracy they been chasing and blaming. The companies treds are becoming more and more apparent evey year it's not suprising to see they are losing sell because they keep scaring their customers away after using those lame excrise over and over again than keep selling unfinish and partial games and never or don't do much to enhance it.




Oh before I forgot
to all those who pirated games and software please buy them after you finished testing them out and found out you like it. Hackers put virus in cracks and keygens and normally your updated virus scanner not able to pick them up, than you end up paying more lol. hackers don't normally do their service for free, there usually a string or two attach. hacker won't call themselves hackers if they aren't smart unless their wanna be hackers

another link here from the offical spore Q and A

spore.WWW Link

im glad they have gone back on this BS as i was going to cancel my pre order of

Look, if we drop the whole "righteous/thief" thing, and look at it purely from a business perspective, it makes no sense putting these copy protections on games.

You have to pay for the licence to use most copy protection systems, so that's added expense.

Those systems, no matter what they are trying to do, are based on *code*. This code has to be incorporated into your product and as such is vulnerable (just like your product) to decoding, reverse engineering etc. and thus can, without exception, be located and removed/changed. Online copy protection systems can be fooled by virtual servers, by "neutering" the code so that the program thinks its dialling home when in fact it is talking to itself, so to speak.
And so on.

If you think copy protection amounts to anything, I challenge you to go and find me a popular PC title which has not been cracked.

So from a business perspective, no, it makes no sense on using these security measures, especially because many of them degrade legitimate customer experience.

That's a rather simplistic view of it, and not entirely accurate. Sure, some people spout that pretzel logic that they're forced to pirate the game. But others just don't think this type of copy protection is acceptable for a single player game.

That aside, I wonder if that post in the link is telling the whole story. I notice it works exactly as the Mass Effect DRM, except this one for Spore doesn't mention limited activations. If it's implemented with no limits on activations, then I wouldn't have too much of a problem with it.

In my case, it doesn't matter much. I checked the original article, and then canceled my reservations for both games. I don't really care if they changed their mind and switched to a less invasive copy protection scam - the fact that they even publicly considered it is inexcusable. The only influence I have is where I choose to spend my money. I *won't* be pirating the games - I won't be playing them at all.

The difference is, the lock doesn't hurt you. However, say your car's lock included an "anti-theft feature" that occasionally (say, as often as several times a month) ate your car keys, but only if your car was locked. Would you leave your car locked as often after the first time you got stranded a couple hundred miles from home with no keys? Granted, the analogy isn't perfect, but its close enough.

You put it so perfectly.

Was definitly interested in Spore but because of this nonsense i will be yet another potential buyer lost because of this...


weird...thjis edit appeared after i wrote the second post but is only available for this one, so read the next post b4 this, atleast i didnt have to triple post but anyways,

i just wanted to add that in genreal as a consumer would u put support in a game comapny( or govt) that cares only for itselt and puts its effort into its enemies or a game company that do their best to appease you

Been monitoring this since the PC release: Mass Effect got released May 28th, the game was partially cracked (with a bug) later that day, and the full working crack was out by June 3rd. That's less than a week.

So much for EA's protection measures.

Who knows? Apparently, some of the SecuROM stuff was paired with other anti-countermeasure stuff like messing up the galaxy map but that too was easily fixed. I imagine it's some sort of company policy, having a contract with SecuROM to use their tech on any new releases. I can't imagine anyone at EA actually deciding to do things this way: it's more likely it was forced.

Thats driven by logic based on desires for badly conceptualised Bonus schemes that distort reality. The Corporate World is littered with such off the rail thinking, where personal enhancement is the driver, not Product / Company success. Corporate bonus schemes are a good thing to keep people focuced on what is important to a Company. Its the way the world turns round whether you agree with them or not. They do need to be kept in check, else a Company can lose direction.

Bonuses are a major element of the check and balance tasks of Non Executive Directors, and too often the latter dont fulfill their role in respect of these schemes. This silly DRM focus lately is a classic outcome of such badly managed schemes, where wishful thinking overtakes commonsense.

Regards
Zy