Mass Effect, Spore PC to require online validation

PC News | Gamers forced to regularly validate their game.

The Mass Effect community forums were recently home to some interesting news in regards to the PC version of the top-selling title Mass Effect.

BioWare Technical Producer, Derek French, has publicly stated on the forum that the PC versions of Mass Effect and Spore will make use of a copy protection system which will require players to validate their game online every ten days in order to continue playing.

French explained that "after the first activation, SecuROM requires that [Mass Effect] re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned)."

Basically, it boils down to the fact that if you are not online at some point during the ten day countdown, the game will cease to work until it gets reconnected with the server. French further explained"...an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after."

The check is run when users activate the game's executable file, with the first re-check coming within "5 days remaining in the 10 day window," giving players ample to time to make a connection to the server.

Many gamers in the past have vehemently opposed the idea since popular games like Half-Life 2 and BioShock have taken up the idea in recent times. According to French, Maxis' highly-anticipated creature creation game Spore will also use the same online validation scheme as Mass Effect: "[Electronic Arts] is ready for us and getting ready for Spore, which will use the same system."

Related Mass Effect Content

New DLC available for Mass Effect PC
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Mass Effect Review
29 Jun, 2008 Equally effective on the PC?

BioWare backs down on Mass Effect
10 May, 2008 Upcoming PC game will no longer re-check authentication every 10 days.

18 Comments

drinniol

4 years ago

And HL2 and Bioshock are testaments to the effectiveness of this system! They went a whole day or so before being cracked.

ZNMS

4 years ago

Quote

Basically, it boils down to the fact that if you are not online at some point during the ten day countdown, the game will cease to work until it gets reconnected with the server.

I think I love my Xbox 360 just that little bit more. Sure, this is helping protect the companies involved, Electronic Arts, BioWare and Maxis from piracy. But, in no way is this helping all the honest and loyal customers who are going to legally purchase Mass Effect or Spore. This is just another hurdle slowly down the consumer from enjoying and playing the game.

A13x

4 years ago

How utterly ridiculous.

Paying customers will have to put up with this tripe, renewing license keys every 10 days, while the pirates will have it free of this inconvenience within the first week of release.

bradc1988

4 years ago

drinniol wrote

And HL2 and Bioshock are testaments to the effectiveness of this system! They went a whole day or so before being cracked.

Bioshock wasn't cracked for about 7-8 days iirc.

Since crackers are getting more intimate with SecuROM this new protection probably won't take too long this time around.

Mr Waffle

4 years ago

That slushy sound is the 10 years of respect I've gained for Bioware, built up by their hard work on quality titles, flushed down the toilet. Nice work, Bioware. I hope EA's Suits are happy.

Passa

4 years ago

Boo hoo, 2K f*cked over their customers to prevent the product being pirated for 7-8 days.

I already said this elsewhere, but I'll go over it again.. this sort of garbage is why PC gaming is dying. The average consumer doesn't want to be bothered by re-authentication of their game every 10 days.. that's ridiculous. They have two choices, buy the game on a console where it is virtually guaranteed to run without performance issues or problems, or get it on the PC where they have to deal with performance settings and hardware incompatibilities, driver versions etc etc.. and copy protection. On a game they have forked out $$$ for.

Look at what happened to music - labels lopped on crazy copy protection, limiting you to CD players and other craziness, and they were rewarded with ever increasing piracy rates. Consumers don't want to be treated as thieves - you should be rewarding those who chose not to pirate your creation.

Galactic Civilizations is a good example. The developers didn't treat their faithful customers as thieves, conversely giving them access to exclusive updates and content. Sins of a Solar Empire also fits here, it charted number one on the US charts for, what, two weeks? For a game with niche appeal, that's pretty awesome. For a game with niche appeal and no copy protection, that's incredible. Why aren't publishers looking at this and realising that copy protection won't help their cause?

The second a game is cracked - it's going to be pirated just as much as a game without protection. The only game in recent time I can remember not getting cracked is Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (it was cracked six months later or so, took so long since it had StarForce). Chaos Theory.. man that **** me hard. I own the game, legal copy, yet I struggled to get it working from the moment I installed it. Why was I put through that as a paying customer of the game?

(Almost done ranting now, I swear).. I really think publishers have the wrong idea in general about PC games - multiple PC installs should be allowed. I can play co-op/multiplayer whatever with my brother when I only have one copy of the game on 360. For PC, this isn't a possibility, I have to crack my own legal game to play local multiplayer with him. Do publishers really expect us to buy a copy each?

*sigh*

Marka

4 years ago

Not that his problem for me becuase I allread have the 360 version. But all this will do is server as a Pointless anoyance to real customers. I was one of those who got burn when I came home after spending $80 on my purchase of Bioshock PC only to run into an activation process disaster and was not able to play my game at all for several days.

As much as I dislike pirates lets face it, those who want to pirate Mass Effect will still pirate it. There will most likely be a fix before 24 Hours of the games release and won't have to deal with these anoyances.

Skiller

4 years ago

If I buy either I'm installing the pirate version, installing the retail version of bioshock was the biggest mistake I've ever made in gaming, I was unable to play it for nearly a week since the damn piracy protection didn't even let it work with a legit version.

Evan

4 years ago

Passa wrote

Boo hoo, 2K f*cked over their customers to prevent the product being pirated for 7-8 days.

A significant chunk of revenue comes from sales in the first few weeks. From their perspective, the payoff of those extra seven days significantly outweighed the investment in copy protection.

The reality is that this is the future for PC games - piracy really is hurting the indusry to the point now where console development is just that much more attractive. If big budget games are going to remain on the PC, they're all going to be like this within the next five to ten years.

FWIW, I was predicting this about five years ago. Quake 3 did it originally, and WoW validated the model - if you can validate online somehow and force people to pay you by mandating an online component, you can actually make big bucks and a good return on the development investment.

What's happening at the moment will eventually mutate into mandatory online content, making the 'copy protection' a little less intrusive - the approach they're using is still fairly simplistic (as if you remove it, you don't lose any value in the game), but they'll get better at. Eventually, every big budget game will be 'online' somehow - it won't be optional, as the game will be missing core features if you aren't online.

Lord Haart

4 years ago

ARGH.

I thought that the blistering sales of Sins of a Solar Empire might have shown the game development world that copy protection is a farce, but it seems I was wrong.

Honestly, I doubt it will be long before people crack this method. Hopefully people will just buy the game because they value it; I tend to do that. Copy Protection is a reason not to buy the game as it's invasive, irritating, and has a tendency to cause problems.

So while I understand the motives here, I just can't help but think, there has to be a better way.

Benza

4 years ago

Evan wrote

The reality is that this is the future for PC games - piracy really is hurting the indusry to the point now where console development is just that much more attractive. If big budget games are going to remain on the PC, they're all going to be like this within the next five to ten years.

Honestly I want to know what percentage of people arn't buying games because they are pirrating them compared to what pecentage of people arn't buying them because they're just asking too much from computers?

mipac

4 years ago

Fortunately I am back in Sydney and have an ADSL2+ connection, but while I was in Lismore last year our apartment had no internet connection, so you can imagine the frustration I had when I got home with Bioshock on PC and I couldn't even play the game.

Internet only activation is terrible, if you are going to make internet activation a requirement, then at least have the option of letting the customer phone a customer support line and activate their unique code over the phone.

Fly

4 years ago

Evan wrote

Passa wrote

Boo hoo, 2K f*cked over their customers to prevent the product being pirated for 7-8 days.

A significant chunk of revenue comes from sales in the first few weeks. From their perspective, the payoff of those extra seven days significantly outweighed the investment in copy protection.

Until the average consumer now grows up with the hatred for the concept and purposely attempts to pirate the game with such a system simply because if the company are treating you like a criminal you may as well act like a criminal instead of feeding them money to stick it up them next time again and again. Already consumers "in the know" are opting to import titles instead of buying locally due to the pricing so the companies can't exactly increase the checks on legitimacy without further angering people to take these kinds of approaches where it costs more, is slower and now I can't even play 2 weeks before someone going "YOU THIEF!!... oh wait legit our bad" repeatedly.

It's a catch 22, you don't put it in and the consumers are happy since they aren't treated like filth but pirates have free reign over the concept, you add it in and you then anger the consumer base (while not exactly denting sales since people still want the games) and pirates have to work a little bit (thus also gaining experience) in cracking the protection. Either way both sides of the fence lose really.

Quote

FWIW, I was predicting this about five years ago. Quake 3 did it originally, and WoW validated the model - if you can validate online somehow and force people to pay you by mandating an online component, you can actually make big bucks and a good return on the development investment.

The day that every PC game with an online component (such as multiplayer) which needs constant validation or payment of some kind is the day that developers for PC will promptly shoot themselves in the foot and turn PC gaming into elitist entertainment. As we effectively live off the companies to provide the entertainment so to do they effectively live of the consumers patience with their practices, there is a line and if they are close to crossing that already there simply won't be a large enough market willing to take the risk to justify some of the productions within the next decade.

I do not see why this is limited to simply PC though. Eventually we are going to get PC's which can rival the potential of the current batch of consoles and at that same time we'll then have pirated copies of the console games circulating.

These companies have to be very careful of how much straw they put on the camels back I think.

Evan

4 years ago

Fly wrote

I'll respond more fully later, but that day's already come and gone with no fanfare whatsoever. Quake 3 required serial key server-side validation to play online, and it worked - id made a lot of money off Quake 3. WoW also requires server-side validation to play online. So does Half Life and Portal on the PC.

My point, which I may not have made clear enough, is that there are good ways and bad ways of getting this past consumers. The games that have done this well haven't even really popped up on gamer's radars. It's only the heavy-handed approaches that stir controversy.

Jarrod

4 years ago

Bethesda avoided using any form of piracy protection what-so-ever on Oblivion because they figured it was useless and the game would sell phenominally anyway.

They were right. Piracy Protection, in my eyes, just shows publisher insecurities and an insult to the honest buyer.

Do they really think those intent on pirating the game will buy it? No, they will just wait until it is pirated, which it will be.

mikezilla2

4 years ago

what if said user dos not have the internet ? did they ever think of that ?

Passa

4 years ago

Quote

The protection will also only allow the game to be installed three times.

I think this is missing from your article.

Yup, final nail in the coffin.

(source)

Lord Haart

4 years ago

Benza wrote

The problem isn't the number of games that get pirated, so much as the perception of piracy by developers. I attended a gaming seminar at UWA in Perth last night, where a few people from the gaming industry were present. What they had to say was basically that singleplayer PC games are dead, at least for their company. And the fact is that unless a game is really good, piracy is a very tempting option for many people.

Think of it this way - it costs $750 to make a game (for arguments sake). You sell it for $1. Roughly 1,000 people play your game, but of those, 300 pirate it. Therefore you make a loss, even though the game sells well.

What annoys me is that people assume that just because piracy protection is bad, that piracy is ok. It's not, not if you want games to keep coming out. Sure, starforce is horrible, and most piracy prevention is invasive, but it would get very little criticism if it worked. Unfortunately, it does not, and therefore people end up paying for invasive and irritating software - or, more likely, they don't pay at all, and get the hacked version.

The solution that I see for singleplayer games is free episodic content - that presents a way to use server validation, and makes up for it by giving the user extra content. If the update detects that the software is hacked, it can just install a heap of bugs in the game to make in unplayable, or delete the savegames, or something like that.

Steam is another alternative - it had a rocky start, but it's blooming now, and I see more singleplayer games going to steam in the future. Additionally, it helps that Steam sells most games for a far more reasonable price. The CoD4 price jack was a huge blow to this model though, and if that trend continues, Steam won't grow as much as it wants to.

Regarding the article, I'm not too concerned by Spore, since it has a significant online segment I had assumed it would be fairly safe from piracy anyway.

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