Actually that thread was locked, diverted to another thread, then that thread was locked and diverted to a topic regarding just on Mass Effect and SecuROM, which was split into two parts, locked, then diverted again into the "Off Topic" section.

Then of course you have the announcement that Mass Effect has gone gold, which again sparked massive amounts of 'Edit: Please keep this on topic" as people expressed unhappiness that SecuROM would STILL be in the game.

Considering there's a thread that's 123 pages long, it's highly unlikely they're trying to quiet people.

-HM

Just got off the BioWagon.

I did some digging around and found about 7 threads on Bioware's forum (the longest being 123 pages) regarding DRM and SecuROM concerns, all of which were rediverted to new threads, and locked down. The new threads even now are being locked down due to a "10 page limit" on threads.

It seems the dogs of war at Bioware are trying to censor some of it's fans in order to Bring Down The Hype, of MEPC going "gold" (see what I did there?).

Yes it's been posted here, and yes the 10-day phone home has also been removed from Spore.

-HM

From Bioware forums (sorry if it's already been posted, I didn't have time to read all 11 pages and stopped half way through):

There has been a lot of discussion in the past week on how the security requirements for Mass Effect for PC will work. BioWare, a division of EA, wants to let fans know that Mass Effect will not require 10- day periodic re-authentication

(this is a revision to their original statement of the copy protection which had a 10-day constant re-authentication system built in)

I just hope the same is true with Spore. The 3 times limit on installation/activation sure is a pain, but at least it's not as crazy as before - with the old system it seemed like they were trying to force customers to run pirate copies of the game by making the legal one such a nightmare to use!