14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts employs a new kind of restrictive digital rights management (DRM) software to prevent piracy and Origin account sharing for Battlefield Hardline, which punishes frequent hardware changes and puts a cooldown on the offending accounts.
Battlefield Hardline launched last week across the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One platforms worldwide, bringing forth a solid first-person shooter experience that included not just an intense multiplayer mode but also a pretty solid single-player story.
On the PC in particular, the game was received quite well, even if some errors relating to the DirectX API or the Punkbuster anti-cheating system have been reported by quite a few different players.
Now, it seems that Battlefield Hardline is becoming an even worse experience on PC, as Guru3D confirms that a restrictive digital rights management anti-piracy measure is present in Hardline that punishes hardware changes.
More specifically, if you change the motherboard, CPU, and graphics card in your computer too many times, such as when you're running a benchmark to see how the game runs, your Origin account enters cooldown. A message saying that "Too many computers have accessed this account's version of Battlefield Hardline recently" pops up, asking fans to try again later.
It's unclear just what the limit of computers is and EA hasn't commented just yet on this rather restrictive measure.