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Spore, Mass Effect DRM Phone Home For Single-Player Gaming
Tridus writes "The PC version of Mass Effect is going to require Internet access to play (despite being a single-player game), as its DRM system requires that it phone home every 10 days. Sadly, Spore will use the same system. This will do nothing to stop piracy of course, but it will do a heck of a good job of stopping EA's new arch-enemy: people playing their single player games offline." Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play? Update: 05/07 17:17 GMT by T : According to a message from Technical Producer Derek French (may require a scroll-down) on the Bioware forums, there is indeed an internet connection required, but only for activation, not for all future play. Update: 05/08 04:10 GMT by T : Mea culpa. As reader David Houk points out, the 10-day window is in fact correct as initially described, so don't count on playing this on any machine without at least some Internet connectivity.
And, of course, this isn't unprecented (on the DVD side, at least). Something very similar was done with the evil DIVX format in the late 90's
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
For goodness' sake, you must be joking! I've pre-ordered the game but now I'm considering leaving it on the shelf and playing a pirated version. Sounds way easier!
It will just make the people who would normally not look for cracks go and find them. These people will then see that they didn't have to buy the game in the first place and EA will turn their paying customers into non-paying ones. Great job!
It's worse than requiring a CD. I can easily carry a CD with me. I can't easily carry my network connection with me. And since I had been thinking about getting rid of my home network connection, it may mean I won't buy the game, or can only play it at work. What's the point in that?
Yet another brain-dead attempt to prevent piracy...
Mostly because it won't do a thing to prevent piracy. I really don't understand how they can keep coming back to this idea of requiring a CD in the drive or an active internet connection for single-player games. It makes no sense and only inconveniences their customers. The pirates just replace the executable with a cracked version and have no trouble at all.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Is this better or worse than requiring a CD in the drive to play?
Worse. The state of my CD/DVD drive is my business and basically under my control, while my Internet connection is dependent upon staying in the good graces of a ISP company that may or may not have their shit together on any given day.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Given my horrible luck with CD/DVD based protection systems I wouldn't mind that much if it phoned home from time to time assuming normal privacy concerns are met.
As a person with cable based internet there isn't a time when I'm not at home.
I think PC gaming is heading toward the persistent online authenticity check system. People look at games like Crysis which has been pirated to an extreme then WoW which was virtually immune to piracy for nearly two years and even now it requires a fair amount of fiddling and you can't play on the real servers.
I'm surprised at the 10 days though. That seems kind of long to me. Sounds like something a cracker could exploit. If there is a timer there is a way to stop it.
I hate how publishers have finally used technological measures to achieve what the courts won't grant them. This should be flat out explicitly illegal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
The more this kind of crap happens, the more I hate the software industry. It's MY computer damn it. If I buy software, I should be able to use it the way I want.
This is bogus. The problem with gamers is that they don't care about standing up for important principles and only care about shiny new games.
Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo should all be forced, by lack of customers, to open up their platform and allow people who bought these devices to actually control their property. Software vendors who do this crap should have every game that requires internet access returned to the store for a full refund. (More damaging than *not* buying it.)
Now that I think about it, I won't even bother with even getting an illegit copy. Why even patronize the product at all anymore?
Method of processing duck feet
You know the thing does more than call. It has to receive some kind of "go" signal to play. It may be well done or it may not be and that will be just one more hole for your non free platform. Consoles, like the Xbox, are connected to your wallet.
All of these gadgets are going to have network access. Big publishers dream of them being non free and pay per play. The last ten years of DRM and non free security dissasters prove better than anything else those dreams are impossibly flawed and that people hate it. Free software and free culture are going to overwhelm them.
No calls now, I'm
Steam's a bit different - you can switch it to 'offline mode' (which happens automatically if it can't connect to the Steam servers), and it won't need to phone back again. You only need to be online to initially decrypt and update the game.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
What if I don't have an internet connection? What if I'm playing on a laptop in a location without access to the internet? What if the authentication server gets overloaded like what happened when Bioshock was released and there were a bunch of legitimate customers that bought the game that couldn't play for several days? What happens if the authentication server goes down? What happens when I want to play this game 5-10 years from now?
It's been said before but this does nothing to curb piracy. The pirates will crack this. Meanwhile, the customer who purchased a legitimate copy of the game will have their ability to play it be hampered.
We'll make great pets
I always buy my games (who needs to download multiple Gb files anyway, it's boring), but I hate these stupid copy protection schemes.
Most of the time I find someone posts a crack or workaround to gamecopyworld though, and they tend to work.
Not for freetards though, not one of them comes with a serial, you still have to buy the games.
I'll try Spore just as soon as the drm is bypassed, not before. I refuse to believe that I, as a legally purchasing game player, need to be watched by the content owner.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Update, as I read farther into TFA:
"just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after"
Now it's saying something different!
Also:
Commenter: "Sure, I have an always-on net connection but what happens if I don't play for 11 days and the moment I want to play my connection is down? Are you saying I'm not going to be able to play my perfectly legitimate purchased copy of the game, even the retail version, until I get permission?"
BioShock rep: "That is correct. And I would suggest that you contact EA Support the moment this happens (once you get your internet back) to report the issue. If there are people having problems with the system as designed, then Support needs to hear about it so they can help us evaluate it for the next game title."
Offline mode has never worked for me. I find this out everytime my DSL is down for whatever reason, and I actually want to play a single-player game. And then I can't...
dont forget air/sea travel, airports, bus stations, cabins, e-mail-less vacations.
I need my games most when I CAN'T get to the network...
So they want you to report the fact that their licensing system is defective? Sounds to me like they already know.
Your ad here.
Quoted from the forum mod / dev person: "Yes, EA is ready for us and getting ready for Spore, which will use the same system." (on the second page)
Whack a Catgirl: You know you want to!
Back door or not, this could be exploited almost more easily than other DRM just by setting up your own computer as the answering server, or for more advanced people, setting up a network box as the server. I can see whole floors of college dorm rooms sharing pirated copies and having the answering server set up in the nerd's room.
I'd say, sounds like someone inside the company knows, and is trying to collect enough evidence to convince the PHB's of it.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
And there may be your solution for when a company dies and takes their DRM with them, along with your purchase's bought-and-paid-for usefulness.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Another moronic publisher killing their market. People talk about the death of PC gaming. Well, this is it, and the companies killing it are too stupid to see it.
Actually it had the sound of a support guy who didn't agree with the system himself and wanted you to pester his bosses when it breaks so that they don't have to implement the system next time.
Remember, companies and governments are not huge homogeneous decision making machines. I personally have to implement systems for my bosses that I KNOW are insecure or will perform poorly, but once it's bought or the decision has been made, it's my job to get behind that and make it work as best as I can, even if I don't agree with it.
The best that one can do after the fact is an "I told you so!" to try and keep it from happening again, and customers complaining are a great help to the "I told you so!" campaign.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If I buy a single player game I want to be able to play it without asking permission first.
Remember Divx. No not that one. The other one. People who payed for life time unlimited viewing now have coasters. Steam can do that to you at any point.
I find being offended by me offensive.
No, the forum mods most likely knows that this is a really stupid idea, unfortunately it is the suit guys (EA) that makes these decision so spamming the support center with complaints is likely the easiest way to let them know how you feel.
The pirated exe will skyrocket in downloads because nobody wants the DRM, and they will blame piracy as to why their game doesn't sell . . .
I don't buy or play a lot of games... I choose carefully the ones I do want to spend time playing. Spore was definitely one of them, and Mass Effect had a good chance.
Unlike the old days, I do actually purchase the games I play a lot. Of all the security methods, I've always found a crack for my legitimately purchased software so I don't have to have the CD/DVD in the drive. Steam is about my limit for DRM techniques. If I absolutely *MUST* have an internet connection to play Spore or Mass Effect, then I absolutely WILL have a crack to play it. The fact that this is required really leads me to think it might just be less hassle to download a pirated copy and forgo buying it at all.
Are they losing a sale because I am pirating the copy? No. I won't buy it because of it's DRM. I will play the game and I will enjoy it - however, there's no sale lost because, if there were no other alternative than buying the DRM laden game, I wouldn't buy it.
Like many other people, I am happy to fork over my money for a game I can copy freely or use how I wish. I am not happy, and will not fork over money for a game that is hostile towards me in terms of my freedoms. A perfect example of how DRM generates a pirate and costs a sale, whereas no DRM gains a sale. How many sales are gained due to DRM? I'd imagine very few compared to how many are lost due to DRM.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I got burned on Half Life 2. I bought the game on release, and was unable to play the game for 2 days because steam was down. I made a decision at that time to never buy another product that requires online activation.
I have not played bioshock, or the orange box due to this.
I will not play spore or mass effect due to this either.
Exactly what I was thinking. What happens 10 years down the line when I try to play a game or watch a Movie that has some funky DRM on it, but I can't because the company is out of business or has shutdown the DRM server.
This sounds like a horrid idea.
Its not what it is, its something else.
I don't support their DRM but this isn't really comparable to the issues with PlayForSure. Microsoft were distributing someone elses product on the proviso that it was protected with DRM. EA are distributing their own product so they can patch the game at any point to remove the DRM. Microsoft couldn't do the same with PlayForSure because the record labels who own the copyright would never have agreed.
Copy protection on games is only really intended to stop copying for the first few months to protect sales. After this a lot of publishers release patches removing the copy protection as the game has sold 90% of its potential copies.
This doesn't of course make it ok to use copy protection that will prevent people from playing a game they have paid for. As copy protection is almost always broken almost immediately anyway it is only ever the legitimate customers who suffer.
Signing etc.
This is the one DRM system where they don't have to give you the key with the lock.
Deleted
You just reminded me to cancel my netflix membership! I knew slashdot was good for something ;)
I have other things I can spend money on, so this'll take a back seat. It disappoints me that I won't be able to play with Spore, but not so much that I'm willing to let them know how much I play it, when, what time of day, what my shopping habits are, and how best to advertise to me.
And what happens in 5 years when I want to pull it out and play it again? I'm sure it will play right? Just like all those people who bought music from Microsoft thought "Plays for Sure" meant it played for sure.
Stardock has this stuff figured out. Here's how life works if you buy Sins of a Solar Empire:
- You can install it from the original media, a copy of the original media, downloaded from Stardock, or whatever. The game works without a disk, and without a key. It doesn't phone home. It treats you like a customer, not a criminal.
- Registering with Stardock (putting your key in once) gets you access to updates on the website. Oh, if your CD gets lost, you can also download the entire game again for free from Stardock.
- You need the CD key once to create an online multiplayer account. Unless you want to play LAN, in fact two players are allowed to play LAN games with only one copy of the game between them. (You can probably do more then that without technical hurdles, the license just explictly allows it for two people.)
Take a good game and put all that on top of it, and as a paying customer I feel good about buying it. I like buying games, it means more games get made.
In the case of Mass Effect, buying the game means I can't use it while I'm moving, when I'll have no Internet. Of course the whole point of buying it is to play a single player game while I'm moving, since I won't have World of Warcraft due to having no Internet.
But the pirated version will work just fine for me. So as a paying customer, I get treated WORSE then someone who pirates the game. I'm failing to see how this does anything but encourage me to pirate the game.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Clearly, you're not allowed to do that. The company went out of business because you and the rest of their traitorous customers failed to buy enough of their software to keep them afloat. Obviously, if you can't even be loyal enough to do a little thing like keep a company in business forever, then you don't deserve to play their games.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Speak for yourself. Some of us are more pragmatic than fighting ideologiocal fights, just for some noble ideal sake. _I_ for example am not a paladin, and I'm not on an anti-DRM crusade just for the common good and freedom. I still think copy protection sucks, from a very pragmatic point of view.
1. To start with the least evil, I have whole bookcases full of games. I'm also not an OCD case, so I don't usually feel a need to sort pencils by length or CDs alphabetically. It sucks to have a game on the HDD and have to freaking search for the CD to be allowed to actually play it.
2. It _has_ happened to me before that a CD or DVD gets scratched, and then I'm suddenly locked out of a game that I bought fair and square.
3. I've also had more annoying mis-fortunes due to piss-poorly programmed copy-protection schemes, which suddenly decide that I'm a pirate when the original CD or DVD is right there in the drive.
E.g., the old Gangsters was launched with a nasty bug: they assumed that noone will ever have more than one partition (WTF?) or more than one CD drive, ergo, the only legit place for a CD drive is "D:". If yours was, say, drive "E:", it would automatically assume that you're a pirate. But here it gets interesting: if it thought you're a pirate, it wouldn't even say so. It would just raise the difficulty through the roof, to the point where nothing you did ever succeeded, and all your gangsters were thrown in jail within 1-2 days. You wouldn't even know that you have a bug, or that you've been mistakenly flagged as a pirate, or anything. The game devs just took it upon themselves to virtually kick you in the nuts as righteous punishment.
E.g., the Die Gilde ("1400 The Guild" for you 'merkins) used to have a massive CTD (crash to desktop) problem. The game would just close for no reason, when you expected it the least, without any error message or anything. The a dev comes and posts something along the lines of, "maybe the copy protection thinks you're running a CD emulator on that machine. It's supposed to do that, if it detects one." Now I didn't even have anything like that on my computer, but I'm left wondering. Was it a different bug in the game itself, or they had shot themselves in the foot with a buggy copy-protection?
Incidentally, that opens another, very pragmatic, concern: who the heck gave them permission to decide what I'm allowed to run on that machine? The copy-protection didn't even check if you actually run the game from a CD emulator, just whether it finds one on your hard drive. While the former may be even hand-waved through as protecting their own investment, the latter is simply unbelievable. They decided unilaterally what other software I'm allowed to run on _my_ computer. Mind boggles. I don't use CD emulators, yes, but the precedent is set. What else can they try to forbid me to run? Games from a competing publisher, maybe? I mean, seriously, wtf?
Etc. The practice of altering gameplay in some way or another if they think you're a pirate, is actually more widespread than you'd think.
4. I have had once the mis-fortune of being left without a connection for a whole month and a half, by the retarded ISP and the lying retards at their tech support. (I could go into a whole whine, but let's just say that they _lied_ to me again and again for a whole month and a half.) So the prospect of games which need to phone home every 10 days kinda rubs me the wrong way. Can an ISP glitch leave me not just offline, but also unable to play single player games? I consider that to be a very pragmatic concern.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In the EA thread the support person tried to address that by saying that if they went out of business they would first product a patch to remove the DRM.
I'm not sure how many people actually believe that though.
That's a lot like finding some of these things now.
Find a Divx disc with a movie on it? You're out of luck even if you have a player.
There's also MovieCD, good luck getting those to work.
Certain MMORPG's were shut down - imagine if they'd let their server source loose? Might be room for some interesting single-player implementations or even local-player setups.
Then there's Blizzard, who actively fucked over people making local-type servers for games like Warcraft and Starcraft.
DRM alone doesn't cause this either - a lot of earlier (Directx 4-5-6ish) games have a TON of problems getting set up on modern systems, or glitch horribly when you try to run them. There are also a few titles you can't even install because they try to access the hard drive directly and don't understand the FAT32 and NTFS formats.
And consider the following ironic thought: what are the chances that, 10 years from now on your (10th? 15th? 25th?) anniversary, you'll be able to find a working VHS player to watch your wedding video?
Because then you can buy a legit copy of the game, register it with the password "Free4All", and post the CD key and password to anyone and everyone that wants to download a copy.
Its on page 2:
"For clarity, though, an internet connection is not required to install, just to activate the first time, and every 10 days after. You can be completely connectionless for 9 days and encounter no problems playing Mass Effect. And you don't need the disk in the drive to play."
Every 10 days after. The game will be checking every 10 days. If you've been 10 days since its last check and it can't get online, it won't run.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
2) Read all 6 faces of the packaging carefully. Does it say an internet connection is required, and does it clarify its intent with said internet connection?
3) If the packaging does not clearly delineate the internet connection as described in the parent article, purchase it.
4) Open the packaging, break all the plastic wrappers and such. Make it look like you tried.
5) Return it in less than 24 hours and tell the clerk you do not have internet access, and therefore the game is unusable.
If enough people do this, then the retailers *might* get the clue, and it *might* get back to the retailers, and they *might* reconsider a poor technique such as this.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Making an unauthorized copy is a violation of the copyright holders rights.
Even in America, where copyright is more heavily imbalanced in favor of owners and at the expense of the public than any other nation in the world - even here, you're wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Fair use exists to protect many actions that a purchaser of a copyrighted work might take, even if it's unauthorized. The DMCA may have warped some of that, but it's already eroding under court challenges, and it will continue to do so.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Because of sites like thepiratebay.
Chess
Softball
Kickball
Baseball
Soccer
Checkers
Go
Hockey
Football
Water-Skiing
Camping
Sex
Having coffee with someone face-to-face
Remote control car races
Whittling
Gardening
Lacross
Golf
Paintball
Play a musical instrument
ALL the above are DRM-free sources of entertainment. Seriously people I swear some of you don't realized there are other forms of entertainment besides sitting in front of a computer... Let them add as much DRM as they want, once they are all out-of-business from a lack of customers then DRM goes with them. Life is not digital, there is ebb and flow in the security vs. freedom. We had that useless "4th word on page 8" protection nonsense since the old gold-box D&D games. DRM has always been around in one form or another. I swear kids these days think they invented everything... It will get worse, then better, then worse again.
Anyways, the very fact that the term Freetard is growing shows a backlash building to a degree, not so much towards pro-drm people, but the useless crap nerds complain about.
The veneer of trendy is starting to wear off the geeks as people once again realize that life is not a scene out of Tron, we do not live in our computers. Pay cash, write a letter with cursive, and remember that not every source of entertainment must come from a computer.
The pirates today are losing their edge, no longer rebels against over-priced software, but viewed increasingly as parasites that are damaging small game developers and empowering large EA type shops pumping out the same crap year after year.
This is why gaming is moving to a service-like structure rather then a product. WoW, EQ, etc are all services really rather then a game-in-a-box. Soon all single-player games will requirer a monthly subscription to play (small as that fee may be) with central hosted servers to provide content. It's the old razor sales angle used for consoles, printers, etc... Give the game away and charge a use fee instead for content.
I would like to thank all the warez teams in the 80 for bringing about "Software as a Service", as suggested by Bill Gates back in the 90s, a reality.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
What happens 10 years down the line when I try to play a game or watch a Movie that has some funky DRM on it, but I can't because the company is out of business or has shutdown the DRM server.
You'll scoot on out to GameCopyWorld, or whatever equivalent of it exists in 2018, and you'll get yo'self a NoCD-hacked executable. Or, you'll just fire up your GigabyteTorrent client, hit an oldwarez site, and find the hacked-to-smithereens version.
Either way, you'll be able to run Spore there in your DosBox v500.0 emulator under Microsoft Windows 12.5 on your 1,024-bit processor. And it will work just dandy, even though the internet by which the original wanted to activate itself will have ceased to exist five years prior.
Why do I know that? Because you're posting on Slashdot. The odds that you have the technical wherewithal to defeat these lame-brain schemes are very good.
But for the average user (who - *gasp* - might never have visited Slashdot) will be out of luck. And that's very sad.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Of course they say that, but that doesn't mean the acquiring company will actually follow through on those promises.
Game houses rarely "go out of business", they bleed for a couple of years then get blob-sorbed by a big media conglomerate like Vivendi or Sony, and you already know how those big guys love to "do good".
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It's not like they'd need to, someone is going to produce a 'patch' to remove the DRM a couple of days after each game's release anyway..
which is totally what she said
Rem SPORE.BAT
@ECHO OFF
DATE (DATE-10)
SPORE.EXE
DATE (DATE+10)
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Because he's telling the truth. NWN was particularly problematic and indeed if they determined you were having legit problems, they'd send you a version with no SecureROM. They kept tweaking it with various patches, and eventually gave up and just patched it out.
I've had similar problems, Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword said my disc wasn't valid. I took it back to Target in case there was a problem with that particular disc (media errors do happen) but no, it just didn't like my DVD drive. Ya well, a patch from GCW fixed that.
You'll also notice that many trainers/cheat programs tell you that you need to get a no-cd patch. The reason is that the copyprotection these days gets real paranoid and if something tries to debug the program (which is how many trainers work) it'll halt execution. So just patch the protection out and the trainer works fine.
It's happened before.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
That's why I pirated Bioshock to play and bought a boxed copy to have on my shelf. It's a great game and the team deserves that I buy a copy, but I also don't want to have to install even more DRM crap on my machine.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
And how has DRM stopped sites like thepiratebay?? If anything, it has fueled them!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
My wedding video was severely decayed due to a bad tape, 5 years after my wedding. No worries there.
Me and my father have probably together bought over 500 games since the days of the Commodore 64. Even back then, the pirates were better off:
A store bought a game took up a whole tape and was slow to load. If pirated, you could fit dozens of games on a single tape and they all had fast, home brewed "turbo" loaders.
The only difference today, is that the corporations have gotten greedier.
Granted the investments may be bigger, but then again, the budget title and indie scene is thriving so well that that it's broken into the mainstream (with Microsoft and Nintendo offering indie titles for purchase online, and even then there's cell phones and the iPhone with their breed of titles).
So I wonder, if we legitimate users get fed up of being treated like thieves by the companies, will the situation only get worse if we stop paying them?
With the amount of money the industry (despite piracy) have generated since the 80s, the corporations have gotten so big and powerful, that they have the power to put the blame where they want, and DRM and the DMCA proves that they can essentially lobby consumers into a situation that I would like to call being a slave to capitalism.
Dear Game Industry,
If you are going to require that my copy of your game must phone home to be activated AND phone home every N days, even though that excludes extended periods of offline play, please let me suggest a way to ensure that my legitimate key will not be used by someone else either inadvertently or through piracy.
I propose hashing my key with a password of *my* choosing, and you storing it upon activation. When someone else tries to play with my legitimate key, you'll know it's not me, and thus you won't simply ban that key. If legitimate key/password hashes started phoning in simultaneously from around the world, then at least you'd have a better case for banning that key from further play.
Do not, under any circumstances, have the game software locally store my password. (And don't store it in the clear on *your* servers.) I don't want some unknown (but plausible) trojan/hacker stealing it from the disk (I prefer them to have to work for it). When time comes for reauthentication, just have the software ask again for my password.
Perhaps with this new authentication scheme, you'll find that you won't need my copy to reauthenticate so often, if at all past the initial contact. No one's going to be able to reuse my key (gotten from a keygen or other means) online unless I give out my password. Obviously, this won't cut down on cracked copies that don't phone home, but it will cut down on the resources you need for authentication and the frustration level for your paying customers.
Sincerely,
statemachine
Copyright is a legal right granted by the government. Making an unauthorized copy is a violation of the copyright holders rights.
You might want to read the entire USC 17 instead of stopping at Â106. Making a copy without authorization from the copyright holder is a violation in many circumstances but not in all.
For starters, there's Â107.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
I think the GPP meant, "Why do the game development companies bother infecting their products with DRM?" But yes, The Pirate Bay and other such sites are an excellent solution to DRM.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
It's not about your "digital" rights or any kind of rights. You do not have any, anyway. It's about their rights. You are just a sheep.
Never trust any rights given to you in an agreement that can be unilaterally changed by the other party.
RIP, Origin.
And Maxis (Robosport!), and Infogrames (Alone in the Dark!), and Infocom (Zork!)...
Equally sad is watching the steady decline of a formerly excellent game company... like id software.
Come to think of it - back in my Commodore 64 days, I used to adore games like Archon, and Mail Order Monsters, and M.U.L.E.
Actually, I still play M.U.L.E. occasionally via CCS64. In fact, I'd rather play M.U.L.E. than any game by EA released in the last decade.
Oh, sorry, we were discussing DRM crapware - carry on...
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
We are sorry, but Big Name Sports 2k12 validation service has been discontinued. Please upgrade to Big Name Sports 2k13!
Dungeon Tactics : Free Open Source SRPG
Absolutely, I buy all of my games yet nearly every one of them gets its protection removed one way or another since I hate switching discs around when I want to change games, and also hate the risk of an accidental scratch every time I have to take one out. The routine is something like this: Get home with game, begin installation, look for official patches while waiting and start downloading those... Then while the game is patching, I attempt to create a working disc image to mount with Daemon Tools/YASU, and if that doesn't work then I go looking for a crack for the patched game. I prefer disc images to cracks since you never have to worry about getting an updated crack when there's another official patch for the game. Although full disc images take up a lot of space, HDD space is dirt cheap these days. I've got around 75 games installed at the moment and only three of them still require the disc.
Hence the reason for introducing this "service".
Just imagine, you spend $20.00 on a DVD. Then you have to go on the Internet to register the DVD and provide a credit card that can be billed when you watch the DVD. Then every time you pop the DVD in the player it runs a check to verify that you have registered the DVD and have a valid credit card that is charged $5.00 every time you play it. That is brilliant! The companies selling these won't go out of business, they will have a guaranteed revenue stream from all those DVDs out there.
I wonder if they have patented this idea yet? Need to check and file one right away if they haven't.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
For the record, I'm with you. One of my favorite C64 games was "Strike Fleet"
No they won't. Don't fall for this shit. The first patch that fixes this "problem" will come in a few days, if it isn't already out. It will be posted to piratebay and other torrent sites.
Really DRM and shit like this isn't really a big deal. There is always some one out there that will always fix these bugs and shit. DVD; fixed. HD-DVD; fixed. BR; fixed. iTunes; fixed. evilgame bullshit; fixed.
Let them try this shit, someone will fix it for them. Problem solved.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Which again demonstrates the true purpose of these schemes: to prevent you from enjoying the media you purchased ten years down the road. They don't want us listening to our old music collections, or re-playing classic games. They want us to buy the flavour of the month today, and again tomorrow. They want us to pay something every time we listen to a piece of music, watch a movie or play a game.
DRM is always about access control, not copy protection. CSS exists to prevent you from playing a movie in a region not approved by the studio, or from skipping past commercials. It does nothing to stop you from making a copy. The DRM in this game essentially forces the player to ask permission every time he wants to play the game he purchased.
At the company's whim, that answer may one day be "no." I'm sure this is written somewhere in their EULA. If it isn't, what the hell, they can change it at any time they like without notice.
I don't care why you're posting AC
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Already cookin', chief.
"Software-as-a-service," a/k/a/ "software rental model"... translation: you never own anything - you pay and pay and pay and pay and pay, and if you stop paying, they turn off your rig. This is the holy grail for companies that don't really feel like developing new software, or in updating their software with appealing new features that you might actually buy. They'll just sell you the same thing for eternity.
Of course, two other trends will also have to occur:
1) Consumers are used to owning software, and won't voluntarily walk into a rented-software model. So they'll offer rentals as an additional option alongside purchasable software... but the MSRPs for purchasable licenses will slowly climb into the stratosphere, until cheap rentware doesn't look half-bad. Sort of disproves that whole "lipstick on a pig" thing, doesn't it?
2) Want to just run a hacked version, and do away with the messy activation stuff? Nope, sorry, won't run on your new Trusted Computing machine (which is kind of a funny name, since you can't trust it at all to do what you want, isn't it?) It only runs software (and music, and movies, etc.) that's been cryptographically signed with a limited-duration certificate. But you do want to play Halo 4, right?
Folks... I've gotta fess up. After 20 years of running MSIntel systems (dating back to MS-DOS 3.2), I am closer to jumping ship and Ubuntu-ing out than ever before. There are dark clouds on the computing horizon, gentlemen... there's a storm a-brewin', and it's gonna cloudburst probably around 2014 or so. "When did Noah build the ark? Before the rain..."
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
There's a hole in your bucket, Dear Liza. http://www.bbspot.com/comics/Lab-Bratz/2007/08/2827.php However, that is only the case if you assume that DRM is a method to fight piracy, which is like saying a super soaker is a method to protect your property from burglars.
Between piracy and DRM, one of them has a small chance of becoming irrelevant to industry.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Well personally, I used bnetd to play Warcraft III without having to buy it (I'm sure I wasn't the only one). I didn't end up paying for it until bnetd was gone. Bnetd was cool, but you have to admit that people were using it to playing pirated games to their fullest. Regardless, you can play Blizz games on LAN all you want. It's not that hard to set up local tournaments without software.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Most of your examples are completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. DirectX 4 games don't run so well on modern systems? Well gee, I suppose you want your old NES games to run on a Wii? Or you demand that old DOS games be maintained for compatibility indefinitely? There's a HUGE line between a product becoming incompatible with time, than to disable it artificially through DRM.
Or Blizzard... They stopped people from producing their own server... while the official service was still running. They did not disable the advertised game experience in any way whatsoever. Questionable or not, this is NOT the same at all as DRM.
And the formats you're talking about are NOT unplayable due to DRM, they are unplayable due to being an old file format that nobody uses anymore. This is, again, completely different from disabling features via DRM.
Technology changes, you can't avoid that. Accept the fact that, unless you want to keep a basement full of old hardware, there will always be files and content you cannot get to in a decade's time.
We're up to, what, the fourth Battlefield game? Yet, EA/Dice have yet to successfully complete a single one!
--- Do you believe in the day?
Though the ironic bit is that often legit customers require pirate copies in order to actually play the games they buy.
For instance, most games I buy for the PC I usually have to get a no-cd crack. For these internet-required games I could easily see that becoming an increasing priority again.
What moves like this really risk doing is pissing off customers that don't have the savvy to get the cracks thus end up with a broken gaming experience that reduce the chances of them buying again. And stuff like this DRM yeah, works fine most of the time, but when it breaks it is really irritating... in this case people who don't always have internet, who travel a lot, or try going back to the game after EA has lost interest (ever try finding patchs for older games? Even big houses like EA and Activision have sizeable catalogs of games that they just don't bother hosting the patches for anymore)
This part's for Moryath:
Huh. Right up until the ad hominem attacks, I was nodding along with you. Makes me kinda sad that, despite having the moral high ground *and* the right arguments, you had to resort to attacking the guy who disagreed with you, rather than stay on topic and defend yourself.
Congratulations, you just brought yourself down to the GP's "mountain dew and masturbation" level. Right up until that, I was agreeing with you.
Ahem. Now, to get back on topic:
It's simple math. One game company's game, plus DRM, minus my wallet equals not much difference to their bottom line. Try division, though... One game company minus two-thirds of their customer base... it's the square route to "wow, we screwed the pooch."
Unfortunately, the real world works like this:
They'll see lots of pirate activity on gamecopyworld and bittorrent, without the corresponding sales revenue to back up that that many copies of the game even physically exist. They'll chalk up their lost revenue to piracy (at a mere $2,650.00/copy, if I look at other 'lost-revenue' statistics for my educated guesswork), and never even consider that their DRM is killing their sales. They'll pump a few more games out this franchise's pipeline, and see increasingly dismal returns on their investment. They'll continue blaming the pirates, while continuing to make crappy product with unnecessary and broken DRM.
Wait a minute. This is EA we're talking about. These are the guys who we made the butt of jokes about re-releasing the same game over and over, with players' names changed to "update" them to the latest sports season.
Who cares?
Yeah, they may have actually made a decent game once or twice, but they told us *years* ago that we didn't matter, we were just mobile wallets, ripe for the taking.
This entire argument (or even article), in my mind, is akin to someone saying "Yeah, don't buy Sony stuff, they have that rootkit thing. Now shut up, I'm playing GTA on my PS3". We already knew they suck; the real question becomes "why haven't they folded yet?" The answer is the same reason gold farmers dominate the MMO market... people are still giving them money.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Ah, the myth that DRM prevents people from "stealing."
Let's see
1. Put DRM-encumbered DVD in drive
2. Type "dd if=/dev/hdd of=/media/some_hollywood_blockbuster.iso"
3. Burn resulting image file to a blank DVD (or mount it as a loopback device and point your media player at the mount point).
DRM didn't do much to stop us from making a copy, did it? I simply made an exact copy of the original DVD, complete with DRM. After all, that's what my player is expecting.
Let try another experiment
1. Put DRM-encumbered Region 1 DVD in a Region 3 player
2. Oops, won't play
Or
1. Put DRM-encumbered DVD in any player
2. Try to fast-forward through Copyright warning, or commercials
3. Oops, can't do that either.
Let's make a 30 second clip of the movie so we can criticize it, or parody it, or perhaps use it in a derivative work. Oh, right, we can't because we would have to decrypt it with something like DeCSS, which the DMCA prohibits.
The purpose of DRM is to control how the paying customer uses the media they purchase. But if they said that, it might make it more difficult to paint themselves as the victim and convince taxpayers that we should continue to enforce their copyrights while they erode the concept of Fair Use with DRM and EULAs.
It sounds much more reasonable to say "we need DRM to stop people from stealing."
Don't spread their lies for them.
I don't care why you're posting AC
First, you're still paying them to do this shit. I realize it's a no-win situation -- if sales go up, they claim people don't mind DRM. If sales go down, they claim they need more DRM to stop those filthy pirates.
But it might be nice if we could actually generate some meaningful statistics, and actually vote with our wallets. Tricky, though, because we're short on options -- maybe because we didn't vote with our wallets?
Second, how many resources have to be wasted building and cracking DRM? BR isn't "fixed", by the way -- both HD-DVD and BR are only really meaningfully cracked by a commercial product, and only as long as their servers stay up. iTunes was "fixed" for awhile now; I think it's broken again. (Oh, and iTunes does have alternatives, though it requires you seeking out bands who are done dealing with the record labels.)
Unfortunately, aside from DVD, the only truly permanent fix is piracy. I can't be sure, if I buy a BR movie, whether I'll be able to rip it -- I can be reasonably sure, but never absolutely sure. The only way to be absolutely sure is to skip buying it and download the 4 gig mkv.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
No, it wouldn't. There are plenty of games without DRM out there, and a lot of them suck. I'm not drawing a conclusion or correlation between the two, but I'd rather see DRM-laded, otherwise-good games than a bunch of crap because publishers think they can get away with selling crap by simply skipping copy protection. You can't treat the lack of DRM a merit, but instead must treat the presence of DRM as a demerit.
What I'm showing is that I'm willing to pay so long as doing so doesn't impair my ability to play the game, and that their attempts to impair my ability to play when I haven't paid is ineffective (this is of course on somewhat of a leap of faith, but has historically been true and will almost certainly be the case for something that will be as targeted as Spore).
Piracy, whether it's being used as a demo that turns into a sale or not (usually not, let's be honest), still says that the product is generally desirable. It also says some of their audience are cheap-asses, some can't afford to pay, and some (like me) are clearly stating that they would buy it were it not for the invasive copy protection. Whether they use that information is their own responsibility, but they'd be remarkably ignorant at this point to not at least KNOW that a) copy protection is ineffective, b) some people will never pay no matter what, so stop wasting your damn time, and c) copy protection measures piss off customers or would-be customers.
Of course, this is my stance on it. If they want to read it as my being immature, they can go ahead and do so. But that's just ignoring my feedback rather than using it to their advantage. If I don't agree with their terms, they don't get my money. If the only point of those terms that I disagree with is the copy protection, what does it say when I'm able to copy it anyways? It's an inconvenience for people who did pay, and trivial to get around for those that won't.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
The same was said about things in the eighties about things built in the sixties. The fact is, VCRs are just like DVD players. A bunch keeled over and died every two years. The ones that are still around are the ones that were built well.
And your past was more interesting than your present because your memories are edited too.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
For some reason, everyone seems to hate Steam. This is one feature I like about it.
I can buy a game online, and then I can download it anywhere I have that username/password. No questions asked. (Unless it's Bioshock. Fuckers.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
2. Type "dd if=/dev/hdd of=/media/some_hollywood_blockbuster.iso"
3. Burn resulting image file to a blank DVD (or mount it as a loopback device and point your media player at the mount point). 4. Discover that the disc you just burned is unplayable, because you can't burn CSS keys to DVDR media. You end up with a disc full of encrypted data but no key to decrypt it with. DRM didn't do much to stop us from making a copy, did it? I simply made an exact copy of the original DVD, complete with DRM. After all, that's what my player is expecting. Well, yeah, it did stop you in the case of DVDs. You're right about DRM in general -- it is fundamentally flawed -- but the way to successfully copy a DVD is to decrypt it using the key they helpfully provide to you.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Conversely, attitudes like his develop because media companies - like many kinds of companies - are often unethical:
- * They sell software that's full of bugs, and won't even be playable for several patches... or maybe they don't even admit that there are problems.
- * They sell software that won't actually run on any state-of-the-art machine without half of the highly-touted features turned off.
- * They sell software that requires some sort of crappy upgrade that you really don't want.
- * They are trying to strongarm you into moving from a model where you buy software once, to a model where you buy the same software over and over and over and over again.
So rather than trying to leap onto moral high ground, everyone involved needs to approach the issue from a practical perspective. That's the only way to make progress here.Look - iTunes, right? Did Apple sell iTunes to anyone as "The Right Thing To Do?" Of course not. They just built a really damn good product and gave it a very reasonable price. It's a blockbuster hit and a cash cow! No moralizing required! And it even lets users do what they want! Wow!
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
This is the way I see it: Say you go into a coffee shop every morning for a coffee and donut to go with your morning cigarette. After going there for years and not having a problem,suddenly the cashier starts slapping you in the face every time you pay for your stuff. She says "sorry,but it is our policy since we found out others were stealing our donuts." Of course it doesn't matter that it isn't ME who was stealing their donuts,I'm the one getting slapped in the face at the checkout. Now how long do you think I should keep paying for the privilege of getting slapped when just down the street is one of those thieves who'll give me my coffee and donuts for free with a smile instead of a slap. I'd be pretty damned stupid to get slapped day after day after day,wouldn't you say?
The point is in reality all retail stores have to deal with a certain amount of loss due to shoplifters. While they do little things like tags to cut down on it,they would never agree to strip searching the customers at the exit or kicking them in the balls to "teach thieves a lesson" because it would drive away all their business. When these comapnies put all this "phone home" crap or rig screwing Starforce garbage they have just lost any chance of selling their product to me. Would I pirate Mass Effect? No,but I like having the pretty boxes lined up on my gaming shelf. But after having to fix so many DRM broken gamer rigs for customers I can understand why some would. You can only be slapped in the face so many times before you just get tired of it.
And before someone screams "but they didn't have to buy it!", we all know from the way the industry is shaping up we are going to have a handful of giant conglomerates doing 95% of all the AAA through C titles,while everyone else goes to those simple lunchbreak games like Popcap. So if you want anything other than "match three" styles games you'll have no choice but to go to one of the giants and they'll all have DRM up the butt. And I have no desire for a PS3 or other console,because I'm a keyboard and mouse guy and have been since the days of ROTT and Redneck Rampage. At least with music there are still plenty of choices if you don't want to go with RIAA crap. With games it is getting really hard to avoid the DRM. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I am altering the EULA. Pray I do not alter it any further.
</vader>
Oh please...
.dlls. I'll stick with my old games.
As a game developer who has shipped 5 titles across PC and consoles, game developers have better things to do then putting in copy protection -- such as fixing bugs. If you take a look at the history of copy protection from the early 80's, it has NEVER worked. It is the _publishers_ insisting on it because they are under the delusion that it will magically make people buy their game.
DRM exists because of one reason: greed to maximize profits. If publishers & 1st party titles could ban libraries, or loaning of games, they would.
Lastly, you can't "steal" a game. All you do is copy it. The pirates have their own principles -- namely that the ownership of a some game is absurd.
You probably think loaning of CDs is "immoral" too.
All this DRM crap done has motivated me & others to stop buying or playing new games. If I have to go thru the hassle of getting a crack just to play the game without the CD, then I don't even want to bother supporting an outdated business model. I _don't_ want your shitty copy protection messing up my system with hidden or system
Record players have a following, as a matter of fact they are bigger now than they have been over the last several years, as the people who like records aren't the type to embrace things like iTunes so I see them here to stay. It's more like a audio cassette tapes, a technology that's been totally outclassed and no one really ever liked in the first place. Can you even buy an audio cassette player anymore?
People with your attitude (I don't like the terms of sale, so I'll just take it) are the entire reason DRM exists. Honest gamers like me have securom installed by their purchased games because people like you will pirate them at the first opportunity.
Yet I bet in your head, nothing is your fault, its all those evil bastard game devs making games you want so badly you will steal them rather than stick to your principles.
Actually, DRM exists because legitimate consumers seem to be willing to put up with arbitrary pain-in-the-ass DRM restrictions. DRM will always be broken given sufficient demand for a product, so the only real effect that copy protection has is the imposition of additional annoyance to legitimate users. Brad Wardell of Stardock is probably the most authoritative voice on this topic:
"The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry."
He's on the right track, which is why Stardock games consistently sell well. I don't want to hassle with copy-protection, being able to backup CDs, or any other nasty shit that comes out of DRMware. If I'm aware that a program comes with something evil or makes me jump through hoops, I definitely won't purchase it, and thus the producer will get none of my money. It's no coincidence that Stardock.net and Steam account for the majority of my game purchases in the last year or two...
So, I don't give a shit about people who pirate software. What ticks me off is DRM that wastes my time as a paying customer, simply because corporate kleptobots think they can get away with it. Stop encouraging them.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Actually, this happens, and EA does it. You may have meant it as a joke but its not.
Here's a list of thier dozens of titles including 2006 and later games they've disabled online services for already:
http://www.ea.com/information.jsp