By James Fudge

Guru 3D writer Hilbert Hagedoorn has discovered some pernicious DRM
in Battlefield Hardline while attempting to do a "VGA graphics
performance" test with the game for a feature article
(thanks Blue's News).
Apparently the DRM monitors hardware changes - something Hagedoorn was
doing a lot of when testing different cards with the game - and when it
hits a certain threshold it locks the user out of the game.
"Here's what EA's DRM is doing," Hagedoorn writes. "They don't just
verify the number of PC's youwork on slash use, nope... they dare to
monitor hardware changes now, which I am sure is a privacy breach on
many levels. So once we insert new hardware (graphics cards) the
hardware id # hash changes and if that happens a couple of times they
are rendering your activation invalid."
When the DRM kicks in it spits out the following message to the user:
"Too many computers have accessed this account's version of
Battlefield: Hardline Digital Deluxe Edition recently. Please try again
later."
Hagedoorn went on to say that if this DRM is the future of EA DRM
then his site will likely stop doing VGA performance tests on the
company's games.
How many hardware changes it takes to trigger the DRM from locking
down the game is unknown as of this writing and it is unclear if the
lockout is temporary or permanent.
Prior to publishing this story we reached out to Electronic Arts for
comment. As of this writing the company has not responded. We will
update this story at a later time should they want to explain what's
going on with the DRM scheme connected to this game.
You can read the entire Guru 3D article
here.
Source: Blue's News

Guru 3D writer Hilbert Hagedoorn has discovered some pernicious DRM
in Battlefield Hardline while attempting to do a "VGA graphics
performance" test with the game for a feature article
(thanks Blue's News).
Apparently the DRM monitors hardware changes - something Hagedoorn was
doing a lot of when testing different cards with the game - and when it
hits a certain threshold it locks the user out of the game.
"Here's what EA's DRM is doing," Hagedoorn writes. "They don't just
verify the number of PC's you
monitor hardware changes now, which I am sure is a privacy breach on
many levels. So once we insert new hardware (graphics cards) the
hardware id # hash changes and if that happens a couple of times they
are rendering your activation invalid."
When the DRM kicks in it spits out the following message to the user:
"Too many computers have accessed this account's version of
Battlefield: Hardline Digital Deluxe Edition recently. Please try again
later."
Hagedoorn went on to say that if this DRM is the future of EA DRM
then his site will likely stop doing VGA performance tests on the
company's games.
How many hardware changes it takes to trigger the DRM from locking
down the game is unknown as of this writing and it is unclear if the
lockout is temporary or permanent.
Prior to publishing this story we reached out to Electronic Arts for
comment. As of this writing the company has not responded. We will
update this story at a later time should they want to explain what's
going on with the DRM scheme connected to this game.
You can read the entire Guru 3D article
here.
Source: Blue's News
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