Now you know the pain of your customer base, firsthand. I’m glad that you all decided not to put your customers through the same pain of online authentication and instead only did a disc check. It wouldn’t hurt to remove that as well. I’m thinking back to ‘Unreal Tournament Classic’, the game that really was wonderful in its execution.

Back then, you couldn’t say gaming piracy wasn’t as prevalant as it was today. Perhaps broadband wasn’t excessively available, who knows? But that game was awesome.

-No CD Key required (gasp!)
-Free online play, period.
-Extensively moddable, to this day.
-Stable as a rock, even unpatched.
-Endlessly scalable, one of the few games that can run well on just about any laptop or even budget PCs (provided you turned everything all the way down and it STILL looked decent even when you did that). Later a fan-created ‘high-definition texture pack’ helped people relive the joys with even more detail then before.
-No disc checks, no DRM, no BS, no online activation.

I don’t know about you but if I recall, the sales for Unreal Tournament Classic were quite hefty even without any copy protection or DRM. People loved the game, they loved it at LAN parties, and they loved Epic Games and wanted to support its future endeavors. People who copied the games for their friends, those friends ended up buying their own copy just cause it was such an awesome game.

Don’t underestimate the loyalty of your customers. Piracy is always around but the more you upset people with DRM, the only ‘lost sales’ you’ll have are the ones from everyone who didn’t buy the game due to draconian DRM.

Kudos on omitting StarForce, and lets hope you can get rid of copy protection altogether.

You’re BioWare, you have a time-honored tradition among gamers of making really badass and wonderful games. Trust us and you shall be rewarded.

Keep the show summaries coming. Good reading.