Quick Question...

[Dr. KillPatient]

I'm looking into buying Crysis after discovering that my computer can in fact run it decently. I noticed that it uses SecuROM and so it can only be activated on five machines.
My questions are thus:
Once a machine is activated, can it be deactivated? For instance, if I use one of the five activations and so have four left, can I deactivate it for the machine it's currently on and have five again?
Does it last between reformats? For instance, if I were to reformat while it was activated, would the activation still be there when I reinstall the game (paired with hardware configuration perhaps), would it be deactivated upon reformatting (unlikely), or would it still leave me with four activations if I reformat an activated computer?
I've heard some bad stuff about SecuROM itself, that it takes admin priviledges, disables system restore, etc. I've not confirmed those, but I would like to know if it's even worth it and what exactly this software does.

 

[MrAlBobo]

ahem
http://store.steampowered.com/app/17300/

get it through steam and forget

 

[Dr. KillPatient]

It says there, though, that it has SecuROM on the steam version too... Does it not?

By the way, does the SP demo have SecuROM?

 

[MrAlBobo]

huh...never actually checked that...i just recalled that spore had all the securom crap as well and the steam version removed that complication.

Anyways, since that apparently fell through...ill answer the question. With spore anyways after months of complaining they added a tool you could use to uninstall the game and increase your download total back up. So, its likely they have that as well, but i can't say 100%...
Reformatting is likely to have the game think its a new computer.

Though I have to say I am curious how they intend to restrict it to 5 installs through steam, it just...seems odd to have DRM on top of what is essentially DRM already...

 

[Dr. KillPatient]

In that case, before going into that I think it wise contact Steam support about how it functions per-computer...

 

[fubarFX]

from what I heard, any upgrade counts as a different computer.
I heard it's fairly easy to get your license reseted via their customer support

 

[lana]

You cannot remove a copy from the computer without contacting technical support. Thanks, SecuROM, for your terrible system!

 

[Dr. KillPatient]

Thanks to EA's awfully oppressive software I may just have to refrain from purchasing such a nice game. :facepalm: