EA Denies Existence Of Battlefield DRM, Problems Caused By Origin Authentication

Yesterday, we were made aware that some Battlefield Hardline users were locked out from the game on PC. We followed up with EA to find out what was causing the issues, which had been attributed to a stealthy form of DRM.

The matter came to our attention via Guru of 3D, which was attempting to benchmark Hardline on a variety of graphics cards. After testing a number of cards, the site experienced an error claiming that the game had been accessed on too many computers.

We reached out to EA to determine exactly what was happening. “Origin authentication allows players to install a game on up to five different PCs every 24 hours,” a representative told us via email. “Players looking to benchmark more than five hardware configurations in one 24 hour period can contact our Customer Support team who can help.”

We reviewed the Origin Terms of Services and frequently asked questions. We were unable to find anything that specifically referred to a limit on the number of machines on which a game can be activated in a 24-hour period. However, we did locate something that refers to a three-computer installation limit within a ten-day period (not the case in the situation detailed by Guru of 3D).

Further, we were able to find EA’s statement on capturing data related to hardware configuration. EA says in its privacy policy that data collected, including hardware specifications, is used for a variety of purposes.

“EA uses personal and non-personal information, both individually and combined together, to better enhance your user experience, improve our products and services, understand the behavior and preferences of our customers, to troubleshoot technical problems, to serve advertising, for authentication purposes, to enforce our Terms of Service, to ensure proper functioning of our products and services as well as to help improve them,” the privacy statement reads.

Users can opt-out of data collection, as specified in the frequently asked questions document. “You can opt out of sharing hardware specifications and crash reports at any time,” the company says. “Sharing of system interaction data can be limited and made anonymous, but not completely disabled.”

However, items like CPU, graphics card, and other hardware-configuration details are listed under “system interaction data,” meaning that despite EA’s assertion that you can opt-out of sharing, the most you can do is make it anonymous.

We’ve inquired with EA about this contradiction and will update should we receive a reply. For now, know that you’re limited to five activations on different systems per game per day. It’s not software-level DRM. It’s a platform-wide policy.

[Source: EA (1), (2) via Guru of 3D]

Our Take
Putting aside the potential privacy and ethical concerns for a moment, a major issue here isn’t that EA uses authentications to monitor for fraud or piracy. It’s that the information on why this is happening isn’t spelled out for users.

I spent an hour with the dense legalese in a number of Origin-related documents and found contradictions about opting out. At the very least, EA needs to put these rules up front, where every user can easily find them.