The activation is keyed to the windows install it is made on (no, we don't keep even that info; it's stored in the sig.bin file). But if he redownloaded, there couldn't be any issue with that since there would be no pre-existing sig.bin, unless he failed to download it then tried copying it over by hand and got that.

I don't know what could have happened with the forums account aside from having had the password saved in the browser before, and not remembering it correctly. Passwords can be recovered via support.stardock.com, and even if you don't have a forum login, there's always support@stardock.com as well.

We don't like seeing people suffer with problems any more than the people having them do. So we encourage anyone having problems to just *ask*, and we'll do our best to get it sorted as quickly as possible.

Well, I just came back from spending a weekend with him, and showed him this forum thread too. I won't say everything he said, and I'll condence all I can, but basically, he said it did not matter to him where you guys store what, or how you "store" info or why. The bottom line is it's copy protection, just like any other copy protection, and the game stoped working when he got his new computer (BECAUSE of your copy protection, regaurdless of what you call it). He told me is I got him the new GCII (Twilight is it?), and if I installed/registered it for him at his place, THEN he would try the game again, otherwise, he said he had not intention of trying to convice people he was not a pirate (hey, he's almost 60, people in his generation never had to deal with stuff like this).

Anyway, if I get him GCII Twilight, by chance, in the future, I'll do my best he gets all re-registered (God help you if he has to reload windows again though.............)

Nobody can help you if you refuse to let them help you.

My problem is they're keeping the 3 installation limit. At first I thought it'd be a real annoyance but not major, and then I thought 'well what if I have a bug+need to reinstall?', or 'what if you can do modding on the game, I do something wrong, and need to reinstall?'. That'd be my 3 installations gone straight away. Since some of my older games have been installed far more than 3 times (and I'm the only one using them) I think it's outrageous I should be restricted in the number of times I can reinstall it. It's absurd that EA is looking to punish it's legal+loyal customers by giving them an inferior product than the one they can pirate, and they're effectively saying 'well we don't care about you, go and pirate our game instead'.

It's nothing short of crazy on EA's part, and I'm really disappointed the system is going to affect Mass Effect and Spore, two games I've been really looking forward to on the PC (even more so with mass effect since it's a bioware game, and in the past they've been great). The only consolation is I can at least consider getting them now, since the 10 day activation has been removed. That one really was absurd - if the game had shipped with it, I wouldn't have been surprised if it ended up selling maybe as little as half of what it should have without all the DRM. That's what so hard to understand about all this DRM - these companies are paying to have something on their product that encourages people to turn to piracy!

I can only agree with maudlin27.

The Irony is, if people do not buy some game because of the copy protection and it gets poor sales, the publishers will blame piracy for it and make the protection even more intrusive. Maybe they will learn someday.

Publishers like that will either learn or go bankrupt, either outcome will satisfy me.

I am probably older than most of you.

I still have a few of the first books I read when I was six. And I still have the first audio singles that I bought (vinyl of course). And I still have the first computer games I played (on a Commodore C64).

All of them suck within todays standards now. Tastes and technology have changed or proceeded. But occasionally I read passages of these books, listen to those audio singles and play those computer games. I can't put in words - not only because English is not my first language - what fond memories and feelings I get by this. About family, friends, situations, and other things that were important at those past times.

Can you imagine how much fun it is to play a 20 year old computer game with the same person you played it with 20 years ago?

All you young people who buy their first (copy protected and drm'ed) music or computer games legally (in the future even books?) are definitely not able to access these media in perhaps 20 years from now.

And believe me at some time you will want to listen to those past music and play that games occasionally.

The reasons that you can't do this are copy protection and DRM. At some time support ends, publishers vanish, and technology changes. Your CDs and DVDs get worthless. You will never experience the feelings when you play the same music you listened together with your first girl-/boyfriend many years ago. If you get lucky you can buy ten different mixes of cover versions of this month's superstar (feat. today's flash in the pan).

This is what bothers me the most about crippling media with protections of all sorts. They make them artificially short-lived and therewith remove all the plenty of future value from them.

Oh yeah, for all the uproar about Bioware/EA's effort in copying protection, my friend who is a member at Demonoid.com is telling me people there are hard at work in working a crack to the Mass Effect copy protection challenge. Apparently the first crack had issues, and now they are all putting their brains together to figure out how to beat it. Well...so much for EA's draconian effort, serves them right. Should have use Stardock's model.

Yep, done it quite a few times recently... (lets make it 15 though ) I can honestly say it is one of the funniest (as in gut-busting) things you can do. Thirty-odd year olds busting their fingers on hyper sports circa 1984 is a staple at our LANs these days. Not to mention the dead-legs that result from someone pinching "someone else's" yellow lollie on bubble bobble. Classic.

Great post Blue

PS Install limits? I've reinstalled windows about 10 times already! What the hell should that have to do with any games I purchase?! What a pack of helmets.

I consider myself lucky, since i've only had minor trouble with copy protection, problem being that my DVD-drive has hard time reading them. For example, i had to install Command & Conquer 3 from my laptop through lan. . A firmware update fixed that up later.

I just upgraded my computers video card, so it should be able to play Bioshock, problem is, i've heard many horror stories about the it's copy protection, and i'm not sure if it's worth the risk..

By "them", i meant "discs". Didn't this forum used to have an "edit" button?

I guess EA have started taking their "EA games - challenge everything" motto a bit too far

MegaVolt

I had a retard in my class that just like you said that if he buy a game he can do whatever he wants with it, including making copies to sell....

I really wonder, are you people really sincere in what you're saying? Do you really mean to say that you won't buy games with heavy protection? If you really are "good" like you want us to believe, then buy the original, stuff it away on the shelf and play pirate release.

You really become no different then the people in my private DC++ rar hub and torrentsite.


I believe that to completely stop piracy we need things like TCPA with Windows Vistas activation and elimination so publishers can be sure that one serial is only used on one machine at any time.

If anybody has another 100% sure way then tell us.

@SanChonino: Yeah, I remember back in the day when I take my cool new PC game over to a friend's house so we could play it together (we always met at his house, he had a larger TV). About half the games I bought he wound up buying as a result. Of course, installing it on a computer I didn't even own was the worst kind of moral turpitude, and proper social interaction only takes place through company owned servers with a monthly usage fee anyway, so that kind of deviancy was wisely stamped out by video game developers.

Nice. Make a point by insulting people.



I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, yes. I went through the BioShock 'copy protection' funhouse and I'm not willing to pay for that type of experience again.



Stupid suggestion. Really. If you buy the game, you're showing support of this type of DRM. If you don't support this type of DRM, why would you hand money to the company that uses it? That's why I won't buy. Nor will I pirate it. Games with this type of DRM are on my personal 'no buy, no play' list.