Ashen

February 24, 2010 at 12:18pm

Yes, I did just zombie rez this. EA may have some nice games out, but after my last experience with them, que BF2142, I will not trust them nor buy their products until they offer a legit ownership experience such as that Valve provides. 

This agreement with Valve/Steam has wonderful potential, so I will sit back and watch.  I will watch to see if EA can screw it up or if Valve can show them how to play the way it's meant to be played. If Valve can truly deliver the epic Valve experience akin to Valve games, then I may relent my EA boycott and buy another title through Steam. 

One step at a time, girls and boys, one step at a time.

shellpc

December 23, 2008 at 2:11pm

Registering retail keys is really up to EA whether they allow it or not. Chances are they won't as very few games outside of Valve's own are allowed to have retail keys registered on Steam.

 

As to Securom its a bit confusing. From reading the forums there's differing opinions on this, alot of people want official confirmation. Some users who have donwloaded the games and claim they could not find any trace of SecuRom from the Steam installs. A volunteer Steam mod who has posted in the Spore Steam forum that it doesn't have SecuROM.

 

The closest official word on Mass Effect on Steam not having SecuRom comes from a thread at Blues News where a BioWare team member posted there is no DRM other than Steam in the Steam version(page 3 starting near the bottom) -

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=94257

 

Another post from BioWare's forums by their CC also stating there's no DRM(scroll up)-

http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=660050&forum=22&sp=120#6147469

 

There is also this strange bit on the store pages of all (but ME) the new EA releases -

INTERNET CONNECTION, ONLINE AUTHENTICATION, END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
REQUIRED TO PLAY. TO ACCESS ONLINE FEATURES, YOU MUST REGISTER ONLINE. ONLY ONE
REGISTRATION AVAILABLE PER GAME. EA TERMS & CONDITIONS AND FEATURE UPDATES
CAN BE FOUND AT WWW.EA.COM. YOU MUST BE 13+ TO REGISTER ONLINE. EA MAY RETIRE
ONLINE FEATURES AFTER 30 DAYS NOTICE POSTED ON www.ea.com.

 

 Mass Effect has this on its store page -

INTERNET CONNECTION AND END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY. MORE
INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE AT WWW.EA.COM.

 Warhammer just includes an extra paragraph about the usual mmo stuff about monthly subs, payments and the firs 30 days being included in the purchase price.

 

Overall its still somewhat confusing whether EA removed SecuROM or not. If you want to check out more or just keep an eye on things, head on over to the steampowered.com forums and check the drm threads in the individual game forums and the ea forum.

hbar98

December 23, 2008 at 12:09pm

Nope.  Not going to be happy until I can take my legally purchased games, uninstall them AND any DRM programs that came with them, then download the games through Steam sans the DRM I didn't want or was told about in the first place.

 

BaggerX

December 23, 2008 at 8:55am

If they really do remove the SecuROM DRM, then I'd like to pick up Mirror's Edge in January.  I played the demo on the 360 and liked it, but the thumb knobbies are just too cumbersome for a first-person game, especially one that requires a fairly high amount of precision.  It would just be much more fun to play with mouse/keyboard.

Thxe

December 23, 2008 at 7:14am

Sorry to break the bad news guys, but steam enforces no standards related to DRM.  And I quote from the FarCry 2 steam store page, "3rd-party DRM: SecuROM™ 5 machine activation limit", so unfortunatly for us, just because its on steam does not mean it will not come soaked in DRM.  But, i suppose this is still a step in the right direction for EA.

Thxe

AndyYankee17

December 22, 2008 at 7:30pm

too bad there's no (good) sports games, then again that's probably good cause I'll end up putting my gamepad through my monitor after I pay the same price as a 360 game with the same name and then realize I got 1/10 of the game