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I've just heard from a longstanding ICQ acquaintance that Dragon Age is bundled with EA's "wonderful copy protection system - the one that works by rootkitting the PC and corrupting its file system to 'protect' the DRM modules" (his words).

Obviously, that had me reaching for the panic button, thinking "Wait, what?!" So I'm just wondering... does that mean that, by purchasing Dragon Age, my computer is now rootkitted and the file system is corrupted? I mean, exactly how is my file system corrupted? What rootkit is it? What can I do to fix the file system and get rid of the rootkit? And lastly, why hasn't there been an outcry in the PC press about this?

I asked him all this, and he said "Basically, yes [i.e. your computer is rootkitted -Ed.] If you're done with it [Dragon Age -Ed.], fdisk/format/reinstall and don't put anything EA-contaminated on it."

So now, obviously, I'm wondering... what the heck is going on??? Is there any truth to this at all, or...? I've known this person for a long time and I know he really dislikes EA, but still... *shrug*

Any ideas?

I've not heard that Dragon Age has a DRM on it.

Assuming you're talking about Origins, I think there is some DRM, at least for downloadable content:

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/04/1 ... s-For-Days

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/drag ... -20110413/

That said, I think your friend is greatly exaggerating its ill effects. I strongly doubt you need to reformat your HDD. I'm actually playing through the game right now and have experienced no issues.

More googling has revealed that Dragon Age does NOT include the SecuROM DRM:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dragonag ... rom-pc-drm

There's no restrictive DRM on DA:O or DA2. You need the main games for the DLC, but that's hardly considered DRM.

SecuROM isn't on either DA game and even if it was (which it isn't), SecuROM isn't a rootkit. That's a rumor and judging by your friend's comments, one that still has a lot of life left to it.

In short, your friend is wrong. I'd take whatever he has to say with a gigantic grain of salt, especially considering his overall hatred for EA.

Fair enough. (Sorry, I should have mentioned that it was DA:O that we were discussing).

It did seem rather strange (and quite alarmist) of him to suddenly come out with that, particularly as we'd chatted about DA:O before and he hadn't said anything. *shrugs* He did mention that the game "Spore" came with EA's 'copy protection system' - quite possibly he thought that since Spore had it, Dragon Age must have it too.

I wasn't aware of what he meant by 'copy protection system', either. Thanks for the link! I've noticed that too - I didn't have to go online to play DA:O, only to activate the extra modules (such as 'The Stone Prisoner', 'Warden's Keep' etc).

Anyway, mystery solved. Thanks again!

Spore initially had a limited number of activations, like the original Mass Effect. However, EA removed that from Spore and later introduced an activation revoking tool for ME1.

As annoying as both of those were, neither had any effect -- harmful or otherwise -- on the actual computer itself.

This is the DRM in question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecuROM

There were rumors that it was a rootkit but I think that was bogus. Still a crappy piece of software that remains on the system after the game is uninstalled.

jujigatame wrote:This is the DRM in question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecuROM

There were rumors that it was a rootkit but I think that was bogus. Still a crappy piece of software that remains on the system after the game is uninstalled.

I think BioWare used a modified version of it it that didn't remain on the system.