Borderlands removes SecuRom, Steam multiplayer coming soon

Drop the DRM and back away, slowly.

An update to the original Borderlands has freed the noble game from the shackles of SecuRom DRM, and lays some groundwork to get multiplayer running again. It seems Borderlands is one of the unlucky few who used GameSpy for its servers, so a switch to Steamworks is necessary and will be happening at some point in the future.

For now, here’s what the update (spotted by BeyondUnreal) contains:

– Removed SecuRom from the title and all DLC
– Added a “Granting Tool” In the steam “Tools” section that turns a retail disc into a Steam version of Borderlands
– “News Ticker” added to the main menu to give you updates on the Multiplayer restoration updates.
– Imported SecuRom DLC keys into Steam, so if you bought DLC outside of Steam, activate it within Steam and get your matching content.

So, although there’s no Steam-based multiplayer today, the main menu should now hopefully keep you informed on developments in that area. The ability to activate non-Steam DLC through Steam sounds fairly handy too.

While it’s a shame not all games affected by the GameSpy closure have enough publisher support to do this, it’s good to see at least a few of them migrating multiplayer services across to new servers and networks so people can still play.