HackNBlog @ Salamanteri Server

Note! This post discusses a lot about program here and often elsewhere called “SecureROM” - apparently the correct name would be SecuROM

Something interesting I bumped into… There is a good bunch of examples of why DRM protection of software (usually games) is a bad idea. Most notable reasons being as simple as following: While DRM protection has not prevented a single game from becoming available as pirate copy with protection being removed, for those willing to buy the game the copy protection does instead create problems ranging from minor annoying to outrageous problems concerning functionality of the whole operating system. This alone should be reason enough to abandon DRM technologies but still several companies don’t seem to understand this… Today I bumped into good example of how trying to use DRM as futile attempt to prevent a game from being pirated can also be a massive failure creating a huge loss in game sales and resulting to 100% opposite effect than what was hoped. Electronic Arts has been using a DRM system named “SecureROM” on some of their games, including their hit game “Spore” which has resulted in huge losses for the company itself. This protection software can rightfully be considered as highly harmful malware. Some of the things the user should know of what happens when you install Spore obtained from legitimate source and thus requiring SecureROM:

• SecureROM is cant be uninstalled by uninstalling Spore, nor with uninstaller of it’s own. The user has to do certain special steps to get rid of it.
• SecureROM constantly monitors usage of the system and thus creates possible and severe security risks, uses system resources (CPU and memory) all the time and thus generally lowers usability and security of the system.
• Cripples functionality of the whole operating system. According to several users this malware has, for example, prevented the OS from recognizing some hardware changes like installing a new dvd-drive. Some users have also reported not being able to burn any data on DVD’s. In some cases apparently the whole OS has stopped to function after CPU or motherboard change (or other large changes in hardware) when SecureROM is installed.
• and more…

And what are the results of this for Electronic Arts? Well, first of all this has resulted in multi-million dollar lawsuit(s) against the company, but this is just small part of the tragedy. Spore has now become the most pirated game of year 2008 - at least according to the top 10 most pirated games of 2008 listing at TorrentFreak. The PC version of Spore has been a huge hit indeed but instead of showing in sales the PC version resulted in little income and on any scale in humongous amount of copies being pirated. Add to this the fact of large amount of people who have bought the game legally getting furious about the problems caused by the malware called SecureROM and the multi-million lawsuit that the company with high probability will have to pay it is clear that while the game has been a huge success otherwise it has become a huge economical catastrophe to Electronic Arts.

It has become a theory generally accepted as fact that the use of SecureROM, while 100% failed to protect the game from being pirated, has resulted in huge amount of people who otherwise would not pirate to obtain the game as pirate copy freed from SecureROM instead.

Finally: Despite all of this several game companies still refuse to see that DRM protection is not only a failed attempt to protect anything and only a harm the legitimate users but has high potentiality to cost a high amount of money for companies. Not only do game companies keep using DRM protection but some also, despite all this, still use the very same SecureROM DRM system behind this failure (one example being the PC release of GTA 4). When will they learn?

Author is a 29 years old linux zealot and hacker from Finland.

Tags: crackers, drm, games, legal, piracy, rant, security

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 at 6:59 pm and is filed under General Rants, IT Security, games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.