I’ve been getting into mass effect trilogy finally, and since I don’t own a gaming pc, I like to play through GeForce Now.
Well, just now I had some things come up a couple of times a row and I quit my game a few times, and now I can’t continue because of some sort of lock mechanism against playing on multiple computers…?
Did not know this is a thing, but I have a few vacation days and wanted to get this series properly started, so it’s a little bit annoying. Who knows how long I have to wait?
Ugh…
Edit:
Talking with EA support, they informed me that the wait is 24 hours. Jesus christ that is long for something like this. There goes my vacation day opportunity…
Edit2:
Wow! The customer support really pulled through, suggested they request a password change on my account from their side.
Turns out, this seems to toggle that flag, and I could now start the game! Hooray! Akash, my man, you saved the day! Cheers 🍻
This is such a tragedy. DisplayName field missing from registry was one of my favorite games growing up.
Can’t wait for the remake
Display name missing from register number two
I torrented it at first but enjoyed it so much that I ended up buying DisplayName field missing from registry once I had a stable job and some extra disposable income
Piracy is completely justified.
Hot take:
Piracy is virtually always justified. By pirating you are simply opting out of transferring wealth from consumer to big business which could be seen as a redistribution of wealth (however small) from rich to poor.
Exceptions would be indie Devs or filmmakers for which you would have more disposable income to support if you saved your money by pirating big budget films/games/software.
Hot take:
Shoplifting is virtually always justified. By shoplifting you are simply opting out of transferring wealth from consumer to big business which could be seen as a redistribution of wealth (however small) from rich to poor.
Shoplifting is actually stealing. You’re taking something away from the vendor. Piracy doesn’t actually take anything physically from the vendor.
Besides, if I can’t actually buy it (only a license to use it), then it’s not possible to steal it.
The mental gymnastics people use to excuse themselves of their entitlement continues to amaze me.
Interesting, because the inability of people to understand basic concepts continues to disappoint me.
For what it’s worth, I never argued that shoplifting isn’t stealing. I only pointed out the absurdity of the argument that piracy is justified.
Feel free to educate me on the basic concepts I’m failing to understand.
From poor to rich*
Yes, this is the big picture view of things.
Unfortunately, a lot of small-minds can’t (or don’t want to) comprehend it.
Exceptions would be indie Devs or filmmakers for which you would have more disposable income to support if you saved your money by pirating big budget films/games/software.
No, this still exacerbates the disparity in wealth unless the creators are globally poor.
How would that help in this case?
Not having to deal with EA’s bullshit
OP said they don’t have a gaming PC, meaning something capable of playing games at full spec
Pffft, just download some more RAM. You’d download a car, wouldn’t you? 😂
Piracy is never justified. The solution is to not buy or use games from EA if anything.
Piracy is justified if it’s to run abandonware, to bypass a broken DRM protection scheme blocking legitimate users from playing what they paid for, and for historical purposes (archiving, etc).
or if it costs 300 bucks in my 3rd world country, for a game that will probably be unfinished.
I don’t consider some things to be piracy. However that is a very small grey area
Poor Greg…
Yeah I’m bad about making typos.
If you don’t own the software when you buy it, it’s not stealing to pirate it.
That’s not true in the least. The smart move is to use alternative software.
Lol yes, except when you can’t. How do you find an alternate game? If EA owns the rights they own it there is no alternative. For Photoshop, Microsoft office, etc, I get it.
Exactly. There have been a few open source, free adaptations of games in the past but it’s rare. Rollercoaster Tycoon comes to mind as a rare outlier. Didn’t someone come out with a great free approximation or was it just for Linux?
Didn’t someone come out with a great free approximation
You’re probably thinking of OpenRCT2. It’s available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android. You do need a copy of the original Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 game (since it uses some assets from it), but you can buy that DRM-free from GOG for less than $10 (currently $2.49 on sale).
This is common with remakes. It’s totally legal to reimplement a game by observing its behaviour and writing code that mimics it, but it’s not legal to redistribute any of the original code or assets. Asking the user to provide the original game disc avoids any potential issues. This is also why some emulators require you to provide a BIOS dump.
I don’t necessarily agree with the guy you’re arguing with, but are you really claiming you not only have to play games, you have to play a particular game? That is the most neckbeardy thing I’ve ever heard. Forget touching grass, touch better priorities.
Sometimes yes. Elden ring is excellent and I’ve played every one of those games. Who makes another elden ring that is actually good? It’s nonsense to claim that some of the games are no good and not worth playing. It’s easy for management to ruin a good game.
In our society piracy is always justified
Fuck every last one of these corporations
How so? You are supporting them using their software.
*their
But it doesn’t support them when they don’t see income from it. You don’t even register as a number on their side, likely
You are still supporting them by using a product from them. It doesn’t matter if you are paying or not.
So what’s the problem with piracy then? I’m still supporting them but I’m saving money in the process. Win/win. What a world!
Not paying them means you are not supporting them
If you even use the software you are supporting them. The only way not to is a complete boycott
If you even use the software you are supporting them.
How?
Mostly because you are not using alternatives. By using it you are more likely not to pirate it if they make harder to pirate or run a sale. There is also the fact that others see you using it and are encouraged to not using alternatives.
☠️ ☠️ ☠️ ☠️ that’s right me mateys, being a pirate is lame and you should definitely…… nottttttt do it………….
Good thing I have this eye patch so I can wink without anyone seeing.
I bet you watch ads, too.
Not OP, but I typically only pirate games if they’re unavailable for purchase in a more legal way. Like PS2 games, for example.
Most of the modern games I buy these days are from developers I genuinely want to support and see more from, like Atlus or Vanillaware.
And, no, I use uBlock Origin.
Well no, I just stay away from proprietary software. For the internet I use ublock origin.
Courageous to make such a comment on Lemmy, where the community will bend over backwards to justify piracy.
I’m 100% for piracy, but you forgot the step where the game you’re pirating has been provided by 1500 other trackers and 1461 of those have been modified to bundle malware/spyware/ransomware…etc many users may never notice it, a lot will be caught by antivirus, but some will not.
Edit: I’m a software dev branching into security. The more I learn the harder it gets to find the actual source for cracked software and the more I notice just how sketch most are.
Example: It’s not a great policy to eat whatever food you find first, regardless of where it was and who made it, and hope your immune system (antivirus example) takes care of it. Eventually you’ll get burnt.
It sounds like you’ve been browsing some pretty sketchy websites. I have yet to find malware bundled in torrents from trustworthy trackers. And I’ve been pirating for many years.
Did you not read the part where they don’t have a fucking computer? 🤦♂️
Just pirate a computer, duh
yOu WoUlDn’T dOwNlOaD a CoMpUtEr…
Me using docker or vagrant: It’s already at 50%
You wouldn’t download a
carcomputer.You wouldn’t steal a police man’s hat
Only because I don’t want to be mistaken for a policeman.
Yeah I have one of those, it works pretty good for mining doubloons and is pretty nice all around except that every time another computer gets near it, my pirate computer has these little cannons that come out of the side vents and BAM it starts firing volleys. Can’t play LAN with other friends or anything it is annoying, I am kinda worried it is gonna find out about my smartphone and attack it too.
Can buy one with the money saved by pirating
👌👍
All these people can’t read apparently. Just about every comment is like this.
It’s a hate on not only DRM, but all paid services pretty much
Subscriptions to death, that’s where we are and it’s only going to get worse
How is a mobile workstation with little disk space no computer at all?
Sentence 1 🤦♂️
Seems a bit rough to understand:
“I don’t own a GAMING PC.”
“Mass Effect should run fine on weaker PCs”
“I only have a mobile workstation with little disk space”
Do you get it now?
ChatGPT, explain it to em like I’m a lobotomized 2 year old.
True, this landscape is changing a lot lately though with handheld PCs making them no longer out of reach for some.
I’ll admit I’m ignorant to this but how do you use GeForce now? Is it streaming? What is it streaming to?
deleted by creator
Meanwhile somewhere out there a pirate is enjoying it right now
Can you run pirated games on GFN?
No, for that you need Shadow or some other cloud service that basically is a full PC available for you.
Of course you should transfer it from your machine or similar don’t go and start downloading a torrent from the machine.
Is there any more information on these dastardly fiends?
Worse, a console gamer. It’s £5.99 right now on PSN. Barely worth pirating for that.
Feeling sorry for you. Hopefully at least your cautionary tale is a lesson to readers here that giving any money to EA ever is a bad thing.
Thanks, though it’s not a huge deal. Just happen to have my vacation days now, and it would have been great time to play. I guess I have to figure something else out for today 🙈
Unfortunately I don’t think you can play this game without the EA launcher and DRM, so if one wants this experience, one has to also experience the entirety of EA with all of its malices and quirks…
Well as many people have already said, if you had a capable PC and a cracked version of the game, you can experience the game while forgoing EA’s bullshit.
Glad the support person was able to work something out for you in the end, though.
It IS a big deal though, that’s the whole point.
You had plans for today. You paid money for a service so you could make those plans happen, and then now your plans are toast. You paid money for nothing.
If you paid for a package holiday and then got denied boarding the plane for some garbage reason like “you’ve exceeded your maximum flight hours for today” (WTF?!l) then you’d be MAD and rightfully so.
Sure, this is just a game. It’s less important. But the principle is identical and your reaction should be to feel cheated and robbed, not just shrug and let EA get away with not giving you the service but still taking your money.
I get your sentiment, and agree somewhat, but I was able to play it prior as well as later, even if I had to wait 24 hours. So I didn’t pay for nothing, and if you meant gfn, then I was still fully able to use the service for everything else.
However, I did make efforts to right the situation, which I think is much better than simply complaining and feeling robbed. Those efforts brought fruit, too, and I was back playing in an hour.
But I still do see your general point and agree in the sense that we really should fight for our rights, and if unable to do so, strive to better things for others, so they need not fight 😌
Yeah, they should just sit quietly in their room never enjoying any video games!
Yeah, they should just sit quietly in their room never enjoying any video games!
Are you from a parallel universe where every single video game is by EA?
No, but they are a troll who thinks negative karma is a video game high score competition
With the name they have it may be confusing if we call games art, electronic one at that.
Ah, I can see how this could happen. Each time you log on you get a different VM and EA didn’t think about that before tossing the game up on geforce now (assuming that’s how it works; never used the service. If you installed the game yourself then I guess it sucks that’s how their DRM works).
Yup, this is likely the exact reason this happens. Oversight on their part. I contacted support and they told me they’d forward this further up The chain, I think this isn’t intended behavior for that safeguard lock, but rather stop account sharing or something like that.
Just need to check if running on gfn system and not playing an online game (which could have some problems with system hopping for bans or something maybe? Doesn’t seem likely but at least there’s a vector for malicious use, unlike in single player games), and if both are true, just skip the check.
We’ll see. I just got informed it’s a full 24h lock, and it’s set on the launcher servers somehow, which is not accessible on the account data. It’s launcher data, which means the customer support reps can’t do anything about it 😅
Just great stuff, EA never disappoints.
Well I don’t think this is true, I used proton and still got this error
Did you happen to run it with different versions of proton? Each version would possibly be identified as a different “system”.
Yeah, and on Proton Experimental when it undergoes a major update it may reset its values.
I think not
I see EA is out of ideas for naming their games, and has started naming their game "DisplayName field¨.
“Field missing from registry”, one of my favourite franchises, is now owned by EA? Ugh. 😩
I can’t play EA games because In 2023 they archived my account for “inactivity” with playtime in 2022. The only option is to delete my purchase history and save games… I wish people would stop giving them money.
This is why I support gog. The future is here, you own nothing and have no rights to what you’ve purchased. Pretty much anything can be turned to a brick when the corp decides it’s time or they want you to buy something new.
That’s weird. I just logged into my ea account from 2012 after not touching it for 5 years and it appears everything is there. Adding a recovery mail just to be sure now. LOL, it’s so old it doesn’t even have a name and shows as a 25 digit ID on the website.
EDIT: dude below is right: GOG all the way.
And they still wonder why everyone avoids them.
Update: It seems requesting a password change from support side toggles the flag and lets you start the game again.
Unsure if this works multiple times, but at least for me, it worked, and this was my first time this happened.
Worth a shot people! If you ever find yourself on a similar situation
Good to know you figured it out. It’s still surprising one affects the other, and that situation happening in the first place. Yet, I remeber EA was one of the studios not completely happy with cloud gaming in the past, so with lower priority they could not looked into a case like yours and adjusted their DRM beforehand.
Do you have any PC at all? Mass Effect should even run on weaker PCs.
But yeah, these kinds of problems are why I won’t bother with cloud gaming. Have you contacted support?
Yeah, the problem is disk space. I have a mobile dev workstation, which means I don’t need huge amounts of disk space, so I cheaped on that aspect when buying it. Can’t fit the entire Legendary Edition on this thing, even if it could play it.
Did contact support, they can’t help with this. Hopefully it gets forwarded upwards enough so that at some point this is fixed.
FWIW, memory is getting pretty cheap, it feels. a samsung 980 m.2 card with a terabyte on it are “only” 80. a seagate 1t drive is like… 56.
I find it difficult to imagine a game (or even three,) requiring a terabyte’s worth of data. of course, bloated game devs are probably already passing their beer off to prove me wrong.
And thunderbolt/usb3/usb4 M.2 enclosures exist and are quite cheap if you don’t have a slot in the laptop.
Except for Apple. The pricing for their ssds is still the one everyone else was charging a decade ago,
For example on the Mac mini they have the courage to ask those prices:
- $200 for 256 gb
- $400 for 750 gb
- $800 for 1750 gb
Same for the RAM, $200 for 8gb (of ddr4 until a few months ago!) and so on
IDK, I’ve heard that MSFS can get pretty big once you start installing everything plus the cached imagery. Relatively quickly I found a post from someone that was using over 700GB and I assume that doesn’t include the dynamic cached map/scenery.
As much as I hate EA and everything they stand for, their customer support has pulled through for me on more than one occasion. Props to them
This seems like an obvious bug with the licensing check in the game, or maybe an oversight by nvidia. (bug because one would think it would be adjusted for geforcenow) Why dont you contact nvidia customer service? Ive never used geforce now, but their shield departement is really good.
I did contact NVIDIA customer support too, but haven’t heard back since the ticket was not real-time chat. EA customer support was a chat though, and resolved the problem for me 😌
I’ll see what NVIDIA responds back. I think this might have some work for steam too, since I play this EA game via steam, but EA is not officially playable via GFN, but steam is. So I think there’s a lot of complications there to shift through.
I did try to contact steam too, but they have no contact info for this kind of problem, rather forwarded to EA.
Genuinely curious since my games stack there automatically. Is it a good launcher? I’ve never looked into it more than updating my graphics cards.
You may be thinking of the GeForce Experience app.
Oh, what does OP mean by not being able to play via geforce then? Apologies.
GeForce Now is a cloud/streaming gaming service, for people who don’t have good computers. You basically pay Nvidia a subscription to play your games. They load the games on their servers, then you stream the video from there.
OP’s issue is that every time they loaded the game, it was on a different cloud server. So on EA’s side, they saw a bunch of different computers accessing their account all in a short period. So they assumed OP was sharing their account, and locked it.
RIP OP, that sounds like NVIDIA’s fault. Idk if they could do some sort of masking to protect their users from this, or just make some sort of identity protocol. But that doesn’t seem fair to their customers. The service still sounds like a cool Stadia though.
