The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection Comes Bundled with SecuROM

EA have released the full collection of the beloved Sims 2 and decided to give the full package away to anyone who had the base game on their Origin account. Because of the popularity of this and the high demand they decided to give it to everyone with an Origin account instead. All one had to do was redeem the “special code” that could be found every where on the web this past week.

Already a bit worried about Origin itself, Lisa Pham from Reclaim Your Game dug a bit into the new Sims 2 version. She found that EA had put SecuROM Version 07.40.0009 in their nice Free Sims 2 Ultimate Collection which they plan to sell in their store soon.

SecuROM has been around for many years now and most people aren’t too bothered by it. Originally created by Sony, it’s a bit of software designed to prevent video game piracy, by resisting duplication devices and preventing reverse engineering. It’s not altogether a bad thing, but it’s copped a lot of negative attention over the fact that it is not removed when you un-install the game it came from. It also throws a number of false positives for piracy attempts, including not recognising the authentic discs. It also generally monitors your software use even when you’re not playing the game. Opponents have labelled it spyware.

EA has already been under the microscope for its use of SecuROM in Spore, which prompted a class action lawsuit. Coincidentally Bordelands just announced the removal of SecuROM in their move from GameSpy to Steam.

Removing SecuROM isn’t an easy thing either. Pham removed the Sims 2, Origin and SecuROM and there were still undeleteable registry entries left. After some trial and error it was discovered that TrashReg could remove those last pesky entries.

Thank you Reclaim Your Game for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of EA.