Copy Protection/ DRM for PC version

[jb the badsign]

I had a little search and I couldn't find anything but this is the single most important question regarding the game for PC users anyway so it deserves its own thread:

What copy protection will the game use? All I know is that apparently it will use some for of copy protection, and this could be a deal-breaker for many of people.

 

[gudduthemaster]

i think they will use Secure ROM (but please codies not in GTA Iv style )

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Do us a favour and don't use any! That's what EA did with Sims 3.

 

[iridescentt]

If it's DRM I think I'll pass. I've already had enough trouble with it.

 

[Huegel]

I forgot about drm, good question.
I wonder if they've got any plans to use Steam? At any rate, anything but starforce. :upray

 

[savvart]

Starforce is evil and should be destroyed...

Get Darth Vader onto it...

 

[MattW]

It is something I asked them with the initial FAQ, but they weren't able to answer at that stage.

I strongly like the use of Steam here, it is DRM but it results in benefits for the users. The ICC series do a good thing with their use of the updates and online features needing a valid key, so you miss out if you pirate, which is good.

Securom = rubbish.

 

[jan52]

as long as no starforce it will be fine, but brian lara is known for using starforce last time around

 

[chaitanyaraghav]

I hate DRM!!
The DRM protection for GTA IV was absolute trash!
The original users suffered while the pirates got away with the cracked version a week after the release!

 

[pcfan123]

I have no idea what all you guys are talking about , I am a console user myself. However I did play battlefield 2 a lot and if you did not have a CD key you could not play. I had to buy an extra copy when I lost one . I really hope they do all they can to prevent people who did not pay for this game from at least playing online.

 

[jb the badsign]

Securom is tolerable as long as it is just the one that asks where the cd is, although if they had any respect for us they would let us just install and play without the disc like they do once the game goes to budget. The versions that require online verification are trash, and in essence mean that you are renting your game.

Steam is an absolute no-no (and incidentally there is no such thing as DRM that benefits the users, how ignorant). Anything that requires online verification will turn off 50%+ of their potential PC customers. If not basically 100%...

CD-Key should be all that is required, and keeping the disc in the drive is on the very fringe of tolerability.

Nobody will ever stop pirates and any efforts to do so will be fruitless endeavours that just hurt customers, and for games (such as cricket games) with small niche userbases they will only alienate users and force them to pirate the game just to get a playable copy... instead of trying to punish pirates with restrictions and checks, they should be trying to reward purchasers with patches, extra features and multiplayer. All of that can be done with a CD-Key... Copy protection has not advanced one step since the advent of CD-Keys...

As a sidenote, I don't think Starforce is very widespread these days...

 

[ajdude]

BLIC07's on Steam, picked it up a while ago, works beautifully. Only problem I see is the little 12 year olds trying to get permission from their parents for using a credit card, and the fact that an internet connection is required...but these days, you're known as a loser if you don't have a connection. :P Starforce tweaked up my PC a while ago, sorry for the French, but it did. Vista wouldn't start saying that there were unauthorised drivers installed. I had to go on my XP partition and find any Starforce related files in system32/drivers on Vista.

On another note, I did ask this about five or six times in one of the stickied threads, to no avail...

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Starforce is evil and should be destroyed...

Get Darth Vader onto it...

Vader won't destroy it - he's evil, too!

It is something I asked them with the initial FAQ, but they weren't able to answer at that stage.

I strongly like the use of Steam here, it is DRM but it results in benefits for the users. The ICC series do a good thing with their use of the updates and online features needing a valid key, so you miss out if you pirate, which is good.

Securom = rubbish.

I used to hate Steam, but now I'm beginning to see its benefits. SecuROM = SecuCRAP.

 

[EarlCG]

Steam is an absolute no-no (and incidentally there is no such thing as DRM that benefits the users, how ignorant).

Totally disagree. I've used Steam for fours years and with its automatic patching, speed of download and community features (friends list, user profiles & groups etc), it clearly offers plenty more to the consumer than the pure hassle that other DRM systems entail.

Last weekend for example, I bought Race Driver:GRID (another Codemasters' game), for an very reasonable ?7.49 on Friday night. Downloaded it over night and been playing it since Saturday morning - simple as that .

Equally, when I've had to validate (I bought Left4Dead & Football Manager 2009 on retail as they were cheaper at shop.to than on Steam) it's simply been a case of entering the CD-Key, just as you would during a regular install.

The only difference is that you need to be connected to the internet at the time of validation, but after that Steam can be run in offline mode. For better or worse, being able to connect to the internet is basically essential as a gamer now anyway with the need to download patches, so is it much extra hardship having to be online at install as well? The steam programs memory footprint is also minimal if you've got over 1GB of RAM (which I'm guessing will be the bare minimum spec for Ashes Cricket 2009.

Anything that requires online verification will turn off 50%+ of their potential PC customers. If not basically 100%...

Finally there's absolutely zero merit in making up random numbers to try and convince that the majority of potential purchasers are likely to be put off by Steam. If you've had negative experiences with Steam feel free to share (I'd be interested to hear them), but rhetoric just doesn't constitute an argument.

 

[CaptainOZ]

Anything that requires online verification will turn off 50%+ of their potential PC customers. If not basically 100%...
...

That has to be the weakest statistical argument I've ever heard.