Borderlands Likely to Ship with SecuROM

Editor's note: We asked 2K Games PR rep Charlie Sinhaseni to confirm whether or not Borderlands will use SecuROM. His response: "The customer will need a live Internet connection during the installation which is specified in one of the first install prompts. The second check is a disc check to ensure that the retail disc is in the drive when the game is run." - Aaron

Borderlands is likely to ship with SecuROM, according to the DRM company's support page. Nobody knows what flavor of this particular copy-protection software will be bundled with the PC version of Gearbox’s Borderlands, but its inclusion -- in any form -- is unsettling.

Borderlands This is what it feels like

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford is well aware of the problems with DRM, as he briefly discussed the topic in a recent interview with Maximum PC:

"DRM has been handled terribly for so many years. For example, false negatives are a disaster for everyone. I’d much rather have a false positive, and allow thieves to play, than prevent a paying customer from playing my game. The industry has destroyed a lot of good will with DRM problems."

Why, then, has Gearbox chosen to go with the most reviled of DRM schemes? Why SecuROM?

It’s true that we don’t know how restrictive a version of SecuROM Borderlands might use.Will it be the simple disc-check that shipped with Bethesda’s Fallout 3? Or are we facing the install limits or online-authentication of BioShock and Spore?

SecuROM! Crashing and burning PC games since inception

Either way, I feel that the inclusion of SecuROM software is going too far. It has a known history of creating hardware and software conflicts and has caused users untold amounts of headaches and frustration to get a game to run. I've not even mentioned the legal concerns surrounding the software. If Gearbox is aware of the good will left in tatters by schemes like SecuROM, why utilize it at all?

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment -- we all know that Borderlands will be cracked and disseminated throughout the Internet on day zero. If I were a betting man, I’d look towards answers coming from the music industry and put my money on an insider leak. No amount of copy-protection is going to prevent that.

We’re also talking about preventing people who may not ever purchase the game at all from playing. While a notable moral goal, I can’t see how spending resources on DRM will bring a return on investment without the guarantee of increased sales. Not to mention the fact (one that Pitchford recognizes) that the risk of causing problems for legitimate consumers will only hurt the reputation of the developer and prevent future sales.

What I have found out is that the Steam version will likely not carry the SecuROM software, since Valve makes a point of listing third-party DRM and there is no listing for Borderlands. Still, it’s a sort of compromise -- one form of DRM for another, and I’m one of those old fashioned types who like to have a disc in hand.

Borderlands was once a game I was really looking forward to playing, but now my enthusiasm has been soured. I'm amazed that, out of all copy-protection schemes, Gearbox has chosen SecuROM. EA is being smart with Dragon Age: Origins and has abandoned SecuROM completely, opting instead for a simple disc-check.

Isn’t Gearbox listening?

(13)

Ron Dippold

October 13, 2009

So basically I can get this on Steam if it really doesn't include the SecuROM (this would be my preference), or I can pirate it. I'm not putting that s@#$ on my computer ever again.

Evan Campbell

Man this post is perfect for October. DRM issues haunt me in my sleep.

Frank Anderson

October 14, 2009

This is yet another reason why I buy most games for home consoles.

Frank Sabatini

Well this just ruined my day. But before people go blaming Pitchford and Gearbox DRM is normally decided by the publisher (2K in this case) As long as the DRM isn't install limits or a Bioshock issue I don't think I'll have a problem.

Rob Savillo

Thanks for checking with 2K on this issue.

Online authentication, eh? I'm weary of this method because we have no guarantee that authentication servers will still be running in 10 or 20 years, turning a classic game into a coaster.

Other mediums don't have this problem -- books can still be read decades later, films projected, records spun. Video game developers and publishers just don't seem to think that anyone would want to return to an old game. What gives?

Toby Davis

Glad I am getting this for the PS3

Brett Bates

@Rob: In 10 to 20 years, coasters will probably cost $50 anyway, so it's a wash! :)

As for other media not having this problem, that's rapidly changing. Just look at what recently happened with Kindle and George Orwell's books.

Oh yeah, that was quite ironic, too.

The difference, though, is that pretty much all PC games ship with some form of electronic lock these days, and usually there's no legal alternative. We're saddling ourselves with the responsibility of supporting quickly obsoleted copy-protection schemes in order to ensure content is continually accessible.

Unlike other mediums which have their roots in analog, video games are wholly digital from the start. It'll take much more to annihilate the printed book than it will to replace the physical game disc with a digital-only option.

I don't see the printed book going the way of the dodo any time soon. Hell, new bands still press vinyl records! There's cultural significance to these mediums, which is something I think video games lack.

And this means that there will still be a permanent (analog) alternative to electronic copies like e-books for the foreseeable future. We generally don't have that choice in video games.

Kevin Zhang-xing

By telling everyone that it might ship with SecuROM, everyone will a) buy it off Steam, thus nullifying Pitchford's comments about Steam, or b) pirate and find patches to go around SecuROM once again.

Jake Mckenzie

360 it is.

Luis Carlos Chivatá Celis

This is a new round between the publishers' capacity to impose their corporate greed on us and the consumers' capacity to not support those schemes, I would like to believe in the latter, but people eventually buy it and let them get away with it

Christopher Quach

@ Rob,

Great piece!

I don't know much about DRM and how it works and by what you've mentioned about Gearbox's choice compared to EA, there are several options to choose from. It'll be great to read more about the different copy-protection options available as I certainly know they exist but do not actually know how they work or even the fact that there was even different models of protection to choose from :)

Jason Wilson

@Other mediums don't have this problem -- books can still be read decades later, films projected, records spun. Video game developers and publishers just don't seem to think that anyone would want to return to an old game. What gives?

While I support a digital future, this is my fear -- that I will not be able to look back at, say, Dragon Age in 10 years and appreciate it in the same way I do with Planescape: Torment.

WHAT THE HECK IS A BITMOB?