Dragon Age - Copy Protection Revealed & More
 

Chris Priestly has announced a minimal protection scheme for Dragon Age, with only a basic disc check:
Thanks, Minotic!
In other DA news, there's an update on Ostagar, "the site of the famed battle between King Cailan's forces and the oncoming darkspawn horde" and analyst Mike Hickey from Janco Partners thinks the game will move 1.3M units.
More information.

Good news. Like most gamers, I make my purchases based entirely on how invasive people tell me the copy protection is. Based on this report, I guess I'll buy two copies of Dragon Age. If they made it available without any copy protection at all, I'd have bought five copies. If they'd used SecuROM, I'd have lit myself on fire in front of a Gamestop. AND bought no copies.

Also, from now on could reviews just cover the copy protection so I don't have to waste all that time reading about irrelevant aspects of the game like gameplay, story, controls, etc? Cut to the chase: DRM. I won't buy a game unless I feel the copy protection respects me, and really likes me for ME, you know?

you amuse…

Great news indeed.

Good news, not great. Great news would be that they found a way to make copy protection really work.

Very good news!

DA just moved to the top of my MUST buy list!! :)

Okaaaaaaay … I usually buy games based on whether or not it is a game I want to play. Then again, I'm buying and playing games for the pleasure of it, not to make a political point or a statement of principles … but to each their own I guess.

P.S. Even though you might be in the majority here at RPGWatch I highly doubt that "most gamers" base their purchases on the DRM scheme. I suspect it is more a case of the usual small yet very very VERY loud crowd making a spectacle of themselves. (this is not an attempt to start a pro vs. con debate about DRM, merely a statement that the whole DRM hysteria has been blown way out of proportion in my opinion).

*Edit*
Epic Fail on my part. Read top of next page for explanation.

Woohoo!

Not that my comp isn't already infested with SecuRom from several other games, but no online authentication is a good thing.

Meh, really.

I dont know, i like the "new" kind of copy protection scheme, where i have to activate my game online one time, but can leave the disc out of the drive. (loud noises, disc swapping, etc.)

Irony check: fail :)

Notice how phrase "supporting the game" seems to have changed its meaning from "patching the game" to "letting you buy some goodies".

I agree.
I'll buy the game asap.

I know I'm massively out of step with everyone else but I'd swap an online authentication for the disc check any day.

Proof yet again how context is very difficult to transfer in discussion forums :D

After the resent stuff about Risen's DRM I absolutely concur.

I tend to agree.

The casual gamers don't copy games that much, except when they get a copy from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend …

Plus, casual gamers aren't - imho - the main audience in role playing games. The only exceptions would be imho classics ("you've got to play this !") and - of course - Puzzle quest. :biggrin:


My own complaint is a rather minor one, and has nothing to do with the DRM :

Well, I once wrote somewhere that developers are rather technically oriented, not creativity oriented. So, in my thesis, the higher developer-oriented the grade of a tool set is, the fewer creativity it might evoke. So to say.

Because in theory, creativity is rather seen with non-techie people, not vice versa.

Therefore I personally doubt we'll see very creative new mods there, only rather mods that are interesting from a technological perspective ("techie playground").

But, as I already said, that's a completely different topic …

Downloading a NOCD crack to remove the disc check is a matter of 30 seconds effort. Why would I wait for a disc check or swap out the CD to play a game I already paid for? Because God is looking over my shoulder?

This makes me happy :) I will likely buy it.

I think that's only true in the first few months, where the most tech-savy content creators understand the toolset. But give it a couple of months and usually there are tutorials online that bridge the gap so more 'artistic oriented' content creators understand how to use it.

I totally agree. I don't like the new 'DRM' mentality that's replacing the add-ons of the past. I prefer 20 hours of new content after a year than 4 hours every 2 months.

Unfortunately the irony check routine didn't even get initialized because the ReadTheDamnTextProperly function apparently crashed with a run time error :wall: … I need to change my Reading software to a version that is properly compatible with my aging Brain OS.

Sorry my bad!

Now if the games turn out to be classic there's no worries of playing it years down the line. It seems EA has seen the light, now for atari to catch up.

Really? I recall you were of the opposite opinion even during the whole Bioshock controversy.

Have you changed your opinion Dhruiny, or maybe you could clarify.

(PS- yes, for those interested, I did bring up the Bioshock DRM with the speaker from 2K but even then I knew he couldn't elaborate because he had nothing to do with it, having worked on the PS3 version of it. He did seem he didn't like it - or didn't like to have to deal with massive blow up at least.)

As somebody who spent four years of his life playing with the NWN Toolset I can assure you technology is a definitely a great tool for creativity. The Toolset itself succeeded because it was annoyingly simple to make a mod you can DM a a game in in 5 minutes.

But the richness of the scripting tools allowed me to do some stuff that was so crazy that I decided to finally finish my CS degree. (check out the Fire Elemental building in my mod below. I'll remind you that none of what I did in the mod was with haks).

And since it was a game, if your players didn't see it or it didn't add to the fun there is no real point except to what you know is under the hood. The fun of the player should always be the focus.

--

So relevance to the DA Toolset it appears from watching the videos I saw those of us familiar with te NWN Toolset see it as a step in the right direction.

However, we all know there is no multiplayer, no DM client, and it looks like you are limited to the areas they give you.

I was far more interested in what kind of toolset they could put out and what I could do with it than what they've announced over the years about the game. I'm likely going to pass.

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nice catch

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I think the public screamfest that Bioware had with Atari over allowing SecuROM to add one half baked version to the game over another lead to this new DRM policy.

You may recall that the initial SecuROM on NWN cracked a lot of discs (including mine) and Bio even recommended the customer use a copied version and safely tuck the original away.

In one patch the SecuROM was so bad that Bio yelled at Atari and a patch was quickly released they removed it entirely until it was fixed in the next patch.

Makes me wonder how they convinced EA to let them do this however. Maybe it was already in the contract.

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Did anyone read my point on marketing in the 2k Game Lecture?

All this info about the game is coming out now months and months before the game is released. This is the reason the speaker says is for such specific deadlines - contracts for this kind of information are signed years in advance.

The delay IMO really throws what Bio signed already out of whack.

Every time I read a press release about this game I end up liking it more and more. If some PR guy somewhere is trying to manipulate me, I think it's working!

This is absolutely great news. Last year i bought Mass Effect's PC version, only with a frustration not be able to play on my gaming PC. Because, i do not have internet access on this computer cause i don't want to fill it with virus protection, internet, etc programs. I use my laptop for this. Also, limited installations is like a punishment to the legitimate users when pirate copy users able to install it any time and number they want. So, long story short DRM sucks. I definitely appreciate EA for their wise decision and support the game with buying it the first day it will be released.

Bah. Online activation >>>> Disc. I hope I can buy the game on steam or impulse or something like that. I hate having to insert discs only to play a bloody game.

And I hate it when the company decided you have activated too many times or your download is corrupt and you're outside of the 6 month re-download window or other restrictions that allow you to pay full price … again! Multi-buy FTW!

Downloading the same crack to remove online authentication takes the same 30 secs, so if we're downloading cracks, where's the problem in the first place?

If a game has no disc-check, then I don't need to bother downloading anything.

No idea what I said back then. I haven't consciously changed my position, so I'd have to dig up those old posts.

I think no DRM is a win for gamers, for the record. Noone needs to worry about anything and we can start talking about game quality or something else rather than having DRM dominating just about every conversation. Again, I acknowledge I'm out of step with most; for me, a disc-check is not a win over a single online authentication.

Bring back the Code Wheels!! :)

And that has happened to you how often and with what games and companies ?

I did not have a such a problem since those online copy protections came en vogue. And I buy a lot of games, both online and in stores.

Well, I think that Mike (txa1265) is a bit of a special case anyway since he's got like 357 computers and laptops (including 26 iMacs and 42 iBooks) and 259 handheld devices :) . If there is one person on this planet where it does not surprise me that he runs into issues with the activation limits then it's gotta be Mike.

So, what is the protection on the DLC?

The same as fallout 3's it gets released broke

I like the fact they won't have SecuROM or other DLC. I actually did run into the activation limit on Spore and Mass Effect, BTW - My computer I ordered kept having massive fatal errors and I exchanged it two or three times - each time I'd install the game, computer would fail, I'd send it back, and then I'd have to reinstall again.

And let's not forget, if you install Windows 7 as many will later this year, that's most probably a new 'installation' for any activation-limited games you may have.

Not really, many will detect you have the same hardware and not use up an activation count.

The market has you all ;)

Hahahaha . . . . spot on :lol:

Indeed, young pups these days bleating about a bit of minor DRM know NOTHING of the horrors of the olden days.