I don't get it. The pirated version is gonna cost about 10 or less bucks and doesn't require any of the stupid steps above. Shouldn't PC companies be trying to get customers to buy the legin copies of their games instead of pirated versions?

I have the game on 360 but if I was a PC only gamer and wanted to get Mass Effect, I'd have probably gone with the pirated copy. WTF is wrong with publishers? All those crazy security / protection for what? Alienating the customers?

I already have it on 360, but as stated above all this does is hurt sales. I buy every single game I play. All of them. I don't pirate anything. That being said, I would pirate this game just to avoid dealing with this copy protection.

Stardock has the right idea.

If i'd knew this before then I wouldn't have pre-ordered it. I dont want to pirate ME, but what choice do I have if i wont have the internet when I leave home next month.
Online activation the first time you use it is bad enough but at least its bearable. But this is something else. Its sad that bioware think that pissing off paying customers is worth delaying pirates for a month.

battle for piracy is on

Your average consumer will have little idea what anti-piracy measure the game employs and won't care, unless it becomes intrusive.

With BioShock a large number of legitimate owners of the game got frustrated by the demand on the authentication servers. In effect they couldn't play the game they had paid for. This punishes legit owners while thieves get their software for free and with out the hassle of SecuROM or whatever.

We know for a fact:

- The copy protection WILL be broken, and probably before, or with in hours of release.

- Some people have zero intention of buying the game, and will steal a copy by downloading it regardless of what anti-piracy measure is employed.

Very few people who intend to buy the game will be pushed to downloading the game just because it uses SecuROM. Anyone who claims they are downloading it because of SecuROM is just making excuses to justify their theft.

Anti-piracy measures are almost pointless. So unless a 100% secure system can be created (unlikely!) there's little or even no point devs spending money on measures which do not work.

This is so stupid. Nothing pisses me of like this. This does not hurt the pirates all it hurts the honest customer. I for one wont be buying this game even tho im a great fan of Bioware. On the bright side I will save 80 dollar even tho im sure the game would have been worth more then that.

I am all against pirating, since good games deserve money, but this kind of copy protection is anti-consumer and utter c***, IMO.

I'll still buy the game legally but when I reformat my computer every six months I dont want to forget to uninstall it.

plus this totally alienates pc gamers without an internet connection or those who have problems with their connection, the same thing happened with ut3 single player requiring internet, my roomates don't have internet yet in their apartment but they had a LAN and all wanted to buy ut3, they ended up getting orange box retail instead,

The best kind of protection is either no protection at all, or very little dvd protection which is unnoticeable and trouble-free to the legit user, What these developers have to work hard against is day zero piracy

If you want to fight all those lost sales due to piracy, target day zero, stop the game from being leaked when it is gone gold, that is where the potential sales are, anything after that is just negligible, any pirates after launch would likely never have bought the game, gold pre leaks is where most gamers cancel their pre-orders since they don't want to wait for launch date, If you can't completely stop the leak, make sure the leaked version is defective by setting up a decoy, it is way cheaper and easier to do that and it is much more efficient, Ubisoft did this with Assassin's Creed and the game is selling very well on Steam, most people got frustrated with the leaked version and pre-ordered the game, they even got people who didn't care for the game in the first place to place pre-orders thanks to the leak

I can honestly say that I didn't buy Bioshock because of this copy protection.

I didn't play it either, after wanting to for awhile before release. I will not be purchasing Mass Effect either, due to the copy protection it employs, even though I was looking very strongly at it.

My reasonings are as simple as my PC use habits. I format at least twice a year for freshness and to keep my CAD software running smooth.

As a avid game collector I'll often install old games to play again on a whim and I'm not interested in paying retail price for a game I get to install 3 times max.

I've always been a firm believer in protection from copying games, but I'm also a firm believer in he who holds the retail disk, should have unlimited use of said disk, be it game, movie, or other. If I own something, I want to own it.

-1 for sales, and i was really looking forward to it, since I've heard nothing but good things from my 360 owning friends.

-CadDad

I'll give Mass Effet one week. It'll be cracked in no time so what's the point? I'm not much into piracy and would buy the game if it would be good enough but honestly, I hate SecuROM, online activations and 3 times install. As a customer, would love to install the game and play without screwing around. It's just dumb for me. You may not agree with me and... Who cares.
It'll be pirated fast. Really fast. Lightning fast.

This sounds stupid but I buy the game then download the illegal version. I do feel guilty downloading stuff and I think you should support companies that make good products. But I don't have the patience to sit through the headaches that are DRM because they decide to knee-cap me because I was nice enough to buy it.

edit: @hay, i bet it is a lot sooner than a week. my experience has been that games are cracked and released before the official street date.

That's just the price PC gamers have to pay for the widespread piracy.

my 8600(soon to be 8800) can run bioshock but not as good as xbox so i never knew it was that bad on pc. what to do with those pirates? what to do. what to do. d2d and steam give games for free for a limited time and very easy to download,if u like it u buy it.does anybody know if thats been working out?

Don't know why this is considered "Draconian." Most non-game based commercial software only allows you to install on one computer. With this one, you can install on three computers.

I think these guys deserve the money. Personally, I would have priced these games much lower $25 or so as to make it an impulse buy. With the games at $40 - $50, you may be making more money per unit but higher likelihood of piracy and lower likelihood of building a larger install/fan/repeat business base.

If going for $50 or so then at least include some tangible goodie like a doll or something.

Their highest rated, best remembered, socially loved franchise... and they have small team working on it for the past 2- 3 years?

Absolute garbage company along side all the heads that made Andromeda.

Maybe Saudi Arabia make something out of this.

overall if they could get CDPR and quadratic dream to help them make the game that would give me hope for the game

Still riding off the coat tails of the original staff from Bioware that have long since moved on.