SecuROM

SecuROM is a digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Sony for PC games and first released in 1998. Historically, SecuROM is well known for being the most agitating form of DRM of the 2000s, and its inclusion within Electronic Arts' Spore has led to the game retaining its position as the most pirated game to-date. SecuROM stopped being supported by Sony quietly some time after 2017, the release date of the last SecuROM-protected title, Onyx. In 2014, SecuROM was succeeded by a newer DRM system, Denuvo, through a management buyout of its developer.

SecuROM

Basic information
Founded	1998
Type	{{{Type}}}
Industry	Digital Rights Management
Official website	https://securom.com

General problems

Optical-drive bugs

Various releases of Secu-ROM have been known to sometimes struggle to even detect legitimate copies of games inside users' disc drives. Additionally, some optical drive models were simply incompatible with SecuROM.

Explicit Congestion Notification

Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN), a feature seen on Windows Vista which helped users with still connecting online with large networks, was required to be turned off because of how SecuROM functioned.

Software conflicts

SecuROM also fought multiple other pieces of software, one of which being Process Explorer.

Installation limits

Users who owned SecuROM-protected games would often be allotted a limited number of times that they can install their games. EA's Spore had a limit of 3 installs (raised to 5), Bioshock had 2 (raised to 5, before being removed) and would even limit installs per user on the same device, and Mass Effect had 3, but uninstallations would not increase the number of installs unlike other SecuROM titles.

Degradation

Because of the security features introduced by Microsoft to Windows 10 and later, many older SecuROM titles cannot function on modern hardware without cracking or other means of circumvention.

Notable anti-consumer events

Game	Release year	Notable effects	Relevant article
BioShock	2007	Users were limited to 2 installs of the game, and had to call in to be allowed further installs. It was raised soon to 5 after a misprint of a phone number in a manual, and eventually the limit discontinued in 2008, however it took much longer before editions of BioShock would be officially released without SecuROM.
Mass Effect	2007	Mass Effect was the first SecuROM game known to not refund installations for users, and also required that the game installation to be verified every 10 days.
Spore	2008	The application of SecuROM in Spore left the program trapped under always-online DRM, which in the 2000s was fatal for anyone's internet bills. The popularity of this game, mixed in with its preemptive cracking, and DRM led to the title holding the record as the most pirated video game. Additionally, there were lawsuits that formed over the implementation of SecuROM inside Spore.
Tron: Evolution	2010	Towards the tail-end of SecuROM's usage in 2019, Disney decided to terminate their license, thus leading to all legitimate copies of Tron: Evolution to be unplayable, and the game was subsequently pulled from digital software vendors. Disney claims to be currently updating the game to not have SecuROM, however after nearly six years since its termination, there has been no new updates upon whether the game will re-release
Final Fantasy 7 (PC, re-release)	2012	The distribution of the re-release of FF7 for PCs caught users off guard when Square Enix distributed this version with SecuROM, and on release, servers were inaccessible, so users could not verify their licenses until much later.