D.R.M. S.U.C.K.'s

For the second time in just a few shorts months, I am NOT able to play a game I legally purchased... thanks to DRM. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a system used to enforce that a game is not illegally obtained (i.e. stolen). Instead, again and again I'm finding that all it's doing is stopping people who have a right to the product they purchased to be able to use and enjoy it. If anything is killing PC Gaming, it's not Piracy, it's DRM!

I bought Spore the other day and for three days I was unable to play it, even though I could go right now and find a cracked executable to be able to run it. Heck, I can just go start downloading the torrent and within two days have the game as a whole. Come on EA (and other publishers like you), who are you really hurting here??? Myself and other paying PC Gamers, or the people who can get the game for free anyway, and more easily!? In addition to not even being able to run it now, once I DO get it working, I'll only be able to install it three times? No, not on just three machines, three installs, then I no longer own the game. WOW. And in addition to all that (yes, there's more), even though the manual says you are allowed multiple accounts per-install (so my Fiancee could have an account on my machine for instance), you're in fact only allowed ONE. What hubris! I still have my copy of The Sims that I bought, what, 8 years ago? And guess what, I've re-installed my copy at least 5 times since I purchased it, and both of us have been able to play it at different times. Can they really argue the top selling game of all time suffered from piracy so bad that it's spiritual sequel has to be so guarded!? I'm not the only one: 1 Star. Food for thought. On the bright side it looks like they're listening to reason and might change a few things for the better (i.e. adding deactivation so you could reclaim your installs), but it's still pretty sad it got this far.

Anyhow, life's been hectic in North Carolina. Starting work has been great and I really enjoy it so far. Destineer is a great company with a lot of great people. There's definitely a lot of great things to come from it in the future. Saturday is my birthday then next Friday I'll be up in New Hampshire to get married and man has it been crazy getting the last remaining details worked out.

I was finally able to get the Hexen Touch (Hexen for iPhone) source code up; here. If you're interested in iPhone development check it out. Disclaimer: The code is purely for learning purposes, is not at all supported, and doesn't represent the best quality possible. But it basically works so beggars can't be choosy. :-)

Time is short. Until next time!