Digital Rights Management and SecuROM are like the wail of a siren to the ears of fed-up PC gamers. While Electronic Arts have been a key offender, releasing countless PC titles with restrictive install limits and online-authorisations - the company has today announced what may appear to some gamers as an April fools prank - but - it doesn't appear that it is.

The release of a de-authorisation tool, (which is available on EA's website) allows users to view which titles they have installed currently that utilise SecuROM DRM, and how many authorisations have been used. Most importantly, the tool (and subsequent web-based results) allow users to download game specific tools which de-authorise the title in question from the computer it is run on.

Read full article by Steven Perdikis

Thanks for giving me a list of games to not buy EA.

Grow up, seriously...

indeed

yeah knife, grow up.


All in all.
I have never seen a problem with activation limits...
Windows OS have them... never hear people complaining about that :/..

It surprises me, that the EA execs released this for free, they should have charged a few dollars for it.

There is one major difference though, the MS reactivation hotline is free. The EA one is extremely expensive.... well it was when Spore was released.

This tool is certainly a big step in the right direction though.

EDIT: Dammit Sathias. You beat me.

As for the activation stuff in general, the only way that EA can fix the mess they caused is to remove the activation limits from all games which have such limits.

you're joking right? since when? oh ffs no more reformatting for me, though I've never had to 'activate' XP unless OEM versions are somehow different from retail versions

Uh... since XP first came out? All you have to do is ring them and tell them you have reformatted and they reactivate it for you anyway. It is just to stop people buying one copy and installing it on multiple machines.

Yeah i realize how easy it is to get ex/vista back onto a machine after your 5 or what ever times are used(had to do a few my self).

really? I complain my frickin arse off every time i have to type the spastic long serial into the phone keypad then TELL the ESL dropout on the other end of the phone the number AGAIN when their tarded system should've told him already - just because i changed a goddamned video card 1 month after installing windows.

Yeah, I found the MS process pretty punishing to go through. I didn't have to talk a person though fortunately.

Either way, it's retarded. Makes the pirated versions much nicer to deal with.

Speaking of which, do you think this tool will find and gank unauthorised copies of games on that list?

there must be something different with OEM versions because i've reformatted XP a couple of times and have never needed to call MS up :/ and nothing happened a few months back when I put in a different power supply/vid card into my Vista machine

/edit

yep, checked wikipedia and OEM copies don't have activations something to do with a number in the mobo's BIOS

I wish they would just get ride of it. Would make it SOOOOOOOOOOO much better.