T w e n t y S i d e d

The big DRM news going around – by which I mean was going around, last week, when I was too busy to talk about it – was the news that EA was dropping SecuROM and putting their games on Steam.

People are once again celebrating that “EA is getting rid of icky DRM! Yay!” But watch the language being used here. They simply claim they are no longer using third party DRM. This means they are using some form of DRM. By which they either mean Steam itself (but wouldn’t that also fall under “third party”?) or some system they came up with on their own. This could be weasel language to give them the room to add DRM if they think they need it, or it could mean they’re just replacing SecuROM with something just as bad, but which isn’t called SecuROM and thus won’t have all the bad press attached to it. It’s hard to tell how much of this is a PR move and how much is a technological move. I imagine the pirates will let us know once they crack open those first few games and see how rotten they are inside.

Paranoia aside, it’s entirely possible that this means EA games will be no more encumbered than other Steam games. But even if that’s true, this news is bittersweet to me. On one hand, it’s great that they are at last listening (somewhat) to reason. On the other hand, my objections were always centered around online activation, not SecuROM, and they’re keeping that. (It’s implicit with Steam.)

This is what the majority of the fans wanted, and I’m happy for them. It makes sense as a business move. This will bring back the vast majority of their PC customers, and only die-hards like me will hesitate. If I can refer back to the chart I used before:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “EA On Steam”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.