Slashdot Mirror
DRM Shuts Down PC Version of Gears of War
carlmenezes writes "It seems that the DRM on the PC version of Gears of War came with a built-in shut-off date; the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now, the game fails to work unless you adjust your system's clock. What is Epic's response? 'We're working on it.'"
This Frist Post is only available through Jan 29, at which point the certificate expires and the Frist Prost will no longer appear first in the comments.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
See, the catch22 with DRM is, it's fine until it interferes with your gaming - and then it's gone too far.
Most DRM seems "fine" until the day you realize it has crossed the line. :P
And lately it seems just about all DRM is like that.
Don't buy DRM games. That's it. Or, buy it, and crack it, so it works. Every gamer knows this, and is doing it (not all of them buys the game though). Fuck DRM.
A proper DRM system would obtain date and time information from a known valid source.
What needs to happen is for everyone with a copy of this to take the disk back as faulty. Most consumer laws support this action.
My son's version of Oblivion (I think it was Oblivion) failed to install after he upgraded his PC five times and they refused to give him another code...
So we took it back to EB and demanded a refund (faulty product) which we were entitled to do. If you can't play a game, it's not of merchantable quality.
Looks like we'll be visiting them once more with a copy of GOW for a full refund :(
Perhaps if everyone did this, we'd see DRM take on a more practical appearance like a USB dongle - or even the entire game on a USB dongle - and without time limits or requiring web authentication.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
This is more evidence that DRM hurts the honest consumer.
As we all know, the pirates wait for the DRM-free... "collectors edition" release on The Pirate Bay.
Why do people continue doing it? Did they start when the economy was in a healthy growth period and then think "more DRM, more economic growth for us, it must obviously be causal".
(now there's a good application of "correlation is not causation" for you)
How many more of these mistakes will people tolerate before they turn in disgust from buying a $20+ POS that stops working randomly? I know that if I bought this game (and was foolish enough to install it, DRM and all) and the DRM kicked in like this, my first stop would be to The Pirate Bay.
This never happened to me. I just played a half hour ago. Oh wait, I got it of The Pirate Bay.
Epic Mega Oops.
This is really a shame; I've actually got a copy of Jazz Jackrabbit running under DosBox right now. Funny how times change.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
There was a time I would never have even considered running a pirated version - my main experience with pirated software has been cleaning off Trojans installed by NoCD cracks or the like.
Now... I can see the claims that DRM is (sometimes, at least) truly more of a hassle for honest consumers than for software pirates. That is a truly sad thing.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
There really isn't going to be a single informative comment under this story. Everyone that reads slashdot knows that DRM doesn't work and shouldn't exist in it's current form. To summarize every comment will be either
a) This is why we don't need DRM
b) I play the cracked version and it's better without DRM and not broken
c) Screw Epic and their DRM games
d) You molest kittens dip wad
Well there is always some idiot posting garbage on the fourms.
Now not only is the game broken due to a broken DRM implementation, but even the logic behind the DRM is broken since it at least this part can be circumvented by adjusting the system clock (!!). What was the point of even bothering with this then?
Although, actually, wouldn't this now make changing your system time an offence under the DCMA?
I never thought I'd post those two words together in one sentence, but yeah.... epic fail.
Oblivion has no such retarded online authentication. By all means we should dump on the games that treat paying customers as pirates but be careful to make sure you criticize the correctly guilty parties.
DRM does it again. Does this mean consumers who've been affected by this can sue? After all, Epic did technically violate an inherent contract in the buying and selling of video games: consumers give money to a company in order to play the video game (permanently). Since the consumers essentially do not have their game anymore, they paid for nothing more than a rental. It's akin to selling your car, then taking it back a few weeks later and pocketing the money you stole, er, made. At least they should be giving a full refund to the affected consumers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's not DRM. It's cheat prevention. Big difference.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
This is all part of their cunning plan to get us to play the game on the Xbox!
and I had trouble even installing the darned game.
I have not started playing it yet and now this?
*shakes head*
Such a thing does exist in the pro audio world. The most popular is called the iLok from PACE Antipiracy. It is a little USB dongle that you hook to your computer. It then stores licenses for your audio software, over 100, from multiple vendors. When you buy software it either comes with a code, or a SIM chip that is the license, and you transfer that over to their key.
Ok great right? Well not really. The first thing is that it isn't cheap, to either the people implementing it or to you. It has a fairly high per unit cost, which of course the vendors pass on to you. However for you there's a direct cost too. You have to buy the dongle. They are $50 each. It works in the pro world, since $50 isn't a big deal if you are already spending $1000 on a virtual instrument, but you'd find it rather a turn off for gamers. Yes you only need one to hold many licenses, but $50 is still a lot when you are talking games.
Then there's just the implementation problems. You go and do some searches online, you'll find lots of people have lots of problems with the iLok. It is trying to do tricky shit, and that causes problems. For some it works great, however for many it is a ton of headaches.
The question also becomes what happens if you lose the iLok? Some companies are good about it, and will authorize PACE to send new licenses to your new iLok. However many are paranoid since you could always "lose" your iLok to a friend and get a new one and then get more licenses for free. So some companies refuse to give you new licenses, you have to buy them all over. Well, that means a single dongle can have a whole lot of money worth of licenses stored on it. You get in a situation in games where someone nicks your dongle at a LAN party and you are out $1000 in games.
Used sales are also a problem. Companies don't like for you to sell their games used. They'd much rather everyone has to buy a copy. With a dongle, they can enforce this easier. While they certainly could make a mechanism for you to transfer licenses, they wouldn't have to. If they didn't, well you are SOL. You'd either have to sell ALL you games at the same time, along with the dongle, or buy a dongle per game, which would be expensive and inconvenient.
Now after all that, the question is ok, but is it useful? Answer? Not really. iLok protected apps are cracked all the time. So you can go through all this trouble and people can STILL crack your shit and release it on the Internet. The fact that you use physical hardware doesn't help. The dongle only really can do two things:
1) Provides authorization. Here the program checks with the dongle to see if it is allowed to run. It's a handshake sort of thing, and often uses good crypto... But what happens if you simply remove the jump to the code that checks? The program never goes and looks for a license and just runs, thus the dongle is bypassed.
2) Has a decryption key for the program. The program itself is encrypted, and a loader goes, checks the dongle, gets the key, and decrypts it to run. Ok great, except then all you do is go and dump the decrypted program from memory and use that, or intercept the key and use it on an emulated dongle.
Regardless, the dongle can't do anything that can stop this kind of thing. The crackers simply strip out all the calls to it and then they've got an app that runs without it. Or they make a virtual dongle that sends all the proper responses. Or they hack the dongle's drivers. Whatever is easier.
The real answer, I think, is for companies to realize people will copy their software, but it just isn't a big deal. It happens, get over it. Don't hurt your legit customers because of it. There are some pro audio companies who have dumped iLok and they report they've seen no decrease in sales. Personally, I'm not surprised. The people who download their apps aren't likely to pay for them in the first place.
Epic fail?
Because it just needs to delay the "collectors edition" release long enough for people to buy the game instead of pirating it in the first few weeks. The first few weeks of the release are when the most money is made.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Does anybody know if this is going to be a problem with all of games using Windows Live ?
I've heard from forums the GTA4 certificate expires in sept this year.
Can anybody confirm this ?
Up until a year or 2 ago, many games (e.g. C&C3 Tiberium Wars) just had DRM that required the original CD or DVD to be in the drive for the game to work. The special drivers for the DRM were also only loaded when the game loaded (at least in the systems I saw like the one on Tiberium Wars and the one on Rollercoaster Tycoon 3)
What I want to know is what was wrong with that kind of DRM and why they needed to move to DRM that requires web activation and other such crap.
More interestingly, if you have a dispute with Steam and you reverse charge your credit card, they will disable ALL your games.
This is stated explicitly in the customer agreement, under the heading "Fraud".
I don't own any way of hooking up my phone to a computer (I don't think my phone even has a USB connection), I don't know or have any interest in learning how to configure Linux to talk to a USB-cell-phone modem, etc.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Let's face it, Epic has gone on record numerous times saying that they were thinking about not giving the PC platform another thought. It's really no surprise that they'd botch this. They're the type of assholes to bite the hand that's fed them for so many years. Instead of adapting to how the market has changed, they would probably rather abandon it.
Their track record as of late on the PC market hasn't been great. These guys are ailing dinosaurs who don't seem to get it. Maybe I'd actually even give a shit about their games if they weren't so mediocre. Maybe I'd actually give a shit about their games if they weren't just the same fucking iterations over and over again.
Wake me up when Epic does something that isn't an epic fail.
The hilarious part is that it only froze up on the people that paid to have DRM installed on their machines. The stolen copies are just fine I'm sure.
I think the secret is, if you really really want to give them your money: buy a copy, never open it, and install a stolen version.
I have two copies of Titan's Quest (never opened), a copy of Flatout 2 (never opened), two copies of NWN2 (no), a copy of Jedi Outcast (no), Jedi Academy (no)...
Mostly it isn't even the DRM, simply having to even put the CD in is an unnecessary hardship. Why should I be inconvenienced because I bought it and the people who stole it get the good copy?
I think it's time the stop treating customers like shit and I say so on my registration cards. Fat lot of good it's done.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
My response is http://gamecopyworld.com/
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
I had a really bad experience with Orange Box. Long story.
Anyway, I don't have a Windows PC any more - that one blew up.
But I began missing playing games like Grand Theft Auto and so on.
I am scared of this DRM thing.
I hear so many bad things about GTA 4 because of DRM issues - I keep wondering if ALL games are DRM-locked as standard these days. I keep postponing investing on a new Gaming Machine.
Fear of purchasing is the worse feeling towards a business. It's worse than boycotting.
RIAA or Not - People do feel scared of buying a DVD movie or Audio CD. But with DRM people are feeling nervous about purchasing Games that end up messing with your PC.
It's almost worth downloading a pirated copy and then sending the publisher the cash by mail along with an anonymous letter saying "I wanted to buy your game, but I needed to be sure I got a version that would work and was a fair deal".
But as an Apple user, I don't have this problem.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Security certificates have built in expiry dates to prevent fraud. You can't change the date without destroying the cert. That is part of the design.
> "Free market theory" is that buying and selling takes places voluntarily between two rational parties, both of whom agree to the terms of the deal. If he thinks he's getting shafted, but keeps buying the games anyway, then it's nobody's fault but his own.
I've highlighted the part of free market theory which has failed to help you out. Knowingly allowing people to screw you out of more money is decidedly NOT "rational" from an economic standpoint. In fact, it is very directly in conflict with the behavior economists expect from a rational person, so much so that it cannot be reconciled with it.
Yes, the situation is all his fault. But it proves that these transactions violate the presumptions (and therefore, will not follow the predictions) of free market theory. Given that it violates the axioms you've put forth, it would be quite unreasonable to expect free market theory to hold.
Must have been a while since you cracked something. These days you just go to one of the more legit sites, pick a crack for your language and patch, and you're set. I crack everything as a matter of course, since everything at least requires the disk in the drive these days, never had trojans or the like.
But as an Apple user, I don't have this problem.
You're smug, aren't you?
I'll defeat you, I swear ... within a single Long Now cycle!
Yeah, this phrase was never more appropriate
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
This is not acceptable for a retail product.
It turns out to be just a rental after all.
They're using their grammar skills there.
In the grand scheme to make PC gaming the most miserable experience there is. Casual pirates love the PC, it's easy, fast and pretty reliable. Consoles ... not so much. That's why they build their PC versions (or worse-ions) of well selling console titles so poorly that anyone will consider buying an Xbox before they think about PC gaming again.
I said it before and at times, I will have to say it again.
When I saw this story this morning, it was tagged both DefectiveByDesign and EpicFail (har har... no pun intended).
What happened to those tags?
Just kill all of the legitimate copies and anyone else who's left is a pirate. Why didn't the RIAA figure this out first? =)
If that's true, why don't they release a DRM removal patch a week (or month or whatever) after release?
It seems if you pay for it and deal with the DRM you CAN'T play it...
Stupid anon cowards...wait...oh, snap!
Killing bad moderation...
I really wish they'd fix it to allow an undo function on mods
That's horseshit.
If he thinks he is getting shafted, but buys the game anyway, then he is factoring in the "shaftage" as part of the price he's paying.
This doesn't contravene rational thought, nor does it contravene a free market.
He values being able to play the game high enough that he is willing to pay for it twice. That does not mean it is an irrational action.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
An old version of the music sequencing software Logic had the same problem with floppy-disc based authorisation.
It deauthorised whenever the clocks changed, twice a year at the start and end of daylight saving.
I bought the product in the UK, so I wrote to Trading Standards. They advised me to contact the retailer (Rose Morris) to request a working version of the product.
They sent me an upgrade to the latest version of Logic, that didn't have the problem, for free.
fail
For anything which doesn't require the Internet to function, Internet connectivity is an unreasonable expectation.
Even single-player games nowadays require the Internet to function, even apart from obvious digital restrictions management. You can't get your score on the online leader boards without them, and you can't get the parts of the game that the "25th Percentile", "50th Percentile", and "75th Percentile" achievements unlock without the online leader boards.
And fail when the known valid source is unreachable?
Imagine a game that comes with a USB security dongle. One of the items on this dongle is a real-time clock with a radio designed to receive WWVB, the radio station that $20 "atomic" clocks pick up. Under what circumstances within DVD Region 1 would this signal be less reachable than the game publisher's NTP server?
But as an Apple user, I don't have this problem... yet
There, fixed that for you.
Let's say I buy a game that "phones home" over the internet before I can install or play it, something like Steam. Now let's say it's five or ten years from now. I'm feeling nostalgic and I want to play this (now) old game. What happens when the "phone home" server is no longer being maintained? Am I SOL?
I thought about this because I have boxes of games that are five, ten, or more years old (like Myst, Riven, Serious Sam, or Diablo) that I'd like to play again.
So does this method of DRM in effect put a limit on how long I can play a game?
Sounds like you are looking for TPM chip.
I was totally pissed and confused about this... One day I was happily playing the Gears of War I bought and then the next day when I wanted to resume my adventure. Noooo, the game says I can't play with a modified size on the executable. GREAT! Just GREAT!
They sure put me in place, who am I who payed this to be enjoying their products. Only pirates are allowed to enjoy their products. I certainly was taught a lesson. I will make no more game purchase, that is for sure. Now I have been let down twice by DRM, the first time when my whole satisfactory feeling was lost after I got to know Fallout 3 had installed a rootkit and now this.
To hell with their monopoly privileges on information and the witch-hunt on honest customers. I can't take it anymore! From now on, my money does not go to game companies.
And I know that too
Also EULAs are ex post facto
Lately, I've seen URLs of EULAs for PC software printed on the box. Therefore, the terms are available to peruse before you buy a copy.
and have no exchange, which isn't allowed in contracts.
Because the EULA was available at this URL, the exchange (or consideration) happened when you bought the copy. Even if not, the consideration is the decryption of the installer in exchange for your assent to the EULA terms. Several countries that have implemented the WIPO Copyright Treaty have made the right to decrypt an installer an exclusive right of the copyright owner. For example, under the United States statute (with my emphasis):
Or at least not copy protection. From the screenshots I've seen, this is nothing more than the standard signed executable failing.
It's a bug in Windows, it shouldn't have failed. The signature was pre-expiration, so it should keep working.
I pirated the PC version when it came out (I refuse to pay money for any game using Games for Windows Live). It was such a piece of crap port I didn't bother playing past the first level. When asked if they would port gears 2, CLiffyB blamed piracy for the poor sales on the PC. The fact they put no effort into it, or filled it with DRM, or wrapped in the most obnoxious interface in the world of gaming (Games for Windows Live) had nothing to do with it.
You can be they won't be swayed by this DRM hiccup, they honestly think the only reason theres not at least 1 copy of Gears of War sold for every PC out there is pirates.
Then I ran across the first Starforce game, in the form of some crap called Trackmania.
I thought the first Star Force game was a scrolling shooter for NES by Tecmo.
It seems to me that the DRM was working exactly as designed.
Ubuntu on primary work desktop since Dapper Drake (2006).
Blizzard tends to do this (although it's significantly longer than a month.) There are a lot of things to like about Blizzard.
Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog . . .
The extra wear and tear will be minuscule.
Couple of dollars.
cf a WHOLE NEW FREAKING CAR.
Which one do they lose most on?
And if it's OK to lose MOST of a sale, then it surely is OK to lose merely a *potential* most of a sale through allowing piratical loads.
has it.
It's never stopped working because it's a new day and the certificate has expired.
NO DRM has done that to date.
No DRM *needs* to do that either.
So how the flying fuck would knowing DRM is in there be accepting that the DRM would kill the game?
All of this becomes a moot point if by "when he can find the games for cheap" he means "used games for less than half the retail price". Then the two rational parties are no longer the customer and the publisher (via retailer middleman), it's the customer and Gamestop or equivalent.
Although, in terms of contracts (disclaimer: not a lawyer). The original sale of the software is a contract between the consumer and the distributor (Steam), via the terms outlined in the EULA. Not having looked at Steams EULA in great detail, if the EULA did not outline specifically how phoning home was to work within Steam and the subsequent failure to be able to play such games, then Steam *should* be liable for a breach of contract suit.
Similarly, if Epic's EULA has no disclaimer concerning the lockdown of the DRM being time-based (or whatever the underlying cause ends up being), then they too are breaching a contract with the consumer. After all, the consumer paid money for a *service*, or ability to play the game. For the distributor to not fully disclose any lockdown date, they too are in breach of the original contract.
Someone with more legal knowledge feel free to chime in (NYCL? ;-). In today's lawsuit happy society (remember the old lady with her coffee?), I'm surprised someone looking to make a quick few thousand dollars doesn't go RIAA on these companies.
But as an Apple user, I don't have this problem.
Of course not: you don't have DRM-infested games, because you don't have any games. (photoshop is not a game)
What? Who's that on the phone? 1995? And they want their meme back? Tell 'em to take a hike ;)
Maybe it's just me..... probably it is, but what ever happened to ID's successful implementation of the Doom/2 product line??? Get some free S9it and if you like what you see your addicted and buy the rest....... I used to be a full time gamer but due to this drm crap.... BF2142 to be exact I've stopped..... and i miss the gaming experience but not enough to put up with the likes of "Steam" and EA's idiot bean counters obsessed with the bottom line to the penny...
Karma go home........
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
FUCKTARD.
FUCKTARD.
FUCKTARD.
Learn English idioms before you attempt to use one incorrectly, you foreigner.
Evidently Marcus Fenix says, "I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." just before the DRM shuts down the game.
Any of the disadvantages of DRM can be considered a trade off for reducing piracy (at least at the level of keeping the honest honest
honest people will be honest anyway - its worthless to put efforts on them.
for the rest of users, I fail to see how a system (=DRM) that *pisses* them more will make them *less* likely to opt for another (illegal) system (=piracy) where they *only need to click* on a link on some website.
DRM doesn't work because it brings more inconvenience to the end user. We have reached a point where legitimate users have to go through numerous hoops just to play a game that they have legally bought with their money. Wereas, all it takes a pirate is to click on 1 simple link on the Pirate Bay and bam! instant unrestricted access to the game.
DRM has reached the point where there's more percieved value in a pirated copy than in a bought one. More DRM won't help.
however there is little effort on the Anti-DRM Camp to come up with a solution that fixes the companies problem, of illegal piracy, or sharing a copy with your friends.
As an example of a solution that works, take Steam : Steam bring the "just one click away and its your"-style convenience into a lucrative and legal platform. It's not just that Valve is "in" among fanbois, it's that Steam managed to put additional value making the game desirable.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Ahh, yes! The "begging the question" defense of free market theory.
The theory requires that everyone be rational therefore anything that people do in an economic transaction must be rational.
So he must have figured in the "shaftage" as part of the price he's paying. Which is rational. Because I said so.
Up next:
Proving God exists by reading the Bible. ;-)
The real problem here is that "rational" is not well defined. And if you want to get really technical, a free market would have an infinite amount of sellers and and infinite amount of buyers.
...they're just trying to figure out who is using a pirated game. If you're still playing... you must be a criminal.
Get one going now and make it loud.
Get it on headlines, make people understand why DRM is bad, and can never work.
Sue the fuck out of them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
False. Where do you get these wacky ideas, from the back of a cereal box? Assuming an infinite number of buyers in a microeconomic model breaks the model, because the demand then approaches infinity. Basic math should be enough for you to realize that what you've stated is absolutely false (assuming you have some basic economic theory, which is doubtable).
It does not matter if an individual actually consciously thinks about all the factors involving their purchase decision (conscious decision is not a synonym for rational). What matters is that, in aggregate, potential buyers of a good act as if they have rationally considered all the factors. And guess what? In aggregate, they tend to.
Sure, strict rational models do not always fit the empirical evidence... this does not mean the models are not useful, or that economics is not useful. It means the models need to be revised... and there are entire fields of study dedicated to this.
I suggest additional reading in the subjects of bounded rationality and behavioral economics, this might help you understand the factors involved. Utility theory might also be good for you to read, so you understand where I'm coming from.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Actually it does fit into economic theory.
He considers the good to be a disposable type good. Which means he is treating it like milk or pop or tp. Broken or ran out, go get another one...
That he is willing to rebuy a 'broken' good means he finds the utility of the good VERY high. Hoping that somehow that by getting another one it will be fixed in some way. It is like buying a burnt pizza most people will not go back and get another one. Some however will be willing to bet that it was just a one time mistake.
In this case however his assumptions of being fixed by getting another version is incorrect.
However buying things is not always 'rational' it is based on 'feelings'. Many of the 'theorys' of economics have things like 'utility' as a variable. Well how do you describe that with a number? I got up today and feel pretty good so I might buy a movie. Where as yesterday my back hurt and had a splitting headache. The same movie has NO utility yesterday has some today.
The original Neverwinter Nights did this, although about a year later. Of course part of it was due to the fact that they came out with the DVD version with all the expansion packs. But even the CD users got, the next time they ran the updater, a version without the CD check.
Of course, by then, they had a huge online userbase, and that did, and still does, key checks.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It seems if you pay for it and deal with the DRM you CAN'T play it...
So , the only play it , is to get a cracked version , where they removed the DRM. Oh, the irony :-)
Slipping shoelaces ?
The submitter is trolling, and all the arguments about DRM are pointless. This has absolutely nothing to do with DRM.
Gears of War is, like all "good" Windows programs (according to Microsoft), a signed executable. It is also a game with online multiplayer, so it has an integrity check that tries to make sure you're not playing with modified game files (eg where all walls are rendered transparently or the player models have 50-foot-high red arrows above them).
The integrity check has a simple bug. It expects the signing certificate to be valid based on today's date, instead of on the date of signing. That's it.
It has nothing to do with rights or intentional expiration. Many other applications with expired signing certs work perfectly well.
It's just a bug. Please shut up about DRM.
"they're" a contraction of "they are", "there" a location. Also add this to your mental notes: "loose" ill-fitting, the action of releasing something("let loose the goose") "lose" ----what people usually meant when they said "loose". The problem exactly is this: You buy a pink widget, expecting it to be pink forever, suddenly it turns into a blue hedgehog. You then have a reasonable expectation to be pretty disappointed at the loss of your beloved pink widget. When you call the widget maker he says too many people stole pink widgets so they turned them all into blue mammals and you sir, are shit out of luck.
billy pilgrim *has* become unstuck in time!
"World of goo was DRM free too and it got pirated the shit out of it." Or: World Of Goo was a DRM free game , nonetheless, it got the shit pirated(sic) out of it. seriously , good point though. Crayon Physics suffered a similar fate.
billy pilgrim *has* become unstuck in time!
I'm not sure which part I find more depressing. The part where people at Epic were stupid enough to let something like this happen, or the part where the people at Epic created a DRM solution that could be bypassed by changing the system clock.
Note: I didn't say "good", or "the right way", or even "useful". Just OK.
First, let's consider:
Steam is just the same as the rest, it's just that Steam is blatant about it's constant need to authenticate
Yes, that is true. That already makes it far more honest than most of the other systems out there -- you know, ahead of time, that if a game requires Steam, it will insist on being connected. If you can verify that it only uses Steam's own DRM, then that's all it requires. With systems like, say, SecuROM, you never know if it requires a CD check, whether it's 5-installs-then-you're-boned, or whether it's rape-and-pillage-your-system-for-anything-resembling-daemontools.
So, it's up front, right there in the open. About the only thing they could do to make it more clear is start disallowing DRM other than Steam on Steam games.
And once we have that all out there on the table, it honestly seems like a fair trade to me.
In general, it leaves the rest of my system alone. All it needs is an Internet connection, a username, and a password -- which I'll want anyway for a friends list, to play multiplayer games, to download something else in the background, maybe I want to play Pandora while I play a game. (I simply don't lose Internet for a week.)
In return, there's the friends list, achievements, community, and the ability to download any game I own on any computer, as many times as I like.
So, what they've managed to do is at least make the legitimate version, DRM and all, competitive with the pirated copy. That's why people are so excited about it, because that's the part most DRM schemes completely miss -- they make the legitimate copy worse than the pirated copy. Steam makes it as good or better.
Could it be better? Sure! Take any MMO -- then the above network effect is real, not artificial. You could have a friends list that was optional, and an offline mode in Steam that worked forever. But you couldn't have offline World of Warcraft -- it just wouldn't make sense.
I think that's as good as it's going to get without going completely DRM-free -- which I do support -- or open source, and free-as-in-beer, and somehow come up with a business model around that -- which is awesome, if you can do it.
So yes, I do like Steam. I don't think it's the Savior, or the last word, or anything like that. I do think it's a damned good compromise.
(For GAMES. Don't even think about using it for movies or music.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My opinion (take it for what it is worth):
Write down each title you were planning to buy, but were prevented from doing so by the online activation. (Or whatever your particular reason is.)
Contact each publisher. Be polite, not fuming. Present them with the list (of their titles, of course). Tell them precisely why you declined to buy their title.
Conclude your letter/email with something like "you may feel you need to protect your property from piracy, but this method cost you these sales. Learn from this, or continue losing sales."
It's cathartic for you. And maybe, just maybe, if enough people do this, they'll get a clue.
If you can, encourage your friends to do the same.
The more personal you can make it (IE not just standard 'contact us email', and paper > bits) the more memorable it will be, and thus the more impact it can make.
A single, small rock is not a threat. An avalanche can be.
I think the main reason that they keep trying to shove DRM down everyone's throat is from thinking about copyright infringement as though it were theft.
Lets say you sold 10,000 copies of a song, and then you see that it was illegally downloaded 60,000 times. It's hard not to have an emotional reaction, especially if you are used to thinking of songs as being on physical items like cds. Did you just lose 60,000 sales? Is it really the same as someone breaking into a warehouse and stealing 60,000 cds?
Not at all. Some of those pirated downloads are from people wanting a free trial. Some of them are from people that would never have bought the thing in the first place. A large percentage are probably from people that bought it once, and now want to put it on other devices without paying for it again. Do you lose a sale every time someone listens to a song on the radio?
The sad reality is that the whole problem is intractable anyway. No matter what protection you dream up, it only takes one anonymous nerd to break it, and then everyone in the world has access to the cracked copy. The more draconic and restrictive you make DRM the more attractive you make the non-DRMed version. I say, stop punishing your customers just because your business model is antiquated.
Its a known problem, you have to disable the network adapters before launching steam to stay in offline mode. It has nothing to do with DRM.
It's not for you to decide that what someone else chooses to do is irrational. If everyone acted the same way all the time, we wouldn't need a free market system-- centralized decision makers could design the market for you. That has been tried. It simply doesn't work.
I'd like to know your definition of "rational".
Currently most economic modelers have given up on "rational" economic agents, except those computer driven. And they also don't act the way people predict rational agents would act, even though we know that they are, in a very deep sense, rational.
Networks of independent agents with known but conflicting goals tend to be unpredictable in their actions. I don't think chaotic is quite the correct word, though perhaps it is. And there are certainly large regions of predictability.
But they definitely don't act in the way that classic free market theory says they would act. And neither do people. (It appears that people, also, are in a deep sense rational...but not on the surface. People, e.g., will frequently take extra damage in order to inflict damage onto someone that they feel has wronged them. This contradicts the presumptions of free market theory, but it appears to be for the intention of preventing actions wronging people like them in the future...which is rational, if you adopt a wide enough view of what is being protected.)
Classical free market theory does not predict actions which match observed behavior either in real world conditions or in laboratory conditions. There are areas in which it, or something approximately similar, does work. This, however, is definitely not a global state.
P.S.: The same is true of all current economic theories. Don't believe any of them except in constrained circumstances. Some accurately cover broader areas than others. Free Market has a reasonably large area of coverage...and I'm not an expert into exactly what it's limits are. But there is no global theory, so it's certainly not global.
(N.B.: global above is in the sense of a global variable, as opposed to geographic.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Most economists would consider voluntarily agreeing to such a terrible deal to be irrational behaviour. Most of the arguments about free markets leading to the fairest distribution of resources are based on the idea of Nash Equilibrium which is based on the idea of people acting with rational self-interest.
It's because people don't act with rational self-interest that fundamentalist free market polices fail.
Nick
That's one thing that really bothers me about a lot of multi platform games: the PC port, when present, is often just an afterthought. Gears of War is a great example. Anything based on the Unreal Engine is a great example. They make it to work on consoles and PCs, but most of their customers' primary market is consoles. Over the ages that's shown more and more in the PC versions.
It's little things like how, in gears of war, one key does EVERYTHING. It lunges, it takes cover, it jumps over the cover you just took (better hope that's what you meant to do). You can re-assign that key, but not the individual actions. Why? Because consoles only have a few keys, and this was designed for consoles. That's not a practical feature for them. That's annoying, but it's only one of many, many trends I've seen in these cross platform games that don't leverage the advantages of the PC. Puffy looking hunch-backed models (to reduce polygon count, I can only assume), gimped or missing plugin/mod system, etc.
It sucks. PC games used to rock because you could do more with them. It's like Leggos vs. Duplos. Not anymore.
I've always preferred pirate software. Old skool copy protection often consisted of typing in codes on unphotocopyable paper (PITA if you spilt anything as it was hard enough to read in mint condition), quoting words from the manual or some other brain-dead annoyance.
Pirated games had built-in cheat trainers and funky cracktros with awesome music. Pirated software has always been better.
Nick
...this totally stops piracy, and doesn't at all punish the customers who paid good money for the game!
Oh, wait.
You lend people books and you can no longer use the book until they give it back. You don't make a copy of the book and give it to them. That's why it's a problem - it's copyright infringement.
You're assuming that being able to easily copy something is a bad thing. It's not! The Christian Church didn't like the printing press, because it meant that the masses suddenly didn't need priests to access God. Books were suddenly worth less, too - probably not good for the bookmaker business. But the thing is that, in the long run, having more access for more people of these things is good.
I'm not going to cry about a company who is unable to reap 100% profit from a game, because it can be pirated. They can choose to stop making the game, but I bet then other companies with a different viewpoint would fill that market. There are better ways to tackle the problem.
Someone brought up spawned copies... brilliant! Make it easier to get a copy of the game if your friend has it. Make it a communal activity. Make it so that groups of people have incentive to buy it - because it's just plain easier. Sure, you'll have cheapskates and malcontents copying it without ever paying into the system... but so what? Are you really losing anything?
Because the simple truth is that DRM does lose us something. It loses us time and resources for doing things that are meaningful, rather than arguing over who gets what. Rise above that, and move beyond DRM.
[Ego]out
Steam won't let me play the games I want to because it can't find the online server to authenticate the games that I claim to own. Maybe not directly DRM but what is happening is an end result of an implementation of DRM. If we use the same situation but say that we are using Impulse, i.e. the games have no per-play DRM, or rather can't only be launched through a DRM platform (a fine line), all that I would be blocked from doing is buying new games, not playing the games I already "own". So to say that it has nothing to do with DRM sounds like maybe you haven't thought it through. Don't feel bad, one day, through reasons beyond your control, you'll be blocked from the Steam purchases you've made, and you'll realize your mistake.
Rule #1. Don't buy, support, or assist DRM games, media, laws, etc.
Rule #2. Put your money where your mouth is. DON'T BUY DRM GAMES! I don't care how good they are.
Rule #3. Too bad people don't understand how to vote with money. You don't buy it, the company doesn't make money. They don't make money, they die. People who support DRM with their own money are shooting themselves in the foot, giving up their right to play the game as they should be able to, not the way the company wants you to play their game.
Rule #4. If you like slavery, then you like DRM.
Digital Slavery. You didn't buy the game. Your renting it, leasing, borrowing, etc. But you don't own it. Your a slave. The company is the master.
That's not even correlation, just coincidence.
Anyone remember what happened to Sony for the DVD/CD Burning software fiasco? Sony was forced to remove the product from the shelves by the uproar of the people it hurt, and pay for damages it caused to the systems. Why can we not see this again but with more companies, DRM hurt the people that actually purchase the products. I have more than once chosen to buy a game and found it has nasty DRM and I just hack it if I love the game but more often than not just force the retailer to take a return on the game.
A possible workaround for now might be using the RunAsDate utility from Nirsoft.
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