EA Securom drm activation.

[scrappysphinx]

Well i'm pi**ed off!

I have a genuine retail version of Fifa Manager 09 by EA Sports.
I re-installed it today on my new machine and when launching the game i'm presented with

The game can not start
For security reasons, only a limited number of machines can ever be licensed by a single purchase. This limit has been reached. Please purchase another registration code, reinstall, and then try again.

Apparently EA in their infinite wisdom decided to use securom for copy protection and implement a 5 computer activation system.

They claim by doing this i can play the game without the cd in the drive safe in the knowledge that my original is there just in case.

What good is my original game if i cannot play it!!!!

My problem is i have only ever had it installed on one machine, my old laptop, and now this PC so i count two activations leaving 3 available.

Computer says No!

I sent EA an email this afternoon and they have replied tonight saying that they have released a de-authorization tool due to complaints from other customers and i can download it from http://activate.ea.com/deauthorize/

Downloaded the tool and it scans my machine and tells me the game is not authorised on this machine and to contact customer services :nuts:

So my options at the moment for playing a game i legally own is to find an unauthorised license key and re-install my game with a no-cd crack or keep going in circles with customer services.

The problem with downloading a crack is, somehow the game is aware of the cracked exe and i get the sack about half way through the season.

As this is a football management game i don't want to have to keep restarting every 6 months!

As much as i disagree with piracy of games i can see why some people do it

 

[StrontiumDog]

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

 

[AndyLandy]

 

[Powerpie5000]

The same thing happened to me with Spore and i've not played it since (i got it free with a graphics card).

 

[scrappysphinx]

A quick update to this, i went back to the ea support website to contact them again and found a live help.
I wasn't expecting anyone to be available but i was connected to someone from India.

He asked for my license key, which i didn't want to pass over the internet but had no choice if i want to play the game, and then he came back and said he'd increased my number of licenses by 1 so i could play the game.

Not the most ideal solution as i may run into problems should i want to install the game on my laptop for on-the-go gaming but at least i can play the game now.

Big thumbs down for EA and Securom for implementing the limit in the first place but a +1 that i can now at least play the game.

 

[ShambleS1980]

i honestly believe securom simply increases piracy..
I for 1 would simply crack or find a crack for the game if that happend. and a good % of others would too. And a high % of those who simply cracked it just so they could play the game they owned will be so disgruntled they may just upload the game to the internet for spite.

 

[Zetr0]

this is actually ilegal and is against your statutory rights.

I would suiggest writing / contacting to the The Office of Fair Trading - inform them of this effort you have to go through - Also inform EA (in writing) that you are doing so and why

They have no right to deny your rights. by doing so they are breaking the law... infact they (EA) have been pushing the boundary as to what is legal for some time.

If more people complained (to the right people) about this type of problem then maybe something could happen to stop this greedy corperate trampling of our statutory rights

 

[Station240]

DRM = Dastardly Ripoff Merchant.
Why pay for your games/software/music just once, when you can pay for the same stuff over and over again. oh:

I've got one game I bought, but the official patch breaks the game. So the solution is to use the crack to fix it.

 

[nkarytia]

For all games there are cracks that bypass their DRMs. Would discuss it here, but then it would through this outside the legal shade of things.

 

[Chinners]

i honestly believe securom simply increases piracy..

Not here. All it has done is make me spend my money else where. I haven't bought an EA title since I got stung by bought Spore. Flogged it off again on eBay.