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News Dragon Age: Origins doesn't have SecuROM

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 5 May 2009.

  1. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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  2. Skiddywinks

    Skiddywinks Minimodder

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    No mention of electronically distributed version's DRM? Are their even any plans for electronic distribution?
     
  3. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    Of course there is, name one big name game that doesn't use Electronic Distribution? Hell, EA and Bioware already use steam.
     
  4. Venares

    Venares What's a Dremel?

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    Thank god. Are EA finaly seeing the light?
     
  5. Jamie

    Jamie ex-Bit-Tech code junkie

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    Piracy will be rife
     
  6. steeli

    steeli CPC Ronin

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    blue sky thinking

    I don't think there's ever going to be an ideal solution to solving piracy. Searching the well known torrent sites lists games for all major consoles as well as PC.

    Note the below are simply my thoughts on DRM, I may ramble.

    In terms of the PC, the solutoins needs to be less instrusive and they need to get rid of this idea of limited installations. I've lost installations due to hardware failure and upgrading that no "deauthorisation" tool is ever going to give me back (1 for Spore and 2 for Mass Effect). I firmly believe that the publishers (well some) believe PC gamers lock in hardware for similar lifecycles to consoles, or they're aiming for the PC world buying public. :waah:

    In almost all their rebuttals to the arguments against install limits, i've yet to see a publishers mouthpiece consider the idea that many lost authorisations are due to hardware failure or upgrade. There's this idea that we all have 3 gaming PC's we want to install the game to at the same time hence the usual 3 install limit. (I must admit to owning 2 PCs on which I play games, one is my main rig the other is my HTPC which will happily play consoley titles at 720p although these are all via steam, cept for Burnout Paradise) but I tend not to play the same game on both machines.

    In fact I've made the decision not to purchase Dark Athena due to a hard limit of 3 installs.:miffed:

    Also i've read horror stories (no way of confirming if true) of people running out of installations and not being able get another after waiting a long time on helplines.:nono::wallbash:

    Personally I miss the days of a simple cd-key and disk in drive (although no-cd were sharp looked for if performance was impacted :sigh:.
     
  7. bogie170

    bogie170 What's a Dremel?

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    All they need to do is have an individual key for online play. Any duplicate keys being used will not be allowed to play online.

    CD/DVD protection is futile. No CD/DVD cracks are freely available on the tinternet!

    IT'S SIMPLE EA!
     
  8. mHod

    mHod What's a Dremel?

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    My belief on how to prevent as much piracy as possible is to make the gane as easy to get as possible.

    Nothing i hate more than games / software that isn't avaialble via digital distribution. I loath spending time having to travel to a game store to purchase a game (something that could take me several hours).

    Sounds lazy, but then i am lazy. If I can't get a game via legal digital distro, then i'm going to feel the temptation to torrent it.

    I'm quite happy to pay for games I just wish they would be easier to get hold of.

    Please cater for the lazy gamer :)
     
  9. cyrilthefish

    cyrilthefish What's a Dremel?

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    It'd be no different with securom added

    leaving off a thing that is completely ineffective and disrupts only paying customers is a good thing!
     
  10. Vimesey

    Vimesey What's a Dremel?

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    Yeah cyrilthefish is right, its in the end just as easy to pirate whether there's securom or not. I hope some pirates will see the light though with the less garbled install thanks to lack of securom
     
  11. D-Cyph3r

    D-Cyph3r Gay for Yunosuke

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    I dont give a crap about SecureROM at this point, as long as the bloody game is actually playable on release. >:/
     
  12. impar

    impar Minimodder

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    Greetings!
    Probably the same as if it were DRMed, without the PR backlash.
     
  13. thehippoz

    thehippoz What's a Dremel?

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    securom, safedisc, all that stuff is emulated by daemontools anyway- I really don't see the point of it.. the online checks have a place imo to see if the serial is legit.. that should be good enough to stop alot of the midgets
     
  14. pendragon

    pendragon I pickle they

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    perhaps, but people like me will be A LOT more likely to actually buy a game without drm than something like say, MAss Effect (which I still have not purchased). So in essence it decreases piracy for many.

    this is great news. I'm looking forward to this game.
     
  15. dylAndroid

    dylAndroid is human?

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    This is great news! DRM has convinced me to not buy a number of games that I otherwise would have. And this is a game that I want to be able to buy.


    Also, as I've said before, piracy and financial problems are not inherently linked. An over-simplified model to explain this would be to look at the total number of sales of a game, vs. the total number of sales in an alternate reality in which piracy did not exist.

    With piracy, there will be people who won't buy the game who otherwise would have. But the increased exposure that the game gets due to its availability will also add in people who will buy the game, who otherwise would not have, without piracy. I believe that games that have multiplayer components benefit more from the exposure scenario, because people want to play with their friends.

    The comparison of which reality (with or without piracy) garners a company more game sales actually doesn't fully answer the question of whether piracy is bad. This is because different game companies will be able to compete with each other differently in each of the two realities. (i.e. game A might take away sales that would have gone to game B in a reality with piracy, but without piracy, maybe game B would have taken sales away from game A). This has to do with games & games companies' ability to compete with one another, based on how they are adapted to their environment. I.e. this will complicate a comparison of game sales for a given company from each proposed reality.

    The question of whether DRM helps or hurts companies can be looked at from a similar manner, as well as breaking that down into different levels of DRM. DRM has a direct cost on implementation, as well as impact on whether people become unwilling to buy the game, and whether other people buy the game because they cannot pirate it. It must also factor in how much implementing strict DRM on one game hurts sales of future game titles, due to hurting a company's brand.

    I buy games, music, and media. I think excessive DRM is a financially foolish move by companies. If a game company is having trouble, very likely it has problems with its product, business structure, or brand that are at the heart of its problems.
     
  16. AstralWanderer

    AstralWanderer What's a Dremel?

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    That's the case for any half-decent game.

    The concern for publishers and developers should not be on fighting piracy to the extent of disenfranchising legitimate customers, but on encouraging as many people as possible to purchase their games.

    I was going to boycott Dragon Age solely due to online activation (as I have boycotted every other game requiring it from Half Life 2 up to Mass Effect and Mysteries of Westgate) so this is good news. However I will wait until a no-CD patch is available (to disable the disk check) before purchasing.

    For publishers who want to eliminate piracy, here's a simple method - release a real stinker of a game. No-one will bother to download it then. ;)
     
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