Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Hah – got you! You totally thought this was going to be some 8,000 word rant against Sony’s widely-loathed DRM, didn’t you? Oh, there’s enough of them on the internet already – I’m quite happy to say limited activations are horrible and stupid and everyone involved should know better, and leave it at that. This sorta-RPG webgame game goes further, pitching the devil-DRM as the ULTIMATE EVIL in a world also populated by the villainous likes of the RIAA and Disney Corp. Or so Brain Chef pretends to be, anyway. It’s fooled a fair few sites with its devious subterfuge… Below: mild annoyance.
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A spot of interesting news regarding Dragon Age: Origins. Bioware and EA have announced that the game will be coming out without Securom DRM, or any other form, beyond an old-fashioned disc check before loading. This means the old-skool fantasy RPG won’t require any online authentication at all, and thus will have no install limits. Another sign of EA’s changing mind about game protection.

Blues News reports the story, picked up via the official Dragon Age forums, where Community Coordinator (come on community, follow me in groups of four) Chris Priestly describes the announcement as “good news.”

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Cleverman make cleverthinks! Fresh from the Web 2.0 expo earlier this month is this entertaining and educating half-hour talk with Will Wright about everything including but not limited to his career and games to date, what’s next, lessons learned from Second Life, the intersect between games and reality and -ooh missus – Spore’s controversial DRM and the business considerations around it: “These people have paid money for a game, and you don’t want to be treating them basically as criminals”. On Spore itself, he observes that he wanted it to be almost more of a toy than a game per se – something else for the game’s many critics to chew on, then.

Also especially salient is an observation that gamers are basically narcissitic – “the more you can make the game about that person, the more interested, the more emotionally involved they will get.” A theme which, clearly, has run through a number of his games. LET THE MAN SPEAK.
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IGN’s got a remarkably long Q&A up with some anonymous mouthpiece of the Rockstar hivemind, specifically detailing all the various copy protections and mandatory login guff next week’s murder simulator will require to install and run. There will, it seems, be quite a few barriers between you and your hooker-killing; the internet will not be happy.
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I know this probably sounds like paranoia, but sometimes I wonder if there’s some people predisposed to dislike the forthcoming Fallout 3. Yes, I realise what you’re thinking: But this is from Bethesda, who make those incredibly popular Elder Scrolls games, and the Fallout series is excellent and deserves a new game from a stand-out development team. But despite all this, my gut just tells me that there’s a dissenting voice, quiet as it might be, out there. While I’m here, another prediction: I think DRM will soon become a hot-button issue amongst PC gamers. Time will prove this. I laugh to think what would happen if you combined the two topics, were my instincts to prove correct.

Wait, what’s this?

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Time to stick my hand into the angry beehive again… The EA/Spore/DRM issue isn’t likely to go away any time soon. In a funny sort of way, the ridiculous DRM on Spore might well turn out to be a good thing for gamers – like it or not, EA’s weight in the industry means they’re trend-setters to some degree. That a company so big attempted the sort of draconian copy-protection that only smaller publishers had hithero dabbled in, and crucially they now seem to realise it was a mistake, may well set a positive precedent for everyone. So, while I initially decried the mass trolling of Amazon reviews, I have to agree now that a game as high-profile as Spore was perhaps an ideal object for protest. I’d still much prefer it was gone about in a smarter way than fevered screaming, though.

Though EA aren’t behaving in terribly gentlemanly fashion towards DRM-complaint posts on their forums, they are gradually backing down from some of the restrictions they unfairly placed upon Spore installs, and it looks like that trend’s set to continue.
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The good news is this: EA are taking a big step back on Spore’s DRM. From three installs ever and one account per copy of the game, they’re switching to as many re-installs as you want on a maximum of five computers, with a patch for multiple accounts for one machine on the way. That’s a big change of heart. We hinted that there might have been a change from three to five installs last week. This weekend the LA Times reported that EA have “apologised” to customers for the digital restrictions, when issuing their reprise. They report EA Games’ President Frank Gibeau saying,

“We’ve received complaints from a lot of customers who we recognize and respect. We need to adapt our policy to accommodate our legitimate consumers.”

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I hadn’t tried activating Spore more than three times, but reader roBurky did. It happened like this:

roBurky: EA apparently changed the Spore DRM from 3 to 5 initial activations without telling anyone.
Jim: did you discover this yourself?
roBurky: Yeh. I installed on three computers, then contacted support to get more ready for when I’d need them
roBurky: Was told I still had two left. I pointed out that their support page said we only got three, and they thanked me for pointing it out and said they’d update it.
Jim: huh

Anyone else made the same discovery? (Extended RPS Spore discussion due next week!)

We briefly mentioned Good Old Games yesterday, but if you’ve not heard of it then… well, suffice to say, if you’re the kind of fellow who reads this site regularly, then GoG’s mooted catalogue of classic game downloads is going to make you a very excited wee PCophile.

The retrocentric digi-store, offering DRM-free, cheapie downloads of the likes of Fallout, Sacrifice and Operation Flashpoint, isn’t starting up until September, but we thought we’d better chuck a few questions about the site’s origins and intentions at the folks behind it – CD Projekt, who you’re probably most familiar with for last year’s divisive RPG The Witcher. Now, they’re potential saviours of olden games…
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Gosh, all that hoo-hah about Bioshock’s limited number of installations and activation process seems like a long time ago, but I suspect it’s still an open wound for some folk. A vocal portion of Bioshock’s players were angry – “Ken Levine personally kicked my girlfriend to death” angry. Will they be any less angry now 2K’s lightened its infamously ruthless DRM (as promised many moons ago)?

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