Mass effect & me2 Piracy??

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Hi,
Just a random question, (if i have this right) Mass effect 1 and mass effect 2 have a anti-piracy program built in that stops piracy(is it DRM?) (but also stops people selling the game on & limiting installations e.t.c.
Just out of intrest, did it work? Lol Ive seen LOADS of places online where you can download the game (iso) + cracks!!-_- At the time it sounded a good idea (the DRM) but now it seems they just wnated to kill the 2nd hand pc market.

P.s Im not asking to see if its worth getting a pirate version lol was just honetsly intrested :)
 
Not especially IIRC.. if people are happy enough to go to the trouble of downloading a game, they'll go to the trouble of using the cracks.

Happily EA have released a deauthoriser for many of their SecuROM protected games, so in actuality you can install it an unlimited number of times :)
 
Not especially IIRC.. if people are happy enough to go to the trouble of downloading a game, they'll go to the trouble of using the cracks.

Happily EA have released a deauthoriser for many of their SecuROM protected games, so in actuality you can install it an unlimited number of times :)

..sooo the millions spent on piracy technolgy (sorry for my seplling lol) was infact..a waste of time?:P.. good old ea lol
 
I think ME1 had something coded in (similar to Batman:AA and GTA4) which stopped pirates from playing the game properly.

ME1 - Galaxy Map
GTA4 - Drunk mode
Batman - Coundn't grapple

Seems a much more effective way to stop pirates but there is always a way around it eventually.
 
I think ME1 had something coded in (similar to Batman:AA and GTA4) which stopped pirates from playing the game properly.

ME1 - Galaxy Map
GTA4 - Drunk mode
Batman - Coundn't grapple

Seems a much more effective way to stop pirates but there is always a way around it eventually.

Lmao GTA4- couldnt stand drunk mode.. (batman - i never used grapple.. sounds perfect for me ;) lol
 
Couldnt agree more dbappa.

I remember the complaints on forums of people playing crysis who were going round in a tank firing chickens at north koreans :D brilliant
 
Grapple? I thought it was glide. Either way you couldn't complete the game without it, so i think 'perfect' is a bit far off.

been a while since i played it (ps3) I seem to remmber there being one where u grab them by the scruff of the neck (i think anyway.. lol).. could never get the hang of it so ignored it:P
 
Huh? Think you've got the wrong grapple... grapple as in grappling hook not grabbing. Either way i'm sure it was gliding and you can't avoid the poison gas at 1 point without glide.
 
Couldnt agree more dbappa.

I remember the complaints on forums of people playing crysis who were going round in a tank firing chickens at north koreans :D brilliant
This forum would be an awesome read if more and more developers adopted that idea :D
 

I seem to remember Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory managed to fend off pirates for almost a year. Seems a real ahceivement considering most take hours/days to crack.

EDIT - The discussion is focusing on DRM, lets make sure we don't go off track (not that anyone has, can of worms and all that....)

EDIT 2 - My 2 cents; you can't blame companies going on the offensive with DRM but it does seem some companies are going to the extreme. Assassin's Creed 2 needs a net connection throughout the whole game - a bit excessive. Was it not Ubisoft who published the last Prince of Persia? That had no DRM at all, assuming their kind gesture did not work.
 
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Batman has a few other anti-piracy measures in the game at random points if the game detects a pirated version - rather than just one anti-piracy measure.

I ran into one (with a perfectly legit copy of the game) where the door to the next level was blocked. Fortunately it was just a screwup with GFWL I think - restarting and I could pass that bit fine - shame it affects genuine consumers and the pirates probably have it cracked inside a week.

Theres also another one in Batman AA I believe where the control reverse in one section if it detects the game is pirated.
 
The grapple 'feature' worked nicely as an anti-piracy measure because I went out and bought the game because of it.
 
The grapple 'feature' worked nicely as an anti-piracy measure because I went out and bought the game because of it.

The thing is... its effectively a demo. You reach a certain point and can't progress, you like the game so you go out and buy it. If the developers are having to achieve this effect with dodgy pirated versions they're doing something wrong, be it a shoddy demo or no demo at all.

I do think pirating is more likely to come with games that have no demo's tbh. People just test it out before buying it. If companies spent more time making a decent demo (seriously how hard can it be if you've taken the time to make a quality product [quality? lol]) then the actual number of downloads would probably go down.
 
Assume MMO's like WoW are pretty much pirate free? Maybe that's where AC2 DRM got the idea, could others follow?
 
Assume MMO's like WoW are pretty much pirate free? Maybe that's where AC2 DRM got the idea, could others follow?

No they aren't. The only difference is you can't connect to the official servers, so you'd simply pirate it and join a private server. They're also played solely online, trying to secure an online only game is a lot easier than securing an offline game.
 
No they aren't. The only difference is you can't connect to the official servers, so you'd simply pirate it and join a private server. They're also played solely online, trying to secure an online only game is a lot easier than securing an offline game.

Its MUCH harder to pirate an MMO - depending how much is held on the server backend... its pretty much dependant on someone either coding an entire server backend from scratch or leaking the official one - which means that its rarely updated and often buggy/broken.
 
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