One of the things that overshadowed Spore was it’s brutal DRM policy, which seemed to favor the pirates (m’hearties) and punished the honest ‘I-pay-for-my-games’ punters. Yet now the infamous SecuROM DRM system has set its black beady eyes on Far Cry 2, and is moving in for the kill, details of which (with all the gory parts) can be found etter å ha hoppet.
Despite only 0.2% of people caring about Spore’s DRM, that 0.2% happened to be a rather rowdy, pitch fork wielding bunch of humans who kicked up a big fuss, and rightly so. With only five installs allowed, there was not much room left for broken or upgraded computers, since these would use up one of the five installs. Most people agreed that when you buy a game, you should be able to install it however many times you want, wherever you want, yet SecuROM, sitting upon it’s obsidian carved throne, shook it’s shaggy mane at these views and the DRM continued. Of course the DRM did not stop the swashbuckling adversaries, thanks to a little thing called a torrent.
EA failed to realize that very few people pirate games by installing a borrowed disc on their PC, preferring to use something known as a D-O-W-N-L-O-A-D.
Anyway, UbiSoft Forum Manager, bukowski113 (you’d think a Forum Manager would have a better username), has gone on record and detailed the Far Cry 2 DRM, which is a bit more forgiving that Spore’s.
Here’s what he said:
- You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs.
- Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called “revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.
- You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)
- Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations can be provided.
- Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you’ll always be able to play Far Cry 2.
So, as you can see, a ‘proper’ uninstall will give you an activation back, which seems like a super-cool-double-yeah idea, but I bet there will cases where the uninstaller doesn’t revoke properly leaving you to remove the program by force resulting in all your activation keys, sans one of them, being present.
My DRM idea is much better than any of these: prevent the game installing. Sure no-one can play the game, but at least no-one’s stolen it.
Source: Ubi Forums
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8 responses so far ↓
1 PyroTails // Oct 15, 2008 at 4:38 pm
When will they learn? Don’t DRM it cos people will have a pirated version a few days before the day is released. Arrr!
2 Mike // Oct 15, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Has anyone cracked securom? im sure an older version of this was cracked, can’t remember what game sorry. Would be nice to know though.
3 winner // Oct 15, 2008 at 6:29 pm
This is no big deal guys
4 Lord Butters I // Oct 15, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Yawn. Crysis Warhead was cracked in 11 minutes, Far Cry won’t fare any better.
And for the law abiding folks out there, there are post-installation cracks too.
5 SilverTorch // Oct 16, 2008 at 12:06 am
At least I’m not getting Far Cry 2 for the pc and getting it for the 360. It would kill my crappy computer. But I did get Spore and even though I havn’t had any DRM problems the thought of the limits the DRM puts on me is annoying.
6 slik1000 // Oct 16, 2008 at 2:17 am
Wow, this is actually exactly what I asked for. It’s a solution to both my, and EA’s, problem. I’m happy. I wont even need post instal cracks (not that I actually used one for spore anyway)
7 Adam Harley // Oct 16, 2008 at 9:39 am
I don’t see anything wrong with this kind of DRM. Refunding the activation upon uninstall is the pefect solution. And it probably won’t mess up, either - if you can get the game to install, you can get it to uninstall.
This line was hilarious, though: “EA failed to realize that very few people pirate games by installing a borrowed disc on their PC, preferring to use something known as a D-O-W-N-L-O-A-D.”
8 Diortem // Oct 16, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Umm… wrong.. just wrong.
5 installs on 3 PCs?
Honestly, EA did better then this on Crysis Warhead. Their setup is unlimited installs on 5 PCs (was unlimited on 3 for Spore). The issue came up that no one could tell you what would count as a “new PC” to Securom.
So now we have 3 PCs with 5 activations? Ok, ok… so we can uninstall and get back one of our 5 installs, but we are only assured 3 installs…
BECAUSE NO ONE KNOWS WHAT WILL SET OFF THE NEW PC CHECK YET!!!!
So if it thinks an upgrade makes your PC #4, you’re once again SOL.
Once again, Ubisoft fails… fails WORSE then EA, and succeeds only in pissing me off. (They do this ALOT it seems.)
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