News Mass Effect and Spore DRM detailed

No, it isn't, I remember paying $60 for NEs games, mass effect is 39.99 at launch. Top quailty and many hours of entertainment for little, yet, people still pirate.

 

So why are you arguing for DRM?

If you don't think it will stop piracy what is it you are arguing about?

Incidentally you will notice I haven't insulted any of you at all in this thread but you can't seem to help it

Hehehe.

 

with dev costs through the roof, and Pc game prices not changing for a decade, and being cheaper then consoles, you expect them to lose money by selling them even lower? Get yourt head out of the sand. It is business, not charity.

 

Who is arguing for it, just saying it is not near as bad a smnay here make out, it is either this, or get used to PC gaming continue to go in the toilet. The real problem is pirates. You can't balme them, they have no choice, if you want to continue playing on PC, work with DRm, or buy a console.

 

punishing the legit consumer again, seems people who buy it have to deal with copyright protection when people who download it don't.

isn't console just as easily cracked? i'm pretty sure a mod chip is cheap and they throw in like all the latest titles when you get it done.

it sounds like a legal spyware, that the user agrees to. collecting user information and monitoring their gaming habits, privacy is dead welcome to the mailing list.

 

My point is that DRM is not working, it doesn't stop piracy and is alienating existing customers. That is why I originally posted here after reading the short article and I stand by my convictions.

Personally I think that 'video' games in general could do with being cheaper and certainly a lot of them could do with not being released at all

I don't condone piracy in any shape or form either, I work for what I want and if I can't afford it I do without!

What I can't abide is people telling me that DRM is neccessary and that it will benefit us all in the end when it clearly will not

Have a nice day

 

So now you are saying that you are not arguing for DRM?? OK....


I will carry on playing games on my PC and I will do it without the need for DRM. Should that requirement change at some point in the future I will simply find something else to do.

And I can blame them because it was their choice!

 

Yes consoles are just as easy. In fact I don't think it will be long before the 'piracy problem' is worse on consoles

 

Blame DRM on the pirates. DRM sucks, nobody in their right mind would argue with that, but companies are trying to protect their multi-million investments. Of course, that means we're all treated like crooks, but when you've got games that are selling maybe a million copies and then estimated illegal downloads are in the region of two to three times that... THEN you start to realise just what a problem piracy is.

 

leper, you really are starting to annoy me. I've seen you misquote people before and now you've gone and done it to me. heres what i said:

"Valve, as usual, do things right. They give you a gaming network that blows xbl out of the water, give a huge variety of games available through nice 'can't be arsed going to the shop' downloading, no need for a CD which will only get scratched anyway, maintain low levels of piracy and cheating and they let all the other developers use it. why aren't they using it?"

i never said you needed the flipping cd for mass effect, all i said was that you don't need cds full stop for steam.
and i agree with what steveo said, steam offer things for their 'invasive drm' (your opinion of it, no?) which i think should be labelled as 'really useful software'

you're one of these that can't leave a computer unless everyone on the net agrees with you, and i think how you bring your opinions across is both rude and patronising. As many seem to be saying 'Welcome to my ignore list'

 

Might as well blame the floods on the rain.

 

Oh boo-frickin hoo. So it checks if it's authenticity every 10 days, so what? If your copy isn't stolen, and you have an always-on internet connection, what's the big deal? I understand that if you were wanting it for free (pirated) that you'd be mad, but then you're not helping the situation in the first place, now are you? I have a dial-up connection, and when I installed The Orange Box I had to lug my computer down to civilization and have it update. If it's just check in authentication, no prob, I'll dial in every 10 days and have it verify my copy. Those of you that have high-speed internet don't even have to wait on a stinkin dial up modem!

Even if it has the check for updates, which really peeved me about Steam, I'll still get it. It's not like it's going to update every 10 days anyway. I don't really see what the fuss is about.

 

Piracy is a problem which harms the whole industry (customers included), so a way must be found to deal with it.

This is obviously NOT the way to deal with it. The more draconian the CP method the more people want it cracked. I'm almost tempted to say that no CP is the best way forward, as there are no 'kudos for cracking it'. The way things stand, paying customers have to dial in and pray every 10 days, while pirates enjoy the game whenever and wherever they want.

There is also a lot to be said about companies blaming bad sales on piracy. While I'm sure that there is some real loss due to piracy, I very much doubt that it's as high they claim. As I said before, I believe that many of the people who pirate wouldn't buy the game even if piracy was impossible. Quite often, what we see is companies delivering mediocre titles which don't live up to hype and expectations and then trying to pass the blame for poor sales.

@BT Staff: Could we possibly have a poll on this issue?

 

It's not even the phone home that bothers me. It's the the thought that if my key becomes 'public' somehow my payed copy gets deactivated.

Can't they see the first person to activate a certain key and keep THEM active, and de-activate all the subsequent poseurs?

 

You raise a good point and your solution might work... but what if the key is stolen before the customer has bought the game? An inside job (most likely at the distributor level) is probably the most likely way that games 'get out' and onto BitTorrent before retail release.

 

I've said this about 10 times now but one more won't make any difference, these systems are all well and good until they break, once they break there may or may not be any incentive to fix them. Even if they are fixed a few days later why should the PAYING customer be inconvenienced. If your happy with it great fill your boots, lets just hope the next time its not starforce they decide to go with.

 

EDIT: I was doing other things and revising this as I went. I started this before 9:15 my time. Meaning that Majestix post near the top of page 7 was the most recent I had read at the time.

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@Joe/Tim - Thank you for your most recent posts as they actually fleshed out your reasoning behind your earlier comments.

@Leper/Shadow vs Wicz/Steveo - Its been a 6 page circular arguement. It is obvious you guys won't agree. And I think the points have been exhausted.

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Internet connection *is* a system resource requirement. People who don't have broadband/internet can't play WoW or any MMO, but I don't think everyone is up in arms about that. Its not that it requires the internet to autheticate, its that it does it every ten days.

Some people who are gamers are also full time workers for real jobs. I know plenty of people away for more then 10 days for an over-seas convention/meeting/wtfe. Also if you have it on 3 machines, what happens when you play it on your desktop for 4 days, laptop 3 days, but forget about the 3rd copy? Does it lock then? And then the key-gen lockouts once pirates get ahold of the game.

I'm used to connecting to an authetification server, but not by a DRM program forced on me. Also: Why does it have to be every 10 days? Why not just every time you load up the damn game without threatening to break it? I'm not "Pro-Pirating" and its not the authetification. Its that it can't just verify on connect. It has to force a program on your computer and force you to check every ten days or it breaks.

I don't think on this thread anyone is suggesting pirating is good. They are expressing their disgust with this particular service model by explaining that it is driving otherwise eager customers to an alternative source of very low repore. Alot of the people saying they'll pirate it were actually going to be happy customers until they read this news.

Pirating is rampant, it needs to be kicked in the balls. But the most you'll ever do is stifle it. We need a method that helps protect the developer (THE DEVELOPER NOT THE PUBLISHER). To say if you make it good enough people will buy it is a lie you tell yourself to justify having BitLord on your hard drive. If that was true there wouldn't be people stealing fancy cars, high-end jewlry, or AAA-Games. And try and tell me one of those is different from the other.

However, this is not it. No, I don't have hard numbers to prove this will fail; but no one has shown me a fancy chart yet that has proven DRM --does-- work. DRM hurts the consumer. It punishes the legitimate user. You can't even argue that. I get what its supposed to do; but it fails. It. just. doesn't. work.

A few million uniformed masses will buy the game and never notice a damn thing, shrug and move on. A few million more will pirate the game-- either they can't afford it or they justify it with some other excuse. (And really, not having money isn't an valid reason either. You wouldn't go down to the Jewlry store and steal a watch just cause you couldn't buy it.)

Both publishers, developers, and gamers need to look at games like any other object. For some reason the world seems to think that because games/music/movies are digital that they shouldn't be held to the same rationelle as physical items.

This model is like buying a car and being pulled over ever 300 miles to have your plates run to make sure you still own your own car that you bought and paid for. And what if someone dupilicates your plates and drives by? Suddenly your keys are taken too because of it. Does that mean you should take the Porsche with the unlocked doors and key in the ignition? No. Does it make it easier to justify the act? Yes. Does it help anyone but that one single pirate? No.

As it was said, the **** that gets pulled in the games/music industry couldn't happen in any other field. The company would go under so fast you couldn't even make a timely satirical web comic about their demise.

Do I support DRM? No, its ******** and it doesn't work in this incarnation or any incarnation yet concieved.
Why do I know beyond a doubt it doesn't work? Cause we're having this sodding arguement.
But I do support the idea and I think the community needs to too.

Steam isn't the holy grail. It isn't the best thing since sliced e-bread.
Lack of transfer of ownership just plain sucks.
But Steam got popular for a reason: It works.
Not perfect, maybe not even as well as it should.
But better then alot of things out there.

...Ann-nnn-nnd...
I'm done. Cheers.

===

(PS - Isn't Spore single player? Wtf...shouldn't even need to touch the internet. )

 

Sorry m8 I just don't agree. Piracy is a problem, I think we can all agree on that

The problem is that piracy isn't nearly as big a problem as the devs/publishers would like you to think and punishing customers on the strength of this argument alone is a crock to say the very least.

They ( the devs ) cannot make their products 'pirate proof', they know this, yet they still insist on including this pointless, non functional CP which as I have said countless times, the pirates simply 'go around'.

A classic situation arose one evening last year while at a friends house. He had just bought Bioshock from his local games shop and couldn't get it to auth with the online server so had joined a forum for advice.

While waiting for said advice he couldn't help but notice so many of the other forum members were playing quite happily. Being an inquistive chap he asked how come they didn't have any problems playing and he was greeted with the following reply...

"We didn't pay for this version, we just downloaded it with bittorrent and it doesn't have to speak to any servers it just works"

To cut a long story short he immediately phoned the bioshock tech helpline and explained his issues and what the other forum guys had said about their downloaded version and waited to see what could be done. After about 5 minutes the tech support guy announced that they were working on the server issues and he should just be patient. So he asked what if he downloaded the 'other version' and the tech guy said well you could play now but it would be illegal. He returned his copy of bioshock for a full refund the next day after waiting nearly 18 hours for the server problem to clear, which of course it didn't.

Where is the incentive to pay for a title that may or may not work when the 'free version' just works?

DRM does nothing to encourage pirates to stop being pirates, it is therefore fundamentally not suitable for the job it is being expected to do

 

I was going to buy mass effect for the second time (have it on the 360) but not now, consider it a lost sale.
Whether i'll download it or not i haven't decided yet.

It's a shame really, as with all DRM, the only people this hits is the paying customers. pirates won't need to deal with this crap

seems fairly obvious to me this will cause orders of magnitude more piracy than it prevents

 

Wishful thinking im afraid, the crackers wont just release one or 2 cd keys, it'll be hundreds maybe thousands aswell as the program that generates those keys. I can understand that devs want money for the work they put into games, that goes for publishers aswell(even though EA publishes everything and they're ****ing scum!!). But this 10 day authentication is ****ing ridiculous!

What about in game advertising? If games cost like... tenner or fiver or something with in game advertising subsidising the rest. People would buy the games, because for that price you might aswell just pay up, and the devs would get the cash. Obviously its abit more complicated that this, but perhaps its a way forward?