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Mass Effect SecuROM scheme revealed

Bioware didn't make Bioshock. 2K Boston/2K Australia developed Bioshock. 2K Games published Bioshock.

whoops, sorry, i was thinking bio with the game name and bioware fit nicely :eek: :doh:

one of the forum posts on the mass effect forum said that EA was going to have that version of secureROM on all games from now until it gets another version. :bang: i dunno how true that is, but i dont doubt it much.

it wouldnt surprise me at all to see a worse drm scheme on Spore. it seems every highly anticipated game has some new form of protection to better screw over honest customers.
 
to the best of my knowledge it has always been within a week, usually much sooner. ...........<snip>

Bioshock is also a game that had a ton of controversy over copy protection. the protection was deemed draconian by most of the community. there was a thread in the forums of over 1200 responses, most saying that bioware had lost a customer, and/or said customer would get a crack. this crack was available a day and a half after bioshock launched.

available a day and a half after.. where do you get those figures?, it was at least 10 days until the product activation patched dll came out, then came 2+ bad cracks...

release date was august 21st 2007 (usa if i remember right) / august 24th 2007 (for europe etc..)...

25th august came the 'crack' from onehitwonder - nuked because it was bad (activation not working, not compressed)..

01st september came the lolcats crack - which was the product activation crack ... (securom was still present)..

29th september came the 1st bad crack from fairlight
1st october came the 2nd bad crack from fairlight...

thats's definately > than your 'day and a half'...

my point in pasting is that if you are going to cite information, cite it correctly.. (it was not to promote cracks)...it took me little under 5 minutes to get those dates...
 
Let's not turn this into a blow by blow account of crack releases. This is a discussion about Mass Effect and SecuROM.

Comparing the game and protection to previous games (ie BioShock) and protections is one thing but there is simply no need to debate the exact time period between an older released game and a crack. There really is no need to discuss cracks, period.

Let's stay focused.
 
okies, understood chief, i was just trying to point out the 'one week, less than one week etc..' theory isnt really applicable anymore for pretty much all the popular protections at the moment.. they're all getting tougher.. thats evident even from the gamejackal change logs / updates etc...

for this one, theres too much hype about the protection, boycotting (imho) is really pointless.. people threatened to boycott bioshock, yet it had record sales... activation every 10 days mightn't be to everyones liking, but its possible this may change, to every month, whatever.. if the game is popular people will buy it, that much is evident... and we can't really guess the outcome of what will happen, ea etc have pretty much made up their minds in their 'direction' so we will just have to wait and see...
 
okies, understood chief, i was just trying to point out the 'one week, less than one week etc..' theory isnt really applicable anymore for pretty much all the popular protections at the moment.. they're all getting tougher.. thats evident even from the gamejackal change logs / updates etc...

I'm not saying you or anyone else didn't make any valid points. The topic of cracks just doesn't really need to be discussed. They exist, of course, but we all know that.

for this one, theres too much hype about the protection, boycotting (imho) is really pointless.. people threatened to boycott bioshock, yet it had record sales... activation every 10 days mightn't be to everyones liking, but its possible this may change, to every month, whatever.. if the game is popular people will buy it, that much is evident... and we can't really guess the outcome of what will happen, ea etc have pretty much made up their minds in their 'direction' so we will just have to wait and see...

I think that people not buying the game or a more public boycott wouldn't be a bad thing.

I perfectly understand online validation and it makes total sense for an online multi-player game. I cannot accept that a single-player game with no need to connect to the net in terms of gameplay should require a connection for validation. Online validation lets them better keep track of how many times the game has been installed and on how many different systems, etc. This, obviously, couldn't be done w/o validating it online.

The problem is the repeated validation. I know some people who have a rocking internet connection when they are at college because it is free but during the summers when they are home they don't have internet access and the aren't able to pickup on any open wireless connections, either. They would be unable to play the game during the summers. No matter how it is worded or packaged a continual 10 day validation process that if interrupted will make it impossible to play the game until a net connection is available is just going too far. It's unfair to people who will spend money. Now, some will argue that this isn't on many games but give it time and it very well may. We'll start seeing "Requires an internet connection" on more and more games.

As much as I am greatly interested in the game I could pass on purchasing or playing it just to show my displeasure. The bottom line is that sales do stand out and if a lot of people don't buy the game or many people cancel a pre-order then E.A. will take a financial hit. If they lose money they might think twice about using this method in the future if not taking this method and making it even more intrusive, restrictive, and downright unfriendly to the legitimate user.

Lastly, personally, I don't care about the online validation insomuch as I have a 24/7/365 connection. I'm going to be online anyway so I can handle it. I think it's wrong but it won't really impact me. My issue is with the limited activations (3) and no way to deactivate an activation. There hasn't been enough explanation as to what happens if I install the game and then upgrade a lot of my hardware. If the system is now seen as a different system then I'd use up a second activation. I shouldn't have to worry about it. I should be able to deactivate the game thereby releasing that "used" activation, upgrade my system, then reactivate. I will have only used that single activation in the process and not had to blow 2. The whole only 3 allocated activations w/o dealing with a human being is just stupid and will cause a lot of headaches, IMHO.

Anyway, just my thoughts.
 
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Lastly, personally, I don't care about the online validation insomuch as I have a 24/7/365 connection. I'm going to be online anyway so I can handle it. I think it's wrong but it won't really impact me. My issue is with the limited activations (3) and no way to deactivate an activation.

I totally agree. They've probably done it to kill the second hand market. I've got Mass Effect on pre-order, but I'm seriously considering cancelling it because of the limited activations.

I often re-install games on a whim, so having to contact EA and prove to them I'm not a low-down stinky pirate, then wait for them to re-activate it or issue a new key is not appealing at all. At least with Microsoft and XP activation they have a 24/7 activation line so you can get up and running very quickly. I doubt EA will have anything as good or efficient in place. In fact I think Microsoft are probably less draconian over their OS activation than EA are being about Mass Effect.
 
well its not really limited is it, with bioshock you had 5 activations, if you did more than 5 you had to revoke them... i suspect this will most likely follow a similar trend... and reinstalling shouldn't change the activation... its drm after all, if its the same machine, it should be the same license...
 
well its not really limited is it, with bioshock you had 5 activations, if you did more than 5 you had to revoke them...

My understanding from the last I read in the Mass Effect forums was that once you used up your 3 allocated activations the SecuROM server would ignore/deny further activation attempts. You'd have to contact someone to deal with that. That type of thing is always fun.

i suspect this will most likely follow a similar trend... and reinstalling shouldn't change the activation... its drm after all, if its the same machine, it should be the same license...

It shouldn't be a problem from what I can tell if all you do is reinstall the game. If you replace/upgrade hardware, however, you definitely run the risk of having an issue.

One of the more... surprising things I am seeing with the use of these newer allocated activation schemes is that the companies are saying it is fine to give your disc to a friend for them to install, too. They're almost promoting it. I was shocked to see this but I figure they think that it's better than the friend either using a pirated copy from the original owner or obtaining it from elsewhere.
 
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Looks like EA have at least partly listened to their customers (probably scared by all the lost pre-orders, I imagine that retailers would be complaining to them if there were any large-scale pre-order cancellations.), as they've abandoned the every 10-day re-activation.

Still has a limited activation count though. I wish they'd be more explicit as to how you can get more activations if they run out. Even better, release a program that tells you how many activations you have left and allows you to revoke them.
 
Looks like EA have at least partly listened to their customers (probably scared by all the lost pre-orders, I imagine that retailers would be complaining to them if there were any large-scale pre-order cancellations.), as they've abandoned the every 10-day re-activation.

Could you please point me to where you saw this? I haven't seen it yet. I can find it mentioned in the DRM thread in the Mass Effect PC forum but I can't find the original official announcement.

Still has a limited activation count though. I wish they'd be more explicit as to how you can get more activations if they run out. Even better, release a program that tells you how many activations you have left and allows you to revoke them.

I may hate it but as long as they provide a tool for me to voluntarily/intentionally revoke an activation then I am happy. That is exactly what I want.

Now, an activation revocation tool might require a little more work than it seems. We don't want a tool that can just yank a legitimate activation w/o requiring the person doing the revoking providing proof that they are the actual owner of the system. In the case that all 3 activations were used up a "friend" could decide to revoke an activation on your system so that they could activate it on their own system. We've all had a moronic friend like that at some point. Somehow there would need to be a check in place to authenticate the revocation process, IMO. A password or some form of proof should be required beyond the serial key from the game discs.

Personally, I never leave my system unattended and accessible however I believe checks would need to be included in the tool.
 
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Some BioWare replies:

Stanley Woo QA Ninja said:
Joined: 17 Oct 2001
From: The BioWare Compound Posted: Friday, 09 May 2008 07:44PM
Quote: Posted 05/09/08 19:38 (GMT) by pcg.Goddess

Will i be able to change my hardware anytime i want to, on one PC, without MEPC requireing another activation?
That's the idea, though the extent to which you can change your hardware without requiring another activation has not been disclosed yet.

Quote: Will there ever be an option to remove the whole activation thing?
A revoke tool maybe?
I don't know. I can't predict the future.

Quote: Will there still be SecuRom involved in your product?
I believe it is still SecuROM, merely the 10-day re-authentication has been removed.


Stanley Woo QA Ninja said:
Joined: 17 Oct 2001
From: The BioWare Compound Posted: Friday, 09 May 2008 09:15PM
To clarify once again:

Uninstalling and reinstalling on the same PC will not use up additional activations. It is only when there is a significant change to the hardware profile that it will count as a subsequent activation.

Don Moar Lead Programmer said:
Joined: 17 Oct 2001
From: BioWare Posted: Friday, 09 May 2008 10:19PM
Quote: Posted 05/09/08 22:03 (GMT) by Ares Draxus

Bioware has no say in the copy protection schemes in their games. Only the publisher. EA says jump, Bioware asks which cliff.

Hey,

That's not correct. We didn't publish NWN ourselves and yet we were able to negotiate with Atari / Infogrames the removal of the copy protection via an update in that case.


Don M
;)
 
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NOW Game Jackal will be useless with Mass Effect :)

I can live with this. The one-time activation with Bioshock wasn't bad at all. Now people will only complain about the activation limit
 
For those like myself that do system upgrades on a somewhat regular basis, with the possibility of blowing away Windows and doing a full re-install, I am still a bit worried about the whole issue with the limited activations. If you re-install on a fresh install of Windows on the same hardware, it will STILL require a re-activation. If I swap out motherboards/processors every two years, by the end of four years I will have used up my three activations limit.

The problem really comes down to the expected life of the game for people. Many games fall into the "play it continually for a month or two, then put it on a shelf because you never want to play it again" type. For these, limited activations won't be a problem, but games you enjoy so much that you go back to them for over seven years WILL become a problem. A "bad install" may also cause issues, but it is too early to tell yet.

Games like Spore, which some plan to play on multiple computers(switching between home and work machines for example, or different computers at home) will also be an issue because there seems to be no way to remove an activation. I consider an activation as how many computers can I use the product on, not at the same time, but at different times, so I might play it on my main machine, or on a laptop, but not at the same time. It doesn't look like EA uses this approach, which is the problem.

The best method I have seen that is a valid compromise is the activation system used by Alcohol 120%. The program checks the server every now and then, and if the product has been activated on another computer, you need to sign into your account(on their web page) to switch which computer you want to be using it on. I have yet to run into a problem with it, but I don't know how often it checks online to verify what is going on with the activation. It may be tied into the "check for new versions" system, but I have yet to run into ANY issue. If I have to revoke the license for one of my machines, or if I reformat, I can just remove that machine from the list of machines I want to use it on, and I am set.
 
Jumping to the Mass Effect forums at BioWare will you find a "Mass Effect for PC System Specs, SecuROM and FAQ"


http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=628724&forum=125&sp=0

It is 66+ pages when this message is posted. :)

To summarise: The community is in state of shock and distrust.
I hope the community will do the right thing, and refuse to buy the game. I certainly will not.
If you don't agree with the practices of a publisher, don't buy the product. If you still buy it, shame on you, as it'll get worse.

Movie quote: "A line must be drawn HERE!"
 
so you wouldn't buy windows because it has a similar activation scheme?
 
mass effect has been cracked, just a fyi. no support to cracks here. :policeman:

(i am kinda happy to see any copy protection be beaten though ;) )
 
pity the cracks (both of them) are also reported as being bad.... so its not beaten...
 
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