Those of you pondering removing The Witcher install from your PC in order to free up space might want to hold off a little bit longer. Patch 1.5 has been released, bringing with it five new adventures created by the game’s player community using the D’jinni creation tools. Deceits, Blight of the Bogs, Wraiths of Quiet Hamlet, The Wedding, and the unseasonal Merry Witchmas are each included in the patch, giving players a small taste of what has been wrought since CD Projekt unleashed free creation tools upon the community.

Perhaps even better news, patch 1.5 also removed the DRM from The Witcher, meaning you can simply install the game and play it, rather than having to worry about making sure the disc is in the drive and such. Of course no-disc hacks generally pop up within minutes of a PC game release if not sooner, but it’s nice to get a little official love now and then.

Patch 1.5 now available! [The Witcher]

Community manager Chris Priestly announced that the PC version of the role-playing game will use simpler, less intrusive methods to dissuade piracy when the game ships later this year. No online authentication for offline play. No SecuROM. The only obstacle Dragon Age players will need to overcome is having the disc in their drives.

“We’re happy to announce that the boxed/retail PC version of Dragon Age: Origins will use only a basic disk check and it will not require online authentication,” Priestly writes on the game’s official forums. “In other words, the retail PC version of the game won’t require you to go online to authenticate the game for offline play. We have chosen not to use SecuROM in any version of Dragon Age that is distributed by EA or BioWare.”

Priestly took the opportunity to note that the Dragon Age toolset beta has launched, which “offers developer-grade tools, and we’re looking forward to what fans will create with it.”

“We’ll also be supporting the game with a ton of great downloadable content that will be available for purchase after the game’s release,” he added.

Dragon Age Copy Protection Announced [Dragon Age Forums]

Oh look. Another PC game with a pointlessly restrictive limit on the number of installs. Aren’t these kind of stories just heart-warming?

Irate users on the forums of both publisher Atari and developer Starbreeze are complaining that Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena only allows you to install it on three machines. After that, sorry.

Atari’s response? That if you use your three installs and need more, and have legitimate reasons for needing more, you need to contact their helpline. Just so you can install a game that you own.

Jesus.

[Atari Forums]
[Starbreeze Forums]

Publisher Electronic Arts has released a De-Authorization Management Tool for PC gamers afflicted with one of its many catalog titles packaged with SecuROM for digital rights management. This is for you, disgruntled Mass Effect owner.

With the EA De-Authorization Management Tool, you can now do sane things like reformat your hard drive and install new video game hardware without the same level of hassle (or using up one of your handful of permitted activations). Simply de-authorize your installed PC game, then install the game on another machine, without wasting those previous software activations.

This applies to games like Mass Effect, Dead Space and even your copy of The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff expansion—any EA published PC game released after May 2008.

For the full list of applicable games, read on.

• Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
• Crysis Warhead
• Dead Space
• FiFA Manager 09
• FIFA Soccer 09
• Littlest Pet Shop
• The Lord of the Rings: Conquest
• Mass Effect
• Mercenaries 2: World in Flames
• Mirror’s Edge
• MySims
• Need for Speed: Undercover
• NHL 09
• Spore
• Spore Creature Creator
• The Sims 2: Apartment Life
• The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff
• The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff

EA Game Authorization Management [EA via Blues News]

With Steamworks’ new CEG technology preparing to make DRM obsolete, Stardock has unveiled their own three-letter acronym answer to digital rights management: Goo.

What is Goo? Goo stands for Game Object Obfuscation. What it does is allow game publishers to encapsulate their game’s executable file together with Stardock’s Impulse Reactor virtual platform in a single encrypted file. When the player starts the game for the first time they enter their email address and serial number and that’s it. The game is tied to that person, as opposed to being locked to any one piece of hardware.

How does this help?

For one, it allows players to validate their game on any service that supports that particular title. It also allows players to resell their PC games, as they’ll be able to voluntarily deassign the game, allowing someone else to sign up with their email and the serial number. In effect, you actually have a product with real value outside of your computer.

“One of our primary goals for Impulse Reactor is to create a solution that will appeal to game developers while adhering to the Gamers Bill of Rights,” said Brad Wardell, president & CEO of Stardock. “Publishers want to be able to sell their games in as many channels as possible but don’t want to have to implement a half-dozen ‘copy protection’ schemes. Game Object Obfuscation lets the developer have a single game build that can be distributed everywhere while letting gamers potentially be able to re-download their game later from any digital service. Plus, it finally makes possible a way for gamers and publishers to transfer game licenses to players in a secure and reliable fashion.”

Stardock will launch Goo on April 7th as part of the phase 3 release of their Impulse digital delivery platform. They expect to announce publishers taking advantage of the Goo technology next month.

Rather than anger their fanbase with intrusive digital rights management technology, EA has opted to stick with tried and true Serial Code protection for The Sims 3.

After getting into a heap of hot water over the DRM included in the hit life simulation Spore, it’s probably a wise decision for EA to back off a bit for their next major wide-audience release. Sims division executive producer Rod Humble posted a message on the Sims 3 website yesterday, putting fans’ minds at ease.

The game will have disc-based copy protection – there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed. We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.

While personally I was hoping they’d go back to the old “what’s the 7th word in the fourth paragraph on page 26 of the manual?” method of copy protection, I suppose this will have to do.

The Sims 3 Copy Protection [Official Website - Thanks Paradox!]

Shortly after Microsoft revealed new features for their Games for Windows Live service, Valve counters with new Steamworks features, including in-game downloadable content, robust matchmaking, and new technology they claim “makes DRM obsolete.”

We’ve already heard about the new downloadable content support for Steam, and the matchmaking is the same we’ve seen in the PC version of Left 4 Dead, now available to publishers and developers worldwide. The most interesting new feature is Steamworks new anti-piracy technology, Customer Executable Generation, or CEG. CEG basically creates a unique copy of a game for each customer, which can then be played on any compatible PC without install limits or root kits. You buy a copy, and that is your copy, completely unique to you. A simple and elegant solution to PC game piracy that manages to benefit both publishers and the consumer at the same time.

With new publishers flocking to the service every day and innovative new features like these regularly added, it’s hard to imagine anyone toppling Steam from the top of the digital delivery heap anytime soon.

What’s the point of fighting PC game piracy? According to Stormrise developer Creative Assembly Australia’s communications manager Vispi Bhopti, there isn’t one.

Speaking in an interview with VideoGamer.com, Bhopti revealed that Creative Assembly had no plans for additional copy protection for the upcoming PC release of their new real-time strategy game Stormrise, explaining that pirates will be pirates, and them’s just the breaks.

That’s not that much of an issue. There’s no additional thing that we’re going for with that sort of stuff. That’s pointless. If people are going to pirate a game they’re going to pirate a game. All you can do is delay the piracy, really. But that’s just the nature of the beast. We are a PC developer, that’s where we started, so you do what you gotta do.

Hell, I’d even take things a step further here and say that the tougher the digital rights management include with your game, the more likely it is that people will pirate it, just to show that they can. Game pirates are almost like muggers. Just hand over the goods, and nobody gets hurt.

Creative Assembly: Piracy ‘nature of the beast’ [VideoGamer.com]

Kidding! We are just kidding! No, the news that Ubisoft has decided to avoid Digital Rights Management (DRM) for the PC release has to be good news. Based on what has happened with every single DRM-locked game ever made any anti-copying countermeasures would have been cracked within nanoseconds of release and the resulting warez plastered all over the intertubes in bittorrent form before you can say 0-day.

Meanwhile legitimate users would have to suffer tedious ‘protection’ measures that are only a hair’s breadth away from being malware.

So, nice one Ubisoft. Hope it works out for you.

Prince of Persia Retail Copies DRM-free, Says Ubisoft [Shacknews]

Leigh Alexander has spoken with the ESA and PC Gaming Alliance about the piracy issue and how people are attempting to combat it. The two part article looks at tackling physical pirating, as well as the online variety, and how companies are attempting to prevent piracy from happening. Of course, there’s been a lot of talk and considerable irritation when gamers are faced with poorly implemented DRM. Industry types who are intimately involved with decisions that gamers grouse about note that they don’t like DRM any more than you do:

“I don’t like locks on my door, and I don’t like to use keys in my car… I’d like to live in a world where there are no passports. Unfortunately, we don’t,” [EA CEO John Riccitiello] said ….

“I think that was spot on,” says [senior director of strategic planning and research at Capcom Christian Svensson]. “People rail against DRM and feel that it treats them like criminals – unfortunately, we live in a world where some people are criminals, and sometimes we have to take steps to mitigate as best we can. We live with some slight inconveniences, and obviously, we try to keep inconveniences to a minimum.”

“I think people who put it out there that publishers are just trying to be evil — I assure you. We don’t make money by making your lives difficult. If we didn’t feel it was absolutely, positively imperative that we have this for our business, we wouldn’t do it.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I doubt the piracy issues will ever really be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction, since if you make it, someone in the world will figure out how to pirate it. On the other hand, it does seem like there should be options that at least placate both sides — protecting IP and keeping consumers happy.

Inside Game Piracy, Part 1: Crushing Discs, Pushing Education & Inside Game Piracy, Part 2: The Countermeasures [GameSetWatch]