EA Includes Hidden DRM in Latest Battlefield

Oh, EA. You couldn’t even wait a month after I posted my article defending you before you decide to screw it up again, huh? Well, it’s not like we all didn’t see it coming, so, let’s not mince words—how did EA drop the ball this time?

Well, it’s DRM in Battlefield: Hardline, as you could guess from the title; and to EA’s credit, it’s not the kind of DRM the common PC gamer would run into. But still, the fact that it’s there—and more dammingly, that EA says nothing about this DRM in-game or on the Origin page—is certainly damnable.

The DRM in question is rather straightforward—designed to keep multiple copies of the same version of Battlefield running on different computers in close succession. What that means is that if you have Battlefield installed in eight or so computers (or, more realistically, you change the parts within your PC enough times) you’ll find you’re locked out from playing “For a time”—how long that time is, however, is anyone’s guess, but it does appear to be temporary.

This DRM was “discovered” by the folks over at Techspot, who were playing Battlefield on different PC builds to see how it ran. According to them:

"We had to cut some testing as EA's platform only allows us to change the CPU/GPU up to eight times per account before locking us out. We were forced use four different accounts to produce this article! After eight hardware changes we get hit with 'we're sorry, an error has occurred...too many computers have accessed this account's version of Battlefield Hardline recently. Please try again later.'"

An annoyance for a reviewer, or someone trying out different builds for a PC, sure, but otherwise… pretty boring. Still, it’s the principle of the thing that makes it deserve our scowling faces: EA should have said as much, even if it didn’t anticipate anyone except pirates would trigger the warning.

Oh well. I doubt they’ll learn anything from this anyway. Hidden DRM isn’t exactly “Mass Effect 3 Ending” levels of disaster, I guess.