I don’t understand why it is so hard for EA to grasp the concept that they are pretty much hated with this SecuROM bullcrap.  We have sites popping up to inform how huge of a problem it has become, yet they keep on chugging out crap to invade our computers with and causing all sorts of stupid problems like not even playing our own games that we own!

Come on, EA…you need to take a look at how Stardock Games does business.  They don’t have any form of piracy preventation on their games.  Nope, none.  Unlike you, EA, they actually value their customers and reward those who purchase their games with great support, patches and new content.  As they mention below, it does not matter what kind of software you put on, it is going to be cracked.  You need to go back to your roots and start pleasing your customers instead of making them want to chase you down with fire and pitchforks….

How Stardock Games does business:

I remember hearing at a conference that when an executive at a big publisher heard that Galactic Civilizations II shipped with no CD copy protection that they quipped “I hope bankruptcy treats them well.”

Millions of dollars in sales later as one of the top selling PC strategy games at retail (according to NPD) over the past couple of years let’s me say “Ha!” in response. And this is on a game that made most of its money on digital sales.

I don’t like piracy. I don’t like people using stuff my friends and I worked very hard on for years without compensating us. But I also can make the distinction between piracy and lost sales. That’s a distinction that most DRM and copy protection schemes ignore.

The bottom line on copy protection is that if you create a greater incentive for someone to buy your game than to steal it, those who might possibly buy your game will make the choice to buy it.

With Galactic Civilizations II, we put no copy protection on the CD. But to get updates, users had to use their unique serial # in the box. That’s because our system is backed by TotalGaming.net’s unique SSD service (secure software delivery) which forgoes DRM and copy protection as we know it to take a more common sense (I think so anyway as a gamer) approach of just making sure you are delivering your game to the actual customer.

Any system out there will get cracked and distributed. But if you provide reasonable after-release support in the form of free updates that add new content and features that are painless for customers to get, you create a real incentive to be a customer.

As I mentioned earlier, Galactic Civilizations II was success in terms of actual sales, critical reception, and most importantly, satisfaction by strategy gamers.

Sins of a Solar Empire is taking the same route. In fact, we hope to have a free update available the first week of availability with new maps, new options, and new features. We consider ourselves lucky. We get to make a game and play it and then get to update it based on talking to our customers. It’s a great system.

And I think most gamers will agree that a system that rewards people for buying your product is preferable to one that treats them like potential criminals.

Source:  IGN Blogs – Sins of a Solar Empire, Copy Protection

Oh, and I’m lending SnootySims as well as Infinite Sims a hand by adding a SecuROM section to our sidebar.  Please take the time to inform yourself on this issue, and if you have a sims site, I’d advise you to promote these sites.  The more we help promote these sites, the louder our voices will become.  Hopefully our voices will become so loud that it will reach out to EA to put an end to this non-sense.