Bad Company 2 - DRM Free!

EA makes Bad Company 2 DRM free. Gee, only weeks before BF3 no wonder. I doubt many will be playing BFBC2 once BF3 is released. I noticed a 2GB patch downloading in Steam for BFBC2 and wondered what was going on. Take note of the Punkbuster note near the bottom (I bolded it).

Here it is:

The Escapist : News : Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Goes DRM-Free

A new Battlefield: Bad Company 2 patch that strips out the game's DRM has been released but you're going to need some patience to get it.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has been around for awhile now but DICE is still giving it plenty of love. Released today, the newest patch for the PC version of the game addresses a number of performance-related issues but will probably be most attractive to players because it strips the SecuROM wrapper out of the game. There aren't many things that make Team PC happier than waving bye-bye to DRM, particularly when the DRM in question is the much-loathed SecuROM.

What else is on tap? Here's the full list of changes:

Removed some memory leaks
Fixed crashes when the game attempted to render lots of content (high detail, high FOV or multiple-monitor modes); this should particularly help multi-monitor users
Chat window no longer causes lag spikes
Chat window reworked opacity & visibility-time is controllable through settings in settings.ini
Clantag is remembered when using auto-login
Banner URLs can be up to 252 characters in length
SecuROM wrapper removed from non-Steam version
Minor performance enhancements
Reduced rubberbanding on servers with more than 24 active players
PrintScreen takes a screenshot, file stored in DocumentsBFBC2Screenshots directory

The bad news for anyone lacking a super-phat pipe is that the update is a whopping 2.6 gigabytes in size. "The patch itself contains all previous patches rolled into one," DICE explained. "While it would have been technically possible to create a smaller patch for those who have Client R10 installed already, that would have delayed the release of the patch even further - so we thought it better to release a larger patch now, than a smaller patch sometime in the future."

There is one small technical issue with the patch: if you use non-English characters in your Windows username, PunkBuster will not activate properly. DICE only became aware of the issue at the end of the testing process and decided to let it go anyway rather than delay it further.

The new patch will be automatically distributed through Steam or the BFBC2 auto-updater. Links to a manual patch for the non-Steam version of the game can also be found on the EA forums.

 

But...I could never autologin.

 

I know, I could never get autologin or friends list to work. Seems a little too late anyhow. I bet the online presence will be 10% of what it is now once BF3 hits release.

 

So if you stick a Korean or Arabic character in your username, you can cheat and not get caught? Well there goes the neighborhood...

 

So, its useless for people with steam..

 

I didn't notice this patch download but there doesn't seem to be any way for me to manually install it and starting the game doesn't prompt me at all (I didn't try to join any servers). However somehow I can get steam download speeds of 22 MBps (yes, megaBYTES per second) and at that rate a 2.6 gb patch would only take around 2 minutes or so to download, so I probably missed it.

What is the advantage of removing the DRM? Also why didn't they fix the chat window lag earlier? I guess this will last me until the BF3 beta starts (assuming I can play it...).

 

Securom was removed from the Steam version within the first few weeks if my memory serves me right.

 

I wonder if that's really true since I'm a Korean myself.

 

To clarify, I didn't mean that the cheaters were Korean or Arab...I meant that someone who wanted to cheat (from ANY country) just had to put a non-Roman-alphabet letter in their name and they'd be able to do so. I was talking about kids in Iowa and Delaware doing this, not actually blaming cheating on Koreans. Sorry if I caused offense

 

None taken ;-)

 

2.6GB sounds like fun on my 1.5Mbps DSL line...

 

I would think it's more likely that you wouldn't be able to join a Punkbuster server, no?

 

That's what it sounds like. Must not be too concerned about the Asian market then.

 

Ahh, gotcha. Thanks.

 

a) there are a variety of fixes, so this patch is beneficial to steam users as well as non-steam users.

b) if punkbuster doesn't update properly, you will get kicked if you join any punkbuster enabled server. you'll have to update punkbuster yourself. this will not allow you to cheat.

 

So it seems the patch wasn't downloaded and steam was not autoupdating BC2 for some reason, so I had to completely redownload BC2 AND the patch. Of course, it only took 5 minutes from start to finish...

Now for some reason everyone who had no tag before the patch has a tag that reads "invalid." Does DICE think we can't take care of ourselves?

 

LOL. What an invalid. I was wondering what that was all about when I was online again. So many invalids, lol.

 

Do I have to manutally install the patch? I run the BC2 game updater and it doesn't download/update anything.

 

If you have it on Steam then no you don't have to install it manually.