Wasting Time

No, not me, not this time. I’m here to record, this time, the history and obscure reasons of other people wasting time and wasting other people’s time. I’m talking about the videogame industry. Now don’t cut me to pieces for saying games are a waste of time. I never said that. I play quite a lot myself. There’s this evergrowing monster of a game, a colossus that has sold over 100.000.000 (let me spell that for you: a hundred million) copies worldwide, called The Sims. Its history is funny: it used to belong to a nice company called Maxis. Then it was swallowed up by EA. And in the end it got its own studio within EA, so it has returned to being somewhat independent. But all this is beside the point. What I really want to talk about is DRM.

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is a type of program that is supposed to keep people from making illegal copies of games (and other things, but we’ll stick to games in this article) and from using the same perfectly legal copy of the game to install the game on several computers so that the game can be played by someone who has just borrowed a legal copy even after the borrowed copy has been returned. Basically, it’s there to keep people from playing the game if they haven’t paid for it. That’s a good thing, right? I mean there are so many people working day and night, metaphorically sweating in the sun on the gaming plantation, for years and years (it’s true about The Sims, it takes many years to make a new Sims game), surely we must repay them and give them a few bucks for their effort. Just think of the beta testers pulling out all-nighters of non stop playing so that the game can come out perfect. Ok, ok, this last part was sarcastic, especially knowing the endless number of bugs the Sims games do come out with. The latest Sims patch solves so many problems that the list is three pages long. But I really do believe that the games are worth the money and all these people working on them deserve to be paid.

So where is the problem? Well, DRM software doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t prevent good Samaritans from finding ways to crack it and make free copies of the game available on the internet. And the only difference between having the original game and a cracked illegal copy is that, with The Sims, if you have a legal copy you can register on the official site where you can download custom content, and benefit from technical support, and, trust me, considering how buggy the game is, you’re gonna need all the technical support you can get. So, basically, the people making DRM software are just wasting their time. Let’s look at the latest version of Securom, which comes with the game Mass Effect. It was massively and effectfully cracked in just one day. So the point is? The point is the poor DRM software makers are trying to make a living here, they have wives and 5 kids at home, give them a break! Of course games need DRM. Besides, the guys cracking this enjoy a challenge and would get bored and give up altogether if a new version didn’t come out every now and then. Why should we care?

And, in truth, the advantages of having a legal copy, at least in the case of the Sims games, were obvious. If they wanted fewer illegal copies being played, all EA had to do was keep up with the bugs (yes, they are doing a wonderful job at it) and give away to the registered legal gamers a free item every month. No big deal. They even had contests for registered users, it was so inviting… Join our community today, buy a legal copy now! I could have designed a whole marketing campaign based on that.
However, lately, there have been more perks to having a legal copy of the game, thanks to the aforementioned Securom.

Securom, or, as gamers affectionately call it, Suck-you-rom, is a nice little DRM thingy that takes it upon itself to finish off your computer, so that you could never copy it or use a cracked copy. How does that work? Well, it seeks out and destroys all emulation software, software that enables you to create an image of a disk on your computer, so you can’t use an image of the disk instead of the real disk. It also disables your CD and DVD burning software so you can’t burn anything on DVD anymore, therefore you can’t burn an evil copy of the game. Plus it sends data back home to its mother company, informing them of who you are and what you are doing on this computer. For this purpose it messes with your antivirus because your antivirus wouldn’t allow just any program to access the internet without your knowing it, the way Securom does.

So one morning, almost a year ago, when Securom was first used on a Sims 2 expansion pack, thousands of happy simmers around the world woke up to realise that they can no longer burn CDs or DVDs and that even uninstalling the game will not uninstall Securom and undo the damage to their computers. There are the heartbreaking stories of women who could no longer burn to DVD and keep for eternity and posterity the last video they had made of their father before his death. But mostly there are the angry cries of those who simply wanted to back up their Sims saved games on DVD, just to show you that the addiction is that serious.

There are threats of even worse versions of Securom in the future, versions that only allow you to install the game 3 times, when Its Buggyness requires one reinstallation every 6 months or so to work, or ask you to check your registration on-line every 10 days if you want to keep playing. But for now, the greatest privilege that the buyers get out of their legal copy is the impossibility to burn CDs and DVDs and higher risk from viruses and worms and trojans.

Now, since that can’t be accepted, some good souls have hurried to provide a Securom-free version, the illegal version that can be downloaded from the internet and doesn’t cost a thing. The only catch is that it’s as buggy as the original and any attempt to patch it will install Securom. Yes, the patches you can find on the official site include Securom, and even a more drastic version of Securom than the one that came with the game. So basically, it’s not enough that you’ve borked up your computer with the game, now you have to destroy it completely if you want the game to do what it was supposed to do in the first place.

In their generosity, EA has provided a way of uninstalling Securom, which appears not to work. But the internet is full of good-hearted people, and one can find out there detailed instructions on how to truly remove it. This involves going into the Windows Registry and deleting undeletable entries, and one false step can destroy your computer entirely, but, hey, it’s a risk worth taking. I mean people who play EA games must be masochistic daredevils, just look at all the bugs and all the complications they are causing! After that, you need a no CD file that allows you to play the game without the original CD, basically a crack. So you buy the game legally, and then you have to play a cracked version, not to mention all the trouble you go through with uninstalling Securom. It looks like it’s just easier and cheaper to download a cracked illegal copy in the frist place.

So, let’s recap. People making DRM are wasting their time because games are being cracked and distributed for free anyway. And those making Securom are also wasting the time of those who buy legal copies of the game because they have to manually and painfully uninstall Securom if they want their computers to work properly. Should we call it the time-wasting industry?