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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.'"
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.
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)
A proper DRM system...
I stopped reading at this point, my oxymoron detector kicked in pretty quickly.
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.
This approach is too customer-friendly for them to consider. The mission of DRM is more than destroying piracy, it means to destroying second-hand game market and cross-boundary water-goods trade as well.
The era of customer-oriented marketing strategy has long gone. Nowaday, all customers are treated as criminals and pirates. Face it man. ARRRR!
> "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.
Who said software should be free? You are lumping unrelated issues together for some reason.
Rather, this piracy issue is not the customers problem, so the customer should not ever have to deal with it or be inconvenienced by it. It is the problem of the content owners. Piracy is the cost of doing business, so accept it and quit screwing with paying customers or pick another industry. In no situation is it acceptable for the content owners to screw with something I paid for after the fact.
If DRM measures ever inconvenience paying customers at all, it is an absolute fail. It doesn't matter if the number of problem cases is small, they have a responsibility to ensure that the people who PAID them aren't affected by their irrational and ridiculous restrictions, and if i AM affected in any way, you owe me a refund.
And to make it even more insulting, the DRM doesn't actually stop piracy of any kind, so it is all for nothing. The end result is that these companies are saying their interests are more important than the customers.
One of the best ways we as consumers can help fight DRM is to buy games from companies like Stardock. All of there resent releases have NO DRM. Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire are their big titles. Don't pirate these games. Stardock is trying to prove a point, that you don't need DRM to sell games. They believe that if you make games that people want to play, provide excellent customer service, and don't encumber them with DRM that they will sell more games, and it seems to be working. These games have no DRM at all (unless you consider typing in your product key to be intrusive DRM). There is no SecuRom, no install limits, not even a CD check. Also, they freely in the EULA give you the right to install the game on multiple computers as long as you own them and are the primary user. Most EULA's state that you are only allowed to install to one machine. Cheers.
Yes, that's right, lets blame PIRATES for GoW not working. The poor production companies are just protecting themselves by purposefully selling a broken product (if you claim that GoW isn't broken, you forgot to read the title, summary or article) in order to... to what? To make sure that people who don't know how to find a crack (or cracked version) aren't copying the game? A simple CD check could do that. You say it's to keep the honest, honest, but it does not keeping them honest at all, it either teaches them that only cracked games work properly, or you just straight up lose a customer. I personally think the lesson being taught is that honesty is punished, and not worth the effort.
I'm not entirely sure how you can fight against piracy by making sure only pirated copies work as they are supposed to (in the consumer eye). Blaming pirates for game company failures isn't going to win over any supporters. "Your game would work, but we had to cripple it because of pirates" is so weak of an excuse as to be transparently stupid to all but the least mentally capable gamers (and I'm talking REALLY unable to comprehend causality).
Automakers would not put an anti-theft device in a vehicle if said device caused your engine to stop at random times (like when driving) and be unable to be restarted until the auto company did something secret inside the engine compartment. They would not sell it if there were certain driver/automobile combinations that simply did not work (i.e. if the car just plain won't start if the an "incompatible" owner tries to drive it). Furthermore, if they DID install such a foolish device you would hear very few people blaming carjackers for the utter foolishness of the automakers. No one would believe it, and nor should they. It is the very same here.
And that's why analogies fail on Slashdot--everyone tears them apart not for the reasons that they are similar, but for the reasons they are different.
The point is that for some reason, we let software companies get away with remotely disabling the products that they sell to us. We'd never put up with that from other industries. It doesn't matter that software can be perfectly copied--that's not a justification for the behavior.
My copy works just fine, I wonder why? Oh, right, I got it from Piratebay. Torrented downloads: They just work.