The site behind last week’s report on the unannounced presence of SecuROM in Dragon Age 2 stands behind its findings but says it hopes BioWare will help it clear up “miscommunications” about its findings as soon as possible.
There was quite an uproar over a March 10 report by Reclaim Your Game, a site dedicated to the analysis and discussion of DRM in videogames, stating that traces of the hated SecuROM were found in Dragon Age 2. After all, BioWare’s Christ Priestly explicitly stated that the game would not use it and there is absolutely no mention of it on the package or in the EULA. Producer Fernando Melo also claimed that although the Dragon Age 2 release control software is made by Sony DADC, the company behind SecuROM, it’s not SecuROM. “It is not the same product – for instance, it does not install anything etc just as we’ve stated before,” he said in the Dragon Age 2 FAQ. “They have the same support site through which is the URL you’re seeing.”
But Reclaim Your Game determined that a form of SecuROM-based release date check DRM meant to prevent zero-day piracy was in fact being used in the game. It’s a complex situation because it’s not a full-blown SecuROM implementation and the primary complaint is not so much its presence as the failure to disclose it. RYC’s Martin Pham further stirred the pot when he suggested in a follow-up comment that “the senior leadership team at BioWare” rather than the usual suspects at EA were responsible for its inclusion. But reports about “SecuROM in Dragon Age 2” led to a predictably fast and furious response that actually knocked the site offline over the weekend.
It came back online yesterday and in a new post Pham said RYC has been in touch with Melo and hopes to hear BioWare’s side of the story from him and perhaps others later today. He clarified that the evaluation “does not assess the technical severity and impact of SecuROM” on PCs running the game but said that the site stands by its conclusions, adding that the results can be reproduced with any disc-based version of Dragon Age 2.
“The Dragon Age 2 reports were written to highlight a clear and systemic issue that is prevalent with many Publishers active within the Industry. That is: there is a clear lack of notification and consideration behind the DRMs implemented,” he wrote. “In any case, we want to help, not just Bioware and EA, but also other publishers in correcting and remedying this rather simple process.”
