News Crytek defends Crysis 2 DRM

Following on from some of the posts here. Although I agree totally with Leveller as DRM doesn't really bother me and as long as the actual developers are rewarded for their efforts then so be it.

However, Crysis was one of the most highly torrented games within the last few years. I don't blame Crytek for adding that little bit extra for them. It would be nice to know the full story here of what DRM it actual consists of.

 

DRM is pointless. If they want to combat piracy they have got to make people want to buy it, rather than add something they think stops piracy.

The level of retardation in the gaming industry is staggering. I wouldn't mind if it works. But it doesn't. If they stopped spending money on useless systems, and put that money in to something else (like, I dunno, making the PC version of the game not consolified ****), then people would have more incentive to buy it.

Nothing on the disc that isn't the game is going to stop piracy. Everyone who has half a brain cell knows that DRM does not work. They need to make people not want to pirate, rather than trying to make it un-piratable (which is never going to happen, face it).

As it stands, I will not be paying for this game, and the way it looks I don't even want to pirate it.

 

Ok, WTF is the DRM being used? Not one person has answered the question, and since when does bit-tech do articles about DRM without mentioning what it is?

 

I have no idea what the DRM is either but I will say this.

Just a small amount of research will show that most games are "cracked" for pirates within hours of release and many are even available before the official release date. DRM free. In fact, as far as I can tell, various pirate groups seem to compete to see who can "release" a game first.

DRM makes no difference to a pirate nowadays. Oh, sure, it would have been useful back in the days when kids swapped games in the playground, but nowadays I doubt anyone bothers going through the hassle of trying to copy an original game onto another DVD when it takes far less time and effort to simply download a cracked version.

So what illegal copying does DRM prevent? I *suppose* it could stop anyone who didn't have an internet connection from making a copy. Um, except you usually need an active internet connection for the DRM nowadays. And any person who wants to play a game but doesn't have a connection is then forced to get a friend to download the DRM-free pirated version and burn it to DVD so they can actually play the game.

And those of us who pay for the games? We get treated like criminals. Meanwhile, the criminals are playing DRM-free versions and are getting treated like a paying customer!

In reality, the ONLY use for DRM that I can see is to convince the paying customer that pirates are bad. After all, if it wasn't for pirates we wouldn't be saddled with DRM.

The truth is that if someone is determined to pirate a game/song/movie/etc. then they will. There is pretty much nothing the publishers can do to stop them.

But I believe there is a significant percentage out there who would stop pirating if the publishers offered real value. Look at steam. All your library in one place, easily accessible, no disk changes required to play, a simple ownership check you don't even notice, all your games stored in the "cloud" ready to download and play whenever you want, regular sales that offer top quality games at low prices, etc, etc, etc.

That's value because it makes the whole experience easier and more enjoyable. And it allows the customer to decide on the value of the game. Some will buy at full price because they can't wait to play, and others will wait for a steam sale to pick up the games they want.

Arghh, this is a long answer and somewhat off-topic. But my point is, that IMO, intrusive DRM is indefensible. The best way to fight piracy is to offer people real value.

 

Not at all, it's there to stop second hand sales also. With more and more online activations and account tie ins they are choking the second hand sales market, they can get away with it on the PC because people are used to it, but the reason we don't get DRM on consoles is simply because if they stopped second hand sales they would be a huge uproar from console gamers. If that happened then maybe PC and console gamers could actually join together and do something about it but until that happens DRM will exist for a long time becoming more and more intrusive.

 

Do you people really believe that DRM is there to stop pirating games? Really? Devs aren't that stupid. It's there to achieve what they wanted for a long time, stop the second hand market. From their perspective the second hand market is worse than piracy, and since everyone knows that they can't stop piracy they want to at least get rid of the second "threat" to their income. It's like e-book distributors limiting lending of e-books, to the point that libraries don't want to offer them so you have to buy your own.

 

I really, really hope a constant internet connection isn't required. My connection is flaky (BT, you are useless!) and I'll go insane if I get kicked out of the SINGLE player because the game can't maintain a constant connection to home.

 

Can we please stop quoting the PCGA? They're worse than your usual industry shills since they claim to actually represent the customer. They are unworthy of being quoted on Bit.

 

It doesn't cost you millions of dollars to lock your car door. It costs a lot of money to implement the most commonly used DRM schemes. Creating a lost sale via an action that cost you money is bad business.

The point is that DRM doesn't stop any pirate, ever. It can only ever inconvenience a legitimate buyer. Devs and publishers need to get over the idea that a pirate = a lost sale. They do not compute.

Correlation != causation

 

It is a bit of a tease, but if EA are publishing it then it's likely to be similar to the DRM in Dragon Age 2 which comes in two parts - an online "its-not-SecuROM-but-something-written-by-the-same-people" date check and an online EA account check (which allows EA to effectively disable your game if you get suspended/banned from their forums, discussed here).

Crytek's handwringing on this seems utterly pathetic. The original Crysis did ultimately sell well (3 million copies by May 2010 according to Wikipedia and another 1.5 million for the DRMed expansion Crysis Warhead) but was clearly hampered by marketing that essentially came down to "Don't bother getting this until you've upgraded or bought a new PC!".

I bought Crysis myself but boycotted Warhead (and expect to boycott Crysis 2) due to their DRM. I expect (and indeed demand) the ability to play games 5-10 years from now and online activation makes that unlikely - how many publishers are going to be prepared to spend money on maintaining servers, bandwidth and paying for technical support after such a period?

I guess Woollster00 and WarrenJ have yet to build up a games collection of any note (or maybe they just "buy from the 'Bay") but there are a number of cases in the online music industry of customers losing access to products with similar DRM (such as Virgin Digital, Yahoo Music and, closing shortly, Nokia's Comes With Music service). The smart choice would be to learn from others' mistakes.

 

Steam might work great for the dev, but can be a big pain in the you know where as a DRM platform for the end user, was a pig for black ops and Home front is just a fail, down load 1/2 the game from steam even with a disk and a big problem trying to play online if you have a BT Home Hub.
I wont be buying a steamworks game again any time soon.

 

DRM = bad bad bad and REALLLLY BAD!

Lower the price and you don't need to worry about pir8.

 

This game already failed for PC before is ever release. DX9 support only, DX11 through patches. All thanks to consoles. Another rubbished port from consoles.

 

Would you still lock your car if installing the lock was very expensive, all car thieves had a key that could unlock your car regardless and your car would decide at random to not unlock or start the engine even tho you had the correct key?

 

Read this, go through all the 10 pages and then we can talk. http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

Most of the comments in this thread are cringe inducing. No company out there has no DRM at all. Even companies that claim not to have DRM, still use it. Stardock releases a stream of constant updates to its games.

For most titles you can get a crack for the gold version of the game. But will the crack work with the patches? How many games which are smaller than the AAA shooters never get cracks for updated versions of the game? Sometimes the DRM will get broken quickly, sometimes it will buy the developer a week or two before it gets broken. Vast majority of profits come from 1st month sales. This is when the marketing push is concentrated, when the reviews are published, when the game sales for the full retail price. If a publisher can get the game protected even for a few days it can make a huge difference in profits. Just creating the doubt, how long the game will take to get cracked while I want to play it right now can be enough to get people to buy a legitimate copy. It is not the role of DRM to be unbreakable. This is not possible and even DRM software companies don't claim their software will offer anything but temporary protection. But using a form of protection might be enough to deter some people.


To anyone saying DRM is evil spyware, you have no idea what you are talking about. Piracy became massive on the PC with the mass advent of torrents, long before games came with meaningful DRM. If you think PC gaming is dying because of DRM, think again.

I want to have an experience that is not intrusive, but saying that you will not buy a game because it has DRM (which 9 out of 10 times is barely noticeable in the first place). DRM can be badly implemented, but many of you are just hypocrites or pirates who just want to make stealing games as easy as possible.

 

So I bought Crysis Warhead when it came out. I didn't have an internet connection. Therefore I couldn't play the game.

Who stole from who in that situation?

 

This is true.

It says on the box that you need an internet connection for product activation. IF you bought it online then your beef is with the way it was advertised.

 

I did buy it online.

Just a pain, that a single player required online activation, were my point was, that this is a form of intrusive DRM.

Couple of weeks later, EA did release a .exe that didn't need authenticating. Just a shame it was buried in their FAQ/Support pages.

 

Agreed. I just read the article and the thread hoping to find out what DRM is being used here. I'm still none the wiser and I've lost 6 minutes of my life.

 

Here here, lose another 6 minutes reading the comments. xD

Or condemn BT for a misleading title?