sony-dadc posts

A few weeks ago, Big Download was the first to report that two founding members of the PC Gaming Alliance, Microsoft and Nvidia, had departed the non-profit organization. Now it seems that another founding member is reducing its involvment in the PCGA and yet another member has left entirely.

According to the PCGA's members web page, founding member Dell is now listed as a "Contributing" member of the organization rather than its previous role in the higher tier "Promoters" member level. Furthermore another PCGA Promoter member, Sony DADC (who among other products handles the SecuROM DRM programs that are used in a number of PC games) has apparently left the organization entirely.

This leaves just founding members Epic Games and Intel as Promoter members of the PCGA along with Razer and Capcom who joined after the organization was founded in 2008.

The PC Gaming Alliance may have lost one of its founding members. The non-profit group of companies no longer lists Activision as one of the members on its official web site. The massive game publisher is one of the few such companies that joined the PC Gaming Alliance when it launched last year. If it has indeed left the organization it would leave Capcom, Microsoft and Epic Games as the only game developers-publishers in the PC Gaming Alliance highest membership tier (The downloadable PC game publisher WildTangent is a member of the lower membership tier)

A new addition to the member list is Sony DADC. Not familiar with it? It's the parent company of SecuROM, the copy-protection program that is used on many PC titles. It's also software that has been slammed by a number of vocal PC gaming consumers for its use in DRM set-ups. Indeed the listing for Sony DADC on the PC Gaming Alliance site links directly to the SecuROM site. We've contacted the PC Gaming Alliance to find out if Activision has truly left and why and why Sony DACD was selected to join the group. At the time of this post they have yet to respond to our inquires.

[Thanks Mikko]