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b0rsuk
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icon Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (0)  
The Inquirer wrote: In a post on Bioware's forums, producer Derek French has confirmed that two of the biggest PC titles of the year - Will Wright's Spore and the Xbox 360 conversion of Mass Effect - will require ongoing, rolling 10-day activation over the internet.
Just to re-iterate that point, you will need to re-activate your copy with the publisher every 10 days. Forever.
And if it so happens that the DRM's makers go out of business in a couple of years, you can forget about ever playing your game again in the future, as there will no servers to activate with.

The article:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/07/mass-effect-wins-award-worst-pc

The post by Bioware's employee:
http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=628375&forum=125

UPDATE
This is also planned for Spore.


What do you think ?
I'm not interested in Mass Effect, but I had great hopes for Dragon Age.

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[Last edited by b0rsuk at 05-07-2008 07:10 PM]
05-07-2008 at 05:09 PM
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Tim
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icon Re: Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (0)  
Spore is published by EA, right? I've been avoiding EA games since this century. And I do buy games, unfortunately they are all gathering dust because I don't have the time... EA is usually synonymous for great marketing, so I'm avoiding them like the plague.

About this online reactivation thing, I think I'm only going to answer this after I know whether F&M does (or doesn't) require being online.

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[Last edited by Tim at 05-07-2008 07:58 PM]
05-07-2008 at 07:56 PM
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Banjooie
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icon Re: Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (0)  
In the real world, this is what happens:
DRM Makers: Hey, Spore Guys, we're going to run out of business soon!

Will Wright: Oh. I'mma deactivate the DRM, then, since it's been years since the game came out anyway.

DRM Makers: K.


05-07-2008 at 08:59 PM
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Maurog
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icon Re: Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (0)  
Hey, Steam is essentially the same thing, and it seems to work just fine.

I hope if Spore gets on Steam it will just let it handle this stuff.

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05-07-2008 at 09:13 PM
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Banjooie
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Well, Maurog, yeah, but I think b0rsuk has an ulterior motive here; he tends to bring this issue up a lot.
05-07-2008 at 09:47 PM
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b0rsuk
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icon Re: Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (0)  
Some people have pointed out that Steam actually does have 'play offline' mode. Even if I'm suspicious about that system, I have to give them credit.
No "offline mode" in this version. So, if you for whatever reason fail to activate your game online once per 10 days (power shortage, no internet connection in the first place, not playing for 11 days, summer holidays, being sent to Iraq, your computer breaks...) this means you have to call the support.

For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play.
Quote: Posted 05/03/08 21:28 (GMT) by Kevin Lynch

Sure, I have an always-on net connection but what happens if I don't play for 11 days and the moment I want to play my connection is down? Are you saying I'm not going to be able to play my perfectly legitimate purchased copy of the game, even the retail version, until I get permission?
That is correct. And I would suggest that you contact EA Support the moment this happens (once you get your internet back) to report the issue. If there are people having problems with the system as designed, then Support needs to hear about it so they can help us evaluate it for the next game title.

http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=628375&forum=125&sp=15

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05-07-2008 at 10:12 PM
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stigant
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Why don't they add an option to just insert the CD to bypass the check? Wouldn't that be at least as good as what they have now?

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05-08-2008 at 12:10 AM
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Banjooie
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b0rsuk wrote:
Some people have pointed out that Steam actually does have 'play offline' mode. Even if I'm suspicious about that system, I have to give them credit.
No "offline mode" in this version. So, if you for whatever reason fail to activate your game online once per 10 days (power shortage, no internet connection in the first place, not playing for 11 days, summer holidays, being sent to Iraq, your computer breaks...) this means you have to call the support.

Er, what? No.

After 10 days, it refuses to let you play until it's activated.

Edit: Well, it starts checking after 5 days, and checks every day until the 10th,r esetting the timer if it comes up to that.

That simple. You don't have to call support.

Edit: Unless, of course, you don't have a connection on the 11th day but STILL REALLY WANT TO PLAY RIGHT THEN AND THERE.

Your FUD is a little mystifying.

[Last edited by Banjooie at 05-08-2008 01:19 AM]
05-08-2008 at 01:15 AM
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b0rsuk
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stigant wrote:
Why don't they add an option to just insert the CD to bypass the check? Wouldn't that be at least as good as what they have now?

Answer; it's in the links above:
Derek French, Technical Producer wrote: After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned).


So it looks like original CD is no longer a sufficient proof for them.

---

There are simply too many ways this can fail. Firewalls, restrictive network settings, even lack of network neutrality.

Case in point:
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

The game uses P2P connection to authenticate accounts while playing online. My lovely ISP (Chello) lowers priority of P2P traffic by default. It's very frequent to be randomly disconnected with a message "connection to online services lost". And it's not just me, lots of other people get this problem. Yet other people don't have any issues at all. It's clearly ISP-dependant.
Workaround: I had to set up proxy server on my machine, and encrypt packets with Tor. That way, occasional disconnect is very rare.

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05-08-2008 at 05:27 AM
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Banjooie
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I have one last question for this thread, then I'll let b0rsuk have it to himself.


Edit: Better one, actually.

b0rsuk, why perchance does your ISP throttle p2p?

[Last edited by Banjooie at 05-08-2008 08:58 AM]
05-08-2008 at 08:56 AM
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NiroZ
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I personally think that this is seriously overhyped. Let me quote the original post that started this furor
Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.
No cd checks. Isn't that a good thing?
After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.
Where does it say it requires multiple checks? As far as I can see, this is a one off event so that people don't publicize their key.

IMHO, this has been, as is typical with the blogosphere, this has been blown right out of proportion. This is just a replacement of the cd checks that have pissed people off for years. Personally I think it is a better system.

[Last edited by NiroZ at 05-08-2008 09:47 AM]
05-08-2008 at 09:44 AM
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Briareos
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Well, if it only re-checks the key once I don't have much of a problem with it; that's not that much different than normal online activation, and I can see the point of doing a re-check after a couple of days to combat online spreading of keys.

But if it does indeed phone home periodically, they can kiss any prospective sale of Mass Effect (and other games with that copy protection) from me bye bye.

I'm not willing take such overzealous copy protection measures just because they think they can get away with anything - and there's enough other interesting games out there that I don't need to have Mass Effect at all cost.

And for the record - SecuROM is the copy protection that gave me the most headaches (with legit software to boot) previously, so that's another reason I'm not looking forward to their new shenanigans...

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05-08-2008 at 09:59 AM
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Tuttle
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It's ongoing, not a one-off. From page 2 of the thread, Derek French:
For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play.
Or page 3, Chris Priestly:
If you buy MEPC, install and run the game the game will register automatically and you are good to play.

After 5 days the next time you start the game the system will automatically try to register. If you are connected to the internet, it will occur without you even knowing it and reset the 10 days.

If you are not connected to the internet, you can keep playing for the next 5 days. As you start each day, the system will keep trying to validate. If it connects and validates, the "clock" is reset.

If the system cannot connect to the internet after the 10 days, you will not be able to play MEPC until you are connected to the internet. Once you reconnect to the internet and try to play, it will re-validate and you can play as normal for another period of 10 days as before.

So it is not "at 10 days and if the servers aren't working you're screwed". There is a large window (5days) where the system automatically tries to re-validate to prevent last minute problems.

[Last edited by Tuttle at 05-08-2008 10:33 AM]
05-08-2008 at 10:31 AM
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Briareos
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Well, one less sale it is, then...

Why am I not surprised that something like that happens as soon as EA buys Bioware, though?

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05-08-2008 at 10:44 AM
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Banjooie
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I don't understand the problem with this, unless you don't have broadband yet?
05-08-2008 at 10:49 AM
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NiroZ
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Who the hell is Chris Priestly?

And if what he is saying is true, it debunks the point that this quote:
Just to re-iterate that point, you will need to re-activate your copy with the publisher every 10 days. Forever.
which implies that if you don't activate it every 10 days your cactus. This is wrong as it only checks when you start the game, and you could start the game after not playing it for a month and provided it was legit and had an internet connection, you would be fine.
05-08-2008 at 10:51 AM
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Briareos
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Banjooie wrote:
I don't understand the problem with this, unless you don't have broadband yet?
I don't want my single player, non-online games to continuously phone home just because I frickin' feel like playing them.

I have no problem if it's a multiplayer game that does this[1], since it needs to connect to their server anyway, but requiring an internet connection just for starting the damn game even if it doesn't need the internet connection for anything else is just madness. (And this ain't Sparta, seriously...)

It's just a principle thing, not a technical one.

[1] Case in point: Trackmania United Forever - asks you for a key the first time you run it, then only checks with the server if you want to play it online (to prevent people from sharing keys). I don't mind it autoconnecting to their server whenever I run it since it keeps your online ranking/official times/buddies/in-game PMs in single player as well (kinda like DROD), but you don't get any benefit like that with Mass Effect...

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05-08-2008 at 11:52 AM
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Znirk
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Banjooie wrote:
I don't understand the problem with this, unless you don't have broadband yet?
Part of it is psychological -- a gut resistance against the "please, Mr Activation Server, may I play my game this week?" angle, apart from (my) general reluctance to let any software telephone home.

Sixth and lastly, there may also be a problem in how client and server communicate. To use Steam as a published example, I've found that I'd need to kick my ISP's firewall down to "Noobville welcomes the Third International Script Kiddie Convention" levels to connect to their servers. Of course, perhaps this here scheme will use :80 or some similarly popular port.

Thirdly, once a game has been out of print for a while, what's to stop the publisher from shutting down the server so that people start buying new stuff instead of replaying ancientware? Sure, it would make them incredibly unpopular, but come on, this is EA we're talking about. They're incredibly unpopular already, they've got nothing to lose :wacko

And, to conclude, they are lying knaves.


Edit. BTW, Niroz, apparently the Priestly person is something in Bioware marketing.

[Last edited by Znirk at 05-08-2008 12:12 PM]
05-08-2008 at 12:09 PM
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b0rsuk
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Banjooie wrote:
b0rsuk, why perchance does your ISP throttle p2p?

You tell me. You seem to like making authoritative ("fact") statements, and telling people what they think.
I can only guess:
- because they feel like it
- because they can
- because they're pressured by media companies
- because most people either don't notice or can't like the two (lost connections in a game and P2P)
- because they believe P2P is inherently evil


--
I'd like to emphasize that for honest customers this protection offers absolutely no value added, just extra hassle. As stated by many people in the threads on bioware forums, only honest customers will have to put up with. Pirates will just use cracked version, and have better experience.

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05-08-2008 at 01:07 PM
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NiroZ
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Znirk wrote:
Edit. BTW, Niroz, apparently the Priestly person is something in Bioware marketing.
Why would a employee in marketing admit this kinda stuff, considering that he would have at least some idea by then of the furor this announcement was creating (and still is).
05-08-2008 at 01:38 PM
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Tim
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As someone who buys games a lot and have too little time to play them, I've got lots of games lying on my shelf. It also means that I play them much later than their release date.

For example, there's this CD lying on my desk called "Deus Ex". Yes, I know it's old (my box says 2000 by Ion Storm - who?), but I'm planning to play it this month. EA servers are notorious of shutting down games very soon, some less than a year. (see http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=66521)

Imagine what happens it this need a connection to an EA server. I'd probably go and play the currently installed game on the stack a bit longer, Diablo 2 (but that game takes a horrible long time, I'm still on chapter 1 after so many days...), or Super Mario Galaxy, which also has DRM but is guaranteed to be better and cheaper.

If anyone enforces a sell-by date on my games, I'm likely to pass. And if companies ignore honest paying customers, the only people who are buying their games are pirates. That's why they are doing DRM measures, because they know all their customers are thieves.

And since I'm not a thief, so I don't buy that kind of games.

(Off topic, the Wii has a much better protection method. All my Wii discs have scratches even after first playing.)

Oh, incidentally, is Deus Ex a FPS?

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05-08-2008 at 01:41 PM
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NiroZ
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If you've got such a backlog, why on earth do you care?

As for your points, I think that the second last post on this page answers your questions.
05-08-2008 at 02:19 PM
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Tim
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First, thanks for the link.
NiroZ wrote:
If you've got such a backlog, why on earth do you care?
Because I still buy (new) games. And they do sometimes have more priority.

Because I'm a responsible consumer, and I want to show people that responsible consumers don't buy crippled games for the same price as non-crippeled ones.

Because I don't want to be tagged as a pirate just because EA is abusing its monopoly.

Because I only have a backlog of good games, and if EA continues like this I will finish my backlog very soon. :D

Because if honest game buyers don't care, then only pirates care. It's not hard to say that only pirates play your games if you (=EA) sees everyone as pirates. Although in EA's case, they deserve it.

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05-08-2008 at 02:44 PM
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Tuttle
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Banjooie wrote:
I don't understand the problem with this, unless you don't have broadband yet?
That's actually quite a large number of people. And even for those of us who are fortunate enough to have DSL, if your phone line gets cut and takes over a week to restore then you're buggered.
NiroZ wrote:
Znirk wrote:
Edit. BTW, Niroz, apparently the Priestly person is something in Bioware marketing.
Why would a employee in marketing admit this kinda stuff, considering that he would have at least some idea by then of the furor this announcement was creating (and still is).
Because once the decision is made and implemented (something that would have happened way above his head), communicating about it is a Good Thing. It beats the alternative, which is trying to hush it up while the rumours fly out of control and the FUD keeps growing.


One other question does spring to mind -- if I bought the game, and my net got cut again, or something fouled up with the activation system, and I called EA support, are they going to reimburse me for the call? We're talking AU$2.48 (US$2.34) per minute from a landline, and even more from a mobile. And you can bet it's not going to be a quick call. "Call support" is not a customer-friendly workaround for a problem with the activation system.
05-08-2008 at 03:07 PM
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Beef Row
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Banjooie wrote:
I don't understand the problem with this, unless you don't have broadband yet?

Interesting point raised repeatedly on the Bioware forum. The often lacking broadband from home community includes essentially all deployed military (any country), (at least according to posters at the bioware forum) a large portion of Australia, most of South America, pretty much anywhere in Africa, and (maybe) much of Eastern Europe and Asia.

This is hardly a trivial community and in many cases (especially military) even personal dialup may be entirely unavailable.

So people who don't own broadband is not the small and hypothetical community that initial thought may encourage people to believe. So this may be a minor nuisance in developed countries, but in much of the developing world (and in the military, and in Australia, and over by Elfstone's place where internet is always in and out for that matter) it may amount to an insurmountable barrier, even for those who otherwise have the resources to purchase and play this game.

Basically, this is another small way to widen all the usual gaps. And force nearly 100% piracy on some already high piracy regions as they are told 'this game is not for you'.

This problem would apply to an extent to any phone-in system, but making it regularly recurring means temporary solutions aren't solutions anymore.

EDIT: As there are plenty of Australians here may as well ask... are there in fact large portions of Australia where internet is spotty/broadband is unavailable/dialup charges hourly rates and all that good stuff, as claimed in the Bioware forum?

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05-08-2008 at 03:32 PM
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eytanz
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You know, I'm not really bothered by the activation system proposed. I don't like it, I would prefer not to have it, but it's not going to get me to boycott Mass Effect or anything like that. Rating annoyances from 1 to 10, it's maybe a 4.

But it's stupid. It's not going to stop pirates. It's going to slow them down a bit - maybe there will be less pirated copies for a few weeks while people work to crack the system - but in the long run, it won't matter. And it won't increase sales. To increase sales, there would have to be a large contingent of people who A - were going to pirate the game, B - want it so much that they must have it *now*, rather than wait for a hacked version.

There is probably a handful of people who answer this criteria. I'm even willing to buy, as a theoretical possibility, that there are more people in this demographic than there are people who are turned off (because of their ideology or lack of broadband) from buying the game by this measure. I doubt it, but I'm willing to entertain that as a thought experiment. But I just can't believe that the amount of profit this method will add will be anywhere near the amount of money it costs to implement it, and keep activation servers running for years. The resources paid for developing, implementing, supporting, and marketing this "protection" are so much more than it will ever protect.

This is especially true since we know now from real data (see www.galciv2.com and www.sinsofasolarempire.com) that lack of copy protection on a PC game does in no way stop it from having phenomenal sales.

It's not really evil, it's not really terrible, and it's not really the end of the world. It's just plain out stupid, that's what this is.

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05-08-2008 at 04:10 PM
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Tuttle
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Beef Row wrote:
EDIT: As there are plenty of Australians here may as well ask... are there in fact large portions of Australia where internet is spotty/broadband is unavailable/dialup charges hourly rates and all that good stuff, as claimed in the Bioware forum?
Yes. You don't even need to look hard -- many of them are in large cities like Sydney.

Cable coverage is limited (2 providers in 3 capital cities, 1 provider in 2 capital cities) and frozen, to the point that even though Adelaide (1.1 million people) has Optus cable running through most of it, it'll almost certainly never be switched on.

DSL is patchy. If you're in a good spot, you can expect 10-20 Mbps download speeds and plans whose download limits are fine unless you spend a whole lot of time watching Channel BitTorrent. If you're in a bad spot, you can expect it to be unavailable for a while yet. Bad spots include large country regions as well as inner suburbs of major cities where mini RIM exchanges were deployed to cheaply grow the network -- capacity in those things for DSLAMs is incredibly limited.

Satellite is widely available but generally expensive, and not a gamer-friendly product to begin with.

Terrestrial wireless is available in limited areas only. There was a plan to roll it out over much of the country, but the government pulled the plug a few weeks ago.

Mobile broadband is a luxury item. High-end plans are typically only a few GB, both uploads and downloads are metered (rather than just downloads) and excess charges for exceeding the quota range from about $100/GB to $2,000/GB (charged per kilobyte). Last time I checked the plans before now(about 6 months ago), the worst-case excess bill was still as high as $25,000/GB.

Residential ISDN is being actively phased out and will be effectively dead at the end of the year.

That leaves dialup. :)

[Last edited by Tuttle at 05-08-2008 04:37 PM]
05-08-2008 at 04:25 PM
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eb0ny
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icon Re: Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (+1)  
And then there's this:
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05-08-2008 at 05:09 PM
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b0rsuk
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icon Re: Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (0)  
Single player games are precisely the kind of games people play in places where internet is not available. And when your connection goes down for whatever reason, they're all you're left with. Being unable to play a single-player game without internet connection is ridiculous.
I've been stuck without internet connection too many times to say it's not an issue.

I don't think EA will keep their servers around for long just because they're nice guys. They will take them down as soon as they find something more profitable to do.

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[Last edited by b0rsuk at 05-08-2008 05:22 PM]
05-08-2008 at 05:15 PM
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NiroZ
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icon Re: Mass Effect, Spore - extreme DRM (0)  
I'd like to point out that worrying about us Australians (although touching) is rather moot because our archaic rating system can't handle sex scenes, which AFAIK, there's one in Mass Effect. Then again, they might just release a censored version in Australia.

As for internet speed, its rather strange. I used to live in the middle of nowhere, in a small town called Uki. Yet I was able to get a 1.5 mbps connection. (Although we did suffer a rather high router mortality rate). However, there were places in nearby towns that still didn't have coverage for broadband. Nowadays I'm on a cable connection (20 or 30 mbps), but at 2c per meg its rather expensive. Damn uni networks.
05-08-2008 at 05:17 PM
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