On the heels of Crytek cry-babies saying that PC piracy ruined Crysis, Bioware has announced some krogan and draconian copyright enforcement measures for the upcoming PC version of Mass Effect.
The first line of defense will be SecuROM. Used in many games over the last few years -- notably including last year's Bioshock -- SecuROM endeavors to make copying the DVD very difficult. Additionally however, Mass Effect will require a internet connection to validate its install not just when the game is installed -- but every 10 days!
Here's Derek French, Bioware's Technical Producer explaining their DRM choice in Bioware's forum:
"Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.
After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run."
Needless to say, community members of the Bioware forums are going nuts. Some are in favor of the system; many are not so cheery about it.
Personally, I'm very much looking forward to Mass Effect, and I'll buy it if it requires a retinal scan and a 60-character alpha-numeric code to be manually typed in every time I play -- but nonetheless, I do have some troubles with the system. Previously, with Bioshock, that DRM was annoying enough -- as a video card testing guy, I had to re-install that game many times, on different benchmarking systems. Even though the game would only be installed on one system at a time, my legitimate serial code would de-validate itself, and eventually, it would not install at all. But this Mass Effect system is even more extreme. What if, say, you move to a new apartment and no longer have internet access? You should be able to play a single-player game somehow, without requiring access to check some serial on the Internet. At least in my perfect world anyways.
While I can understand Bioware's position, I do not think it'll be effective. There has never been a single single-player game that was not cracked -- (and quickly cracker) -- by the all the dark-side programmers out there, cracking away. Multi-player games are a different story, but single-player games invariably have their anti-piracy methods bypassed.
Piracy is not as big of a problem on the consoles because of how much of a hassle it is. Really: it is not so much about the money. It's the hassle. In North America, chipping your console and getting pirated games is probably a pain. Downloading a problem-free, pirated game on the PC from your home the day it is released is easy, and here is my point: once it becomes far less of a hassle to play a pirated game than a legitimate one, then we have a problem. I point to the success of Steam to backup my claims. Game-buyers appreciate convenience. And people who don't have enough money to buy games, well, you don't have to worry about them pirating all that much, because they aren't the people buying games.
What's a better solution for Bioware? I can think of one in about five seconds -- okay, done: you put a in-game anti-piracy droid in the game. Make it a full in-game character. In order to get Commander Shepard into certain randomized solar systems in the game, you have to meet this droid in-game, where he authorizes you to travel further. In each game you start, say the droid can appear in 40 different randomized locations in the galaxy. For each of the 40 different positions, have a different DRM-key that needs to be checked online. All 40 of the DRM-keys are derived through algorithms from the one serial code that you enter when you first install the game. That way, people would be able to play if they did not have internet access at the moment. And with 40 different keys at randomized positions, it would be far more difficult to crack. And then, on top of this, you release bi-weekly updates to the game, which only tweak the game in very small ways, or squash the small inevitable bugs that pop up, but additionally, you study the anti-cracking methods out there, and shut down whatever methods they use with these updates. For the money that Bioware pays to SecuROM for their DRM, Bioware could instead pay some comp. sci. intern to develop these updates for them.
The thing with game piracy is that the crackers and warez groups do it for props. Releases older than a couple of days mean nothing to them. If games were updated often, the skilled crackers would lose motivation fairly quickly to work on the game.
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