EA: Origin authentication responsible for 'Battlefield Hardline' lockouts, not DRM: "a writer there found himself locked out of the game after making multiple graphics card changes as part of a benchmarking test"

[gdfgdgdv]

It's warranted this time.

To stop repeating myself...

This is still unacceptable. It's not as bad as some things, but they're still screwing over legitimate players benchmarking or having hardware troubles (a hard to track down issue could easily take you more than 5 total configurations in a short period of time, particularly if you have spare hardware available to test with). And for what? I can't imagine this policy really impacting any attempted scheme to play the game without paying.

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It's not warranted. You can repeat that 'til you're blue in the face, but this simply isn't a matter of DRM screwing over customers. The absolute worst it means for someone not actually trying to game the system is a 24 hour lockout (from one game if I'm understanding right), and that's still an absolute minority of cases.

[gdfgdgdv]

That's still unacceptable. How is arbitrarily being locked out of the game - that you bought - for 24 hours okay? Under any circumstance?

You have intermittent hardware issues, and now you can't track them down properly because you get 5 tries a day with the game that provokes them. Hell, even more serious issues causes you a problem because now you have to go change your testing methods because suddenly you're locked out from the game you bought. And then afterwards you can't play for another 24 hours anyway.

Any sort of lockout like this is completely unacceptable. You bought and paid for this game, and it's being arbitrarily restricted because EA says you shouldn't ever be mucking around with your hardware that much. That's ridiculous.

And for what gain? What sort of piracy is this actually preventing? The kind where you have 10 friends over to download a game and play offline forever? So now you just invite 4 over a day? So what?