I picked up Halo MCC on Steam which requires an xbox live account. No big deal right? People always tell us "oh, it just takes 5 minutes to setup a free throwaway account". So I did that.
Played for an hour, then came back the next day to find my account had been locked due to "potential fraud". That's right folks, a free account with no emails, no purchases, and no credit card information was somehow committing fraud.
To unlock it, all I had to do was provide my cellphone number to Microsoft who promised never to share it with anyone. Sure, sure, and when they get hacked it's "please change your passwords, kai thx bai".
Screw you Microsoft. I setup another account and so far it's still working. But if they ban it again I'm asking for a refund. Luckily in this case it's Steam that controls actual ownership, so I only lost some campaign progress.
But it really does show that DRM is basically an assessment of your "worthiness", checked at every game launch. And at the snap of their fingers companies can remove it without warning, for whatever reason.
"Oh, this sort of thing never happens", we're repeatedly told.
Yes it does.
Played for an hour, then came back the next day to find my account had been locked due to "potential fraud". That's right folks, a free account with no emails, no purchases, and no credit card information was somehow committing fraud.
To unlock it, all I had to do was provide my cellphone number to Microsoft who promised never to share it with anyone. Sure, sure, and when they get hacked it's "please change your passwords, kai thx bai".
Screw you Microsoft. I setup another account and so far it's still working. But if they ban it again I'm asking for a refund. Luckily in this case it's Steam that controls actual ownership, so I only lost some campaign progress.
But it really does show that DRM is basically an assessment of your "worthiness", checked at every game launch. And at the snap of their fingers companies can remove it without warning, for whatever reason.
"Oh, this sort of thing never happens", we're repeatedly told.
Yes it does.
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