Traces of SecuROM will be left behind even after uninstalling GTA.

Many would claim that DRM is bad, and perhaps rightly so. But it's unfortunately a necessary evil in the videogame biz (at least it is if you ask almost any company this side of Sins of a Solar Empire publisher Stardock). SecuROM in particular is frequently employed by developers in order to prevent pirates from illegally playing their games. This tends to lead to backlash from the community, as we saw illustrated quite well with Spore, where a class action lawsuit was filed against EA and Amazon customer reviews took a nosedive -- and that didn't stop the game from being pirated, either.

In spite of that, Rockstar has decided to use SecuROM with this week's release of Grand Theft Auto 4 on PC. Calling it "the most effective form of disc based copy protection," Rockstar provided details to IGN on how the game's DRM will work.

Steam will be among the digital distributors where you'll be able to purchase the game, and while that won't spare you from SecuROM's wrath, you will at least be able to get out of needing a disc in the drive -- a requirement for the disc-based version. The game needs to be authenticated online once installed, but only needs to be activated once per computer. You'll be able to authenticate on a separate computer with an internet connection should you be unable to get online with your gaming rig. (You'll be missing out on that 32-player multiplayer if that's the case, so you should really get that sorted out.)

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 16:55