Dragon Age: Origins skipping SecuROM PC DRM

Last month, EA made a significant concession in its ongoing conflict with digital-rights management opponents. After the digital-rights management on last year's Spore sparked a popular uproar and a legal dispute, the publisher first relaxed the game's SecuROM security software to let users install it on five different computers instead of three, and then released a tool that deauthorized PCs so that they would not count against the title limit.

Today, EA took one more step back from the much-maligned theft-prevention software, confirming that its wholly owned subsidiary BioWare would not make use of SecuROM in the upcoming PC release of Dragon Age: Origins.

"We're happy to announce that the boxed/retail PC version of Dragon Age: Origins will use only a basic disk check and it will not require online authentication," confirmed community coordinator Chris Priestly on BioWare's official forums. "In other words, the retail PC version of the game won't require you to go online to authenticate the game for offline play. We have chosen not to use SecuROM in any version of Dragon Age that is distributed by EA or BioWare."

Dragon Age: Origins is expected to arrive on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC this fall. Check out GameSpot's previous coverage for more on the fantasy role-playing game.