Seeing as how I work in the industry, have talked to DRM vendors, and have talked to people implementing DRM in games I helped create... Yes, I really believe that. The secondary market is a concern for console executives that they're combating with free downloadable content for the original purchaser.... All of the PC executives I've worked with were terrified about bittorrenting, and were implementing DRM to combat that. They're the ones implementing draconian DRM, and they're all doing it to combat copying.
It is interesting that you say that. I'm holding a copy of Spore right now that has made it very clear that you have to register it and you're only registering it once. I'm willing to bet, too, that that the downloadable content is pretty well linked to your account, right? As opposed to just being about the binaries appearing in the right folder, like game expansions used to do? Well, I'll grant you this, I don't know what they're thinking. You see, I'm looking at this from the eyes of the consumer. Every year that goes by, games become more and more disposable. Instead of relaxing on use of DRM, it's increasing. All in the name of 'fighting piracy'. So now they're in the mode of 'everybody needs to pay.' They want everybody who plays to pay. They're not lifting one finger to accomodate those buying second-hand games. They're certainly happy to use DRM to make the DLC work.
Niche development houses that couldn't get on the shelf in Target wanted to leave physical media. Do you really think Jonathan Blow didn't try to get a distributor to carry Braid before going XBLA?
I said history, not recent events. The ability to sidestep the publisher has been around for ages. Nobody cared. They're happy to put their 1 gig demo out there for free download, but when it comes to being able to purchase on-line... noooooo we need Steam to come along to make that 'technology' happen. You know what's funny is when I was in school we were forced to watch these stupid videos on how piracy kills software development. What a load of crap that was. It's never happened!
I'll tell you something about myself you may find interesting. I have software on the market right now. I wrote a plug-in to a popular 3d app and it's been for sale for the last 4 years. My partner wanted all kinds of protection in there. "What if a bazillion ppl download it and don't pay for it?" Yeesh. Fortunately that got settled when we went to visit a potential customer. We went to a studio, whose work you've seen on-screen, and had a nice long chat with them. They said something very interesting. They have a ton of computers and artists coming and going all the time. They do not want to fuck around with licensing. Keep it simple. And you know what? That's what we did. The protection scheme was a simple username and unlock code. That is it. It didn't check for dongles. It doesn't time out. It doesn't install a watch-dog on the machine. It doesn't prevent your CD-ROM from working. All it does is it requires that code and it puts your name in the titlebar. It doesn't even care whether you are using PC or Mac. And you know what happened? We had steady sales for several months. Then the crack came out. And then... our steady sales continued. You could not look at a chart of our sales and see when the crack arrived. Seriously, the chart is like a straight line with a slight bump upwards here and there. But... if we had gone to the ridiculous lengths my partner wanted, we would have guaranteed a non-sale with the aforementioned studio. It is more than likely other places would have shaken their heads, too. We catered to the guys handing us wads of cash, not to the guys who weren't.
In context, I meant that the forms of console DRM that I had previously mentioned hardly ever get discussed as they aren't a problem for players. Players accept CD-key based DRM, hardware DRM, and have begrudgingly acce
No, it doesn't. It serves the purpose of limiting supply. It does not know anything about who the user is.
Just because you see them as two distict categories does not make it so.
That's funny. Heh. "A truck and a car are the exact same thing! Just because you see the other capabilities a truck offers doesn't mean it's actually any different!"
Let's see which one works NOW.
I have 15 year old games that still work.
DRM is far more successful at deterring pirates than media validation ever has been.
[CITATION NEEDED] Read the headlines.
Stop being such a jerk on here.
How do I do that? Let me guess... by agreeing with you?
No, the disc requirement is now DRM. XBox360 allows you to copy a game to the harddrive, but still requires the disc be inserted to verify you own it. There is nothing being loaded off the disc, just validation.
That's not DRM. Media validation goes back at least as far as the early 80's. You give that disc to somebody else and they can play it just fine.
It's even more stupid because for example right now you can buy Street Fighter IV off the xbox live store and download it and never touch a disc, but because I bought the game as a disc, I forever will need to swap the disc in when I want to play.
Can you lay out the exact differences between schemes where a game runs from the HDD but requires a disk as a key to play and one where a game runs from the HDD but requires a login as a key to play?
- You can install only so many times before you have to pick up a phone. (See Spore.) - You can only activate if they're on-line. - I'm not certain if it's impossible, but you'll definitely have trouble selling it.
And before you say "They're trying to profit by re-selling us the same junk!" the DRM contained in Final Fight is clearly intended to prevent unauthorized copying. This has nothing to do with killing the secondary market...
Heh. I'm sorry I find this statement amusing. Do you honestly seriously think, and don't forget how outspoken the industry has been about used games, that the lack of ability to sell games isn't on their minds? Really? You really should look up the history of electronic download of content. Nobody wanted to leave physical media. So why all the sudden are they actually putting development effort into something that they think only needs one little leak to take down their business model? It has to mean more money for them, right?
Why do most people not talk about that as awful, awful stuff? Because it doesn't really effect the average end-consumer.
They talk about it all the time, especially on the PC side. There have been a number of headlines since the start of the year about exactly this topic. Honestly I'm not even sure how you missed all that.
And quite simply, to game companies it's all to stop people from casually copying games, and slow down the downloaded hacks...
No. It's all about getting people to pay them money. That includes, for example, wiping out the used game market.
When we're talking purely digital good, a DRM can make much more sense, and there's no physical item to imply strict ownership.
That'd be nice and dandy if they weren't trying to double-dip. Are they selling us a game we can play for the rest of our lives, or a subscription to it? Personally I don't think DRM works in that context. Rentals? Sure, no prob! There's no expectation they'd last longer than promised.
I understand my digital purchases' lifetime is directly related to the lifetime of their servers, and I'm alright with that.
I'd love to hear from you 10 years from now about this topic.
Isn't that the point of everything a publicly traded company does?
Were you intentionally not trying to get my point? I mean, seriously, the very next sentence. Yeesh.
By my definition, if the DRM is noticed when the servers go down (as in, can't use it any more), it's a bad DRM.
Right. Wait and see what happens a few years from now when that game is no longer supported. You paid for the game, but you can no longer play it.
I don't think piracy needs to be taken out of proportion to see the business desire for DRM
It's not about what you or I think, it's about what those guys think. They're still charging you the price of owning a game for the reality of only renting the game. That really is the key point right there. Until they change over to the rental model (why they don't is beyond me, a service like Game Tap sounds often!) you're basically agreeing to a $60 rental fee for a game they do not actually guarantee to support for any amount of time.
I'm seeing a lot of semantics in your post and little reason. DRM, copy protection, call it what you like, the purpose is the same.
No, it's not. In fact, it's at odds with the rest of what you posted. I would encourage you to go look up the difference between DRM and copy protection. It's a fascinating read, though longer than I'm interested in posting here amongst people who'd rather argue than discuss. I'll give you the short version, though: The key difference is that with copy protection you can sell your game to somebody else.
I have to have my disc in my drive to play a game despite it being installed. The disc doesn't spin except on app start up.
DRM is what they use so you can do things like download games from Steam. Spore is another example. When you install Spore, you don't need the disc anymore. You also have limits on how many times they're installed, you need their permission to install, and good luck selling it to somebody else.
So, no, copy protection and DRM are not the same. In fact, you proved it with your own post.
Semantics. Of course, the intent is for DRM to prevent you from copying the content...
The intent of DRM is to get you to pay them money. DRM is what, for example, makes it difficult for you to sell your copy of Spore.
However, a DRM whose presence is rarely if ever noticed is a good DRM scheme.
That's a short-sighted view. The big problem with DRM is 'what happens 10 years from now when the servers no longer exist'? With DRM, any DRM, you're not purchasing software, you're renting it.
The whole reason they blow piracy out of proportion is so that people will actually use the phrase 'good DRM scheme'.
Requiring to have the disc/cartridge in the system while playing the game _IS_ a DRM scheme.
You're thinking of just plain old copy protection, and you're still wrong. On almost all the systems you mentioned, the physical media was a technical requirment to play the game, not a matter of company policy. It's not like everybody was sitting around going "why do I have to have a cartridge to play may SNES?"
My point is that people are on a misguided tirade against DRM. When really what they want is to play a game without DRM getting in their way.
The only misguided bit I've seen is calling DRM and copy protection the same thing. It's not, but since DRM is being used so much now the difference usually isn't big enough to ause a confusing conversation. (I wouldn't have even brought it up if you hadn't mentioned 20 year old systems.:P)
Anyway, to get back to what you said, your point is both right and useless. There really is no such thing as DRM that doesn't get in your way for the simple reason that customers have different ideas from the publisher. If it didn't get in the way, there'd be no point to it!
The sooner that customers realize DRM is OK, and the sooner that publishers realize that DRM can hurt consumers -- that's when we'll meet that nice and comfy middleground.
Think about why copy protection started turning to DRM in the first place. Your dream will never happen. It's not just because these businesses think all their customers are waiting to turn into thieves, it's because they want to kill the used video game market, too. There is no middle ground. They need to take a deep breath, look around, and calm down. Internet ubiquity has risen in the last 10 years, so has the video game market. Their fears are unjustified.
I'd pay for it if they made it available outside the US.
Good luck. They aren't getting advertisers from your region and it's unlikely they'd be happy with you just paying them what the advertisers would have.
same here, which means I don't care about giving/. any page views,
Uh, yes you do. Apple stories bring in lots of comments, which means they bring in lots of ad views, which means Slashdot has an incentive to keep doing exactly what you're bitching about. It doesn't matter whether you use ad-block or turn off that switch or not.
...which also means I can bitch about Apple Marketing being invasive... all day long.
...which is fine if you don't mind the fact that you're feeding the situation you're bitching about. Your ignornace of how ad-views affect you regardless of blockage doesn't suggest you would be.
You picked the wrong article to bring this up in. This isn't an iPhone story, it's a story about Gizmodo being asshats.
But... while we're on the topic: So long as Apple stories generate comments Slashdot's gonna keep posting them. Lots of the comments I've seen in this thread and on the last one were "mememememe not another Apple story!" It's like watching a guy write a 3 page email about how painful his carpal tunnel is. If you guys are really sick of 'Apple Marketing', maybe you shouldn't be rewarding Slashdot with ad views and generating content for them to serve even more ads. You all already know that bitching on Slashdot won't change the editors' minds. Silence is your best option.
Slashdot Mirror
Seeing as how I work in the industry, have talked to DRM vendors, and have talked to people implementing DRM in games I helped create... Yes, I really believe that. The secondary market is a concern for console executives that they're combating with free downloadable content for the original purchaser. ... All of the PC executives I've worked with were terrified about bittorrenting, and were implementing DRM to combat that. They're the ones implementing draconian DRM, and they're all doing it to combat copying.
It is interesting that you say that. I'm holding a copy of Spore right now that has made it very clear that you have to register it and you're only registering it once. I'm willing to bet, too, that that the downloadable content is pretty well linked to your account, right? As opposed to just being about the binaries appearing in the right folder, like game expansions used to do? Well, I'll grant you this, I don't know what they're thinking. You see, I'm looking at this from the eyes of the consumer. Every year that goes by, games become more and more disposable. Instead of relaxing on use of DRM, it's increasing. All in the name of 'fighting piracy'. So now they're in the mode of 'everybody needs to pay.' They want everybody who plays to pay. They're not lifting one finger to accomodate those buying second-hand games. They're certainly happy to use DRM to make the DLC work.
Niche development houses that couldn't get on the shelf in Target wanted to leave physical media. Do you really think Jonathan Blow didn't try to get a distributor to carry Braid before going XBLA?
I said history, not recent events. The ability to sidestep the publisher has been around for ages. Nobody cared. They're happy to put their 1 gig demo out there for free download, but when it comes to being able to purchase on-line... noooooo we need Steam to come along to make that 'technology' happen. You know what's funny is when I was in school we were forced to watch these stupid videos on how piracy kills software development. What a load of crap that was. It's never happened!
I'll tell you something about myself you may find interesting. I have software on the market right now. I wrote a plug-in to a popular 3d app and it's been for sale for the last 4 years. My partner wanted all kinds of protection in there. "What if a bazillion ppl download it and don't pay for it?" Yeesh. Fortunately that got settled when we went to visit a potential customer. We went to a studio, whose work you've seen on-screen, and had a nice long chat with them. They said something very interesting. They have a ton of computers and artists coming and going all the time. They do not want to fuck around with licensing. Keep it simple. And you know what? That's what we did. The protection scheme was a simple username and unlock code. That is it. It didn't check for dongles. It doesn't time out. It doesn't install a watch-dog on the machine. It doesn't prevent your CD-ROM from working. All it does is it requires that code and it puts your name in the titlebar. It doesn't even care whether you are using PC or Mac. And you know what happened? We had steady sales for several months. Then the crack came out. And then... our steady sales continued. You could not look at a chart of our sales and see when the crack arrived. Seriously, the chart is like a straight line with a slight bump upwards here and there. But... if we had gone to the ridiculous lengths my partner wanted, we would have guaranteed a non-sale with the aforementioned studio. It is more than likely other places would have shaken their heads, too. We catered to the guys handing us wads of cash, not to the guys who weren't.
In context, I meant that the forms of console DRM that I had previously mentioned hardly ever get discussed as they aren't a problem for players. Players accept CD-key based DRM, hardware DRM, and have begrudgingly acce
No, not limiting the supply but controlling the supply.
I am not seeing the distinction. Could you elaborate, please?
DRM has been successful at this but media validation never has.
This is comically untrue.
No, just by discussing in a nice way.
Then reciprocate.
How insightful.
There is a lot you didn't quote there.
Where you're wrong is your ideology that DRM and customer satisfaction are mutually exclusive. They aren't.
"How insightful". I provided reasoning. Your turn.
Media validation serves the same purpose.
No, it doesn't. It serves the purpose of limiting supply. It does not know anything about who the user is.
Just because you see them as two distict categories does not make it so.
That's funny. Heh. "A truck and a car are the exact same thing! Just because you see the other capabilities a truck offers doesn't mean it's actually any different!"
Let's see which one works NOW.
I have 15 year old games that still work.
DRM is far more successful at deterring pirates than media validation ever has been.
[CITATION NEEDED] Read the headlines.
Stop being such a jerk on here.
How do I do that? Let me guess... by agreeing with you?
No, the disc requirement is now DRM. XBox360 allows you to copy a game to the harddrive, but still requires the disc be inserted to verify you own it. There is nothing being loaded off the disc, just validation.
That's not DRM. Media validation goes back at least as far as the early 80's. You give that disc to somebody else and they can play it just fine.
It's even more stupid because for example right now you can buy Street Fighter IV off the xbox live store and download it and never touch a disc, but because I bought the game as a disc, I forever will need to swap the disc in when I want to play.
Let's see which one still works in 2020.
Can you lay out the exact differences between schemes where a game runs from the HDD but requires a disk as a key to play and one where a game runs from the HDD but requires a login as a key to play?
- You can install only so many times before you have to pick up a phone. (See Spore.)
- You can only activate if they're on-line.
- I'm not certain if it's impossible, but you'll definitely have trouble selling it.
And before you say "They're trying to profit by re-selling us the same junk!" the DRM contained in Final Fight is clearly intended to prevent unauthorized copying. This has nothing to do with killing the secondary market...
Heh. I'm sorry I find this statement amusing. Do you honestly seriously think, and don't forget how outspoken the industry has been about used games, that the lack of ability to sell games isn't on their minds? Really? You really should look up the history of electronic download of content. Nobody wanted to leave physical media. So why all the sudden are they actually putting development effort into something that they think only needs one little leak to take down their business model? It has to mean more money for them, right?
Why do most people not talk about that as awful, awful stuff? Because it doesn't really effect the average end-consumer.
They talk about it all the time, especially on the PC side. There have been a number of headlines since the start of the year about exactly this topic. Honestly I'm not even sure how you missed all that.
And quite simply, to game companies it's all to stop people from casually copying games, and slow down the downloaded hacks...
No. It's all about getting people to pay them money. That includes, for example, wiping out the used game market.
When we're talking purely digital good, a DRM can make much more sense, and there's no physical item to imply strict ownership.
That'd be nice and dandy if they weren't trying to double-dip. Are they selling us a game we can play for the rest of our lives, or a subscription to it? Personally I don't think DRM works in that context. Rentals? Sure, no prob! There's no expectation they'd last longer than promised.
I understand my digital purchases' lifetime is directly related to the lifetime of their servers, and I'm alright with that.
I'd love to hear from you 10 years from now about this topic.
Isn't that the point of everything a publicly traded company does?
Were you intentionally not trying to get my point? I mean, seriously, the very next sentence. Yeesh.
By my definition, if the DRM is noticed when the servers go down (as in, can't use it any more), it's a bad DRM.
Right. Wait and see what happens a few years from now when that game is no longer supported. You paid for the game, but you can no longer play it.
I don't think piracy needs to be taken out of proportion to see the business desire for DRM
It's not about what you or I think, it's about what those guys think. They're still charging you the price of owning a game for the reality of only renting the game. That really is the key point right there. Until they change over to the rental model (why they don't is beyond me, a service like Game Tap sounds often!) you're basically agreeing to a $60 rental fee for a game they do not actually guarantee to support for any amount of time.
I'm seeing a lot of semantics in your post and little reason. DRM, copy protection, call it what you like, the purpose is the same.
No, it's not. In fact, it's at odds with the rest of what you posted. I would encourage you to go look up the difference between DRM and copy protection. It's a fascinating read, though longer than I'm interested in posting here amongst people who'd rather argue than discuss. I'll give you the short version, though: The key difference is that with copy protection you can sell your game to somebody else.
I have to have my disc in my drive to play a game despite it being installed. The disc doesn't spin except on app start up.
DRM is what they use so you can do things like download games from Steam. Spore is another example. When you install Spore, you don't need the disc anymore. You also have limits on how many times they're installed, you need their permission to install, and good luck selling it to somebody else.
So, no, copy protection and DRM are not the same. In fact, you proved it with your own post.
Semantics. Of course, the intent is for DRM to prevent you from copying the content...
The intent of DRM is to get you to pay them money. DRM is what, for example, makes it difficult for you to sell your copy of Spore.
However, a DRM whose presence is rarely if ever noticed is a good DRM scheme.
That's a short-sighted view. The big problem with DRM is 'what happens 10 years from now when the servers no longer exist'? With DRM, any DRM, you're not purchasing software, you're renting it.
The whole reason they blow piracy out of proportion is so that people will actually use the phrase 'good DRM scheme'.
Requiring to have the disc/cartridge in the system while playing the game _IS_ a DRM scheme.
You're thinking of just plain old copy protection, and you're still wrong. On almost all the systems you mentioned, the physical media was a technical requirment to play the game, not a matter of company policy. It's not like everybody was sitting around going "why do I have to have a cartridge to play may SNES?"
My point is that people are on a misguided tirade against DRM. When really what they want is to play a game without DRM getting in their way.
The only misguided bit I've seen is calling DRM and copy protection the same thing. It's not, but since DRM is being used so much now the difference usually isn't big enough to ause a confusing conversation. (I wouldn't have even brought it up if you hadn't mentioned 20 year old systems. :P)
Anyway, to get back to what you said, your point is both right and useless. There really is no such thing as DRM that doesn't get in your way for the simple reason that customers have different ideas from the publisher. If it didn't get in the way, there'd be no point to it!
The sooner that customers realize DRM is OK, and the sooner that publishers realize that DRM can hurt consumers -- that's when we'll meet that nice and comfy middleground.
Think about why copy protection started turning to DRM in the first place. Your dream will never happen. It's not just because these businesses think all their customers are waiting to turn into thieves, it's because they want to kill the used video game market, too. There is no middle ground. They need to take a deep breath, look around, and calm down. Internet ubiquity has risen in the last 10 years, so has the video game market. Their fears are unjustified.
The Weird Al reference would have been more dead on if GP had made more references to food.
I'd pay for it if they made it available outside the US.
Good luck. They aren't getting advertisers from your region and it's unlikely they'd be happy with you just paying them what the advertisers would have.
... but no one sucks Steve Jobs' dick more than you.
Amusingly your link doesn't even begin to suggest that. Which means you're a dude I zinged recently and I bet I even know which one. Bitter much?
Alright, men! Let's wave our pitchforks, complain about all the Apple news, and make sure Slashdot serves as many ads as possible in the process!
Not exactly recent history.
It wasn't that long ago. In 1938 we found the last surviving knight of the Templar. Actually he might still be around!
"you definitely have too much time on your hands." ... said the guy bitching on Slashdot.
same here, which means I don't care about giving /. any page views,
Uh, yes you do. Apple stories bring in lots of comments, which means they bring in lots of ad views, which means Slashdot has an incentive to keep doing exactly what you're bitching about. It doesn't matter whether you use ad-block or turn off that switch or not.
...which also means I can bitch about Apple Marketing being invasive ... all day long.
...which is fine if you don't mind the fact that you're feeding the situation you're bitching about. Your ignornace of how ad-views affect you regardless of blockage doesn't suggest you would be.
Are you saying that when you check that I don't see ads?
You picked the wrong article to bring this up in. This isn't an iPhone story, it's a story about Gizmodo being asshats.
But... while we're on the topic: So long as Apple stories generate comments Slashdot's gonna keep posting them. Lots of the comments I've seen in this thread and on the last one were "mememememe not another Apple story!" It's like watching a guy write a 3 page email about how painful his carpal tunnel is. If you guys are really sick of 'Apple Marketing', maybe you shouldn't be rewarding Slashdot with ad views and generating content for them to serve even more ads. You all already know that bitching on Slashdot won't change the editors' minds. Silence is your best option.
Any time you come up with any other number, they'll claim your methodology is flawed.
How do they argue against their revenues going up every year?
The best solution is to just boycott this kind of companies. Stop buying their products. Educate others to do the same.
Won't work. They'll blame piracy for their losses.
The most effective thing I've seen so far is a flood of one-star reviews on Amazon on Spore. Go look that up.
But we all know this is never going to happen and people will keep buying their products.
Hah. That alone is a good reason they shouldn't be worrying about piracy.
Haha. What's sad is after I posted that I looked down and noticed I was wearing a Transformers T-shirt.
Super cool, huh?
Humm... it seems like we are seeing an increase in earthquakes...
No, we're not. It really isn't a good idea to use the media to measure how something 'increases'.