Electronic Arts is trying to make things right again with the release of the SecuROM de-authorization tool.
PC gamers probably know all too well the pains caused by SecuROM copy protection. EA’s game management system with SecuROM places a limit on its games to be installed on up to five computers to play the game.
While good in theory, in practice this just caused headaches for gamers who legitimately purchased the game. To ease their pain, EA has now released a tool that will manage the authorizations of each of the SecuROM’s protected games.
“If your EA PC game was released after May 2008 and has a machine authorization limit, you can now manage your computer authorizations using EA De-Authorization Tools!” EA released.
Gamers have the option to download a tool that will scan a user’s computer for any applicable games to de-authorize, or the user may choose to selectively download tools specific to each game.
The games affected are:
- Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
- Crysis Warhead
- Dead Space
- FIFA Manager 09
- FIFA Soccer 09
- Littlest Pet Shop
- The Lord of the Rings: Conquest
- Mass Effect
- Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
- Mirror's Edge
- MySims
- Need for Speed: Undercover
- NHL 09
- Spore
- Spore Creature Creator
- The Sims 2: Apartment Life
- The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff
- The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff
With new developments in game DRM from Microsoft, Valve and Stardock, perhaps life will get easier for PC gamers who buy their games.
I absolutely love PC gaming but there is no way to stop piracy. That may be a downfall to PC gaming. But if businesses have more deals for LAN goers then they will pay. A regular game that costs 50 bucks, if they had a LAN special of like 3 copies for 100 bucks I'd be all for it. Well, if the game was worth it. Its better than people illegally downloading it and using a keygen. Plus, customers would feel better about getting a sweet deal and would probably buy from the publisher again. Publisher makes some money at least to continue its survival.
mass effect is ea drm free on steam... but still has the install steam thing which you may not like, or the lack of a physical copy..but it gets the job done nonetheless
this is def a move in the right direction, now we know ea falls into peer pressure. once other companies find a better drm solution, they will follow. hopefully they will rid of drm from any ea game after sims 3
UGH! I hate SUCKuROM!
Life is good - so long you use iso's from release groups for the big titles. I never unpacked my farcry2 collectors ed to play it - I only used the tshirt and the map, and a nice simple iso without drm for actual gameplay. It's a bit of a hazzle just to keep your system relatively junkfree though.
Gazz
I know of many who legally purchase games only to go home and download them off the net so they don't have to deal with the DRM...
I did that with Far Cry 2 and NBA 2k9. Steam was a pain in the @ss. Problem is that a lot of these pirated versions have trojans in there. Far Cry gave me some browser hijacker that cost me 8 hours to reformat and reinstall all my programs. Not worth the pain.
I don't like sports very much, so I don't like sports games very much. But my best friend has studied sports at the university, and he's a huge fan of german soccer and nba. He plays those nba games, and he probably pays for some of them. And a collegue of mine bought nfl or something for his kid last xmas, so there are a few customers for these kinds of games. They've got better replay value than most of the games on the marked, so although their initial thrill is.... questionable their long term impression isn't any worse. That might be good actually. A game like Oblivion or Dark Messiah you only play thru once, maybe twice. That's it. My friend still plays nba 2007 (he didn't like the newer ones)....