We all have our theories. I think the opposite - that the people boycotting are a vocal few thousand posters on the internet and an insignificant amount in the 250,000 - 1M+ who might pick this up at the their local game store and couldn't care less about the EULA or DRM technicalities. Meanwhile, if the guestimate of 10-100 pirates for every legitimate copy is even vaguely correct, converting 1% into sales can be good dollars.
Publishers sometimes do strange things but it belies credulity for me that basically no publishers see this obvious truth that protection is a waste of money. Sure, EA are idiots. So are Ubisoft, THQ, Activision and everyone else. Don't you think someone might just buck the trend (other than Stardock, a minor publisher who uses this as a marketing device)? Or is it possible that they've done the math and concluded that despite the internet wisdom, DRM does make some sort of financial sense?
As for the scene, I don't know anything about it but I thought I'd wander over to The Pirate Bay for the fun of it. Yes, this is an unscientific as everyone else's unproven assumptions.
It looks like the Mass Effect cracks are failures so far and a couple of them shipped with Trojans. A taste:
alkkfkfkfkkf at 2008-06-02 00:02 CET:
Beause of all this hassle, I've actually ordered the game (isn't released in sweden yet).
If any game is worth buying, it's probably this one, atleast if it works properly, which it probably doesn't, but atleast I'll have the right to complain then.
evildmt at 2008-06-02 00:04 CET:
Supposedly this is already nuked for containing a trojan.
Noru at 2008-06-02 00:39 CET:
Trojan, do NOT download. Delete.
HavingWithdrawal at 2008-06-02 00:43 CET:
This is not a trojan you morons. It's on GameCopyWorld...but it doesn't even matter anyway. It doesn't fix anything.
Corwin111 at 2008-06-02 00:54 CET:
This is not a trojan. Or at least there is definitely a legit crackfix release with this name.
Question is are you guys 100% certain it doesnt work? Or if this is the file it's supposed to be...
Cuz there's a few really excited people on nforce and other forums sayng that this actually works perfectly... and fixes the map and saves even after you restart the game...
HavingWithdrawal at 2008-06-02 01:27 CET:
Like I said, I applied this crack fix right after I first installed the game. I ran the game for the very first time with this crack fix applied, and it does not correct anything. Once you become a Spectre, you can no longer save or quicksave, and the galaxy map is pitch black and broken when you access it. These people who release cracks need to play the game for more than 20 minutes.
silence951 at 2008-06-02 01:48 CET:
it doesnt fix the game saving issue for me, but i see the galaxy map. did you start a new game like the nfo tells you to?
aegise at 2008-06-02 02:12 CET:
Im looking at my registry, I found these
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTS - MassEffectSave - ShellEx - {BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}
(and a bunch of SecuROM stuff in other folders)
since the cracks dont currently work, anyone know if deleting the "rootkit" stuff in the registry would work?
slimdaddy47 at 2008-06-02 02:42 CET:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/slimdaddy47/error.jpg
any ideas?
gryeyes at 2008-06-02 03:00 CET:
Ya you downloaded a corrupt/infected file like a retard.
himar at 2008-06-02 05:26 CET:
Legit and doesn't work as intended
HavingWithdrawal at 2008-06-02 06:26 CET:
I'm sure plenty of people have tried this "crack fix" by now. Has it worked for any of you bastards or are you all still getting the same shit problems like me?
I am disappointed with both of the groups, as it was announced MONTHS before this shit came out that Bioware/EA were planning to put protection up the ass on this game. We're obviously feeling the reprecussions of this right now.
In fact, those cocksuckers were orginally planning on forcing people who bought the game to connect to the Internet once every 10 days to authenticate their CD keys with their servers, otherwise the game would completely stop running. That probably would have killed their sales even more than we do.
If a REAL crack doesn't come out soon though, I might actually end up buying this shit after all, because it's the first game I've played in years that has really impressed the shit out of me both graphically and game play wise.
Yeah, I know. Two whole people who might buy the game - but how many others wasted 7Gb of download and decided $40 wasn't such a big deal after all? No idea - but my guess is some of them.
I keep reading that pirates are only there for the fun of downloading and probably don't even play the games but if that were universally true, there wouldn't be so much angst that a crack doesn't work. Some of these guys are
to play - maybe even desperate enough to pay for it.