I was pleasantly surprised this morning when upon logging on to Steam, I found that the Borderlands downloadable content (DLC) was released. The DLC caught my attention a few weeks ago because it combines a few things I like: shooting zombies, dark and silly humour... and hmm... shooting zombies.

Unfortunately, my contentment was short lived. While I was looking at the product page and considered buying the DLC for some friends who play Borderlands as well, I noticed something fishy: SecuRom was included in this release with a 5 concurrent install limit. I puked a little in my mouth.

For those of you unfamiliar with SecuRom, it's a software included with many games that is a means of digital rights management (DRM). DRM isn't something new. Most music and movies also have DRM, but most DRM is not as insiduous as SecuROM. Although there are many variations of the software, most SecuRom software does the same thing: it limits the end user's ability to use their legally purchased goods. Pirates laugh at the software, it's easy to find pirated version of software that in its legal format contains SecuRom, but in pirated form is free of it. In other words, people who buy the software have their access to the software limited while pirates don't have any issues with it. The ridiculousness of SecuRom doesn't end there. If you decide to remove the software you installed, removing SecuRom from your system is more difficult than removing the most horrendous malware (in fact many would argue that SecuRom is a form of malware).

Users on the Steam forums have been ranting about the inclusion of SecuRom in the Steam release since it became available for purchase; many users have decided to refrain from purchasing the release until SecuRom is removed from the software. Gearbox, the creator of the Borderlands franchise, released the following statement on the subject through the forum moderator known as 'ennui': Steam in itself acts as a form of non-intrusive DRM because it limits the number of concurrent users on an account, but doesn't limit the number of times you can install software you purchase. ennui also mentioned that he would be passing complaints on to the higher-ups. Spore, an EA game was the subject of controversy recently because of DRM and eventually changes were made to the conditions and the Steam release was SecuRom free. EA hit hard enough by the Spore backlash that it retained this stance for most of the games it released in the following months on Steam excluding Crysis Warhead. Hopefully Gearbox and 2K Games, Borderlands' publisher, will follow suit.

One day, DRM such as SecuRom may be made illegal. Autodesk was recently involved in a court case concerning their sale of "licenses" for their software rather than the actual product. They accused an ebay reseller of infringing upon their license agreement by selling the software online. The court found that Autodesk was in fact selling the software and therefore the resale of said software was allowed by purchasers of the "licenses". This is a step in the right direction to grant consumers and therefore users the right to use what they purchase more freely.

Although I recently touted the awesomeness of Borderlands, I too will be joining in boycotting the DLC until changes are made to the inclusion of SecuRom in the Steam version.

-Adje