Beating Those DRuMs To Bloody Death

Woohoo! Now we’ve entered a realm where basically repeating title elements is okay! Truly, I am growing as a writer…

Anyway, this won’t be another long, long preamble about SecuROM, I promise…it will be a short one. More of an addendum, really, to my previous post. It seems that my earlier point about Bethesda being more ‘on board’ with the needs of their customers was perhaps a tad hasty. Oh, they’ve produced a workaround for people that are unable to play (or in some cases, install) what they’ve paid for because SecuROM won’t let them. Let’s take a look at this ‘workaround’.

1. Remove every media player program that isn’t Windows Media Player.

2. Remove any burner/emulation software, including stuff that often comes packaged with your DVD-ROM drive when you buy it (and is therefore 100% legit), like Roxio or Nero.

3. Hey, what could be more fun than fucking around with your System BIOS settings? Surely EVERYONE is comfortable doing this for the sake of playing a game!

Wow. Just fucking wow. Would you like my soul and perhaps my first born as well? So, people are expected to jump through all these hoops to PLAY WHAT THEY BOUGHT FROM YOU?! And you don’t see a PROBLEM with all this? One person made a one line post on their forums that I think sums things up quite nicely…treat customers like customers and you’ll make more money…treat customers like pirates and you’ll make more pirates.

Also found the website Reclaim Your Game through the Bethesda forums. Basically, these are the guys who are collecting information and handing it off to the lawyers who are launching the class action lawsuits against game companies. These lawyers, by the way, are the same guys who hammered Ubisoft over Starforce, and who launched the original DRM lawsuit, which was against rootkit software Sony was putting on their DVDs and music CDs (Sony, by the way, owns SecuROM, so…yeah…way to not learn any lesson at all, jackasses). Anyway, if you really wanna read about what this shit actually does, check their site out. They also list the existing lawsuits (Hell, you can read the legal papers if you really want to, they have them all linked to .pdf versions of the briefs themselves)…there are currently FOUR suits against EA working their way through the court system. Now, one of these in particular caught my attention. A guy downloads the limited, freeware version of the Spore Creature Creator. He installs it, messes with it, uninstalls it. Then he notices SecuROM is now on his computer. He’s puzzled…he tends to avoid software that uses it. Where did it come from? The freeware Spore Creature Creator. Yes, high end DRM ON GODDAMN FREE SOFTWARE! You felt the need to ‘protect’ FREE software, EA? How does that make any goddamn sense? Well, perhaps here we see. Head on over to the SecuROM website and you may find THIS little page…yes, SecuROM, when it’s going online is acting as a fucking data mine service, one of those delightful little things that starts customizing the spam you’re hit with, and suggesting web sites you might like and such, based on what you’re buying. Well, isn’t THAT just the damn cherry on top. Lovely.

Actually, the SecuROM is a pretty amazing little site. Their ‘advice’ for customers having problems is staggering. Our software is reading your legit DVD-Rom drive as a Virtual Drive program? Why, simply disable the drive! Of course, I’ll just TURN OFF hardware to run a game (and, by the way, how exactly does this make sense…I thought the point of SecuROM was insisting a disc be in the drive to insure it’s a legit copy. It can’t exactly DO that if I TURN OFF THE DAMN DRIVE, can it!?). No, no, don’t fix your software or anything, no…I’ll just systematically dismantle my computer instead, that’s a MUCH better way to go about things.

Anyway, yeah, I’ve reached a point where it’s time to walk the walk. I’ve been issuing screed after rant after…uhhh…something else apoplectic…about this garbage. Well, it’s time to back up the words with the wallet. So, I shall not be at any point buying the new Brothers in Arms game, Endwar, NHL 09, Fallout 3, or any other of this shit that comes with these lovely ‘bonus features’ as part of my experience. I am about to begin the long and ridiculously laborious process of removing SecuROM from my system. Should I decide to reinstall and play, say, World in Conflict, I will burn a goddamn image of the disc, install it THAT way, and use a Cracked .exe file to run it, rather than deal with this garbage again. I have no problems with reasonable levels of DRM. You want to use a keygen program, fine. You want to have something that simply requires the disc be in the drive, fine. I take no issue with stuff like that. But I’m no longer financially supporting this fucked up business model of ‘Let’s just assume every customer we’ll ever have is a criminal.’ No. Fuck you. I sincerely hope enough people follow this idea that every douchebag cunt who thinks crap like that is a GOOD idea is left destitute and homeless and sucking dick on the streets for enough money to eat.

Oh, and speaking of beating drums to bloody death (hey hey, remember that title? Look at me recycle!), I will also, when finally buying one of those ‘be a band’ games for my 360, be picking up Rockband 2. What swayed me in that direction? Activision, makers of Guitar Hero World Tour, have had serious issues with bad instruments that are breaking very quickly after purchase, or coming broken. Now, okay, the same thing happened with Rock Band, so it isn’t the end of the world. However, Neversoft was smart enough to say “Okay, our bad, ship it to us and we’ll fix it, and we’ll charge you nothing.” Activision on the other hand has taken the path of “Okay, our bad, ship it to us at your expense and we’ll fix it and ship it back to you…at your expense.” Wow. Nice. How ‘generous’ of you to offer to let me pay to get this crap you didn’t make sturdy enough to you so you van do me the immense favor of making sure it works and will then charge me to get back what I paid for. Truly epic. Eat a diseased dick and die of venereal disease. Seriously, what the Hell? Fine, you wanna act like I should pay for YOUR manufacturing screwup? Okay, I simply won’t pay in to your fuckup in the first place. Rot.

Yes, it’s the new Cliff…he’s a geektacular as ever before, only now he’s actually backing up his shit. Woohoo!

Addendum : I have removed SecuROM. It took a good…oh…15 minutes, and several specific program downloads to get software that would delete some of this crap, because IT WON’T NORMALLY LET YOU. Yes, this is what happens when software installs on your Kernel in Ring 0, and therefore has higher power to mess with your system than you do. What a complete pile of shit. NEVER…AGAIN.