There have been many times this generation where we’ve gone to do something, be it charging a controller, installing software, or simply playing a game, and been met by horrid and counterintuitive design. These moments are incredibly frustrating not because the product isn't working, but because it is working precisely as intended. At one point, someone thought that these ideas were completely acceptable, sensible, and downright good choices to make. Looking back, this obviously isn’t a new phenomenon, and people have been making terrible choices for a while now, dating back to the earliest days of gaming.

Counterintuitive Design Choices in Gaming: SecuROM

Trying to keep a game from being pirated is a noble goal, and one that, while likely futile, is a necessary evil in order to turn a profit in the PC market. In olden days, publishers would include special glasses, rotating wheels, and everything short of straight-up voodoo to prevent a game from being shared. However, as home computer technology has improved, so have the means to copy games. Inevitably, the backlash from the game publishers has been fierce.

This is where SecuROM comes in. On the surface, the simple goal of SecuROM is to lock down a game so it can’t be pirated. Generally, it takes the form of software that is bundled with games, requires online activation and limits the number of times each game can be installed. This alone isn’t a problem – people who find this aspect of SecuROM draconian or wrong are, in my opinion, out of their minds. PC piracy is an real issue, and costs the industry countless dollars a year; and if it takes online activation to solve this problem, then that’s not an issue. Even limiting the number of times someone can install a game isn’t really as much of a problem as people seem to pretend it is, and if that’s all it took to prevent PC Piracy it would be a small price to pay for the success of the platform.

The problem is SecuROM doesn’t work.

At all.

EA’s Spore, which was a flagship title for the anti-piracy software, was leaked onto the internet over a week before the game hit store shelves, and many of the top downloaded games of 2008 had SecuROM sitting uselessly, completely incapable of preventing piracy - its one and only goal. It hinders gamers who legally tried to install the software and doesn’t seem to stop regular game pirates at all. In fact, aside from the boycotts over the piracy protection, many have reported purchasing a game only to have the game’s installation error because of the protection, and have followed up this action by; you guessed it, downloading the game illegally. Because of this, SecuROM might be the most counterintuitive software ever created.

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