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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?
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.