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Stardock, Microsoft Unveil Their Own New Anti-Piracy Methods
Island Dog sends news that shortly after Valve showed off their new anti-piracy methods in Steamworks, Microsoft and Stardock were quick to demonstrate their new, similar technologies as well. All three companies are bending over backwards to say that this is not traditional DRM. Stardock (the company behind the Gamer's Bill of Rights) calls their system Game Object Obfuscation (Goo), "a tool that allows developers to encapsulate their game executable into a container that includes the original executable plus Impulse Reactor, Stardock's virtual platform, into a single encrypted file. When a player runs the game for the first time, the Goo'd program lets the user enter in their email address and serial number which associates their game to that person as opposed to a piece of hardware like most activation systems do. Once validated, the game never needs to connect to the Internet again." Microsoft's update to Games for Windows Live has similar protections. "You can sign in and play your game on as many systems as possible, but you have to have a license attached to your account. Of course, this only works for online games."
The only flaw I have with Steam is that they dont allow you to tie activation keys to your account. I have a few games that I have valid CD keys, and are games sold on steam, but it wont let me input them into the system and have it added to their content download system. So if I want to use one of the best features of steam, I'd have to purchase it again in the steam system.
The only flaw I have with Steam is that they dont allow you to tie activation keys to your account.
They do for some games, such as Unreal Tournament 3.
Others such as Crysis, Fallout 3 they do not however.
See here for a list of games you can do it with: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7480-WUSF-3601
Seriously, these protections that are "not DRM" still manage my rights to things that are digital. However unintrusive these things are to my system, they are still doing the same thing and therefore this re-branding of it is just stupid.
Hopefully people are bright enough to see through this little marketing exercise.
I've been saying that for years now. Stardock/Impulse/etc. are DRM. They limit the ability to distribute digital media.
You still need an internet connection to enable it from the wording in the summary. What happens when that server is no longer alive? How am I to play the game? What if I don't have internet when I install it on my laptop on a plane to play when I'm bored?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I'm not sure how it works with Impulse or Windows Live, but as far as Steam goes, if multiple users attempt to log in and play simultaneously with one Steam account, the user who logged in first will eventually receive an "Invalid Steam UserID Ticket" error message and be forced to log back in to continue playing (if the first user logs back in, the second user will receive this error message).
Demented But Determined.
The PS3 has region free gaming. In fact, I just imported an Asia/Chinese game Demon's Souls and it runs perfect on my US PS3.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I've used Stardock's Impulse a little bit and while I can't comment on all games on it, the 3 I have it works quite well. You can tie a license key to an account, however I have installed and played 2 of the 3 offline never connecting to the internet to play or install, simply by entering the license key in the normal installation. Then I can then tie it to Stardock Impulse which will automatically tell me about updates and help me install them. To register it with Impulse I simply entered the license key again with the online component. In fact Impulse recognized that I had the game installed and asked me if I wanted to add it into the system.
Also, I can then log into stardock impulse on any other computer and it will allows me to re-download and install the game on that one as well. Well I've only done it for one so far, Sins of a Solar Empire, so again I can't comment for all games.
In fact, I play offline all the time and only fire up Impulse (I haven't needed to run it to play the games) when I check for updates.
In the case of Stardock's DRM, you can disassociate the game from the email address you registered it with if you decide to resell it.
Mada mada dane.
With GOO, you are able to decouple your e-mail from the game and transfer ownership.
Steam often has "free weekends" where you can download and play the game for free for a set period of time. If you like it you can buy it and keep playing. If not, it just deactivates and you have the option to delete it.
If I understand the Stardock system, once you've paid for and activated the download, it's permanently transformed into a usable game, and can be copied as much as you want. There's no registration code to keep straight (IIRC, Stardock keeps it's own database of what your registration codes are, so it you lose everything they can give them to you again).
This sounds like the ideal system to me:
* Download a file from the Game co or FilePlanet or wherever, that needs a key to unlock.
* Game co sells you activation of what you download (no phoning home ever again), and will let you re-activate as often as you please.
* You can copy the activated game as often as you please.
* If you want to play with friends, eveyone needs a different activation key, so piracy is somewhat limited.
* If an activated game shows up on a warez site, the Game co can associate it with the person who bought the key.
The last is incredibly useful to deter piracy for one key reason: without any legal authority, merely contacting the owner of the credit card that paid for the game and telling them that "the game is being illegaly copied and they should probably stop that" will be remarkably effective if it's a parent that paid for the game, and their kid who's sharing it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.