Planet C&C

Planet Command & Conquer is a gaming Web site covering all games in the Command & Conquer series. It was originally founded in 1997 by Tim Spelt and several community veterans in cooperation with the PlanetQuake Network. It officially opened to the public on June 4, 1999, as the first site to cover all games in the Command & Conquer series. Since then, it has been providing the latest news and content on a daily basis, serving millions of visitors. Today, Planet C&C is over a decade old and part of IGN Entertainment.

Writing under a pseudonym, David is responsible for updating the site with C&C related Xbox 360 news, as well as the weekly mailbag feature. The mailbag poses a new question each week, which readers answer with their views, and David shares his opinion at the end.

On the 25th October 2008, the mailbag question was: –

Has DRM put you off buying Red Alert 3, if so, why? Also, if you could change (not remove) the DRM in Red Alert 3, what would you do and why?

Planet C&C – Mailbag

My views on this DRM (digital rights management) debacle are all over the place at the moment.

I can totally understand what EA are trying to do, they’re protecting their product from piracy. Unfortunately, we’ve already seen this fail completely in regards to Spore. Pirate versions were available to download days before the product hit the shelves, stripped of the DRM that was supposed to protect it. I’m not sure what that means in terms of further support (patches, etc), but the game was there for anyone who wanted it. Before anyone reads into that incorrectly, I do not condone or support piracy in any form.

DRM is something a lot of consumers hate to have on their products, especially if it is restrictive to the point where the product will become useless at some point down the line. It doesn’t matter what number of installs you give, 5 or 100, someone will always reach that limit eventually.

The backlash for Spore was huge, and while EA are doing their best to address the DRM on that game as well as Red Alert 3 in the future they could have just looked at successful protection methods already “in the wild” and adapted them to suit their needs. It does little to soothe my rage when I read that the install limit problem will be addressed in the future, especially as it could have been addressed before the game went gold.

And to answer my own question, it hasn’t put me off buying the game. Like “Heron” I’m a complete nut for C&C games, and it’s one of the reasons I’m working for this site (alongside world domination, and the fan girls that constantly show up at my lair). I’m actually getting two copies (I actually have two copies of every C&C game), one for my newly upgraded PC, and one for my shiny Xbox 360. If I could change the DRM, I would keep online activation only when trying to play online. In a similar method to that of Company of Heroes, I’d allow the option of signing in online to allow the use of the game without the need for the CD/DVD.