EA DRM - At it's finest


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I've never had this problem with a game before... up until now I had only heard of other people having problems with it. I will not be buying any more EA games, that's for sure.

For those interested, I've only ever installed Red Alert 3 on one machine, the hardware has not changed AT ALL. The only thing I've done is reformat several times. If anyone thinks that it is fine for any game publisher to do this, can you please explain why, and how it does not hurt pc gaming?

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I'm not supporting piracy in no way, but just use a nocd crack to be able to play the game.

Well, problem is I don't even want to play it now. I'm assuming that would work, and I don't want this to turn into a piracy thread, but I don't see how they think that this type of DRM is helping the situation.

All they've done is make tons of people angry, and those people tell other people, and then you have a bunch of people who just don't want to buy the games anymore.

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Not quite sure, but I believe you're allowed a certain amount of installs, before you have to buy the game again.

"Each PC will get five free re-activations if you need to reinstall the game for any reason (Spore only gets three); beyond those five times EA will authorize any further re-activations on a case-by-case basis. The game will require you to sign onto the Internet to install the game but won't bother you anymore after that."

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Not quite sure, but I believe you're allowed a certain amount of installs, before you have to buy the game again.

"Each PC will get five free re-activations if you need to reinstall the game for any reason (Spore only gets three); beyond those five times EA will authorize any further re-activations on a case-by-case basis. The game will require you to sign onto the Internet to install the game but won't bother you anymore after that."

For some reason I think I've installed Spore more than 3 times as well... I could be wrong. The problem with that game wasn't the DRM though, well at first it was. But even once I did buy it... it's not a very good game. Creative, and unique, yes... but good? No, definitely not.

I think I might just call EA to bitch at them... I really don't care if they let me reauthorize it or not, because I know I'm going to reformat again sooner or later, and I'm going to be in the same stupid situation.

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The "best" thing about it is that it's still as easy to crack these copy protections as it was before the dawn of DRM.

IMO they are just trying to find "alternative" ways of increasing sales, with the excuse of piracy, forcing john-doe-customers to buy more copies. It's this or they are completely brain dead, this doesn't stop piracy at all and only drives computer-savvy customers away.

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For those interested, I've only ever installed Red Alert 3 on one machine, the hardware has not changed AT ALL. The only thing I've done is reformat several times. If anyone thinks that it is fine for any game publisher to do this, can you please explain why, and how it does not hurt pc gaming?

SecuROM is stupid, and you need to manually de-authorise it every time before you format, or it will count as a new install.

http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/

Fire off an email to EA Support, and they will reset the activations for you.

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The "best" thing about it is that it's still as easy to crack these copy protections as it was before the dawn of DRM.

IMO they are just trying to find "alternative" ways of increasing sales, with the excuse of piracy, forcing john-doe-customers to buy more copies. It's this or they are completely brain dead, this doesn't stop piracy at all and only drives computer-savvy customers away.

Yeah, but what about those people who aren't computer savvy, they're not going to figure it out... they're either not going to play or be forced to buy another one if they're too lazy to call EA. I just hate it because you're exactly right, it doesn't stop those who were going to pirate it in the first place... it just inconveniences those who were (or did) purchase it and use it legally.

EA's SecuROM is stupid, and you need to manually de-authorise it every time before you format, or it will count as a new install.

http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/

Fire off an email to EA Support, and they will reset the activations for you.

Yeah, I'm going to get in touch with them, but I'm going to be pretty ****ed off if they try to give me any trouble.

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I'm not supporting piracy in no way, but just use a nocd crack to be able to play the game.
+1 to this

While I understand the OP's frustration and so on, let's not break forum rules by suggesting piracy. :)

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While I understand the OP's frustration and so on, let's not break forum rules by suggesting piracy. :)

Yeah, sorry, I knew it might be a little risky posting this, but I just think that more people should be aware of this type of crap protection being used against legitimate "owners" (I don't know if I would call it that anymore) of software.

I remember when you used to purchase a game and you were free to install it an unlimited number of times... no matter if you reformatted a billion times or just liked to upgrade your computer every month.

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While I understand the OP's frustration and so on, let's not break forum rules by suggesting piracy. :)

He owns the game. It's not piracy. All he wants to do is be able to play the game he paid for!!

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What I find laughable about DRM (especially by EA really) is that the people suffering are the ones actually buying the games and just wanting to play them legally whilst still people who are 'pirating' these games are having an easier time and evading the DRM anyway so it seems pointless.

This is one of the biggest annoyances I have, it's also like some places where you can 'buy' (direct to drive) but your only allowed to install them on say 3 machines, or 3 'installs' from the D2D setup before they then stop you from having access to something you paid for, simply because you might have say 2 pc's, or have decided to do a system clean up every now and then.

I know this has all been said before, but I just wanted to add my frustrations to the many millions (has to be!) who surely feel the same way, when will these companies realise they actually aren't stopping anyone, because determined people always manage to crack them within a couple days anyway.

*end*

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EA have a tool which unlocks the game from a machine. You have installed the game to many times.

http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/

I don't support this kind of DRM, but you can do a little research or contact support before flaming about it.

edit: sorry was posted already. But needed to be said again.

I obviously knew that I installed the game too many times, the message was quite clear... and I wasn't flaming about not being able to play RA3... I was more angry about the fact that they put this type of protection into the software that we purchase, in a more general sense.

I sent them an e-mail this morning... I'm assuming they will just unlock it. I would like them to just reset the counter though. Does anyone know if they just give you "one more" activation or if they reset the install count?

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I hate this kind of DRM. It does nothing useful for the company at all and just angers people. I have bought two games (Bioshock and an earlier Rainbow 6) that I both cannot play because of the DRM (Bioshock just screwed it up and it won't even accept my CD key, never been able to install it, and the Rainbow 6 DRM drivers cause my OS to BSOD because it force installs XP drivers on Vista / Win6). I'm a believer in paying for what you need (unless you have a damned good reason), as I spend hundreds a year on software for personal purposes and hundreds a year for music, but you can be damned sure I'm pirating the next Bioshock and I already have pirated both Rainbow 6 vegas'es.

Steam is a neat idea and how they do DRM, and they got it right. It works pretty much flawlessly with the true steam games and I find it's amazing. The only thing that sucks about it is that you can't resell the games after you are done playing them unlike console games.

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Is there a reason that you didn't manually de-authorize it before reformatting? Too much software to keep track of, testing something, or something like that?

It's hard to keep track of all the licensing requirements of all the software you own. I often forget to deactivate stuff.

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Hopefully you'll get it sorted with EA. I hate the limited amount of activations crap, but it's no secret. It's been talked about a number of times (Spore being one of the highest-profile cases). You have to deauthorise the game or you'll burn through the activations. I only have one EA game that needs it (Mirror's Edge) and I have the deauth tool on my drive to make sure I don't waste any activations. It should do it when uninstalling, but I'd deauthorise manually beforehand just in case.

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