Mass Effect Anti-Piracy Measure Provokes Anger

Electronic Arts and BioWare have attracted the ire of many potential buyers of Mass Effect for PC thanks to their decision to use the SecuROM anti-piracy measure with the game.

Following the announcement that the system will be used, an epic forum thread has developed on the game's official site, rife with claims of cancelled pre-orders and refusal to buy the game. Many feel that legitimate users of Mass Effect are going to be punished with the inconvenience of SecuROM while pirates will find a way to circumvent the security measure and get a better experience.

BioWare describes the measure as follows:



Checks are run continually every 10 days subsequently.

Derek French, a Technical Producer at BioWare, has said that Spore - also published by EA - will use SecuROM.

While the measure is labelled as an anti-piracy step, it will also make re-sale of the game problematic. It is only possible to activate the game on three separate machines, meaning that anyone purchasing a pre-owned copy is gambling that the three attempts have not already been used up.

SecuROM also makes playing the game without an Internet connection impossible, as has been confirmed by BioWare.

Another issue was seen with BioShock, which also used SecuROM and suffered from the authentication servers grinding to a halt due to high levels of demand.

To give you a taste of the the tone of many dissatisfied BioWare fans, here's what one angry forum poster wrote, “Nice, guess EA has decided they really don't want to even pretend to treat their customers well. And it's equally nice that Bioware has decided the same. I'd rather have honest contempt than hypocrisy any day of the week. Good bye, so long, enjoy the PR beating that you are inevitably going to receive when MEPC actually gets released. What's really funny is EA makes the calls (yeh, it won't change you guys at all, uh huh) and you are the one who's going to take the blame for it. Up to today, I've defended EA when other people refer to it as 'the evil empire' and such-like. Guess I won't be doing that again.” His post was edited by BioWare to remove 'language'.

Recently Crytek said that it won't be creating any more PC-exclusive titles thanks to high levels of piracy of Crysis. While the issue is undoubtedly a problem, BioWare and EA would seem to have come across a very unpopular solution.

Thanks to SPOnG Forum poster Ben Mills for the heads up. You can weigh in with your opinion here.