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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.'"
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?
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.
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.
Seeing as you already paid for the games, wouldn't it be within your rights to pay a friend to download a pirated version of the games you already own for you?
The Unicode standard is over 20 years old. Why does Slashdot not support it?
Perhaps because not all of us think copyright infringement is ethical. I don't Pirate games (or anything else for that matter) for this reason.
So... if you paid good money for a game and DRM cut off your access to said game, YOU would be the unethical one for having a pirated version available to play?
There are many cases where piracy is way more ethical than DRM.
I lost my sig.
No one really likes DRM 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.
Game companies already had a solution for the "problem" of people sharing a copy they own. Blizzard's "Spwaned Copies" were freaking amazing. Honestly though, how is sharing a copy of a game you own a problem? You lend people books don't you? Or movies? What about movie/video game rental stores like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video? In short, explain how its a problem or there isn't one.
Also, why do the people that are against DRM get saddled with finding a "solution" to piracy? Every single DRM scheme has been an failure and damaging to the consumer to the point that some people feel morally obliged not to buy the games anymore from those companies. Better still, these DRM schemes do nothing but encourage you to pirate the game since the pirated version doesn't have the DRM!
DRM is not working. This is very fucking obvious. Until they figure out something else to try, they should go back to only having the CD-KEY (which doesn't stop people from pirating in any way whatsoever, but makes it easier in multiplayer games to ban disruptive players. EA already is under a Class Action lawsuit due to the DRM in Spore before it moved to Steam. How many more game companies are going to have to be attacked legally by their own fans to get them to stop ripping us off?
Oh and before you bitch I have a link to Steam in with the failures, remember that the Steam DRM does get cracked on occasion. They just patch and ban accounts. Will not stop players from doing it for single player or LAN games (and it takes no real effort) but as a DRM system it still fails at its task. On the plus side at least its largely bearable.
Unfortunately more and more games are requiring you to "activate" online before you can even start to play them, even if there is no online content whatsoever.
This REALLY sucks when you don't have internet at home. I was finally able to save up some good money while living out in the boondocks on a farm, and went to walmart to buy a game to cure my no-internet boredom. When I got there, the only decent looking games I wanted to get had a little note at the bottom of the package stating "* This game requires online activation before use."
I thought how strange, being as how a couple of them didn't even have a multiplayer mode. I thought, well maybe that's just for some kind of updating scheme or something, but I sure wasn't going to risk $50 to find out. So I ended up buying a USB drive, taking it to a place with high speed public internet, and just torrenting a few cracked games instead.
You're nothing; like me.
The last place I lived was at the cutoff line for the city limits. The property literally began where the city limits ended. The house was approximately 25 feet from that line. There was not one provider who would run a cable or try to set up a wifi connection for us there, while our nearest neighbors all had cable/dsl.
In fact the man who owned the house had to pony up somewhere around a half thousand dollars to get Qwest to run a friggen phone line, which they wouldn't let us use DSL with.
The US really is shitty for 'rural' internet access.
You're nothing; like me.
I call BS on this. Piracy gets people interested in both games and media, as recent news articles about studies of the subject seem to indicate.
The real effect of DRM on me is that each time I buy movies or games I am discouraged from doing so again and pushed a little further towards so-called piracy. I'll explain why...
As a teenager, I was prolific pirate.
Encouraged at first by how easy it was, and the fact I really did not have the means to purchase the games.
On rare occasions, I was a customer, but only when funded by birthdays etc.
I was never a potential customer for the games I pirated.
Now, I'm an adult with cash I am happy to spend on games. However, it was my teenage years which got me hooked on gaming.
What makes me sad is that I still find often find myself resorting to piracy.
The driving factors:
1) I do not like waiting to play games other regions have, I often download US or Japanese games before they reach Europe.
The difference is that now I will happily buy it when it (finally) reaches our European shores.
2) Copy protection - I don't like physical media, it gets scratched, I lose it and do not like switching DVDs all the time. I've been buying tons of Steam games lately for this very reason.
This annoys me, as I have much less rights with a Steam copy of a game - e.g. no chance of reselling it. I had hoped Steam and other digital distribution would stop the region-delays game too... but it has not.
The activation limit policies on newer PC games are also starting to cause this.
3) Same crap we get with DVDs loaded with no-skip trailers and anti piracy warnings. The DVD rips are conveniently pre-cleaned of the BS they force in my face on a legal copy. Again, the region delays suck too.
Having pirated this stuff, I am often willing to buy a copy when it finally reaches Europe.
It worries me that by going about it this way I am risking finding myself in court for copyright infringement, but honestly, I am happy to pay for the content. I would just really prefer it is delivered sensibly without the stupid limitations listed above.
The result of this is that when I finally buy a copy, each time I am disappointed to find it significantly less convenient than the pirated copy, a little bit of my willingness to continue buying is forever sucked into the void.