In my plug for Front Office Football 2001 I forgot to mention that Electronic Arts has used an insanely stupid licensing mechanism, which is worth noting because rumor has it that Microsoft is going to begin using a similar system with the upcoming Whistler and Office XP.
FOF2K1 is distributed only over the Internet. When you download and fire up the game, it asks you to enter your order number. The game transmits the order number to an Internet site which generates a license code specific to the machine you’re using — I’m assuming they’re writing the license code somewhere on the C: drive.
Here’s the insane part. When you buy the game you’re granted a license to run the game on two machines. The Internet server is tracking how many different machines you’re running the game on. If you decide to use a third machine the game has a feature in which you can de-license the copy on machine A, install the game on machine B and then license it again on machine B.
The problem should be obvious. Suppose I have the game licensed on my home machine and my laptop and someone steals my laptop. Or perhaps the hard drive on my home machine bites the dust. According to EA’s licensing scheme I’m already using my two licenses and am screwed — time to put up another $25 for a two-machine license (if they simply give me an additional license if I say my laptop was stolen or my hard drive crashed, there is no point for the copy protection in the first place).
I haven’t seen any details but have heard that the copy protection for Microsoft Office XP and Whistler will have a similar feature that keeps track of the number of installs of licensed software. Already it’s being reported that beta testers of Whistler quickly hacked the copy protection after running into Microsoft tech support people who had never considered the problems with this sort of system.
Unfortunately so far I haven’t run into a crack for FOF2K1, but I’m still looking.