Hello people. This time I decided to cover a thing that doesn't effect you but I think goes against most of our laws as far as ethics go. The specific topic I am talking about is Ditital Rights Management.
Back in the day games and music used no digitial rights manangement to protect against piracy and were respectable to their customer. I am not sure if any of you remember but last year a certain topic of debate came up surrounding the release of Bioshock. For the first time in gaming history a game had limited activations. That is right reader, you can only activate a certain game x amount of times and then it is useless. In the very least after seeing how if effected sales the 2k Boston cut off the Digital Rights management on it for activation limits and made it as many as you want like a normal game.
All was fine in the gaming world until EA, a company that is leading pc gaming into the ground thanks to their draconian Digital Rights Management entitled securom, decided to eat up Bioware. Bioware was one of the most respectable dev studios in the world with games like Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale. Around the end of last year their latest game entitled Mass Effect hit the 360 before pc first, a first in Biowares history. That I am fine with, however I am not fine with what was to follow. In the months following EA announced it would be releasing a pc version months later, something I am used to at this point with recent console games and don't really care about that, but this game would be carrying a limit of 3 activations just like Bioshock! Except for the fact that if you ran out you have to call customer support. If you call customer support you have to pay for the phone call on top of waiting while pirates are playing the game hassle free. 2k Boston abandoned this DRM because they saw how much it effected the customer in such a way that you are paying full price for a game but are only limited in your activations?
Let me give you a little technical information on this DRM called securom. When you install a game with Securom on it onto your computer securom installs drivers on your computer that monitor it and send information to a company to see if you are a pirate. So an honest customer is treated like a pirate... Hm, this isn't very good is it? By the way, you can't remove securom from your computer even if you uninstall the game, you have to get a special program from the net to get rid of it. It gets better by if it detects a program with imaging software like Alcohol 120 it can screw up your computer and completely fry your DVD drive or in rare cases your hd, this is all in EA's definition of protecting their product. They are doing this for 2 reasons.
One, they want to stop pirating since it kills pc gaming and they are entitled to try things as long as it doesn't kill your computer or things of the sort. They keep on telling you that pirating is the reason for poor sales. I say **** they just need an excuse. Did you know the DS lost a billion dollars last year through piracy? Do you see Nintendo crying about game sale losses? No, they except the fact that piracy happens and cannot be prevented as a whole, however protecting their product is first priority. The thing these people fail to realize is Bioshock was supposed to be crack proof, I saw cracks a week before release. What I am getting at is piracy does happen and cannot be controlled by DRM that makes the customers who support your damn product and pay for the game while pirates can get away with getting the better version of the game, this is real fair...
Second, EA simply wants control over their games. Ever since the dawn of time people have wanted to control over others in some way even if small. This may not seem like a lot but think of it this way, they are effectively controlling how many times you can distribute a game you own and payed with your hard owned money. I payed to use the game and I am not gonna be limited by the number of times I want to put a game on my computer. EA has proven that yet again, they would rather have control over a market then listen and respect its customers. People like this make me sick.
Let me take a page out of Bethesda's, Good old Games, Stardock and my beloved id softwares book for a moment. These developers/publishers have NO digital rights management on any of their games, NONE. Bethesda released a little game called Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I am sure most of you know the game that was RPG of the year of 2006 and topped the charts, a DRM free game hits the top of the charts and does great regardless of piracy. Then we have good old games which is releasing its entire catalogue of old games with no DRM, those are selling like hotcakes. Stardock just this year released Sins of a Solar Empire, it sold 310k copies and maintained its position as best selling game for about 3 weeks. Finally, we had id software who released megahits like Doom and Quake with NO DRM. In fact they gave you about 1/4 of the game and told you go wild with it and if you like it buy it and if not then thanks for trying our product. Stardock did a similar thing with Sins of a Solar Empire, they released the game with no drm and told you to pass it around and basically pirate it and if you like it then buy it and if not thanks for looking. The singleplayer has no drm while the multi you can register your product to get updates and multiplayer. This is a system that is fair and works, the reason these are very successful is these people respect their customer and are fair, unlike EA.
Now by this you may think I am a pirate or I just don't like DRM. You happen to be wrong on both counts. I hate pirating and think it is doing more bad then good, what I think about the matter is you can put DRM on your product as long as the thing is fair. I don't care about Steam or CD-keys as those aren't intrusive. A cd-key is a one time thing then it leaves you alone and will not screw up your computer. Now steam, this was a topic of great debate when it came out since you have to be online to play. I think it is fair since Valve respects the customer and does these to protect their product with honest customers in mind, they don't **** the paying person just because they don't want idiots to pirate it. Protecting your product is fine, going over that border and making the customer who wants to pay and support your product be treated like a criminal is not.
In closing I want to say that Digital Rights Management was fine until EA decided to step up the game and release all their new pc games with it. If this continues I am gonna quit buying EA games all together. This new breed of Securom is a joke and should be treated like Windows Live was, boycotted until the company gets the idea through their head that we aren't paying for a broken/restrictive product. If I wanted something restrictive I would get a console, pc gaming has always been about freedom and I will be damned if you start limiting that freedom because you are tightwads. If I need to give anymore reason as to why EA needs to be stopped I think you need to think about this.