14 DAY TRIAL // The gaming industry has seen its fair share of blunders and mishaps happen to even the most renowned companies involved with developing and publishing video games. One of the biggest ones in 2008 was Electronic Arts, abusive use of DRM software in almost all of the titles it published that year.
But the scandal really took proportion with the release of Spore, which was bundled with the infamous SecuROM program that prevented users from installing the game on more than a handful of machines and, if you changed a piece of hardware or formatted your hard drive, the game would no longer be playable.
But for people who still have problems with SecuROM, EA has now launched a de-authorization tool that, through a simple procedure, uninstalls the game from your hard drive, along with any traces of SecuROM, so you can install it on another PC. Here is the list of titles that will be supported by the program.
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
As you can see, a lot of titles were protected by SecuROM, but all the problems users encountered will soon be a thing of the past. You can download the de-authorization tool from the EA website. Hopefully, no more issues with DRM will appear in the future and users won't be treated like criminals every time they want to play a game.