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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 PC receives 2.6GB patch, removes DRM

Stace Harman avatar
News by Stace Harman Contributor
Published on

The release of Battlefield 3 is a mere several weeks away, but those PC gamers still enjoying the previous instalment will be pleased to hear EA has joined the ranks of publishers that release a title DRM'd to the nines, only to later put out a patch to remove it. Huzzah!

A 2.6GB patch due to hit this morning will remove the SecuROM DRM measure from non-Steam versions of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, as well as bringing with it a number of technical fixes.

A post on the official Battlefield blog states that the main aim of the patch is to "...address stability problems with the game and performance issues. It is not intended to address game logic fixes."

The large size of the patch is attributed to it containing all of the games previous patches, rolled into one. Post author, Mikael Kalms explained the team's reasoning for taking this decision.

"While it would have been technically possible to create a smaller patch for those who have Client R10 installed already, that would have delayed the release of the patch even further - so we thought it better to release a larger patch now, than a smaller patch sometime in the future."

The patch was due to start rolling out via Steam and the game's own auto-updater at 4AM UTC - 5AM BST - this morning. Those with Client R11 installed should check out the EA forums for further instructions.

The full change list looks like this:

  • Removed some memory leaks
  • Fixed crashes when the game attempted to render lots of content (high detail, high FOV or multiple-monitor modes); this should particularly help multi-monitor users
  • Chat window no longer causes lag spikes
  • Chat window reworked opacity & visibility-time is controllable through settings in settings.ini
  • Clantag is remembered when using auto-login
  • Banner URLs can be up to 252 characters in length
  • SecuROM wrapper removed from non-Steam version
  • Minor performance enhancements
  • Reduced rubberbanding on servers with more than 24 active players
  • PrintScreen takes a screenshot, file stored in Documents\BFBC2\Screenshots directory

Thanks, Shack.

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