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The Gamer's Bill of Rights
Edge Magazine is running a piece by Brad Wardell, CEO of game developer Stardock, in which he presents a "Gamer's Bill of Rights." Stardock teamed up with Gas Powered Games to develop a list of ideals they think all game publishers should follow. Some are rather basic operational guidelines (not requiring a disc to play, minimum requirements that make sense), and some are aimed at repairing the damaged relationship between game companies and customers ("Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers"). Wishful thinking or not, it will be interesting to see if they manage to get other publishers to sign on.
not have to pay fo...wait what?
They do what they preach. Galactic Civilizations I, II and their expansions were always released like that, and they were highly successful.
I really don't see the "wishful thinking" part. Their model actually works. People who pirate aren't gonna be stopped by copy protections. The only effect those protections have is to annoy the hell out of the paying customers.
The Raven
Brad Wardell is also calling for:
* Ponies for everyone
* Sunshine and rainbows, everyday
* World peace out of the power of love
And in his most daring position of them all:
* He's AGAINST kicking puppies
Gamers shall have the right to modify their games to alter their singleplayer experience.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
"#9 Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play."
I don't want to EVER have to connect to the Internet to play a game after I buy it. Product activation, DRM, Steam - these are all the reasons why I have stopped buying games. And I used to buy a lot of them.
I'm still curious as hell over whether Half Life 2 is as good as Half Life 1. But I'll never know, because Valve doesn't want to allow me to buy it.
It's nice that they're saying that... but doesn't their Impulse digital distribution platform contain DRM? Their own site doesn't seem to say either way, the Wikipedia article says it's a DRM platform and this post on their forum suggests that Impulse supports DRM but Stardock doesn't take advantage of it in their own products.
For the same placement, that's "AOE" for dvorak users. When the bindings are not changed, we have to deal with what would be ",a;h" on a qwerty keyboard. Another words the buttons are all over the map with no logical sense....
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Like I said on GamePolitics, here's one additional "gamer right" that Stardock wouldn't like (their EULA forbids it), but which I think is essential:
"Gamers shall have the right to sell their copy of the game to somebody else, provided they remove any copies of the game from their own systems upon doing so."
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Well that's crazy. I have, sitting on my desk, a purchased copy of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2. I uninstalled it about 30 minutes after installing it. My computer far exceeds (as in 400% or more) the minimum specifications. The game still ran like crap. So I took it off and will never buy a game from that publisher again. I am not going to go through the hassle of trying for a refund. I am not going to go through the hassle of telling them I will never buy one of their games again. They won't listen anyway. So, it will sit here on my desk with my beer on top of it. Expensive coaster? Yeah, but I don't care :-)
0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
11) Publishers are free to break rules 1-10, but they must clearly state the violation on the box.
Gamers have the right to remain silent (about bad games). They have a right to an attorney.
Anything they do/say can and will be used against them in their moms basement.
11: No publisher should ever be so stupid as to think a server browser isn't a necessary component of an online game. Infinity Ward, are you listening?
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
What? They won't let you download shit off their servers unless they can verify that you paid for the game?
Boo Fucking Hoo.
They basically gave the game out for free. A fully functioning and playable game for free, a game me an my roommates spent countless hours messing around with for a few weeks, un patched.
Pardon them for not letting the people who didn't support them with a purchase suck down their bandwidth too.
Jesus fucking Christ people are never happy. It's never enough for some people unless they can have what the want and maybe if they are feeling generous toss a few bucks to the creators.
You mad
W = ,
A = A
S = O
D = E
Its much easier to say "AOE" than ",AOE" or "AE,O" or something...
This gets pointed out a lot but while your praising STEAM it is its own DRM implementation, and the important part here, watch carefully;
It's not the DRM most people hate, it's the poor implementation of it. If it worked smoothly nobody would notice it. But since every user is stuck with CD keys, looking for the play disc, online activations, and verifications, and its all buggy as shit. Then it gets noticed.
STEAM is a method of DRM that doesn't intrude on your gaming experience, most people don't even realize it's DRM. But it is, and it works well and thats why people like it. Partially because it was designed to be non intrusive (that preparing to launch TeamFortress 2 pop up, yea thats it phoning home, but you barely notice it, its just the game loading right?) and partly because valve actually rubbed two brain cells together and included services we'd enjoy.
Purchase and download games online (with amazing speed too, you don't have to wait overnight for your download, I can max out my 10mb line on steam), tie your games to an account that lets you download and reinstall them with little to no hassle, intigrated message systems, online game finding, and communities.
They made their customers happy with their product. Because it works well.
And when we bitch about DRM, what do we use? The spectacular failures like StarForce and WGA, DRM so intrusive and buggy thats its hard to imagine it being done worse.
I hate DRM on the principle of it, I bought the fucking product let me use it as I see fit. But the fact of the matter is most non-techie people who hate DRM hate it because it interferes with their user experience, is annoying and a hassle.
If all DRM was as unnoticeable as STEAM is most of the public outcry against it would go away. Its fortunate for us then that all the big corporations have their heads collectively up their asses and can't design something most of us would never notice in action.
Thou shalt listen to your customers.
The problem is that those of us that do that are very much in the minority on this.
As much as I'd love to play Spore, I'm not going to be buying a copy as long as I'm going to be subjected to that draconian DRM. It's a shame, but I'm not willing to put up with that bullshit.
I don't mind paying for software, but it needs to be a reasonable price, fully completed and the copy protection basically non-existent. As a customer, it isn't me that should have to put up with the pain in the ass which is DRM.
GPG has already made an absolute mockery of rights #2, 3, 4 and 5.
Supcom and FA both lack even the most basic functionality in critical areas, Patches were obviously not tested at all beyond making sure the game boots up, the recommended requirements are barely capable of running the game, and the only way to really get patches is through the hilariously poorly designed GPGnet.
In short installing Supcom/FA involves creating a GPGnet account, opening it up and not being able to do anything until it finishes loading and checking for updates, and god help you if you dont get your FA and Supcom licenses done properly because they won't let you fix it if you botch it. An update involves using their magnificently bad download and install system and then NOT being able to get back into GPGnet for anywhere from 3 to 30 minutes because their own system doesn't recognize when it logs out during the patching process.
Trying to play a game is also an exercise in futility at times. Ranked is what they decide it is, which I can accept, but it also takes FOREVER to do ANYTHING and the ranking system has a shit-ton of problems and always has.
Non-ranked play is basically ignored, you can't even download a custom map or mod (smaller file than a single CS map usually) off of someone automatically, and the "vault" is disgusting. Even the much better replay vault is barely functional, with no way to differentiate between supcom and FA replays and files automatically saved so that the game is incapable of opening them (you need to repair the filename by hand) in a location completely seperate from the rest of the game files and a damn sight more difficult to navigate to.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
So that's eight passes, one unknown and one late resubmission. They are doing comparatively well.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
What about the right to play the game under Linux or Mac? Trust me, Game developers hate Linux with a Holy passion.
Its a religious thing.
10mb patches spread over a few tens of thousands of people? Are you kidding?
If it's not costing them that much, how about YOU fucking pay for it, you arrogant sonuvabitch?
You just have to add an awkward pause before you say it. :-p
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
That's the business model on how to cope with piracy. Release a product, and only let legit users update the product. Pirates will just have to keep downloading new versions of the product (or find someone distributing the patch).
I see nothing wrong with this - patches can be considered "support" and pirates don't deserve support. If they wanted support, they can buy the product and get the updates with no issues, or just log onto their favorite site and grab the update that way.
They know people will pirate their software. So they make it worthwhile to be a legit owner - patches, updates, etc. Let the cheapskates get their way, and let the legit owners know they're appreciated. In effect, it boils down to, is your time hunting for updates (and fixing any viruses/trojans/etc that get installed) on your favorite pirate sites worth it compared to just buying a copy and having it do the updates for you without any worries. Seems a fair trade.
Ever notice that DVORAK users are just like those that have no tv in that they have to tell every single person they meet about it?
You forget that DRM is often the choice of the publishers and not the developer.
Not only that, some DVDs disable the fast forward so that you have to look at up to 10 minutes of trash before you can view the movie. It gets even worse, the movie that they were hyping often is a bomb and no longer available but you have to sit through the previews nonetheless. Disney is a BIG offender in this and add to that they specialize in kids movies. Try to explain to a crying kid that just wants to view his favorite movie that he has to wait until the trash is done showing.
There's a default awkward pause after the word dvorak in my mind, so he's good.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
I still can't figure why developers decide to use DirectX when there are cross-platform equivalents. I refuse to buy a game that uses DirectX because of the policies of the Microsoft. I can't believe they are going to force users to upgrade to Vista to use DirectX 10. I'm glad I don't use their products.