Dragon Age II PC DRM has online check

All non-Steam versions of Dragon Age II on PC will require an online check "after a select period of days".

But how many days you'll be allowed to play offline before being locked out, BioWare hasn't decided.

"We'll have more info on this closer to release," posted BioWare producer Fernando Melo on the official forums.

"Not trying to avoid the question, we honestly have not settled on this yet - but also did not want to further delay getting the rest of the information out to you."

These bespoke anti-piracy measures don't do a game-disc check and there's no limit on total game installations. You won't be able to start and play Dragon Age II on more than five PCs during 24 hours, though - as if you possibly could.

Each time you install Dragon Age II you'll need to log into your EA account to verify game ownership. BioWare forum members are automatically EA account holders.

"The login checks are light," Melo added. "It would not be a problem on dial-up, and should not hog up bandwidth or create a noticeable impact on an connection that has a limit imposed by your ISP. You are likely using more bandwidth currently just by surfing on this site."

In other words, gaming laptops should cope just fine on the move.

The non-Steam PC version of Dragon Age II will also include Release Control: software that stops anyone playing the game before street-date release in their region. Release Control does not install anything to the PC; checks only whether the game's territorial release date has passed; unlocks the game when that date hits and removes itself afterwards, BioWare community manager Chris Priestly explained.

Steam versions of Dragon Age II use only Steam DRM. Console versions of Dragon Age II use console-specific DRM.