Reader jk writes in to let us know that EA’s sci-fi epic Mass Effect is still having DRM issues on the PC platform. This time, instead of requiring gamers to maintain an internet connection and activate their game every few weeks, paying customers (allegedly) get three “activations” of the game and that’s it. Uninstalling the game doesn’t “give back” an activation.
jk writes:
You reported the initial DRM problems on this title but it’s back…
Apparently the game Mass Effect PC version can only be installed 3 times, there are NO credits given back when you completely uninstall it..
They have been very dishonest about this. The consumer is crud at EA. Every single used disc for sale on ebay/amazon could be empty of installs and the buyer wouldn’t know til they got it home..
He pointed us to a forum thread on Bioware’s message board where one customer posted his attempt to get a straight answer of out EA’s customer service reps.
As it been said in the Mass Effect tweakguide that if you uninstall Mass Effect you get an activation back. I decided to ask EA Support if that is true. The exact question is:
When uninstalling Mass Effect do I regain a activation?
Here is one reply from a Chris P.:
Quote: Disc based authentication required authentication every time you launched the game. Online authentication is more flexible and for Mass Effect, game authentication is needed only at the initial launch of the game on a particular machine. Re-authentication is required if the game is re-installed on a previously authorized machine for any reason.
I did not ask about authenication or what is required. I asked if I get an activation back if I uninstalled. This reply does not answer my question. In fact the only 3 possible answers should be Yes, No, or I Don’t Know.
I asked again, trying to be clear to exactly what I wanted to know. A Chester responds:
Quote: Thank you for updating on us, Electronic Arts Technical Support. I do apologize for the inconvenience. If you just reinstall the game, you do not need to re-activate the game again.
Again, that is not what I am asking. I am not trying to be rude. I am not trying to be a jerk. I am trying to get a straight forward answer to my question and EA Support continues to fail to understand SIMPLE ENGLISH!
Yes, No, or I Don’t Know. How hard can it be?!?!?!
Allegedly, an official answer was eventually wrested from EA–confirming that 3 activations was the limit:
Unfortunately, you will not gain an activation by uninstalling the game.
Any other EA customers running into this wall? Or is this just bad communication? Any luck getting new activations by contacting EA?
The Obliviousness of EA support [Bioware]
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Lol who buys in to crap like this? forget this anti-customer behaviour. clearly they don’t want your business.
Well shit if I have to go through all that to play it on the PC when I get a new laptop, I might as well download it. That’s ridiculous. I know I reformat constantly. I’d be fucked if Blizzard did this.
I’m just waiting for Spore here… let’s hope Will Wright can force EA’s hand if need be. He was given the time he wanted, instead of handed a deadline, so if anyone can overrule EA it’d be Wright, not that I’m going to be optimistic about that happening.
I’ve installed the game on one PC after two days of successful playing:
Activation 1 — original install of my newly purchased game
Activation 2 — replaced Vista with XP to troubleshoot video issue
Activation 3 — upgraded video card to fix video issue
Activation 4 &Locked out of my game — either installing a new case fan or changing the user logged into XP
Now whenever I try to run the game I get a cute little popup saying “The game can not start. For security reasons, only a limited number of machines can ever be licensed by a single purchase. This limit has been reached. Please purchase another registration code, reinstall, and then try again.”
I’ve been struggling with EA support since Friday with no luck.
@Swervo: @nuton2wheels: @dakotad555:
I can see why people would like Steam and I have no problem with those that do, it’s just not for me. I don’t contend that it’s not convenient to be able to quickly play any game you “own” on any connected computer. If I had high-speed Internet and a beastly gaming computer, I wouldn’t mind it as much.
1. I find it offensive that I buy a new game in the store, and it requires that I go through a “validation” process, as if I were some kind of ex-con reporting to my probation officer. I’ve already gone on at sufficient length about this, so, moving on…
2. I find it deceptive that the box for HL2 only says “Steampowered”. It does not say, “Warning, for this game to properly function, you must install an instant messenger/online matchmaking service and agree to its terms and conditions, which are far more extensive and restrictive than the terms of use of the actual HL2 game.”
3. I find it downright criminal that Steam modifies other files on my hard drive without my consent. When I installed Half-Life 2 for the first time, Steam took it upon itself to Steamify my old copy of Half-Life 1 that was still installed, and I never did find a way to deSteam it, if such exists. It didn’t ask me if I wanted to link all my old Valve games with Steam, it went ahead and did it and provided me no way to stop it.
4. The EULA for Steam is/was downright scary. The version that shipped with HL2 on release stated that Valve could modify the agreement that I was bound by at any time, and it was MY responsibility to keep checking their website to see if it changed, not their responsibility to inform me if they decided to change it. Maybe they’ve changed it by now, I don’t know. I still have a copy of that old EULA around if anybody doesn’t believe me.
5. If and when Valve gets bought out by another company, what will happen to the Steam games you “own” when EAMegaGamingCorp decides to shut down Valve’s servers? I can still play games like Warcraft and System Shock on my new PC, a decade after I bought them. This ties in to the EA DRM discussed in this article. What about Fair Use, and resale rights? If somebody wants a non-pirate original copy of System Shock badly enough, I can sell my old CD to them no matter how many machines it’s been installed on. This is not the case with HL2 or PC Mass Effect. If you buy a copy of Mass Effect on eBay, you are most likely going to get a coaster.
I understand that I’m probably not going to change anybody’s mind about Steam, and I don’t expect to. I just want to educate Consumerist readers about the numerous legitimate consumers’ rights issues that DRM schemes like this create, and I believe that I’ve done an acceptable job of presenting five different and distinct problems with this business model. Also, I apologize for going so far off-topic, I know this article isn’t about Valve. All I know about Mass Effect’s DRM is what I read on Consumerist, so if I limited myself to talking about Mass Effect, my sole contribution to this topic would be, “That sucks, glad I didn’t buy the PC version”.
If you dislike steam- check out some competitors, such as Gamersgate (Paradox’s service) and Impulse (Stardock’s service)
Both companies deliver very good customer service- and both have a decent selection of games, that have minimal nonintrustive DRM (not DRM-free as you have to online register)
@donkeyjote: Couldn’t you accomplish the same thing with a demo?
I don’t get the complaining about this sort of DRM quite frankly. It seems less horrible than paying a monthly fee to play games like world of warcraft or tons of others in that ilk. In those cases, you’re paying a shitload of a premium in monthly fees compared to the price of the initial software and you pay regardless of your usage of the game since there’s no tiered system. Paying a single lump sum for 3 installs seems practical utopian in comparrison.
Any trace of guilt I might have had about downloading and installing a cracked copy of the game is out the window.
A few things here.
1. After I buy a game, I download a no-cd crack for it. And any DRM-disabler cracks for the game. It is illegal for the company to add in DRM onto any product that you buy w/o telling you BEFORE you buy the product. .. AKA If it’s not mentioned on the box, then it’s illegal to install.
2. The EULA is against the law in most states in the USA. First Sale Doctrine. Therefore. whatever is mentioned in the EULA does not apply to most americans.
3. As far as I am concerned, any companies who use DRM (EA), or illegal EULAs and tries to enforce them (Blizzard), have no rights at all and should be boycotted and destroyed 100%. Warez the hell out of them, they deserve it.
Well, I was considering buying Spore.
I guess I won’t.
These companies just don’t get it. The best way to combat piracy is to offer a superior product for the paying customer. Here you’re better off with the torrent.
I don’t pirate games. But hell if I’m going to buy software knowing I can only install it thrice…ever.
Thanks EA, for contributing to the death of PC gaming. =(
@Gilbert: Since when do genesis and dreamcast games come in demos?
@yagisencho:
Hahaha…like this isn’t the future of console gaming.
You know, the louder we complain, the less companies are likely to do stupid crap like this. Hello, dead-disc e-bay scams.
5minuts in the torent sights.
found 4 difrint versions of the crack.
no more problem installing
install it then crack it
And people wonder why we say that PC gaming is dying is not already dead.
Even with this in the EULA how is this legal? When you’ve opened the box the game is non-returnable, so even if you disagree with the EULA you’re still out the money you spent on it.
And speaking of spending money on it – it’s in a box on a shelf next to a bunch of other games in a setting you’ve seen many times before when you went to purchase games. Not quasi-rent like this scenario.
I understand the motivation behind the addition of DRM to titles. I frequently find the execution ridiculous and invasive and extremely inconvenient… but what I don’t understand is turning ‘Digital Rights Management’ into ‘Digital Rights Revocation’.
Each side in this transaction has rights, and EA seems to have forgotten that. If ever there was a candidate for a class action suit over DRM, ding ding ding I think we have a winner.
I won’t be buying the game, if it ever comes around to me wanting it, pirate it away. Did I mention my steam account has 65 games in it (for all those who don’t know about steam, I bought all of those games)?
The game is still unplayable for me. Constant crashes abound for some of us PC users. I’m stuck with some shiny box art until they release a patch.
I won’t be buying this game & I am putting DRM related reviews for it up on every webstore I can find it being sold at. Please help me out.
DRM = Loss of Customer
Welcome to the 21st century, where buying software really only means you bought a license to the software which can be revoked for any or no reason at all.
It’s unfortunate, really.
Personally I think Steam provides a good balance between DRM content and usability. Activations are keyed to your account, not to your computer. Thus you can install your game basically anywhere you want and it doesn’t complain. It does complain when you try to play with the same account in two different places simultaneously, but I mean that’s reasonable. It also provides me with value. Updates are automatically downloaded and applied, no need to search for the latest patch if I haven’t played in a few months. They can also roll out new features to me. This part is the most critical for me, the DRM infrastructure not only suits the company’s anti piracy measures, with true value add to the consumer. DRM and activation just for its own sake doesn’t appeal to me because there’s no benefit to me as a consumer at any meaningful level.
EA has a storied history of screwing their customers. I mean, really, their games usually suck and are full of bugs that never get fixed (BF2). What’s the point of supporting a company that consistently releases flawed games?
@Jbball:
Indeed. I have not purchased an EA game in quite a while. The last title I bought I think was Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. (which is aaaaages ago.)
One might have slipped under the radar since then, but that’s the last one I remember buying.
Couple the DRM issues with EA’s penchant for running ‘coding sweatshops’, and it’s pretty easy to say “I just don’t want to reward that behaviour with money.”
PC gaming is getting ridiculous. Companies know that piracy is rampant on the PC platform, so they do this kind of stuff, but it ends up just hurting those who buy the game. Also, in the process, they’re pushing long time PC gamers (like myself) away, and for good. I’ve given up and moved to console gaming. I’ve had enough. I mean, authenticating online to play or install a single player game? Add that to the steaming heap of other issues, such as worrying about hardware upgrades, compatibility, performance, drivers, operating system, conflicts, codecs, etc.
Steam is an acceptable compromise for me. I sometimes install no-cd cracks on games I buy because I hate having to pop the cd into the drive every time I want to play.
Allegedly, you never get an intelligent person in an online chat “help” session.
I always install no-CD cracks for PC games and make copies of PS2 games, keeping the original games in a separate location. I’ve had games stolen before, and a few of the games I have now are either impossible to find now or are too expensive to replace.
While I could care less about Mass Effect, SPORE is a game I’m eagerly looking forward to, and unfortunately it will not be purchased until a reliable crack for the DRM is found. Which is a shame it has to be included at all, as I’m having a blast with just the Creature Creator.
…and then they wonder why the PC gaming market is in decline while the consoles are doing well. No, EA, it’s not “piracy” that’s doing the market in, it’s crap like this.
It’s bad enough that PC games are often released unfinished so the broken retail disk can be fixed by last-minute patches. It’s bad enough that to keep up with PC gaming, you have to regularly update your machine. It’s bad enough that we have to “phone in” even for offline games, carry our CDs everywhere we go and keep my fingers crossed that the authentication servers never go offline. Now, we have a product that can never be used more than 3 times because they think I’m going to pirate it? Screw you EA, you lost another customer.
My strategy now: use 360 instead of PC (even though I definitely prefer PC for FPS), buy anything published by EA via eBay or other 2nd hand source so that I can get a legit copy without EA seeing my money. If restrictions come into place to stop me doing this, stop playing EA games altogether.
I think it’s interesting that the word BOYCOTT has only appeared once in all these post. STOP BUYING IT and it will stop. Even the DRM morons are smart enough to know that 20% of something is better than 80% of nothing. BOYCOTT ANYTHING WITH DRM!
And that’s why I stopped buying software that requires activation.
@RedSonSuperDave:
Just pointing out that Valve has stated publically several times that if something happens to the company and they go bankrupt or something, there is code already written that will unlock every valve game in existence.
So you don’t have to worry if they go out of business. Your valve games will remain safe.
@donkeyjote: Sorry but thats just wrong, they will never ban you from Portal because you were cheating in TF2. Now if you get your Steam User account banned thats a different story and is pretty hard to do without trying to steal someone else’s account or doing something else illegal.
In the beginning i HATED Steam but now that i have a fast internet connection and probably always will i love it. But this kind of DRM is so stupid, when are company’s going to learn that they are only hurting legitimate consumers with crap like this. Pirates easily get around this and dont have to deal with draconian DRM. Which would you chose to install?
I was on the fence about buying Mass Effect before this, since I take issue with spending $40 to rent a game (and if you believe it’s not a rental when they could take down their authentication servers whenever they feel like, I have a bridge you might be interested in).
This seals it though. Why am I going to pay money for something I don’t actually own?
@satoru: +1
I’m just barely willing to deal with STEAMS drm. It’s not “in your face” so I can tolerate it.
This Mass Effect DRM… it’s definitely “IN YOUR FACE, ON YOUR PC, ON YOUR MOM, ON YOUR GIRLFRIEND, etc…”
Bioware… you guys are better than this. Make it stop please.
I pretty much use steam to launch all of my games, whether i bought it on steam or not. Valve doesn’t monitor the shortcuts that you put into your client as far as I know. May buy this then leave the box unopened and install a pirated version. Maybe I won’t buy it at all. I bought BioShock before finding out about the DRM. Made an ISO of it to try and use Daemon Tools. That didn’t work cause of SecuROM, so I said fuck that and pirated it. Legal copy is sitting on my shelf.
I’m amazed at the complete lack of accurate information here.
a) I hate DRM as much as anyone.
b) Mass Effects DRM isn’t resident, so it’s not taking up any resources.
c) If you install 3x, and need to install a 4th, you just call them and they credit you more. 3 is plenty for 99.99999% of users, you can use them to install the game on 3 different machines if you want, and the game doesn’t need the CD in the drive. If anything this is one of the LAXEST DRM schemes I’ve seen in a long time. The only thing the “3 installs, then call us” DRM does is keep people from posting their authentication code online for the entire world to use.
d) You don’t get “credited” for the uninstall because the game doesn’t contact their servers to let them know you uninstalled it, it only contacts it when you first install it.
e) Windows XP has had this same DRM scheme for a decade, I’ve had to call them once, most of you probably don’t even know you have it.
Problem #1: It isn’t “install the game on 3 different machines” before you’re locked out, it’s “install on your machine and make 2 modifications”.
Problem #2: I’ve been trying to get them to increase my activations since Friday. This is day #5 and there’s still no sign of them doing anything to help me.
This is the worst DRM I have ever had inflicted on me. No other game in my decades of PC gaming else has ever stopped working just because I’ve reinstalled windows and upgraded my video card to play the game and then had the audacity to log into my machine as a user other than Administrator.
@Jmatthew: Neither of my copies of Windows XP uses this DRM scheme. One of them is DRM-free(!) and one of them uses some kind of hardware profiling system to determine if I’m using a Gateway, and if my machine is close enough to what it considers a Gateway, then it installs. Neither of them require online authentication or anything of the sort, though the Gateway one does ask me if I want to register online until I check the box that says, “Don’t ask me again”.
Whenever HL2 came out, I stated, “It’s a dark day when a single-player offline game is harder to install and more restrictive in its conditions of use than an entire operating system.” This still applies.
I’m not calling you a liar or being adversarial here, I’m just pointing out that there’s a lot of different legitimate versions of Windows XP and they have a variety of protection schemes.
Yeah, the DRM is pretty janky. What’s worse is there’s no support for people who have problems with this game. (Like me)
It’s a good game though. =/
What’s fucked up about this is that ther’es no way for the average buyer to know.
I happen to know because I’m a gamer (I got here by way of Kotaku), but the average person doesn’t. You can only find this out if you’re the kind of person that does crazy, obsessive research into what they’re buying or are (ahem) gamers with OCD.
There’s gonna be a whole lotta real pissed off folks in a few months when they discover that they can’t install the game again to take advantage of the DLC that’s coming for PC in a month or two.
And I do’nt blame them… I’d be pissed off too.
and then, don’t forget, is the same thing is happening to Spore. Egh.
FYI, if you use the pirated version in Vista you have to run the game as an admin (or disable UAC), no idea what the pirated version is saving in system protected areas, but what can you do.
Also, my Spore Creature Creator doesn’t have any checks (digital distribution), but what is really funny is if you leave the EA Downloader running and try to play the game, the game crashes. (Vista again).
I unloaded EA Downloader and the problem went away.
And yet again, DRM, malware is slowly eroding PC gaming. The media companies punish honest people buying their games while pirates get the full/clean version of the games. Ridiculous.
@Jmatthew:
b) Mass Effects DRM isn’t resident, so it’s not taking up any resources.
About drm not staying resident isn’t exactly true its often hidden, go into device manager choose show hidden devices then look under non-pnp drivers. I think Mass Effect uses securom so you should have secdrv in there somewhere. Also depending on what drm is used they have a tendency to save data in a hidden folder on your drive which uses a strange name or erronous characters which you can’t open or delete it unless you format or use special software to remove it. I’ve had supposedly non active, non resident drm bsod the computer when not playing the game I was doing something else at the time.