Slashdot Mirror
Final Fight Brings Restrictive DRM To the PS3
Channard writes "As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness. "
Channard continues, "The key difference between buying titles on the 360's Marketplace and Sony's PlayStation Store is that buying a title from the Marketplace only usually entitles you to play that title on a single console. A PlayStation Network account, on the other hand, can be used to license up to five consoles, meaning any title purchased from that account can be played on five different consoles. And these consoles can be de-authorized and re-authorized at will, allowing gamers to switch licenses around. This has led to a practice known as PSN game sharing, whereby gamers can purchase a title together, thereby paying a fifth of the cost of the game, and still allowing anyone to play the game on their console. Whether this has had any direct impact upon Sony or Capcom's apparent decision to implement this forced sign-in system is unknown. [Though an email from a Capcom employee seems to confirm this.] But Final Fight is the first title to feature this system — it'd be interesting to know whether this was done at Sony or Capcom's request."
simple as that. Only by refusing to buy DRM laden product will we win.
On PC games you have the option of cracking your games.
On PS3 you have no other option, right? Once you paid the console, you're pretty much forced to accept whatever system Sony decides to create. They may decide tomorrow to force you to be permanently connected to play any game at all and the only alternative would be to sell the PS3.
Well, its a funny thing actually.
I've downloaded items (like game maps, etc) using my friends accounts on MY ps3.
While I've not bought these items I've had access to them when the machine isn't logged in to their ps network account (nor mine, e.g. just logged in locally to my user).
Which basically means free game extras.. (still, paying £40 for a game then £2-5 for 6-7 extra maps is a ripoff in my book, and yes I know, its entirely optional to purchase the extra content, no flames please)
Note: The accounts aren't linked per say. I believe there's some "family" account thingy where you can share some (or all?) purchases between linked ps3 accounts.
...you know, Trusted Computing?
gpl'd free rts with a sexy 3d engine.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
These companies need to get it through their rotten skulls that we aren't all always connected to the Internet. Many, many people go through periods where they don't have a net connection at all. All these greedy fools are doing is shooting themselves in the foot by reducing their customer base. A customer only has to buy a small number of titles that don't work for them, for whatever reason, to conclude that all the games are junk and that they're better off to pirate or go without.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Besides, who says you have to sign on with the same PSN id as the one that purchased the game? If you don't then that puts paid to that argument. Still, it's a highly annoying "feature" and unless the game has stuck this requirement in to ensure game updates, or some multiplayer feature it really should be disabled.
Xbox 360: Everything you download is tied to your gamertag and your console. Either your gamertag must be logged in, or it must be running on the specific console that the content is licensed to. Microsoft provides a license transfer tool that you can use to migrate your licensed console in case of system death, which you can use once a year (more if you talk to the service agents). You can re-download content as much as you want as long as the purchasing gamertag is logged in.
- Advantages: Very difficult to illicitly share content. For the most part, it happens behind the scenes without the user ever knowing. Content can follow you to other consoles with your gamertag.
- Disadvantages: When the console breaks, licensing issues become very confusing and unexpected. License transfer & re-download is easy, but time consuming.
PS3: You get 5 downloads, tied to the purchasing PSN account. This can be onto your console, or the consoles of bunches of friends. If you choose to download to the consoles of a group of friends, you won't be able to re-download in the future if your console dies. As the grandparent poster pointed out, this leads to sharing groups on PSN... groups of friends who buy once, share 5 times.
- Advantages: Relatively straightforward. Easy to understand. Trusts the user. Can use content on friend's machines (afterward, so can they).
- Disadvantages: Lots of cheating. Migration is a lot less streamlined. After a certain point, the user simply cannot re-download to new consoles.
Wii & DSi: Downloads are tied to the system, not the account. If your system breaks, your content needs to be re-purchased on the new one.
- Advantages: Extremely simple & hard to cheat.
- Disadvantages: Any console failure means all of your digital items are lost.
Steam (for comparison): Downloads are tied to the account, which must be logged in to the steam application to play. Additionally, steam may or may not require being online at the time of play. However, player can download and connect to as many machines as they install steam on, and can switch freely between them so long as they are only logged in once.
- Advantages: Relatively easy to understand. Download anytime, anywhere. No need to keep old games on your HDD that can be re-downloaded later.
- Disadvantages: Requires frequent network access. Some games install secondary DRM.
The ______ Agenda
This would be a reasonably smart thing to do: require a user to log on to download content onto that console, giving it rights to play. This only needs to be once on that console, and if that user is on a different console, they can login in and activate that console (deactivating the other) to download and play their content. When they go back to the original console, they activate that one again.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
This is actually a totally understandable response to the flawed user profile/content ownership system on the PS3. Really the only thing that surprises me is that it took this long to happen!
Basically, on the 360 permissions work out such that your purchased content can be used by you or any other user on the console it was originally bought from and roams with you, but can only be used by you on other consoles. This means I can play SomeGame X with my friend at his home, but he can't play it once my account is gone.
As I understand it The PS3 ownership model doesn't seem to really do anything at all, so as another poster mentioned you can basically share PSN Games and DLC with abandon.
This didn't need to happen this way but somebody skimped on the planning stages for this whole downloadable content thing and left the door wide open to abuse. I'd love to see a way to digitally transfer ownership legitimately, but that is an argument for another day.
No, really this time. This particular title I wouldn't be getting anyway, but my young kids use the PS3 and I don't let them on to the Playstation Network - they're just not old enough yet.
Now, if more titles start to insist on a connection to the network whilst playing then these will be titles my kids can't play. Final Fight...not too fussed. Other ones though would be a problem. Little Big Planet is their current favourite game, the middle one just went through Ghostbusters too. Had a connection been required they wouldn't have been able to play either. Lost sales for the platform, lost games for the kids. Not a good thing.
Cheers,
Ian
You keep reafirming my 10 year old commitment to never buy a Sony product again.
I've installed WipEout HD on two consoles, so that's not the case. I also had to redownload the activation key when I put a new HDD in my PS3, and this counted as another download from my 5 console limit...
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
The summary says they mention adding this restriction to keep people from sharing a PSN account to share a game. But it also means that hacked or Linux-enabled PS3's wont be able to play it either, as those machines are not running the most recent firmware and are banned from the PSN.
As I understand it The PS3 ownership model doesn't seem to really do anything at all, so as another poster mentioned you can basically share PSN Games and DLC with abandon.
For reasonably small definitions of "with abandon". You can download content five times.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Final Fight was the only arcade game that I *ever* completed in an arcade... my brother and I found one in a old arcade in a Butlin's holiday camp that took 10p's. It still cost us about £3 but we got there in the end. Those were the days.
Similarly, seeing that same game boot up in a CPS emulator a few years ago brought back some memories.
Oh, find the DRM restrictive? Don't buy it. Problem solved. I fail to see why that's worth an article, I was just hoping that there was some "new" Final Fight coming out.
Look! It's a game which requires that you are logged in to PSN to play it, which will require you upgrade your firmware to the latest version which disables the "Other OS" feature!
I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I've a hard time seeing how a game for the PS3 could in any way befit from MORE DRM.
Almost makes me glad I'm too poor to actually own a console.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
I had no idea Final Fight operated this way and might have bought it and regretted it. This is unlike any of my other PSN games and it's extremely undesirable for me. Part of the beauty of PSN titles for me is that they go with the console. Sometimes I take my PS3 to a friend's house to watch movies (which I usually just plop down on the hdd as well) and it's nice having these games available. This system in Final Fight plainly goes against my usage habits and does so for no advantageous reason for the user.
Like many here I just don't like the entire concept of DRM and would rather not support it in any way. Does anyone know of a website somewhere that tracks this kind of thing? I often hear from my friend -- who insists on buying all his multiplatinum games from Steam, ironically for archival and access purposes -- that new games often come with even more protection than what Steam offers (which I'm fine with on its own, how much more control could you reasonably expect to have). Most of it just sounds abusive. It's becoming harder and harder to remain aware of which games have extremely shitty DRM crammed into them and makes purchasing games in general a more and more reluctant activity for me.
I'm also reminded of my friend who's recently deceased father invested thousands of dollars in iTunes music over the years. The DRM-ed kind unfortunately. He's come to find Apple's lack of a an avenue for inheritance with respect to property with so called "Digital Rights" rather unfair and I don't blame him. Just another reason to say fuck DRM and collect only media that is completely free of it.
We have seen this before. There is/was a game that was discussed with the requirement of having a live connection to the internet to play it. Within a short time after its release, the server(s) required were inaccessible for whatever reasons(s) and could not be played by thousands of angry users. I know. Vague and less than precise but it's 6:30am and I just woke up. Most people know what I am talking about.
As Sony approaches this same colossal mistake, I can't help but wonder when there will be attacks that will (1) update people's firmware without permission and/or (2) begin DoSing or taking down Sony servers to prevent people from playing games. I tacked on point-1 because it is somewhat related to the sort of attacks that Sony is opening up to everyone with their greed and lack of foresight.
I loved your OtherOS option
you have turned to the dark side
next chrismas no more sony
http://springrts.com/wiki/Games
Spring is one of the few really popular and good open source games. The lobby is easy to use and there are a number of AIs that you can play against too first, if you want to learn the game but you have to check what the AIs are meant for (which mod and whether it's for actual playing or map testing). Spring makes many commercial games look bad and the community is fairly large so you can play huge multiplayer games of at least Balanced Annihilation (the most popular mod) all the time.
I'll give the developers the benefit of the doubt, since the Xbox 360 version works offline. I'm guessing that the game requires a PSN connection because it features drop-in, drop-out, cooperative gameplay, allowing you join in on someone's game and vice versa at any time. So maybe by default, the game assumes the PS3 is connected to PSN. Nothing a simple patch won't fix.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Dear Sony,
I now see that by removing the Other OS feature I paid for with my PS3 console you were intentionally trying to upset me so I would no longer be a customer for any Sony or related products. I see you did this for my benefit so that I actually might be spared enormous headaches down the road when playing games as I do not have a persistent connection to the net with my console. You truly are a noble and caring company.
Your former, but grateful customer,
xxxxxxx
Dear Sony,
Could you please share your secret of making a profit by pissing off customers? I am very intrigued how you manage to do that. We are a company of people with a proud heart for our jobs. Time and time again you demonstrate that satisfying customers is not the way to go.
But what is? What makes your customers want to buy products that will be crippled remotely after a while or even directly at sale? Is it some marketing trick? Do you select your customers for misplaced good faith? Is it some other twist of genius?
Curiously,
An honest craftsman.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
All I needed was a quarter.
(Disclosure) I admit I've been a corporate tool for the better part of 15 years now. As an IT consultant I've worked for over 10 years across the Twin Cities area and now currently retired from IT work. I work at a bank now as my personal gift for years of IT hell and I am happy. As I've been eye deep in corporate culture since high school I can easily see a possible reason.
We here at Slashdot can readily accept that any game with DRM will lose some sales. By default, if a game performs poorly senior and executive management apparently are in the habit of blaming software piracy.
By putting DRM on a potential goose of a game they can claim double the excuses for poor performance to shareholders and create a perfect Chicken\Egg argument:
"We have to have the DRM to stop the piracy, it's a vicious circle that only a government subsidy can offset in the form of a piracy tax to reimburse our low sales..."
This is simply a theory that, if this was intentional, may explain the mind set.
The problem is now that I've documented that potential strategy I've rendered it useless.
1: Blame Piracy for Low Sales
2: Add DRM to products
3: Console gaming market declines as mobile apps eat up market share
4: Blame DRM and piracy for depressed sales ignoring the growing mobile and web game marketshare
5: Demand government do something about Piracy that is killing their sales
6: Get a government subsidy
7: Shift development efforts to web and mobile game markets
8: Profit Twice Over
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Because, you know, it is.
If I was witty I'd put something funny here but, as it stands, I am not and have just wasted seconds of your life
not really, you can download content infinity times to 5 consoles. however, thats not 5 consoles per game, it's 5 consoles total, so i can't share game A with 5 people then share game B with 5 different people. However, the 5 people I shared game A will automatically be able to buy game B after I buy it. It's actually a pretty reasonable system. Obviously there is abuse where people share with strangers, but it's strongly discouraged since a) you have to give them your account email address and password and b) you're at their whim to delete the account when they're done with the game and can wind up screwing yourself out of legitimate use if you hand out all your authorizations to strangers.
Doesn't the PSN-downloaded version of Warkawk, one of the oldest downloadable PS3 games, behave exactly the same? If I recall correctly, (I haven't run it in a year or so) I need to be logged in on the Playstation Network in order to run my downloaded version of Warhawk, even if I don't play "on-line" (such as, for the training scenarios).
Or have I been missing something for the past couple of years?
with their points system. It's not a great system, but I just realized two things.
1) I've bought stuff from Xbox Live Marketplace, using points.
2) I've never purchased anything from PSN. Except freebies.
The reason? I could get points "on sale" all the time (it doesn't take long to find someone selling MS point cards for 10% off , and Best Buy/Dell/etc. do run 25% off deals a few times a year). PSN cards have their value marked on them, so it's hard to find any retailer willing to discount a card with $50 marked on it.
And with Sony doing the OtherOS crap, I haven't updated my firmware. Then Sony banned un-updated PS3s from connecting to PSN. Which is a great way to ensure that I never spend a penny on PSN. And I had considered anteing up to buy some stuff for LittleBigPlanet.
And I upgraded Xbox360s, so had to use the license transfer tool - worked great, if a bit long because you have to download everything again to get the updated licenses. (Those who send their Xboxes in for service have the license transfer done automatically).
Oh well. At least the PS3 has gotten a slew of single player games lately. I'll reserve multiplayer and the like for my Xbox.
"Moderators, just because you don't understand a post doesn't mean it's offtopic. He's in effect saying "don't buy DRMed games, the GPL is the way to go". Overrated perhaps (although I don't agree that it is overrated), but it IS on topic."
That is so redundant in this thread that it spills over the sides and actually becomes redundant in hundreds of other slashdot stories. It's grade-a redundancy.
Must include on the box,Internet Connection Required to Own the Game. Let the consumers decide if they want DRM or not. And there not going to do that unless forced by laws.
Jack of all trades,master of none
.. and further information can be found [url="http://kotaku.com/5523238/capcom-apologizes-for-not-telling-users-of-final-fight-drm"]here[/url]. The statement from Capcom reads...
"Capcom would like to formally apologize for the issues consumers are having with the PS3 version of Final Fight: Double Impact. Typically, the notification for a required PlayStation Network connection appears in the full game description when a game is downloaded from the PlayStation Store. Unfortunately when populating this content this detail was overlooked and wasn't included in the versions of the game that released in North America and Asia. It was included in the release for Europe. Capcom should have checked to make sure the notification was included when the final game was made available and we sincerely apologize for this oversight.
The DRM requirements for Final Fight: Double Impact are not unique to this release. This protection mechanism has been implemented in numerous games offered on the PlayStation Store before. When it was brought to our attention that the notification was missing, we acted quickly with Sony Computer Entertainment America and a fix is on the Way.
We would like to thank our vigilant fans for bringing this to our attention and we will exercise better scrutiny on future Capcom releases."
Hang on a mo... not unique? So there are other PSN games that require you to be logged in to fire them up? I don't remember hearing about any. Kotaku asked Capcom to tell them which other games used a similar system, and were greeted with silence.
Some games are good but some are not. As we see today many children spend too much time playing games and this can cause many problem.