Spore, Mass Effect PC games to require an Internet check every ten days

I don’t recall seeing this : Spore and Mass Effect PC games to require an Internet check every ten days to function.

Obnoxious at best, even ignoring the likelihood of bugs or a down Internet connection locking out legitimate users. Guess I won’t be getting them; I’m not interested in being treated like a thief by people I’m buying things from.

Yeah, I’ll be passing on their games too.

They tried this with Bioshock, too. The servers registering the activation couldn’t handle the load, and were up and down a lot the first few days. If that’s going to be what it’s like every ten days… well, i’ll probably still get Spore anyway. But i’ll be pissed.

If you check on Slashdot, you’ll see that the games will require an Internet connection for initial activation, but not for continued play.

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…or maybe not.

Slashdot’s been known get a lot of things wrong.

That is fucked up. There’s no two ways about it.

Because the key might get ‘warezd’ they’re demanding that legit customers check in every ten days?

Not everyone is on high speed, twits.

I’m with Der Trihs - there’s two PC games I’m not getting.

God, I hope this kind of foolishness never crosses over to console gaming. I want to be able to play my games for as long as my console’s working, not as long as some company decides to keep their validation servers running.

What concerns me about this is that I still have dial up (Yeah, I know, I know), which is a shaky connection even at the best of times. Will it even let me use the product?

You’d hope that, just before they take down the validation servers, they’d release a final patch getting rid of the necessity.

I hope this is just a case of bad information… I really wanted to play Spore, will have to give a long pause for consideration if true. I can live without it I guess…

Won’t buy it if that’s a condition.

They’ll cut sales dramatically with this ridiculous idea.

Well, Spore does have some Internet functionality (stuff you create is traded with stuff other people create), but yeah, this is annoying. Is the cost of keeping those servers running really less than money lost to piracy?

Wow. I definitely won’t be getting Spore, in that case. Who thought this was a good idea?

Agreed. I’ve no desire to play Mass Effect, but I’m really looking forward to Spore. One of the features I most like about Spore is the hybridized online multiplayer, so I don’t mind having an active net connection. However, what happens if the validation server goes down?

Once again, anti-piracy merely annoys the crap out of legitimate users. People who are going to pirate the game are merely slightly inconvenienced by these sorts of measures.

In a way, this is good news, because if I’m not buying Spore I’ll be able to put off buying a new computer for a couple of years more. As a matter of fact, I might just give up on PC gaming altogether and join a bowling league.

It’s bad enough we had to wait 53 years for Spore; this latest development is just insulting.

That’s el sucko. I was drooling after Spore, like every other gamer out there, but

a) phone home DRM
b) SecurROM = bad news

On the other hand, Spore. :frowning:

If PC gaming wasn’t dead it is now.

I was going to buy it. Now, I won’t. This is why we can’t have nice games.

And this is why PCs are really only good for MMO play these days, because checking in with the central server is part and parcel of an MMO’s functionality. But a single player game? It’s just insanity. The worst part is they put it on such a highly anticipated game; people will put up with it because they want to play, and that’ll be seen as a validation of the practice.

I’m not convinced “Spore” is predestined to be a humongous hit anyway. If it’s good, maybe it will be, but I’m skeptical; it sounds like a game that’s going to try to do a lot of things, and will do them all just okay and none of them really well.

If it’s not a great game, it wouldn’t be all that successful anyway. This ridiculous decision will reduce its sales either way.

SecuROM isn’t just irritating; it’s also a program with a reputation for screwing up people’s computers.

It’s the publishers and the suits runnign them, terrified of piracy and damn well happy to screw over legitimitate customers in some silly attempt to foil them.

Which of course it won’t. I guarantee this copy protection will be cracked within days of release, perhaps even before release as has happenned on occassion.

The only thing this will do is make the casual gamers seek out cracks for their games so as not to have to bother with this. On the way they’ll find the games available online for free and more pirates will be born. Why bother with legitimate copies when pirated copies are free and have no stupid DRM crap to deal with?

It’s like EA et al are run by a bunch of morons.

Having said that, I’m still getting mass effect. Looks too good to pass up.