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EA is finally ditching Online Passes so the three-year experiment clearly didn't work out quite as it had hoped, but how bad was it? "The amount of money that we made, it didn't replace the amount of frustration we put on our customers and it didn't offset the reputation damage it caused the company," EA Labels president Frank Gibeau has said at E3. Ah. So quite bad.
SimCity was brought crashing down at launch by its always-online requirement, this we know. However, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau has sworn blind that the requirement was a result of the designers' MMO visions, not a DRM mandate handed down to Maxis from EA. He's ragged on DRM a fair bit too, decrying it as "not a viable strategy for the gaming business." Honest.
Ubisoft has scrapped its always-on and start-up verification DRM requirements for PC games, stating that its new policy as of June 2011 is to only require a one-time activation.
The CEO of CD Projekt Red has claimed that DRM simply does not work, and promised that its games will "never use any DRM anymore."
The PC edition Borderlands 2 will use Valve's Steamworks suite as its DRM. Gearbox's shooter RPG will pack Steamworks features including multiplayer matchmaking, Steam Cloud storage, achievements, auto-updating, downloadable content, "and more."
Ubisoft had warned that a number of its PC games would be unplayable while the publisher transferred servers, thanks to its frightful DRM, but it seems some games supposed to be safe are not working either.
Though many fans were upset when Football Manager 2012 became the first in the PC sim series to require Steam, developer Sports Interactive has credited the move with helping reduce piracy, seeing FM2012 cracked 15 days later than the games "usually" are.
The Witcher 2 has sold over 1 million copies without DRM. Studio co-founder Marcin Iwinski says it simply doesn't work and they succeed by offering extras with their game and educating the consumer.
Ubisoft has revealed that Assassin's Creed Revelations on the PC will not utilize the company's contentious DRM system.
Unsuspecting pirates playing Take On Helicopters have found their vision turned watery, and not with tears of shame. Bohemia has explained its anti-piracy scheme, saying developers have a responsibility to "try to protect their company's future."
