A new day for PC gamers dawns, developers dropping draconian DRM

You may have heard that Ubisoft released the PC retail version of Prince of Persia without any hard-ass DRM. They said that it was a test, but haven't released their conclusions of the test to the public. The general consensus around the communities seems to be that the test went well for us PC gamers, since Ubisoft hasn't made a huge news headline out of it where they show the numbers that justify DRM use.

So, now it seems that other developers are following the good example set by the French giant, since the second news for today is that Dragon Age: Origins is not going to use SecuROM, instead opting for a basic disc check authentication. 1UP reports that this bit of news came directly from the community manager for BioWare. While people probably don't like disc checks either, it certainly is a step up from the online authentications and install limits we have come to expect from SecuROM laden games.

Quote: We're happy to announce that the boxed/retail PC version of Dragon Age: Origins will use only a basic disk check and it will not require online authentication. In other words, the retail PC version of the game won't require you to go online to authenticate the game for offline play. We have chosen not to use SecuROM in any version of Dragon Age that is distributed by Electronic Arts or BioWare.

If you haven't heard, EA's other big name game, Sims 3 is apparently going to be SecuROM free as well. All this bundled with the earlier mentioned Ubisoft experiment, it seems like publishers are finally starting to realize that it really doesn't help with piracy at all, and only hurts the real customers.

This probably sounds too good to be true, right? Well, have faith brothers and sisters of the gaming world, it's a new era of PC gaming! Maybe. Hopefully.

Posted in Gaming by Kilu on May 05th 2009 at 7:48pm 0 Comments