BioWare fixes DA: O server failure

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 13 April, 2011

Angry gamers point finger at DRM.

Angry gamers have filled BioWare's forum with complaints after the PC version of fantasy role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins became unplayable over the weekend.

According to a report on Ars Technica, the problem was the result of Bioware's DRM authorization servers.

"Sometime on Friday morning, Dragon Age:Origins players who booted up the game for a session of single-player dungeon crawling were greeted with a nasty surprise: all of the downloadable content (DLC) that they had purchased for the game had been flagged as 'unauthorised', so their saved games wouldn't load," Ars Technica reports. "Again, these were vanilla, single-player saved games, representing untold hours of gameplay and investment, that users were suddenly unable to load."

Yesterday BioWare announced it had fixed the problem, but not before angry fans had their say in a spiralling thread packed with posts.

Dragon Age online producer Fernando Melo jumped in to explain what had happened.

"The short answer is that we were caught off-guard by this as a new issue for DAO players, believing initially that this was an existing issue that had a solution already available here on the tech forums," Melo said.

"Some of you may be familiar with it, but for those that were not, DAO has an existing (but low in numbers of affected players) issue with unauthorized DLC which can occur in certain cases - usually stemming from something related with the DA updater service that is either not correctly installed or not started with the game.

"Normally, we are pretty responsive to activity on the forums, but you may also be aware that our forums are staffed voluntarily - and while we do ensure that additional presence exists when launching patches or server updates, this weekend was not the case.

"The DA2 patch was not expected to clear QA until at least Monday, and most of the volunteer staff/moderators were focused on the DA2 threads currently. The higher than normal traffic in the DAO support thread was not caught.

"The delay and vagueness in information provided to you came from the fact that the issue ended up residing in servers outside our direct control elsewhere at EA -  and across time zones it took us a while (most of Mon and into early Tues) to go back and forth trying out different approaches to identify exactly what was causing the issue. 

"Once again my sincere apologies on the delay and the frustration factor for everyone wanting to play the game and DLCs over this weekend."

Dragon Age: Origins launched in 2009 to an 8/10 review score from Eurogamer. Its sequel, Dragon Age II, launched earlier this year.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Freek #1 1 year ago

    Pirates: totally uneffected.
    Legitimate customers: screwed over.

    That's DRM for you.
    Edited by Freek at 13/04/11 @ 12:26

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #2 1 year ago

    DRM on pc just seems mental its never going to stop the pirates. Don't they realise that the pirated versions of games aren't even going to contact their servers to ask if they can play?

  • dsmx #3 1 year ago

    That will show those pirates who has the best version sitting there playing the content while all those who paid for it have to wait before they've been given permission to play it.

  • TelexStar #4 1 year ago

    It's the same with those anti-piracy adds you see at the beginning of DVD's. The whole concept of chastising legitimate users is just crazy beyond belief.

  • djed #5 1 year ago

    The forums are staffed by volunteers? Volunteers who can ban forum users making them unable to play their games? Haha, oh Bioware.

  • arcam #6 1 year ago

    "The short answer is that we were caught off-guard by this as a new issue for DAO players, believing initially that this was an existing issue that had a solution already available here on the tech forums," Melo said.

    "Some of you may be familiar with it, but for those that were not, DAO has an existing (but low in numbers of affected players) issue with unauthorized DLC which can occur in certain cases - usually stemming from something related with the DA updater service that is either not correctly installed or not started with the game."

    tl;dr: We didn't notice this was a new problem with the DRM because when we saw all the complaints we assumed at first it was the same as the existing problems with the DRM.

  • Maledictus010 #7 1 year ago

    This would have been easily avoided if no-one would have bought the game, which is also the only way to fight this type of DRM. Mind you, I'm not saying the game should be pirated, not at all, but the only way to get a message across is by not supporting this type of practice. Unfortunately people can not be expected to do the right thing.

  • Darren #8 1 year ago

    Isn't it time to remove the DRM then from Dragon Age: Origins now that it has been out a while?

  • Schiraman #9 1 year ago

    A while back EA changed their business practices, putting a greater priority on quality, investing more in new concepts and relying less on constant sequels - and as a result they repaired a lot of the damage that had been done to their reputation with gamers. Suddenly companies like Activision and Ubisoft were the big bad guys, while EA seemed kind of ok.

    I guess EA didn't really value that situation at all though, because they sure are burning through that credit fast these days...

  • uknortherner2000 #10 1 year ago

    @Freek "Pirates: totally uneffected.
    Legitimate customers: screwed over.

    That's DRM for you. "

    Yet still people will continue buying their shit no matter how often they get fucked over. I'm surprised BioWare didn't do what they usually do - ban anyone from their forums who dared to complain.

    @Darren "Isn't it time to remove the DRM then from Dragon Age: Origins now that it has been out a while?"

    But that would mean BioWare relinquishing their iron grip over their legitimate customers. We can't have that, can we?
    Edited by uknortherner2000 at 13/04/11 @ 13:48

  • Rack #11 1 year ago

    @Maledictus. I found myself in an impossible situation, the DRM was untenable but Dragon Age was a game I'd looked forward to for years. I had to support Bioware in really putting effort into a hardcore RPG that required strategy in hope they wouldn't make a sequel like Dragon Age 2. So I bought the game and cracked it. A faff, but at least I was still able to play it when EA wanted to flex their control.

  • Freek #12 1 year ago

    That's the problem; gamers can't vote with their wallet because we all want to play the next big thing, no matter how terrible the DRM, no matter how high the price, no matter how silly the nickel and dime DLC is: we all take it.

    Time to face facts: we are the games industry's addicted little bitches.

  • Peter_LIAR_Molyneux #13 1 year ago

    Freek is right. If you don't buy games with horrendous DRM then the only message the publishers get is "they don't like this type of game, stop making them" instead of " I would buy this game if it wasn't infested with this terrible DRM". Then if gamers actually do stay away from a high profile, DRM infested game the publisher trots out the old piracy card for poorer than expected sales. We can't seem to catch a break either way.

    Then you have some ignorant fellow gamers who attack us when we don't want games to have to call the home base for permission every time you want to play what you paid for. They say stuff like "who doesn't have an internet connection. Stop bitching". Well those idiots should read this article. What good is having an internet connection when the server that lets you actually play the game that was paid for tells you to sod off?

    The only solution to all of this garbage on the PC is to avoid any Ubisoft and EA games altogether. Dragon Age was my last EA game for the forseeable future (not DA2, the original). Forget Mass Effect 3 and TOR, EA won't be getting any of my hard earned money if they treat me like a criminal. End of mini rant.

  • uknortherner2000 #14 1 year ago

    @Rack

    I disagree. Take Spore for example - I was really looking forward to it, watching the E3 videos, Will Wright showing off the different stages, the spore creator etc. It was all great, it was different, and I was determined that I was going to set the cash aside to buy it.

    Then EA stepped in. They slapped on SecuROM and a three-installation limit and told us all to lump it. All of a sudden, my interest evaporated. I decided I would save my money and spend it somewhere where I wasn't going to be treated like a criminal. When Ubisoft demanded a permanent internet connection to play a single-player game, I stopped buying their games. When Activision thought it would be hilarious to slap on an extra tenner for a five-hour generic shooter, I stopped buying their games too.

    True, I might be missing out on some great games (doesn't look like it though), but at least my pride and wallet are still intact.

  • Sunyavadin #15 1 year ago

    Once again legitimate customers are the only ones shafted by DRM.

    (And this is why every game I purchase gets a crack slapped on it within the first week to protect me from any DRM errors)
    Edited by Sunyavadin at 13/04/11 @ 14:50

  • DwarfyP #16 1 year ago

    That isn't DRM problem it is an Master Server problem. If that went down it couldn't confirm ownership.

  • bad09 #17 1 year ago

    I bet that showed the pirates! Oh wait...no, no, it seems they could authenticate their game quite easily and they didn't even need to pay. Go figure, still at least it stops the pirates right?

    DRM, promoting piracy and cracks since...forever. Honestly why don't they just fucking admit it's not there for piracy but to control US the customers.

  • orangpelupa #18 1 year ago

    DRM should work like in BFBC2 or steam.

    in BFBC2 if you play SINGLEPLAYER you
    - no need a DVD in drive
    - no need internet connection

    so without using crack, pirated version. The original version already can be used as easy as the cracked version.


    the internet only needed in BFBC2 if you go to MULTIPLAYER mode.
    and its only logical right that you only able to use MP while connected to internet :)

    hope BF3 will have the same DRM as BFBC2.

  • Gunship #19 1 year ago

    The funny part is they didn't realize for 4 days despite the fireballs on their own tech forums. Or they read posts 'selectively'. Sort of like the way they apparently read the forum feedback on Origins to arrive at DA2.