Don’t use any EA software period.

Steam will however ban your entire account in a heartbeat if they catch you playing a pirated Steam game. That in itself is similar to EA’s Origin but I agree – banning someone’s entire account because they said a naughty word on their precious community forums is a bad strategy.

Considering the alleged disconnect between TOR and Origin if and only if you buy the boxed copy I can see this game being the biggest single up tick in brick & mortar sales since Steam first appeared.  Same with Mass Effect 3. 

But aren’t BoingBoing a little behind with this news?  It’s been reported on since Feb/March after all… 

Needless to say, I’ll be checking for this Games-for-windows voodoo on Steam before buying certain titles.

Were I to have all those titles on Disk, I’d have the convenience of a quicker install, but I also need to have the key-code at the ready, the disk at hand, and also inserted to boot up the title alone. 

The Mac App store equally has the nice bonus of having all my purchases in the one place, and ready to install and notify me of updates, as apposed to me personally having to manage email for updates to my apps bought online from the individual seller. 

Some DRM can really cause trouble, like Origin, but the nicer ones out there are well worth taking advantage of I feel.

6) After the cycle has been repeated a few times, EA will emerge victorious. Ultimately, people will be more concerned with the shiny game bauble that their rights as software purchasers. A decade or two from now the next generation of players will find it hard to believe that there ever was a time when people weren’t under DRM’s watchful gaze.

(Sorry. Guess I’m feeling cynical today…)

I find the trade off for some forms of DRM (Steam, iOS/Mac App Store) perfectly acceptable.

But what’s the trade? I mean, they put DRM in place, limiting what you can do with the game you purchased. What upside do you get in return, your advantage over non-DRM media? I mean I understand theirs, but what’s yours?

But really, once you’ve bought a copy the only reason EA gives a shit at all about the quality of your play experience is because bad word-of-mouth reviews at release time squelch sales. Years later they’ve already sold as many as they ever banked on, and don’t care what happens as long as you won’t bother to sue them over it.

Who was banned literally for being sworn at by someone else. Not responding with swears, but because someone else swore at him, and ended their post with his username. Gotta give a big round of applause to EA, who is one of the worst companies in the video game industry when it comes to customer service.

So not only does DRM not stop piracy, it actually harms sales.  And some overcompensated executive somewhere is patting himself on the back for thinking it up.

If everyone would start simply calling it digital restrictions management, we would have much more honest discussions about this problem.  Remember, this has never been about copyright  infringement, it has always been about control.