So hey - I was am working on a graphics performance review for Battlefield Hardline, and guess what ? Do you guys remember the DRM introduced in Ubisofts Anno 2070 ? Well, EA just did pretty much the same thing. They sniff your PC and monitor for hardware changes.

The story goes like this; once upon a time I started working on a performance review. And after testing merely a handful of graphics cards I noticed EA will now lock your game (Battlefield Hardline) with the following message:
 

Interesting huh? Especially considering it is just one PC that we are using ? Here's what EAs DRM is doing these days, EA does not just verify the number of PCs you work on slash use, no Sir .. they monitor hardware changes inside your PC now, which I am sure is a privacy breach on many levels. So once we insert new hardware CPU / mobo / graphics cards or even a system firmware flash  the hardware id # hash changes and if that happens a couple of times EA will render your game activation invalid. From what we now have learned, you get to have 5 hardware changes per license. Use them up and access to the game will be blocked for 24 hours per activation. 

What a bunch of rubbish ....

If this is the future for EA titles then you guys can forget about VGA performance reviews as EA is rendering that pretty much impossible now. I've now been waiting for like 3 or 4 hours and we are still locked out of the game. The only way to solve this would be purchasing another key and setup a secondary account. This means that if we'd like to make a VGA performance review on Battlefield Hardline with a card or 20 we'd need to purchase the game three to four times. 

EA - Guys we understand your piracy and cheating/hacking concerns, really we do. But STOP pissing off your user-base with this STUPID non-sense as it just is not needed. This is not five PCs we are using, it's happening after we swap out a videocard. Thus one user, one PC ... but changing graphics cards. Do that 5x in 24 hours and you are locked out of the game for 24 hours.

Hey -- if hardware changes force Windows to de-activate, we push a button and the system gets re-validated. EA however refuses you to login to the game for 24 hours, I could understand an hour; but 24 hours ?? I don't get that anymore, how does that make any sense ? Sighs - you need to wonder - at what point will the industry realize they are killing the PC game market themselves ?