SecuROM is shit.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-07 11:37am

I bought Spore today and it told me I have an invalid activation key when I tried to log-in with my Spore account in-game.

I spent 40 minutes on the phone with EA tech support trying all sorts of fixes and they ended up emailing me instructions on how to generate an analysis log and email it to SecuROM's technical support because they don't know what the problem is.

So their DRM works. It prevents people from playing the game, even if they have paid for it.

It doesn't matter to me any more what sort of game comes out, if it has SecuROM I am not going to buy it, because what's the point of owning a game if you can't play it.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2008-09-07 12:15pm

Well...shit. I was going to pick up the game today, but now I'm having second thoughts.
Any luck getting through to SecuROM's technical support?

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-07 01:10pm

Nothing yet. God knows when I'll hear anything back.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-09-07 03:12pm

I've had that before, when a certain game won't play because the copy-protection software has trouble accurately identifying the game disc. Usually, it's sporadic, ie- it fails to work 1 of every 5 times or something.

In any case, it's no wonder everybody goes to gamecopyworld and downloads cracks to play their games without CD checks. It's aggravating and infuriating to know that pirates actually have a better game-play experience than you do.

FuncoWilkerbean · Post by **FuncoWilkerbean** » 2008-09-07 03:35pm

Is SecuROM something that just came out with Spore?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2008-09-07 03:43pm

FuncoWilkerbean wrote:Is SecuROM something that just came out with Spore?

No. It's a copy-protection system that's been around for years.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2008-09-07 03:43pm

FuncoWilkerbean wrote:Is SecuROM something that just came out with Spore?

10 seconds worth of Googling reveals its been in existence since at least The Sims 2

Ohma · Post by **Ohma** » 2008-09-07 04:40pm

Although they have switched to a newer version since the release of Mass Effect for the PC. The older version that was used up until around when Sims 2: Seasons came out, and to an extent the version used up until MA's release (though I don't have any first hand experience with that one because seriously, fuck limited installs...and most of the recent Sims expansions...and not having money...), were pretty inconspicuous (as far as I know).

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2008-09-07 05:23pm

I've had similar issues with games in the past, so getting one of the security bypass programs is actually a sound plan for everyone. I wouldn't use the GCW cracks and stuff though, they use a lot of really ugly brute-force ways of doing it and you shouldn't have that much of a problem with securom if you use some other piece of software I'll just call authentification aids. Something to make Securom or Safedisc settle down is good, as these programs are annoying when working as intended and downright criminal when they malfunction. Respecting the company enough to buy the game even with that stuff on it shows character, but no reason to suffer through it once you've paid for it.

You should also consider making a game image and using that instead, and use one of the mounting programs to do it. I've had a great deal of success in creating CD images in the past to make things easier on me, and emulating a driver is not often faster, safer, but also simpler. It's space-intensive for the computer to do that but the ability to inventory things is really handy.

It's also nice to be able to have your hard copies in their original cases without them being all mangled and broken like mine tend to get over time and after being moved around a lot, and the digital copies are more easily portable for laptops and stuff.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-09-07 09:00pm

Vista hates SecuROM, and people have had problems with it for some time on older OSes. Just get a cracked exe or a modern SecuROM unwrapper. Turns out when you base a DRM system on doing freaky things to exes at runtime, modern OS's think that's pretty damn suspicious.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2008-09-07 10:47pm

It's times like this that I'm really glad that all the information I've seen on Spore makes it look completely uninteresting. Too bad shit like this is also preventing me from touching Bioshock, which I was looking forward to before finding out about the DRM it used.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-09-07 10:49pm

So get Bioshock and crack it. DRM is inconvienient and a problem for 'regular users', but it's a simple crack download away from irrelevant for most people (unless it's pervasive like Starforce was).

Then again, don't go downloading a crack without an AV, lol. Especially not from any site with porn ads!

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-07 10:58pm

SecuROM has been officially patched out of Bioshock now.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-09-07 10:59pm

Ha! Out of interest, is it SecuROM 7, or is there a newer one? I played something else with SR7 on it, and it was quite annoying.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2008-09-07 11:07pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:SecuROM has been officially patched out of Bioshock now.

Really? How does that work? Is the patch a new installer that will let me install the program without SecureROM? Does it remove SecureROM from my system if I install it after installing the regular version from the disc? Or does it just untie the program from SecureROM but still leave me to find a way to unhook its tendrils from my system on my own?

Regardless, I still probably won't be playing the game any time soon. Hell, I haven't even gotten a chance to play Penumbra: Black Plague yet, a game that presents absolutely no barriers to me other than simple lack of time.

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2008-09-08 05:40am

Drooling Iguana wrote:
DPDarkPrimus wrote:SecuROM has been officially patched out of Bioshock now.
Really? How does that work? Is the patch a new installer that will let me install the program without SecureROM? Does it remove SecureROM from my system if I install it after installing the regular version from the disc? Or does it just untie the program from SecureROM but still leave me to find a way to unhook its tendrils from my system on my own?

Regardless, I still probably won't be playing the game any time soon. Hell, I haven't even gotten a chance to play Penumbra: Black Plague yet, a game that presents absolutely no barriers to me other than simple lack of time.

It changes the .exe so it doesn't use Securom to check for the presence of a disc. Same thing a lot of cracks do really.

Securom is a pain in the ass these days, Supreme commander has it patched out now as well.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-08 06:51pm

I got a reply back from SecuROM's support saying that they didn't see anything odd in the analysis log. They asked me to screenshot the error screens and tell them what the problem was.

So I took screens of the error messages and told them that EA said the game was properly tied to my account according to them, but on my Spore.com profile it doesn't list the full version of Spore tied to the account and obviously the game itself doesn't think as such.

I refrained from calling them contemptible cuntrags because they still have to tell me what their piece-of-shit DRM is doing.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-09-08 08:38pm

So... why haven't you just cracked it?

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-08 09:11pm

Stark wrote:So... why haven't you just cracked it?

Because if this happens to other people, I'd rather they have a quick solution for them rather than having to wait for the SecuROM people to take their thumbs out of their butts and figure out what they did wrong.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-09-08 09:41pm

I'd be surprised if they even went as far as to incorporate a fix into the next version, but whatever. There already is a quick solution, used by people the world over every day; crack the shit out of it. *I* don't have any securom problems because I don't subject myself to ridiculous DRM 'verification' systems.

Amusingly, if the problem is hardware (ie the drive can't compare the disk to some stored data the way securom wants) you're making the DRM -more- annoying.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-09 03:22am

I've received another email saying that after "careful inspection" it has been determined my problem is not related to SecuROM and that I should contact EA again.

I will do that. Tomorrow.

Ohma · Post by **Ohma** » 2008-09-09 03:30am

Man, it'll be hilariously lame if EA tells you to contact SecuROM again.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-09 03:36am

Ohma wrote:Man, it'll be hilariously lame if EA tells you to contact SecuROM again.

If they do that I'm going to email Will Wright and tell him I won't be purchasing any of their products again if they continue to ship with SecuROM, and ask for a refund for a product I cannot use.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2008-09-09 04:22am

DPDarkPrimus wrote:I've received another email saying that after "careful inspection" it has been determined my problem is not related to SecuROM and that I should contact EA again.

I will do that. Tomorrow.

Was it obviously a form email? I'm stunned by your persistence here.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-09 01:06pm

Stark wrote:
DPDarkPrimus wrote:I've received another email saying that after "careful inspection" it has been determined my problem is not related to SecuROM and that I should contact EA again.

I will do that. Tomorrow.

Was it obviously a form email? I'm stunned by your persistence here.

That was their second reply after telling me to do a screenshot and the like.

I'll find out if it's a form reply if I have to email them a third time.