Battlefield Hardline - DRM Woes

 

Battlefield Hardline has recently been "infected" with a nasty DRM. It was discovered by a user over at Guru3D.com. Guru3D.com specializes in benchmarking with different hardware setups. The user, known as Hilbert Hagedoom, had found that whilst benching Battlefield Hardline with different video cards, he had uncovered that the game has a form of DRM.

 

Whilst swapping out hardware, Hilbert went to boot the game up again only to be greeted by an error stating that the account's version of Battlefield Hardline had been accessed by too many different computers; suggesting to try again at a later time.

 

Unsurprisingly, PC gamers are up in arms as the dreaded DRM scheme may be returning, at least for EA games. It could spread like an infection, resulting in every game having a DRM. The reason why DRM is such a problem for PC gamers is because during the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, not many developers were making games for PC. And when they did make a game, they would stuff it full with DRM schemes which would require PC gamers to jump through a load of loopholes just to get the game to run, and if your internet every cut out, you would get booted off the game entirely. They did this because they assumed their games would be pirated.

 

Thankfully, a time of peace has been thus far long lasting, but that could soon be all over if DRM policies are allowed to take root in our games again.

 

The form of DRM that Origin uses, is not all that bad. It creates a hash ID whenever you load up a game, and each time you play that game from another computer, that hash ID will change. If the ID changes too many times in too little a time frame, your account is locked out from playing that game for a period of time. Furthermore, if you play Battlefield, you've already agreed to this in the End User License Agreement of Origin, which states:

 

"You acknowledge and agree that the Application may use information regarding your computer, hardware and operating system to create an anonymous machine identifier for purposes of validating your license rights and updating the Application. Information accessed for this purpose is not stored in retrievable form."

 

- Origin End User License Agreement, License Grant and Terms of Use, Section C

 

This single quote, puts a bullet in any arguments in regards to a breach of privacy, as players have already agreed to this.

 

Furthermore, this form of DRM is not so much as a form of anti-piracy measure or anything nasty for that matter. It's designed to be an anti-cheating measure; meaning that when someone is cheating, EA can ban their hardware ID instead of their IP or account. Cheaters can easily remake accounts or spoof their IPs, but it's a lot harder to spoof hardware IDs.

 

Back in 2011, a Need for Speed: World user had asked for cheaters to be banned based on Hardware IDs. EA listened and now years later, what they did for the community has come back to bite them because one user was affected during the very rare case that you have a cartwheel's worth of video cards going into your PC.

 

I hope EA keeps this policy, as a hardware ID ban is the best way to ban a cheater and makes it a lot harder for them to come back.