Slashdot Mirror
What Modern Games Are DRM-Free?
IceDiver writes "I used to be an avid PC gamer. However, I have only bought 1 game in the last 18 months because I am sick and tired of the problems caused by the various intrusive, and sometimes damaging DRM schemes game publishers insist on forcing upon their customers. Once burned, twice shy! The EA announcement that upcoming releases will include SecuROM, along with verification requirements and major restrictions on installations left me wondering which recently released or upcoming games (particularly major titles) are being released without DRM? Are there any? How has DRM affected your game purchasing? Will EA be negatively affected by their DRM decision?"
The ongoing DRM controversy was stirred by the recent launch of Spore. We discussed the public outcry from Amazon's reviews (which were subsequently taken down and then re-posted). EA's response to the outcry was to say that only one percent of accounts tried to activate the game more than three times, which is the limit without help from their customer service. Meanwhile, their efforts to find a "balance" between preventing piracy and not hampering legal users may not have been as successful as they hoped. According to Forbes, a P2P research firm found that illegal copies of Spore had been downloaded over 170,000 times already. So, is it time to create a whitelist for game publishers and developers?
I wasn't about to ask permission from Microsoft to use something that I bought and paid for. Since then, I've personally converted three non-techies from Windows to Linux. These companies never stop to think of the sales they lose by trying to stop each and every last instance of piracy.
Multiwinia doesn't have DRM as far as I know :) That's a pretty cool-looking game, I gotta say. Introversion does an AWESOME job with their games, in all reality.
Plus, they run on Linux natively! :D
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Try Sins of a Solar Empire, one of the best games of the year that has no copy protection. So far they have sold 500,000 copies of it which is huge considering the modest budget.
Sins of a Solar Empire made by Stardock is a recently released DRM free game (their other games are DRM free as well).
We've discussed Stardock's anti-DRM policy before.
No affiliation with Stardock, just a happy customer.
Now listen here Sonny, just yesterday I took my scooter down to the game store and bought me a brand new box of checkers for my grandson.
Now sure, it doesn't have any of that D-R-whachamacalit that today's young'uns want but it's brand new and that's what counts!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The gaming community has been suing thieves? I demand linkage.
Jeremy
Let's see... DRM doesn't work, and discourages legitimate customers... while those who pirate the game don't even notice (as it's been removed). Pirates obviously don't care about DRM, as it doesn't affect them. Asking them to care is pointless.
The game publishers here are cowards and scared. Even if the "public outcry" makes them finally rid us of DRM, they will find even more scary things to throw on our harddrives. The only solution I see is for the big companies to realize these two rules: Rule one, games will be pirated; rule two, publishers can't change rule one.
On the other hand, rainbows exist, why not miracles?
Actually, publishers can change rule one.
All they have to do is make their game rely heavilly on Internet content for much of their game logic, requiring a monthly subscription to have an account activated.
Take World of Warcraft, for instance. The game itself is essentially free -- at least here in Europe the cost of the game itself is the same as the montly subscription cost -- and the game comes bundled with a 30-day subscription.
As far as I know there are no DRM measures in World of Warcraft. There is an anti-cheating module, designed to detect and stop third-party software, but whether that can be called DRM is debatable. And even if it is DRM, it's for a good cause.
I for one applaud publishers like Blizzard and the many other publishers out there who, instead of trying to prevent the physically impossible act of copying bits, actually find new viable business models to base their software around.
Hai you're doing it wrong. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.
The vast majority of people are not stealing fucktard. All those people complaining about DRM own it... they paid for it and the real issue is that they are treated like criminals.
DRM is like showing a commercial about how movie piracy is bad while you're sitting at the theater. It only annoys the honest and does nothing to those who are not.
Basically, DRM discourages people from buying legit software since cracked software has that shit removed.... I'm glad I could teach you something today.
So, which part of the industry do you work for? There's no way I'll ever believe somebody who isn't paid to be on that team will ever bat for it.
Some of us "dirty bastards" have a damn good reason to do what we do. The way art and culture is commodified in this society is dangerous and wrong, and is responsible for many of the corporate abuses we see today. I don't feel that I'm stealing anything when I download a game, because the company that made it doesn't own it and can't sell it to me. Art and entertainment are, in a sane society, services which each person pays for in proportion to the piece's personal value to them. The companies I like will get my money after I have played their game and determined whether it deserves to be in my personal collection or not. Until then, it is part of the library of collective consciousness which must be free to access in any free society.
Losing DRM is a good first step to achieving WINE compatibility. I've seen a good many games where they will work perfectly on WINE, except the stupid DRM system some moron decided was necessary.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm not exactly using DRM as a selling point when I buy a game. It affects me, but I have security software which can prevent the DRM from doing harmful things to my computer.
I buy a lot of games, and I honestly don't think the DRM is effective.
Scenario #1: you bought the game and enjoy it. your friend wants to play the game without buying it. You can't copy the CD and have him play thanks to the DRM. or can you?
Scenario #2: you don't want to buy a game, but you still want to play it. You can't download it from the Internet thanks to DRM. or can you?
in both scenarios, DRM is useless. in #1, you can download a NOCD crack from the Internet and make as many copies of the disc as you want. In #2, the game has already been released by some cracking group without DRM before the game even hits the stores. Is harrassing paying customers really helping to gain more paying customers?
DRM doesn't even deter casual gamers who would copy their own disc. Since the game has been cracked before it's even released, that DRM scheme is a waste of customer money.
As I see it, this harmful middleware just eats into profit margins. Companies who make products like securom and starforce rely on the fear and ignorance of publishers to sell their harmful software. Who is to say these companies don't have their own agenda in installing their harmful and mysterious software on unsuspecting machines?
Since we don't fully know what the software does, nor do they allow us to know, isn't it safe to assume it's malicious?
They're using their grammar skills there.
...it's even open source.
Advice: on VPS providers
I think what we have to do, as a community, is stop bitching at the game developers, and start bitching out the dirty bastards who steal games and ruin it for the rest of us!
Why? People stealing games (are you talking about shoplifting?) don't harm me. Companies that add DRM do, because they are making my purchases harder or in some cases impossible to use. As for people who make illegal copies of games (copyright infringement), well they're mostly not affected by DRM, so my opinion is that DRM's purpose is probably not to stop them from doing so, or if it is it is completely ineffective so there is no point to it anyway.
Seriously, hardly any breath is spent on criticising these leaches[sic].
Likewise few people spend time on Slashdot criticizing people who embezzle millions from large corporations, because very few of us suffer because of such behavior.
If it becomes socially unacceptable, people will stop doing it so much.
Yeah, sure. It is publishers and their lobbyists that are harming me these days. Just recently they passed a law to use my tax dollars to prosecute their dubious and unconstitutional civil lawsuits. That's much, much worse than anything a copyright infringer has done to me.
Right now, stories like this just work as justification for more theft.
What does this story have to do with theft? Do you even know what theft is?
You wouldn't copy a car. You wouldn't copy a handbag. You wouldn't copy a television. You wouldn't copy a dvd. Downloading pirated games is copying. Copying is against the law.
Thats some great justification, buddy. Glad you can sleep okay. Their art isn't YOURS to give away - if you believe as you do, then just play the open source games and stop being a self-centered prick.
Jeremy
I'm the first person to voice this (unpopular) view.
No you're not. It pops up like an annoying ad everytime the subject of DRM or copyright comes up. And it's lame. GNAA is a better read.
Fuck I hate this site sometimes.
Click here.
What?
EA's response to the outcry was to say that only one percent of accounts tried to activate the game more than three times, which is the limit without help from their customer service.
Spore has been out for 8 days, and that's if you count the early release in Australia. In 8 days they've had 1% of their customers install Spore enough times as to be unable to play the game.
Bullet, meet foot.
Dude, as much as I hate DRM, I hate people like you too. Steal it if you want to, I don't care but call it like it is.
Don't tell me you really need Spore so bad that you have to dl it without paying for it. You know the deal, they made a game and to play it you have to pay for it. If you don't want to, don't, but also, don't make up shit about art and culture. It cost the same as a meal at a nice restaurant or a couple of cases of beer. How about you skip a few bags of weed and pay for your art and culture.
Or steal it and stfu... just as long as you stop feeding people bullshit.
The Unreal/Unreal Tournament series of games, including UT3, don't have DRM. However, Gears of War DOES, so avoid that one.
As far as I know, Call of Duty 4 does not have any DRM. Searching "Call of Duty 4 $DRM" where $DRM equalled DRM, SecuROM, and Starforce, turned up nothing relevant.
Be warned, both of those games are basically only good for the multiplayer, so keep that in mind.
The Civilization series has strong single player, if you're into turn-based strategy, has no DRM, and really only requires a quick No-CD crack to be completely convenient. This includes every Civ I know of (2 to 4 + expansions).
Telltale games from what I've experienced has no DRM. Their Sam and Max series of adventure games, when purchased directly from Telltale's site, can be redownloaded over and over. This is no large technical feat, however, as their episodes are ~80MB a pop.
Good Old Games has just entered beta. They are offering older games for $5.99 - $9.99, completely DRM free. They've got some great games in their catalog, including Fallout & Freespace.
Being DRM Free is one of their major selling points.
I'll admit I snagged a copy of Spore in advance of the USA release. Played it for a day or two, and gladly coughed up dough for a legit copy once it was available.
Illegally downloaded copies != lost sales, I'm sure I'm not the only person who did it.
First of all, lumping all slashdot readers and posters into the same group is a logical fallacy, so I'll ignore that.
Personally bitten me? My purchased copy of LightWave 9.0 (and that is way more expensive than a video game, believe me). Comes with a hardware dongle, which is small, tiny, necessary, and easy to lose. For a while I was "in between computers" and had my hardware dongle on a keychain, and the software on my external harddrive. Lost the keychain, and am now quite tied to my new box (mmm... dual quade-core opterons...). Seems that thanks to "copy protection" I am unable to get a new dongle without re-purchasing (expensive!) software. All I have to say is, yay pirates[1].
I agree, don't BOYCOTT developers, as this further puts them under the illusion that piracy is killing their business model (like boycotting the RIAA), but certainly make them aware of your opinion on how annoying DRM truly is (similar to how we complain about lack of linux support). 1. (On a side note, cracking lightwave made my decision to make this box linux only much easier this time, as it was the one thing I needed windows for, and lightwave runs quite will in WINE, IMO)
So a company spends a ton of cash to develop a cutting edge game, and you think you have the right to access it for free just because you label it as "art" and declare that their "art" doesn't belong to them?!?
I'm no fan of DRM, but I just can't take this argument seriously. They developed it, they paid people to code it, shouldn't it be possible for them to reclaim their expenses (and then make a profit)?
If you want high quality, cutting edge games to continue to be produced, then there has to be a method for the producers to get paid for it. Why else would they do it?
If you remove the financial motivation to produce games, then games will not be produced. Is that what you mean by "good for society"?
Man, my karma's gonna suffer for this, I just know it...
So when we have an oppressive Orwellian government, we should blame the criminals for forcing the government into taking away EVERYONE's freedoms?
... and they claim this as a POSITIVE attribute ? One percent of accounts ALREADY hit the 3 installation limit ? This game has been out for ~a week. One week, and already one percent of the customers are plagued by this DRM-scheme (some percentage of which will already have gotten customer service responses akin to "buy a new one" by the helpful customer representatives, as has happened with "Mass Effect").
After just one week, legitimately bought copies of the game stopped working for these people.
What will the stats be in 10 weeks ? 6 months ? Five years ? Can YOU offer up proof-of-purchase for all your games after 5 years ? Good on you. Should you have to ?
I find it pretty telling though that EA considers 1% for this timeframe to be a good number.
DRM Lite. You need Impulse to patch it, and validate it after patches.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Impulse is DRM. DRM as it is defined is any electronic form of verification of ownership. If you don't have Impulse, you cannot run the game.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Personally, I liked how they did it for UT, and UT 03/04, Cd is required to play for the first 3 months or so, then release a patch that removes that requirement.
Free entertainment is not a requirement for life in any fashion, sane or otherwise. The fact that you really, really want it has no bearing on the necessity at all. Your lack of impulse control doesn't make you a freedom fighter.
You won't die, but you won't be human, either. You go look at how some children who "don't like to read" are doing sometime.
...Wait, is that it? I bet it is, isn't it? We just need an analog for the good shit for this argument to be accepted. books:literature::movies:film::games:??? Find that word and I bet the media snobs will be just rushing to donate to public gaming funds. XD
Not all games are art. Nobody's missing anything important in their lives if they never played Counter-Strike. But some demonstrably are important parts of modern culture, and as such, they need to be a part of our common experience, the same as literature and film.
> It's easier to get a pirated copy and continue using the same knowledge set of skills,
> techniques and software than it is to totally convert to another operating system.
Kid, I have some bad news for you. If you are worried about your 'skills' you needn't worry because you obviously aren't earning your living from them. Otherwise you would know how stupid you sound. Try installing that piratebay copy of XP in a work environment and watch what happens. First disgruntled ex employee that is, ya know clueful enough to listen to the radio or read a magazine, sees that 1-800 get revenge AND a cash reward hotline to nark out pirate copies and your employer is in a world of pain and you are out of a job.
Of course this isn't a problem in your bedroom/dorm but this is the time to upgrade your skills for the world of tomorrow... where with a little luck Microsoft won't be a monopoly anymore.
Democrat delenda est
DRM is not about pirates, it's about killing the reseller market for games.
I'd like to say that, though I despise what they did making generics illegal in the computing world (blizzard v. bnetd), I've never heard of them using the ruling to kill any websites.
I've been to a couple free servers, and blizzard simply out-innovates them. One particular "server-which-must-not-be-named" had so many bugs with the shaman class it was impossible to play it, and examination of their tracker shows they are simply not capable of keeping pace with the blizzard game updates.
Despite their dishonesty, they were compelled to compete with free and have done so. Kudos to them for doing what 3 other full industries refuse to do.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I won't link to it, but gamecopyworld.com is the domain name for those who want the NO-CD or cracked versions of the games. It is mirrored by various web sites throughout the world.
A warning that some of the cracks may have malware in them. You bought the ticket, so take the ride. As Hunter S. Thompson would say.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Spore's DRM was so effective that the cracked version was leaked only *3* days prior to retail. The game companies are making progress!
As a legitimate customer, it is NOT MY FAULT that other people are stealing the game. Let's say you're person A, and you're with person B and person C. Person C does something that pisses off person B. Person B can't reach person C, so they hit you instead.
Person C may be a douchebag, but your immediate concern is that person B just hit you, and you DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG.
Games will be pirated. DRM punishes legitimate customers. The pirates shouldn't goddamn be the ones to get the better product. Paying customers should.
As things currently stand, pirated software ...
* is a bitch to install
* might not play successfully
* could come with a rootkit
In contrast, legitimately purchased software ...
* is a bitch to install (don't you love those 40 character CD keys?)
* might not play successfully (if you can't connect to the internet to validate the damn thing, god help you)
* and might come with a fucking rootkit.
* costs 50 bucks
Pirates will always have to use work-arounds to get software to install and run. Pirated software will always have a risk of carrying a rootkit. Legitimate software need not have these issues.
(in that order)
I don't buy or play PC games. When I do any gaming it's on the 360 so none of this stuff is an issue.
But this time.. I bought the game mainly because of a very cool special I was able to catch on the Hist Channel - went into both the tech and also the lore/idea behind it. Wasn't familiar with Spore until this. Saw all of the negative pub on Amazon before I purchased.
I've opened the original (just so it can't be returned/exchanged when I'm done - that's wrong) but I downloaded and am playing the cracked version. I've done it this way to 1) support whoever needs to be financially supported (not paying and then playing is plain stealing), but also 2) hopefully send a message to someone somewhere (even if it ends up just being to me) that DRM/limited activation is the more evil of two evils. I'm not a gamer (tho WOW ftw) and I've got no problem next time just keeping my cash and doing without.
Amen brother. EA and the other gaming companies have been pissed off for years at Gamestop, EB Games, etc that they resell their games used to customers and they don't get any slice of the pie. The gaming companies at one point wanted to make reselling games commercially illegal. They were like why should we only get 1 sale when 4-5 people have bought it from EB Games, played it and sold it back to be resold again. That has really been pissing of the computer game companies and they have slowly been working to make that less and less possible.
If you want to know if it working, just look at the historical data. EB Games used to sell a ton of used PC games, not so much anymore due to online activation keys and other forms of DRM. The PC industry has slowly been able to kill the resale industry of PC games, and now they want to do the same exact thing to console industry if they can.
Game companies want to make it illegal for you to give away or sell your old games you don't play anymore because it cuts in to their profits for them to sell another copy instead of someone getting or buying your old copy. Have you actually read some of the EULAs that they make you agree to? Most of them do not allow you to resell or even give away your game to someone else, only you can use it and play it. It has *ZERO* to do piracy and 100% to do with killing the resell industry.
Don't believe me read some of the old news articles on this and ask the game companies what they think of the used game resell industry.
Art belongs to the artist who created it, for the lifetime of the artist. When the artist dies, then you can claim that his/her work belongs to the greater culture. Not before. Any less than that is infringing upon the artist's freedom, and is 100% unacceptable.
The founding fathers seemed to think otherwise.
Steam hasn't always been so perfect. When HL2 first came out, I already had a Steam account, but I signed up for a new account since HL2 came with all the games I had in my first account.
I forget exactly when this was (I think it was near the XMas rush after HL2 came out, I don't think it was when the game first came out), but one of Steam's authentication servers died under the load of all the new users signing up for HL2. The result was that all new accounts (including my "second" account) could not login to Steam (although my old account worked fine). It meant that lots of people who had purchased HL2 couldn't play it for two or three days, which kind of sucked.
I do like Steam, but I'll buy a game on CD (with a good old fashion disk-in-the-drive copy protection system) if it's available rather than buy on Steam.
I don't have any real problems with Steam, though. One day when Valve goes out of business, life will get a little interesting, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I imagine Steam would be a lot less fun if I was on dialup.
Well, assuming you're a twisted marketing/accounting guy...
As with most DRM schemes, I think there's an ulterior motive here, and I think that's to kill the second hand market. Most people are unwilling to buy games with activation second hand, and most stores are unwilling to even take them for trade or sell them.
Remember, the difference between Digital Rights Management and plain old copy protection is that DRM is about restricting your rights, and in this case they're taking away your right of first sale, plain and simple.
You want to see the game companies sit up and howl like a howler monkey? Get the federal government to pass a law saying that everything sold at retail has the right to the "doctrine of first sale". That is that if I buy it and don't want it anymore I can legally sell it to whoever I want and companies can't do anything to interfere with that.
You would see most of these DRM schemes disappear over night. This crap of your key tied to your account and you can give it away or sell it would be up in smoke. All these insane EULA's that say your not buying a copy of the software just the right to use it would be gone. Also they wouldn't be able to say hey if this blows up your computer it's not our fault, you can't sue us. Because then they would have to abide by the doctrine of fitness for sale.
As it is right now software companies love to tell you, we own it not you. We're just allowing you to use it for awhile, and we don't promise anything other than there are some bits that your allowed to use that might do something or they might not do something, just be glad we let you look at it at all.
Oh yea and don't you dare try and make anything compatible with our stuff, that's illegal. We sure showed those BNETD guys, and the Overhead garage door, and the printer ink guys not to ever try and be compatible with us. Why should we let you in on our ability to steal...excuse me..get all the money we can get from you? That's our money in your pocket and we'll be dang if we are going to share it with anyone else.
Game companies and software companies in general hate the software resell market, because they aren't get anything from it. They don't want you to buy 1 copy and sell it to another guy who does the same. Dang that could mean like 5-10 people who bought the same copy over a 2+ year period and they only got 1 sale. They sure can't allow that to happen.
Game companies *HATE* EB Game, Gamestop, and your local used game shop. They think they should be criminalized and run out of business for interfering with them making obscene amounts of profit. After all that isn't your money in your pocket it's their's and how dare anyone deprive them of it.
Then the whole thing of telling people what they can and can't do with software once they bought. Oh sorry you can add 5 extra lives and 1000 bullets to the game that effects the balance and by passes our protection, it's not allowed. Also you paid good money for the game, full retail, but you can't put it in your gaming shop or cyber cafe without paying us more. Do car rental places pay special extra price for their cars? What about a library that loans out books? Why is software so special when compared to other fields? It shouldn't be.
CD Key tied to accounts, and updates tied to specific people, and it's all non-transferable. Those are things that block the "doctrine of first sale" and should be out right illegal to do. If I want to sell my game I should be able to do it without any extra fees paid to anyone. I don't pay extra for my books I donate to the local library, or when I sell a book to a friend. Why is software suddenly special and needs to be protected different and given differnt rules?
Punkbuster (Made by EA, hmm) is a terribly buggy and resource intensive program that is ineffectual at BEST.
Punkbuster is made by Evenbalance which isn't related to Electronic Arts. Now EA Games does license Punkbuster from Evenbalance to use in various games and the same goes for Activision and ID Software.
Now the part about it being buggy and resource intensive I can testify that is definitely true. Even a monster of a machine like mine using an ASUS Maximus Extreme, Q6600, 2GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM, and GeForce 8600 GTS it'll choke on games like Call of Duty 4 whenever Punkbuster does screen captures that get uploaded to the server for analysis at an interval (some every two minutes) which can make a difference between you successfully killing a player or getting choked and they kill you instead. I have heard there are a few tricks to get around that in CoD4 such as forcing the game into multiple threaded mode by configuring the graphics setting Dual-Video Cards to true even though you only have a single card with one GPU processor.
Another bad thing with Punkbuster is that if your pb client is even slightly out of date with updates such you were gaming all night and then fourteen hours later once you've woken up and decided to play the game again on the exact same server and there was an update, well you'll get kicked off with in a minute due to some communication error with your pb client of which the only fix is to manually update the pb client by running the pbsetup utility. Talk about annoying...
This space is not for rent.
Are you 14? I ask only out of curiosity. If you are, carry on. If you're older, for shame sir
I'm not the original AC, but I share his opinion. I'm 31. The point is, anyone who wants a pirated copy of almost any popular game just has to haul their ass over to the pirate bay, look for a popular torrent of it and download. The DRM will have been stripped and everything will work just perfectly.
People actually paying for games will be presented with games that might not work with their hardware (I've seen games that only work with CD drives on a specific list, and if your drive isn't one of those you're SOL... time for a downgrade), or might not run if they have certain perfectly legitimate software installed (I've heard of games that refuse to run if you have debuggers, virtual CD drivers or even fucking Process Explorer installed). Even if they get the game to run, there's a significant change it'll stop working if they upgrade their hardware too many times.
Yes, DRM is an encumbrance on the paying customers but not on the pirates. This seems perfectly clear to me. So when you see people complaining about DRM, generally speaking they have paid.
First, I still have to see a video game I could consider as "Art", at least as valuable art. They are entertainment, they can be part of pop culture, but art (as in Beethoven, Rembrandt or Shakespeare)? Sorry, but no.
Second, a painter can work on his spare time, a musician and a writer too, but video games are now an industry. They are not about one artist expressing himself, they are a business. Most people who work in this industry do it mainly as a job, meaning for the money, they don't do it for the love of "art" or "culture". Maybe you don't care about their paychecks, but I'm pretty sure they, on their side, don't give a shit about your culture and your sanity.
Anyway, even if "sane" life depended on commercial pop culture (and I disagree, BTW), I don't see how being free (as in beer) is a necessity. Affordable, maybe, free, no way. If you think it's normal to pay for food, which grow on trees by itself and also which is far more important to your life than a video game, than why don't you find normal to pay the people who create cultural products?
In every arts related job, there are the expressive parts that you love and the administration jobs that you hate. Every game maker is founded by people that just want to make great games. Then they have to deal with the bullshit that is required to make their games a success. Is it any surprise that game makers, the RIAA, and every other arts related industry has shit the bed when it comes to marketing their products.
Let's face it, for every pirate out there, there are 100 people who are qualified to devise a way to market artistic digital media in a way that makes everyone happy. One problem stands in their way:
NOBODY IS PROVIDING ANY INCENTIVES TO MAKE THE JOB ATTRACTIVE, AND IT'S A SHITTY JOB TO BEGIN WITH.
I could go on for days, but most readers here have some insight into the situation, how much would you have to be paid to attempt to devise a reasonable scale for game makers to be reimbursed for their efforts?
Think about it, who wants that job? Worse yet, who's willing to pay for it? Everyone acknowledges it has to be done, but it's the ugliest job in a sexy industry. "Hi, I want to work for your modeling agency, got any grease traps you need cleaned?"
I record my own albums, book my own shows, drive the tour van, set up the stages, sometimes run sound myself, make my own posters, etc etc etc, and if I can do all that at age 34 and still run a successful studio, house tech at a local venue, AND still write good music, then these pukes who call themselves artists but can't deduce a way to bring their art to market can eat my shit. In fact, I happen to have a nice fluffy one brewed up just for EA.
Fire in the hole.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
... but what happened to personal responsibility? Everything the GP did, he did of his own free will. PC gaming is not some fundamental right that big gaming companies are depriving him of. If he's becoming a monster, then he should probably lay off the games for a while.
That said, he seems to be aware of the morality of his own actions, which is a damn good start.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It's now called Bos Wars.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Also you paid good money for the game, full retail, but you can't put it in your gaming shop or cyber cafe without paying us more. Do car rental places pay special extra price for their cars? What about a library that loans out books?
The United States, home of Slashdot, restricts the "rental, lease, or lending" of copies of computer programs. However, nonprofit libraries such as those run by government agencies or educational institutions are exempt. 17 USC 109(b)(2)(A).
Why is software so special when compared to other fields?
Because it is so much easier for an end user to make a new copy[1] of a sound recording or a computer program than any other kind of work.
[1] "Copy" here includes phonorecords.