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Tensions Rise Between Gamers and Game Companies Over DRM
Tootech recommends an article at the Technology Review about the intensifying struggle between gamers and publishers over intrusive DRM methods, a topic brought once more to the forefront by Ubisoft's decision not to use their controversial always-connected DRM for upcoming RTS RUSE, opting instead for Steamworks. Quoting:
"Ultimately, Schober says, companies are moving toward a model where hackers wouldn't just have to break through protections on a game, they'd also have to crack company servers. The unfortunate consequence, he says, is that it's getting more difficult for legitimate gamers to use and keep the products they buy. But there are alternatives to DRM in the works as well. The IEEE Standards Association, which develops industry standards for a variety of technologies, is working to define 'digital personal property.' The goal, says Paul Sweazey, who heads the organization's working group, is to restore some of the qualities of physical property — making it possible to lend or resell digital property. Sweazey stresses that the group just started meeting, but he explains that the idea is to sell games and other pieces of software in two parts — an encrypted file and a 'play key' that allows it to be used. The play key could be stored in an online bank run by any organization, and could be accessed through a URL. To share the product, the player would simply share the URL."
I won't buy anything with Starforce or the new Ubisoft online DRM or with limited installs.
The user has the key. The user can retain or share the key, or just share the material unencrypted. As for remote DRM, even if you bloody well upload large parts of the game's code remotely it's just security through obscurity. As well as a source for nusiance and flakiness/unplayability.
Emotions! In your brain!
Ok, admittedly, I haven't taken the time to read the article, but that "Alternative to DRM" just sounds like another form of DRM to me.
Honestly, the DRM involved in games is a reason that I've come to shy away from gaming lately. I'm really looking forward to New Vegas, having played Fallout 3 on XBox 360, but I'm going to do some serious research on the DRM involved before I buy it on PC.
Crap like this is why I put my money where my mouth is and buy from Good Old Games. NO DRM, NO limits on installs, easy and hassle free, and even works perfectly on x64.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I just bought two copies of GTA IV (pc version) for me and my girlfriend, in the hopes that there would be some cool co-op. After installing 'Rockstar Social', and having to get a damn 'Games for Windows' Live-esque account, and having to register account after account and confirm this after that after serial after serial, I said, well, Fuck. It. In the trash they go, and $40 down the tube. Shoulda looked at the reviews first I guess.
Overreaching DRM and poorly written interfaces upon interfaces are the death knell for PC gaming. I am sorry, but they just keep getting worse, and worse and worse. Albeit the gaming experiences might be improving, the overall software experience is absolutely terrible. The amount of disneylandish crap pc game devs are pumping into games to mimic the consoles is absolutely infuriating, and doesn't seem to be getting any better.
I'll say it. I love PC gaming, but it is definately an industry that will die if they don't all get together and streamline some of the bullshit. Steam is the closest thing we have, albeit still is one more interface you have to use to get to another interface to start/load/join a game.
Back to Q3A and CS 1.6.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Game companies will never let you resell a game you don't have on a disc. Unlike with games printed on physical mediums, there is no chance of a downloaded game being unplayable due to scratches, and there is no "shiny newness" that a game that wasn't resold has. Either used copies would be cheaper than new copies and there would be no point in buying new copies (which I can't imagine game companies allowing), or game companies would make the used copies the same price as new copies and it would be a moot point. This will not catch on.
I bought a copy of Neverwinter Nights when it came out and... well, they actually did with the game the very same thing the article is suggesting.
You have your CDs with your serial, which you use to install as many times as you want, and Bioware actually allows you to store that Serial in their servers, protected by a password.
Do you feel like sharing youre game? Just lend your CD key to someone, which could just mean to lend them the password for your account with bioware. Also, if you lose the damn booklet in which it came printed, or if you're just not at home, you can always retrieve your serial from their servers, provided you remember the password.
Now THAT's what I call value.
On an unrelated topic, they also ported their game to linux after a while. You didn't even have to buy it again! Just download the installation package for linux (yes, download, for free, from their servers), use your windows serial and you're all set. Suffice it to say it worked like a charm.
Say you will not use an aways on drm, use a more well respected company's aways on drm... And yes I know of steam's offline mode but RUSE is an RTS. Offline mode would be pretty much useless.
Ruse sucks - so you don't have to waste any time on it (was demoed on steam)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
is that it's getting more difficult for them to sell their product without it being massively distributed by folks who don't actually have to worry about the development costs.
Now you can argue that the massively expensive games aren't worth the price, or you can argue that simpler games are the way to go, or even that DRM does nothing, but...it's really not that simple.
Do I want a game that's nothing more than a star vehicle in disguise? No. But do I want games that are just repeats of whatever works on Pogo or Neopets? No.
Sure, there are limits, for example, I will not be playing Starcraft 2, but that's not because it's not worth the money, or because it's not a good thing to do with a game, or even any problem with its DRM(does it have any? I don't know..). It's because I simply didn't like the thought of Blizzard sharing people's real names in game. They backed off on it...but not to the degree they'd need to do for me to be comfortable being anywhere near them.
Ah well.
God Almighty, I thought that damn thing was gone forever.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Refer to Stardock's Impulse service.
One of its abilities is to return games with a restock fee (I think its 50-75% offhand) which is more than physical media retailers offer!
Also out of this I believe the game developer may also get a cut.
Download caps may hit games hard some day with drm systems and any kind of on live system will run of that fast 5 Mbps can hit the comcast 250 gb cap fast.
How well does the Ubisoft system work with dial up or satellite internet. For one thing any thing like on live is out for them.
"Alternative to DRM"? No, this is just another form of DRM.
I like what Steam offers. I think it's a fair trade. I'm still not going to call it something other than DRM.
You know what the "alternative" to DRM is? Not putting fucking DRM on your products!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Personally I really like how Starcraft 2 works. I no longer need to carry dvds/cds or a dvd-player. I don't need to worry about using 'other methods' for obtaining a game I've bought before. I just need an account, a password, maybe a battle net authenticator, and I'm good to go! Can play anywhere. And I feel warm and comfortable.
So, key parts of SC-2 security I guess:
- the client is freely downloadable, in full, as many times as you like
- since multiplayer is a major part of how it works, that takes care of the drm
- we have an account, that we can use anywhere we like, on any computer
Of course, the campaign bit isn't really secured by this method, so there are still some pieces missing from the puzzle for that, but for multiplayer games, which is I feel the most interesting to me, there doesn't seem to be a major issue?
Realistically, something is your property insofar as you can control it; my car is my property because I have the keys and can do what I want with it. (It helps that I legally own the car as well, but legal property rights do not guarantee that things won't be stolen.) If someone does steal my car, then legally I still own it, but realistically I don't have it anymore.
Copyrighted and publicly released media such as video games are legally owned by the copyright holder(s), but realistically, they are 'owned' by either everyone or no one. Once something goes on the Internet, any privately held control over it is basically nullified. Anyone can copy it and redistribute it to anyone else. The 'owners' can come close enough to actual ownership by not releasing the media or information, but once that happens it is, for all intents and purposes, public domain.
That's why I think the term "digital property" is an oxymoron. It can't exist because of the nature of the Internet, which is the unbiased sharing of information from one computer to another, and no DRM garbage will change that.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
The IEEE Standards Association, which develops industry standards for a variety of technologies, is working to define 'digital personal property.' The goal, says Paul Sweazey, who heads the organization's working group, is to restore some of the qualities of physical property — making it possible to lend or resell digital property.
But, but, it's "imaginary" property. How else are we going to illegally download movies, music, and games, if we start giving it physical properties?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I loved Ruse in the open beta.
That DRM was the only reason I didn't pre-order the game and was not buying it.
If they dropped that I'll buy it as soon as it's confirmed to work just fine offline.
Of course no one else cares about that, but it was annoying to really like a game and also not be able to play it because the DRM was retarded enough to make buying it not an option. Steam I can live with.
"...simply share the URL".
<sarcasm>No, I don't see how that could possibly be abused.</sarcasm>
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Only if it's their games. If it's a third party publishers game you're still screwed because the publisher can simply say there isn't a problem and deny the refund..
Starforce was cracked, Ubisofts "always on" thing was cracked. If you build it, they will crack it. Pirates, bored techies in need of a hobby with lots of time, have often outstripped paid programmers in certain areas. You can get full games at half the file sizes that the publishers themselves provide. HD Movies with a nearly lossless quality are provided at a mere two gigabytes versus the same file size corporations say are needed for standard resolution. Heck, one pirate group even patched a game, fixing a bug the developers wouldn't, or couldn't, fix. As long as games are made for the pc they will be pirated.
I stopped getting tense after MechWarrior4. When that stupid game didn't work in any CDROM drive I owned due to DRM, I stopped buying new games for PC. I only play old games or open source games, both of which I have plenty.
Personally, I think the future of pc gaming is a Microsoft app store, where we buy *everything* through Microsoft, much like the iPhone app store. I know that might make many of us go "Ewww", but it is I feel the Windows version of the apt-get repositories, only with a credit card involved.
A few advantages of a Microsoft app store:
- trivial to obtain the latest copy of any software one wants
- implicit whitelist, so no more viruses on our various friends' / relatives' pcs
I know I'm risking karma on this... :-O
The indie humble bundle was an interstig experiment.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Unfortunately, many publishers really ARE stupid when it comes to DRM. They think it is a fight they can win. Also they get focus on the wrong thing. They want to reduce piracy at any cost, rather than focusing on increasing sales, which is what matters.
Even if you could make a 100% uncrackable DRM it wouldn't be useful is said DRM was so invasive that nobody was willing to purchase you game. You've have stopped piracy, but killed sales. It would be like a store so determined to eliminate shoplifting that they sealed all exits except one and had armed guards strip search all customers and employees. It'd probably work but nobody would shop there so in the end it would be worse than doing nothing at all.
I'm quite sure the reason Ubisoft is changing is because their DRM has probably cost them sales, as well as costing a good deal of money to administer. I know I'm two of the sales they lost. I was planning on getting Assassin's Creed 2, since it looked like the first one but with the annoyances taken out. Also Settlers 7 looked interesting. After hearing about the DRM, I wrote them off. I didn't pirate them, they've been cracked despite the "server side processing" shit, I simply played other games. There's no lack of good games out there, I lack the time to play them all so if they want to be assholes that's fine, I'll just spend money elsewhere.
What publishers need to concentrate on is DRM that is non-invasive. I'm not saying DRM is worthless, I'm sure there are people who are cheap and won't pay if they can easily get away with it, but you want to make it so that the DRM doesn't hurt legit users, but actually helps them. Steam is a good example in that regard. If you get a Steamworks protected game, it is to your benefit not to crack it. Reason is when you register it on Steam you get all updates automatically from good servers, and you can redownload it as you please, again from fast servers. It actually improves your experience, makes things easier. So even if someone doesn't care about doing the right thing, the easy of use, their laziness, can convince them to pay.
If companies wise up and start focusing on increasing sales, by making things better for legit users, rather than trying to decrease piracy, I think it'll go a long way.
This isn't a software engineering problem, it's a social engineering problem. DRM can help to some extent, but it can't possibly be a complete solution and it can't be strong enough to approximate a complete solution without causing a host of problems. There are a few key points:
This suggests that the best approach is to use weak DRM then do everything else through social and design factors. It will be as effective as possible in curtailing casual copying, and it won't piss off or drive away your potential paying customers over a futile effort to spite the people who were never going to pay you anyway. At worst, an increased reliance on social and design factors to prevent copying will be equally effective while not pissing off your customer base. If done well, it may be much more effective.
DRM is not a magic bullet. If it was, it would have been working for all these years in which production houses have been erroneously treating it as one. Careful use of DRM may be part of the solution. But it cannot provide a complete solution. Over-reliance on it can do a lot of harm by damaging your customer satisfaction while failing to adequately address the problem of unauthorized copying. It's a bit like the guys taking the abstinence-only approach to sex ed - there's plenty of proof to show that this "solution" only makes the problem worse.
Just make the game free and charge for the online game play in a micropayment fashion.
DRM also costs money in and of itself. If it is your own, you pay someone to develop it. If it is third party, you pay a per copy license fee. Either way you pay someone to implement it in the game. The more complex and tricky the DRM, the harder the implementation. Some extreme ones, like the Cubase protection, does dongle checks on almost every operation, even opening menus. Lots of extra coding to make that happen.
Also of course if the DRM is invasive, it may cost sales. I won't buy Ubisoft titles with their new DRM, too invasive.
What it comes down to is that an economic analysis needs to be done on any DRM. Weigh how many more sales it is likely to generate vs costs. Then choose something intelligently that makes more money. That may be no DRM, it may be something non-invasive like Impulse::Reactor, but is probably not these insane high cost, high maintenance DRMs.
Just let them go to consoles?
To be honest, there really isn't the chance of a used game being unplayable due to scratches if you're going through official channels. EB games, etc, all warranty against scratched-to-hell used copies, and the time it has been an issue they didn't bat an eye. Even when it is a major problem, disk resurfacing is easy and cheap. With digital media, other than booklets there isn't a downside to the secondary market.
They should setup a system that will allow you to re-sell your game for ever decreasing value, but the publisher takes a fixed cut. Say you buy a download game for $50. You could then re-sell the game through 3rd party interfaces, but the publisher takes a fixed $30 cut. It would maintain a price floor, and a publisher incentive, but still give used game owners a reason to get out there and push the titles.
The ______ Agenda
All Steam games get cracked, a little tidbit the article failed to mention.
it boils down to this: I don't give a shit about developers/publishers, and they don't give a shit about me. My wish is to have a fun game to play at a reasonable price. Their wish is to take as much of my money as possible while doing as little work as possible. I may have had warm feelings for some of the people who made my favorite games 10+ years ago, but this obsession with forcing malware down my throat has caused me to quit caring about them all entirely. If you want to see a dime from me, you will sell me a game that plays the way *I* want it to. That means I won't have to put the CD in the drive to play, or be online so you can spy on me.
My new policy is to avoid or buy all games that include any kind of malware from the used market to deliberately deprive the publishers and developers of revenue. If they can't treat their users with respect, they deserve to go bankrupt. I'm just doing my part to help the process along.
There have been numerous $20 DRM-free indy games that were pirated just as much as everything else.
There is no reward for companies that go DRM-free. The people that pirate do so because the pirated version is $0. Good will does not convert pirates.
The only solution is remote processing. Don't let the client have all the code.
It seems everytime I buy something I'm fucked in the ass.
I purchased PowerDVD and there was so much crap and call-home on every run spyware installed with it that I uninstalled it and never used the piece of crap.
Recently I purchased SC2 thinking it would be fun for lans but the asshats at blizzard intentionally disabled LAN play.
Even previously awesome products such as nero have been turned into absoulte crap.
Everyone is bundling CRAP that is no fun to deal with. In game micropayments, in-game advertising, you must be online to play (spyware), DRM.. The only people excited about this shit are the media companies who think they can really make money off of their customers by treating them like crap.
When a game is obsolete and the vendor thinks its been too long since you've given them money what happens when they decide to take down their shit or goes under and all these games are no longer playable?
Its like buying a legal DVD and then burning a copy to actually watch because you are sick of fast forwarding thru all the goddamn commercials and "comming attractions" on something you spent money to purchase.
the best solution is to move some of the code to the server.
The chunk method can keep pirates at bay but an effective implementation would be cost prohibitive. Games just aren't designed to be broken up into a hundred pieces.
MMOs and web games are the future of pc gaming since they keep so much code server side. That and casual games that are purchased by demographics that have low piracy rates.
Valve will eventually go broke, for a sufficiently distant value of "eventually". Much bigger and older firms have gone under; in their heyday, talk of such companies as Woolworth's going under were met with similar scoffing.
Right now, Valve may have the golden touch with their games. Eventually that will pass. The core team that's so excellent will either move on, or retire, or be forced out. The new blood won't be as good. They'll still be good, for awhile, but eventually they'll hit a slump. Even then they won't die right away, people will still buy their stuff for awhile after it starts sucking. But eventually they won't be able to go back to their wells anymore, they will have poisoned them so heavily. (Star Trek, for example, was fairly effectively run into the ground to the point they had to reboot the whole franchise.)
Similarly, Steam may be awesome now. In time, something better will come along. Valve's management will (sooner or later) push to "monetize" Steam heavily, and degrade its usability significantly. Or they will decide that they're a game company, and Steam supports the competition, so they'll spin it off, and without Valve, Steam becomes just another content delivery service. Or Steam will simply eventually become too big and heavy to easily make changes to it, and it will coast along on its inertia, until it gets passed by.
The question is how far into the future this will be. If it is eight decades from now, well, by that time, only archivists and historians will probably care about (say) the original Half-Life. And they will have a legitimate beef, but they also will be few in number, and thus, this is a small problem. If Valve disintegrates five years from now, then it's a big problem, because millions of people will have Steam accounts that disappear.
And make no mistake: If Steam collapses because Valve goes under, there won't be anyone left to sue. Instead, people who owned games via Steam will be creditors, along with the banks and the mortgage holders, etc. in the bankruptcy liquidation. Unfortunately, bankruptcy law puts the general public at the end of the line in such situations. So most likely, your games will simply disappear forever; you get in line for your share of the refund money, and by the time the line rolls down to you, there isn't any left. (Otherwise they wouldn't be broke.)
Like selling me a physical copy of a copyrighted game that I can install and run with my fair use rights and then sell or loan to a friend if I'd like to.
without them the property market would collapse.
without copyright laws the digital market would also collapse.
Most software including video games is developed under the assumption that the government will ensure that the producer is the exclusive seller.
Take away that assumption and most software wouldn't be developed. Wall Street investors would simply pull out of the software market.
The global economy would likely go into a depression from the shock. This is a multi-billion dollar industry after all.
There would just be a big hole where there was once a thriving market. Supply would not meet demand. Most software companies cannot use the Red Hat model since most software does not require support. Intellectual property laws make sense from an economic perspective. It's well established that certain types of intellectual work will only get developed if the government offers protection to the producer. The best evidence of this is the poor selection of GPL'd games and industry-specific software.
Nothing can completely prevent piracy forever. That's not the point.
The point is, Steam at least presents a scenario where if we ignore all moral, legal, and financial reasons, and reduce it to the raw functionality, I'd prefer Steam.
By contrast, almost all other DRM schemes are exactly the opposite. I prefer not to have physical media which can be scratched, so even in its most refined form (console games) where a game can pretty much be treated as a physical object to be bought, sold, lended, rented, etc, I'd still rather have something I can download immediately, back up, and otherwise save from physical harm.
I don't know how many people think like me, but if you add the relative convenience of Steam (click, buy, download faster than a torrent, sometimes start playing before it's even done downloading, no searching for cracks, no worrying about viruses), I would guess there's a large swath of gamers who might consider piracy, but would rather use Steam.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Theres nothing UNIQUE about the pattern of 1's and 0's they are trying to sell you. It may be new... (to us) But it can never be UNIQUE.
And as long as we can replicate the pattern of 1's and 0's that make up a game. We'll duplicate it.
What is the value of something that can be replicated for near zero cost and spread across the planet in hours?
It still requires internet access. That little fact makes this new DRM scheme equally draconian. I swear, these new "product managers" who have never touched a game in their lives are ruining PC gaming.
They need to give the whole product to the buyer just like they did during the 90s and early 2000s.
It's pretty easy in my case. I know I will never purchase something with online DRM. If I see a game I like, I always check for DRM:
Online DRM = pirate
No online DRM (i.e. DRM-free, or a simple DVD check) = buy
If all publishers decide to go with online DRM, I'll pirate everything. If they come to their senses and decide to release DRM-free games or use DVD-based copy protection, I'll buy everything just like I used to before this whole DRM shitfest began.
Some DRM has been effective at delaying piracy.
AC2 could have lasted a lot longer if they had some programmers that were security experts. Their idea was sound but the implementation was spotty. But it still stayed uncracked far longer than most games.
A big company like Ubisoft or EA could make a pretty nasty always-on DRM system. If they could boost sales it might be worth it. I wouldn't personally support such a system but I could see the rational behind the investment when pc piracy rates are so high.
For small and medium sized companies investing in DRM is a waste of limited resources.
Greenman gaming lets you trade games back in when you're done with them.
https://www.greenmangaming.com/
No DRM or Copy Protection has ever in the history of computer games survived uncracked for more than a few days! - Those days of 'exclusivity' does not do anything for sales vs. piracy so continuing to waste money on DRM and the like is stupid, plain and simple. Mind-boggling stupid.
Just make a great game, offer it inexpensively and make it really easy to install and play, and I'm sure people who like it will pay for it. But appear as a greedy MAFIAA-wannabe, make the game really hard to install, requiring hoops, leaps and bounces, semi-impossible to play (requiring online servers, validation and other crap) and sell it for a fortune, and you can be guaranteed that piracy will be rampant and nobody will pay out of their conscience.
And as many have mentioned already - money wasted on DRM is money not spent on making the game itself legendary, and that's a huge mistake!
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Parent is right.
I've lost out of more or less a generation of games.
I stopped pirating after in my last year of uni, then realized that the drm was too intrusive.
I'm stuck playing civ 4 (all expansions, all paid) and a few steam-games, like defcon, some hl-mods and portal.
DRM has basically been a wedge against cultural proliferation, and as such it sucks much more. I almost cry, when I realize that there are games, that I would love to play, but I just will not install them on my computer, due to digital rights management. Bioshock, spore, assasins creed 2, company of heroes, silent hunter 5 and many many more.
DRM is the reason i buy music anymore, i got a sony-infected cd and apparently hadn't turned off auto-play after adding a new dvd-drive.
the people who do install this fit the description:
Because they deprive the world of cultural enrichment. They do so without regards to the fact that promoting cultural enrichment is the very reason they have copyright in the first place.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
I hardly even play non-free games anymore. Excepting the Avernum series, one of the last commercial games I bought was Age of Empires II.
Seriously, I'd advise people to give Battle for Wesnoth or Widelands a try, or some of the free rogue-likes. There are some real gems in open source gaming, and they allow you to stick it to DRM without the slightest bit of piracy.
In countries where there are real consumer protection laws (pretty much all developed countries but the US), if you buy a game in a store and it doesn't work in your machine, you can easilly go back and get a refund (in the UK the magic words are "Not fit for purpose" and "Trading standards").
However, it's almost impossible to have your consumer rights respected by an online trader, especially one not based in the same country as you are.
This is why I don't buy games online anymore (unless we're talking about stupendously cheap stuff like those from GoG).
Steam is even worse in this respect since in effect your ability to play the games you buy is tied to their good will (if they "loose" your account with all your games in it, what can you do?)
If what happened to GP had happened to me, I would have gone back to the store and gotten a refund, only loosing a bit of time but not being $40 out of pocket.
I decided I wanted to play Bioshock. Yes, it's a few years old, but so what.
Living in Germany, I can only buy a censored version. I am over 18 and want to play the game as it was intended to be played. Steam not an option, then.
Looking for physical media, I realized that SecuROM is still used with the DVD variant. I refuse to install any such thing on any machine I own or maintain.
I contacted Steam support, looked around the web, etc. I tried _really_ hard to play by the rules.
Long story short? I bought a DVD and installed Bioshock from an age-old torrent that has been alive for a few years now. To add more irony to irony, the torrent download was faster than the typical Steam download and apart from a single .reg, I did not even install Bioshock. I runs happily from where I extracted it.
People... DO NOT MAKE IT HARD FOR ME TO GIVE YOU MONEY! You would think that should be obvious...
I had thousands of dollars in games that I actively played in my spare time in the late '90s. I maintained an entire system just for gaming. Now I have just a handful of old Loki games under Linux that I play, mostly turn-based strategy. DRM and the resulting compatibility and durability/backup issues with the vast majority of PC games just made me feel like I was being had. The balance of "gaming time" shifted from actual gameplay to troubleshooting, DRM-fighting, hardware-DRM-compatibility researching/installing, and so on.
Totally not worth it, and today I basically wouldn't game again if DRM ended tomorrow. It was a fun hobby that I found meaningful in some way until I finally ended up completely disillusioned, and once that happens, you can't really get it back.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
and to maintain dual Windows/Linux installs with latest OS versions and partitions full of applications and games.
DRM and serials and keys and activation actively ended my Windows partition. I eBayed off thousands of dollars in software, I stopped buying the latest version Windows and now just download the media and install whatever version is on the license sticker on my hardware and nothing more, and I do it in a tiny partition "just in case" I need access to Windows.
Basically, the hardware and software industries lost a customer that used to spend rather a lot of money on gaming hardware and on software of all kinds. Rather than continue to fight it all and feel cheated, I went 100 percent Linux. These days I'e started buying Mac OS X and installing in on PC hardware and paying for Mac OS applications instead. They're cheaper, the OS is better, and the DRM isn't as onerous.
I'm totally willing to buy software, but only if it's actually useful/usable long-term. DRM makes it useless/unusable or limits its utility to one or two installs that only work with a single version of Windows or a very limited and historically specific set of hardware.
I suppose what they want is for me to have to re-buy thousands upon thousands of dollars in software and hardware every six months. Not gonna happen. They should have been satisfied with once every 2-3 years.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
> and installed Bioshock
> not even install Bioshock
Yah, yah. You know what I mean :)
Perhaps the game companies want to offer a service rather than a product. So when you buy a game, it is similar to buying an entrance ticket to a theme park. The game won't last forever. It is just a change of mentality, and gamers have to accept the fact that they cannot "own" the game, just as you cannot own a theme park (well, you can, but you get the idea).
DRM is a scam where the Exec's pay for a piece of software that will do nothing after days or hours, that software will make the life of the paying customers worst. The Real protection a bussines need against piracy, is to calculate how much his game will really sell, and ignore the pirates. Just that. Any money put on converting the pirates into customers is lose money, and more lose money if make the life of the paying customers a hell.
-Woof woof woof!
I think this is the key, isn't it? Whenever I use DRM it always feels like I'm actually renting and that I don't own the game.
Urgh; this is a tough one. On the one hand, I want to make sure that the makers of said games make money enough on their products to keep producing MORE games... and, similarly, I wish people didn't have such a compunction to steal! On the other hand, though, if DRM gets in the way of playing a game, it's almost just as bad (for both the player and the maker simultaneously.)
DRM only affects paying customers who play by the rules.
DRM ceased being about preventing "piracy" nearly a decade ago (if not earlier). DRM does not affect pirates. At best it makes difficult work for the one or two guys who initially crack a given scheme. Though I suspect those guys are probably getting more enjoyment out of unraveling the DRM than they would playing the game it's wrapped around - so even there it is a failure to affect "pirates".
Take UBI's DRM for instance, because it seems to be the one on everyone's minds these days. Assassin's Creed II was one of the first games to use it. Not only was the game out on usenet before retail, but the DRM was also smashed. If I can be permitted an anaolgy: Companies like UBI wants us to think of DRM like a lock that they use to put on their most valuable treasures, and they want us to think that they're just doing what is necessary to defend their livelihood. So in terms of Assassin's Creed II, it's like they bought a brand new lock to lock up their priceless treasure, then someone came in, right in front of them, cracked the lock, made a master key, duplicated it a thousand times and started spreading the keys all over the sidewalk in front of their building with little labels on them saying what they were for. Now the reasonable thing to do would have been to demand your money back from the a-hole who sold you the lock that didn't work, and move your valuables elsewhere, but that's clearly not what UBI did. They just soldiered on.
Why? Because the DRM still works. It still does what they want it to. It controls consumers who play by the rules. No company in this business is naive enough to truly believe that DRM will stop or even slow "piracy". (There may be elements in the company, like CEO's and people distant enough from the concept and susceptible enough to BS propaganda that believe it, but I'm not counting them - they're just highly paid idiots.)
Otherwise, why would DRM be implemented to stop people from playing a game before the release date? Not all pre-release copies are unlicensed. Release dates are a function of marketing, not technology - especially in situations where a software is completed and sitting on a shelf for two weeks before anyone is allowed to buy it. DRM is about controlling customers.
Why would DRM require that you log into an Internet service to "activate" a software, or only allow you to install it a certain number of times? This is not to prevent "piracy". It is to discourage "sharing" via sneakernet, and it is to kill off secondary sales. They don't want the copy of the game you have to retain any value - they are attempting to make software behave like perishable goods - in other words they want your copy to be "used up" so that anyone seeking a copy is forced to buy it new from them.
Again, these are not things that affect "pirates". "Pirates" disable the "protection" scheme and just go on their merry way. You may think that "pirates" are just greedy bastards who want everything for free, but their efforts are sometimes the only thing tipping the balance in favor of consumers.
It is ironic that so many people who read posts bitching about DRM automatically assume that the ones doing the complaining are just frustrated "pirates". "Pirates" do not complain about DRM - IT DOES NOT BOTHER THEM. The people doing the complaining are either paying customers, or people who would be if it were not for the DRM.
DRM isn't a problem. You know what's really more worry some isn't the servers going away it's the game simply not working anymore. Every game I own that's over 7 years old or so won't run on my fancy new computer. So in another 10 years will say starcraft 2's servers still be there? Maybe; maybe not. But will it still run on my computer with out all sorts of hacks and emulation? Probably not.
The idea sounds fantastic because it preserves the principle of ownership. I could actually resell a game, or buy a used game. Which is exactly why no game devs will adopt it. They LOVE that Steam killed the used game market.
It's ironic that this is posted on Slashdot the day before the release of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental:_War_of_Magic. And Elemental comes from Stardock, the game publisher that has probably been the absolute best on not putting intrusive DRM in their games.
Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, recently told gamers what sort of DRM he has planned for his upcoming turn based strategy-cum-RPG Elemental: War of Magic. His plan is simple: “What I think would be helpful against piracy is if you actually gave users stuff.” The limited edition boxed set of the game will be full of undownloadable trinkets.
It’ll contain a map, pewter dragon, a poster, and the Hiergemenon – the game’s encyclopedia, in book form. Brad calls it “Half D&D monster manual and half lore book.” It’s got maps and artwork, race profiles, short stories, and a detailed breakdown of the game’s universe.
Put your money where your mouth is and support Elemental. Not only will be you be sending a clear signal to the big publishers (No DRM can still mean big sales) but you'll be rewarding the guys who are "doing it right". And as a bonus, early reviews indicate you'll be getting a really good turn based strategy game!
There are two problems I have with Steamworks.
1. You are at the mercy of Steam - with the EULA they are within their rights remove your access to games you have already purchased, or even start charging you an access fee to continue having access to those games - and your only recourse is you can cancel your account.
2. Steamworks completely removes your rights under the First Sale Doctrine. Once you have started using a Steamworks game you no longer have any rights whatsoever to transfer your license to another user.
It is one thing to sell Steamworks games through Steam, but when they are selling these products at retail, without warning that they are denying the end user a right that they otherwise have with any other retail product... and still want to charge full retail price while selling such an encumbered product.
Sorry, having my patches sent to me automatically (along with advertising for other games I might enjoy) is not worth me giving up my rights as a consumer.
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
And Steamworks enabled games won't let you resell the game even if you have the disc.
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
To me there is no comparison between consoles and PC's when it comes to gaming. PC gaming will ALWAYS win out to me from a performance and control standpoint.
I am a gamer... a well off gamer who likes the full gambit of experience but most importantly be able to set the controls the way I like. Halo was an excellent example for this. PC gamers wiped the floor with the xbox counterparts when xbox live allowed PC gamers to play against Xbox'ers. There wasn't a single Xboxer in the top 100 players.
PC gaming will never die. If labels leave, new competition will take up the market. Xbox's and PS3's ARE computers at this point. That's what they are. Hell both of them can run linux or windows. In fact, gaming today is heading TOWARD PC gaming, just in a controlled manner they call "consoles".
This is just like the RIAA and their fight toward controlling the environment. Focus on your customers, focus on the experience and you won't have to worry about Pirating! The people who steal generally cannot afford it, or wouldn't have bought it anyway. Stop focusing on these people as you'll NEVER beat them. It's a challenge, a game... to them to break your scheme. Every single DRM has been broken within two weeks, the only exception being BlueRay which took a little bit longer. Stop wasting resources on this.
The publishers that use DRM made the mistake of declaring war on people who love the sport of breaking DRM. It's gotten to the point they create executables that let you break the DRM so anyone can do it without any tech knowledge at all.
SHOW me a single reputable study (REPUTABLE) that shows piracy is hurting publishers. This would be a study that connects pirates who would have bought it if it had DRM. Any study that it's entire source set is that of a college campus is going to have skewed results.
Buying a game is like buying a car. DRM is like the key to that car.
If I buy a car, I do not expect to have a significant percentage of the cost of that car used to make the key. Especially when the justification for that is that the key cannot be copied by key-cutters and third-party garages.
Yes, this make the car more "secure" - for a while - because official keys cannot be fabricated without the manufacturer's co-operation. FOR A WHILE. But there isn't a car in production that has an "uncopyable" key, or that can't be broken into without any key at all - the fact that manufacturers can make a key in the first place tells you that.
However, in blocking out this "unauthorised key copying" industry (some of which is actually legitimate - not everyone who takes their keys into a key-cutting place is intending to break into someone else's house), the manufacturer is spending more time designing more and more elaborate keys (all of which can be copied "unofficially" at any garage within a matter of days of the car being produced), charging me more and more for the privilege (by moving some of the value of the game into the cost of the key itself), and in the process giving me a car that I can't always drive, sometimes won't open, that I must NEVER lose the keys to (because in a couple of years it'll be almost impossible to get an official key ever again, and in the meantime the only option for replacement is to buy an entirely new car direct from the manufacturer in order to get "another" key) and where the key weighs 12 kilos, cannot be put onto a ring with other keys, and comes only in flourescent day-glo orange (just in case someone wants to run off with it to make it work on another car of the same model) - with holographic iris-identification-over-IP built in to the key just in case you try to lend your car to someone else.
Software copyright infringement is a problem. So do something about it that a) hurts the people doing it to you and b) doesn't hurt the people who aren't. Current DRM solutions do NEITHER of those.
I used to game when there was no DRM and if I wanted to pirate it was as simple as copying floppies. I bought a game every months or two and rarely pirated.
I carried this thorugh the CD check era and simply used no-CD cracks. When no CD cracks limited me from running the latest cersion of some games or palying online, I stopped buying games. Anymore it's rare that I buy new games. I deal with the DRM in Steam for HL2 because I only play it online with DoD mod. That's really the only game I play anymore. It's cheaper since I don't need to upgrade my computer or buy new games, and easier because I don't sweat having to circumvent the latest DRM so I can enjoy my games how I want to play them.
I now waste a lot less time on video games and spend more time doing fun active things, so in a way DRM has improved my life by pushing me away from wasting time and money on video games and computer upgrades.
However, if you think about installing your game on a friend's PC or sharing it with others then please don't do it, okay?
(emphasis added)
..., well, it works for me
Anyone who's paying attention already knows that all DRM is crackable for people who are sufficiently cheap. In fact, I'm inlined to believe that excessive DRM only posses a "challenge" for players to crack. Instead of just having a game to play, there's the game of cracking the DRM, with the reward being you get to play a game.
I think social-hacking by game makers would be a much more effective and affordable approach. To do it properly, they'd need some kind of carrot and stick approach. Here's an example, let's say the game takes a good old CD key. When it boots the first time it tries to authenticate with a server. If the server is found, and the key is valid and never before used, the loading screen displays something along the lines of "Thank you for purchasing this game. Your money allows GAME_COMPANY_X to make the best games possible." If it connects and the key is valid but not new, they could select a message based on how recently the key was used by someone else. If very recently, they could splash "It looks like you may be borrowing this game from a friend. We approve of sharing, but hope you'll love this game enough to purchase your own copy." Or, if the last user hasn't loaded in a while, it could display something friendly about reselling the game.
Meanwhile, if the server finds the key is not authentic, or is being used by lots and lots of people at a time it could display "You do not appear to have an authentic copy of our game. We do not believe in punishing people who play our games, so we will not record your IP address or in any other way violate your privacy, but do know that our developers must be paid to produce games of this quality. So, if you like the game, please buy a legal copy or share one with a friend."
My wording might be incorrect, but I think a simple scheme like that might go much further towards encouraging players who like the game to buy it while removing the fun of cracking from those who just like a challenge. Also, if I do purchase a valid copy and for some reason my key is being used by other people or I'm not on a network, I can still play the game and the message itself may even be positive. E.g. we can't authenticate you, but please enjoy our game anyways, and please play a legal copy.
The only problem with this kind of idea is that to CEOs it doesn't look like you're doing anything. They won't realize it's probably more effective at reducing theft than any DRM they can dream up.
I have stopped buying/playing/watching products by companies who have show their disdain for me and their employees.
Vote with your pockets if you are tired of something. I do.
When are people going to learn that if you don't like something a company is doing then don't buy their products. If you keep bending over, they'll keep sticking it in. I think if everyone could keep from getting the newest versions of whatever game software for a year - you know, like maybe just hold on to Madden 10 for now and leave 11 alone for a year - they will have to adapt. By adapting, I mean they would have to give into the demand of their customers. If there is no demand for game software with DRM, don't buy it - they will not make it anymore, I guarantee it. Demand doesn't mean you keep providing a constant revenue stream and then bitch about what you've bought. If you keep buying products like this why would they change their course of ever "improving" DRM technology. You don't just keep buying shit you're not happy with and then bitch about it after the fact. C'mon, people have to be smarter than this.