EA/Origin/Something Locks Benchmarkers Out Of Battlefield Hardline After Too Many GPU Swaps
from the punishing-the-innocent dept
Origin, Electronic Arts' online store and license-check-in system is a hilarious study in how to build a platform to serve legitimate customers and identify infringing copies of the game that both inhibits legitimate customers and misidentifies what is an infringing copy of a game. Add to this the fact that the Origin platform has in the past been found to be in and of itself a massive security exploit and one wonders how the service is still around today. But around it most certainly is, and still screwing with legitimate customers, too, as a group attempting to run benchmark tests on EA's Battlefield Hardline found out.
Guru 3D writer Hilbert Hagedoorn has discovered some pernicious DRM in Battlefield Hardline while attempting to do a "VGA graphics performance" test with the game for a feature article (thanks Blue's News). Apparently the DRM monitors hardware changes - something Hagedoorn was doing a lot of when testing different cards with the game - and when it hits a certain threshold it locks the user out of the game.For the record, EA has already responded to Game Politics with a wonderfully silly answer: it ain't our DRM, it's the Origin DRM, yo!
"Here's what EAs DRM is doing," Hagedoorn writes. "They don't just verify the number of PCs you work on slash use, nope .. they dare to monitor hardware changes now, which I am sure is a privacy breach on many levels. So once we insert new hardware (graphics cards) the hardware id # hash changes and if that happens a couple of times they are rendering your activation invalid."
"Origin authentication allows players to install a game on up to five different PCs every 24 hours," the EA spokesperson told us this morning. "Players looking to benchmark more than five hardware configurations in one 24 hour period can contact our Customer Support team who can help."Hoo-boy, EA, that's quite a trip of a rebuttal, considering Origin is your platform and the check-in system you're describing is in fact a form of DRM. So a statement that essentially boils down to, "It wasn't our game DRM, it was our platform DRM!" is absolutely useless. Is the Origin authentication that lets customers install on five different machines in a day fairly lenient as these things go? Sure, except for a couple of things. First, it clearly doesn't work all that well, since simply swapping out a GPU suddenly counts as a whole new machine. Second, why have this restriction at all? If your platform can't be relied upon to properly determine legitimate copies of games, then ditch the platform. Don't back that failure up by annoying paying customers with restrictions designed to buttress your failed attempts.
But all of that may end up being besides the point, because Hagedoorn's early point is the key: why is EA sniffing around our hardware configurations? The company had damned well better be sure that there is something in the EULA that allows for them to sniff out hardware swaps, something quite common amongst PC gamers, nevermind benchmarkers. But even if the EULA allows for this... what the hell?
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Filed Under: benchmarking, drm, locked out, origin
Companies: ea
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MY rights
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Wow
It is one thing to basicly steal peoples money if they hack or cheat but for nothing more than *remove gfx card* *plugin new gfx card* that is just silly.
And the "excuse" is just the cherry on top. If it is your game or your platform that does the damage really doesn't matter because it is still YOU!
But in the end I guess when people use software that more or less asks them "Do you want to have everything you do on your PC monitored by us?" and they click "check" then they kind of deserve that treatment.
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I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
I probably should be stockpiling weapons for the GoG insurgents.
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Re: MY rights
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Re: Re: MY rights
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Re: I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
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EA customers have Stockholm Syndrome
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Re: EA customers have Stockholm Syndrome
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Re: Re: Re: MY rights
C'mon, Mike, give the people what they want!
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EA makes the review practically write itself
Game fails to perform at all on common hardware due to buggy DRM. Avoid.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: MY rights
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Re: Re: I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
Fuck EA for destroying Origin Systems and using their name for a bad DRM scheme.
Fuck EA for destroying Bullfrog Productions, Westwood Studios, and now Maxis too.
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Re: Re: I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
TL:DR DRM is the only way to make sure people in the industry earn more in a year than a regular worker earns in a live time ($50k year *40)
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Re: Re: Re: I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
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Re: Re: Re: I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
Answer is: too many.
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happend before
i dont remember the game, might have been battlefield 4...
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not new.
EA is incapable of learning...anything good, anyway.
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Re: Re: EA customers have Stockholm Syndrome
Corrected that for you.
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Re: not new.
Seriously? Securom DRM?
In my exp Securom means "we printed some letters on our product and now it is secure". If you had issues with Securom you were just to dumb to google two words.
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What the hell?
How are they not offering games for free or paying developers decently with all of this extra revenue they can rake in off their users?
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Re: Re: not new.
History. Learn it.
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Re: Wow
In other words, there's no privacy violation going on here; EA doesn't really track what hardware you're using -- they just have your registration hashed against the serial numbers reported by your main hardware components, and when the hash changes, your registration fails. Contacting them can likely get it re-enabled, just like with MS.
Annoying draconian DRM? Yes... but not a privacy issue.
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Re: What the hell?
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Re: Re: Wow
And just to be honest about it, MS doesn't trace all your steps if you manage to use www.google.com for once. Apple on the other hand can't be fouled that easily because of their closed system and "we control everything you do" mentality.
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Re: What the hell?
They do use telemetry with detailed hardware configurations to do data driven risk analysis and development resourcing. That type of information is critical for game teams and not something they have to worry about on console. You can opt out of that type of data collection in the user settings.
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Re: not new.
This is a time based limit that few people run into and not a total install/activation limit... well you are limited to 1,820 installs a year for fixed 24 hour window... if is 5 per rolling 24 hour window that ends up around 8,741.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
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EA sets a whole nother level for how shitty you can be to your customers and long ago, I said I would never buy another game from EA; and I haven't. They don't make a product good enough to even out their treatment of their gaming fans. EA has also been well known to give the minimum gaming experience for a franchise. It makes the game not worth the money as all they are doing is cashing in on the name. You don't get long playing games with them.
This sort of stuff has been going on forever in the gaming world and if you have a problem with it, shame on you. You stupid enough to buy their games after all this time of them doing it this way? Then suck it up. It's your own damn fault.
I'm sure to the gamer that can no longer play his game that it makes no difference if the DRM is Origin or EA. It results in the same thing, a non-playable game. EA's name is all over it. That's not a product I will ever buy due to EA's poor customer relations.
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Re: Re: not new.
Why is there any need for EA's say-so for anything after you've made a purchase from them?
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Re:
Ah yes, blame the victim, of course. Not that any company should, you know, behave decently towards its consumers. Oh no, fuck the consumer. Suck it up or live without. Interestingly, this is the same attitude the Big Media corps have regarding any reasonable release of their locked-up copyrighted content.
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But this is not something to scream about... FIVE PER DAY. And their response was, contact us if you want to do something like this. And maybe it's not just about DRM, maybe is also has to do with suspicious behavior on your account. A negligible percentage of players are going to be affected by this.
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Re:
MY
FUCKING
COMPUTER.
If I want to change my hardware 5 times a day, that is my damn business and no one else's. I shouldn't have to ASK FUCKING PERMISSION from any software company to use their shit.
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Re: I worry about Steam's market dominance, monopoly potential
I am going to crucify Gabe Newell. He is going to die for your sins.
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And for the hyperbole "they DARE record hardware changes???" That's been going on for years. I don't think it's good to lock users out because of it (though a temporary lock-out is really not bad at all), but this is not something that started with EA, or started in 2015.
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Hardware hash
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What privacy?
The original clusterfuck.
I still think EA should be in business with the NSA for the amount of data they capture all the time. What good does it do, anyway? It doesn't prevent piracy, nor does it even slow it down.
Customer metrics? Oh, let's get real. It's just a way for them to think they can control every single 'gaming experience".
It's just intentional spyware.
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They've always done it this way. Everyone does it.
We also torture and throw wrongful convictions by the hundreds into inhumane prisons. Not that I'm saying that DRM on a computer game is of the same caliber of heinous crime as wrongfully imprisoning people into dungeons. But the notion of that's just the way it's done is an appeal to the continuation of madness.
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We had a total conniption when Compuserve did it.
I will never install Origin on a system of mine. Ever.
Frankly I'm paranoid that my roommate has and that I share a network.
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"Activation"
Yes, and it harms Microsofts customers too. I know of "hardened computers" that had components changed because they were to be operated autonomous (as in: without access to the internet and without easy access to parts or external services). It failed horribly. When something failed the spare parts disabled computers permanently as the Microsoft Windows counter triggered. That someone would consider Microsoft products for critical infrastructure is baffling. It is not public as it were "shit on the face" of some "important" people.
I also know several students that got problems related to the activations. Windows was pre-installed when they bought the computers, and sooner or later they would get problems. Usually closer to the exam or some other inconvenient time (or perhaps those were just more vocal).
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Re: Hardware hash
Tying accounts to a specific device is a bad idea. In fact, requiring online accounts for a piece of software to function is a bad idea.
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Because they are retarded. Cant wait to see them go bankrupt.
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Re: MY rights
I think that you statement could be more accurately phrased as
A company's right to consider its customers serfs does NOT trump my right to privacy.
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BAD EA, take all my monies!!!!
Its funny too the looks you get when you tell people that complain about EA that that is why you simply refuse to buy any thing from them, like you're the ridiculous one for refusing to buy from someone that is behaving abusively and borderline illegally, and voting with your wallet, possibly the most powerful tool a citizen of this country has.
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Re: Wow
That said no excuse, the industry has been down right lazy when it comes to dealing with cheaters, and this just hurts legitimate users with negligible impact on cheaters. Companies that have invested heavily in dealing with cheaters have found significant success and support from their communities, and while one time release games can't afford to hire a team to handle anti-cheat, with publishers pushing multiplayer even in games where no one wants it, there is no reason publishers shouldn't have a group to handle anticheat for all their games in an real way, not this half assed spyware crap. Hell if the industry was smart they would collaborate on this, but you know that would be good for the consumer.
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Re: Re: Re: not new.
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Re: Re:
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Silly Human, thinking human beings have rights over Corporations.
Send them money and your "rights" will be restored.
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Re: "Activation"
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Re: Hardware hash
Perhaps because tying software or accounts to a specific PC is a stupid idea to begin with.
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EA has found an aspect of human nature on which they capitalize.
Kinda like Zynga.
It does make EA look like a total turd, but so far a golden turd.
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As a gamer the list keeps getting longer....
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Entrance is easy, and there are few contestants at the moment so your chances of winning are quite high!
Just check out 'Game DLC Codes' on Facebook for more information on the giveaway!
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