Bit of an odd topic really, but after chatting to some friends about it, i'm worried about how things are headed. For bioshock, friends were getting concerned over the excessive drm, somewhat negated by it being released on steam (fun fact: everyone i know got it on steam, no CD sales) For mass effect pc, 2/5 not bothered about the game. Two brought it, one of those was happy with the 360 version, i only brought it for pc after struggling for a long time to reconcile supporting the DRM and buying a legal copy (i eventually did) Spore, i'm the only person so far to buy a copy, only because i wanted the online features, 2 said the 3 install limit is beyond stupid and the others weren't fussed by the game (but apon hearing about the ridiculous drm, some ended up convinced not to buy it anyway) for the upcoming C&C game, out of the 5 people we have 1 person who will buy it anyway, 2 who are put off by the the drm and 2 who might buy the game if the rest of the group buys it (but as this looks like being 1/5, seems unlikely) (for info, i'd buy if my friends did for multiplayer, but the drm stupidity is stopping this) As the drm has totally 100% failed to stop any piracy i just can't see the logic... I can see real effects on friends who i 100% know both have free money to buy games and are willing to buy games not buying things because of this stupidity... It's got me thinking though: has EA been purposely saving up drm to push the envelope on what it can get away with only when releasing games it knows fans will buy regardless? I know i've been suckered in on this already, i would not have brought a game with spore's drm if it wasn't spore... But now i've brought it, will i be so bothered the next time? Grrrr... It's so very annoying... I'd actually for a moment thought EA had got out of it's 'evil' phase when it stopped buying every publisher out and killing innovation, now i just feel they're just turned the evilness factor onto crippling drm instead now they can get away with it
I know what you mean. I'm going to buy Spore, and I'm going to hate myself for it. I'm actually surprised I've held out this long. In all honesty, though, I think Spore will be the best thing that's ever happened to DRM. Up until now, DRM has been isolated to computer gamers - people who are vocal on the internet but actually a very small minority in the world. DRM has been tolerated, because we all want to play our games and while we may hate it, we understand DRM and the eldritch rituals we need to perform in order to play our games. Spore changes that. Spore is like The Sims: it's going to be purchased by millions of casual gamers. These aren't people who play games and complain about DRM on the internet, because they're people who've never even posted on an online forum. When they start to complain, they're going to do so loudly and publicly, and I can't wait to watch.
I'll not go into the whole business and economics behind it, as I've done it enough times. But I'm beyond sick of DRM that extends in any way beyond a serial key and I'm simply avoiding all software that uses it at this point. One thing I've noticed anecdotally (and it really comes down to opinion) is that it seems the companies with the games that are really worth playing - indie developers, mostly - are the least concerned about DRM and piracy. If you build code it, they will come, you might say. Of the people that will shell out money under some circumstances (some people will pirate games no matter what and to hell with the rest of the world; I used to be that way but grew out of it - it's mostly a demographics thing), most of them are looking for a good reason to support the developers. Where I'm going with this really extends beyond games. Music, for example - I pirate 100% of my music when first listening to it. It's a preview, so that if I don't like it, it's not money wasted. I want to support artists, but obviously only those that I like. Nothing against the rest, but to reason to give them my money. So if I like it, or end up playing it more than a few times, I buy it. Same thing applies to all of my other media. Of the movies I've watched more than once, I own all of them (or I think I do anyways; I've got a pretty decent collection which has all been ripped to my computer and never touch the discs so it's possible one or two slipped through by accident). I deal with games the same way these days, and Spore was a perfect example of why I do this. I ended up buying the game outright first, and I ended up with a very mediocre experience from it. It wasn't bad or buggy, it just ended up severely lacking in substance. I might have paid $20 knowing this, but it wasn't worth anywhere near the $50 that I paid - it simply didn't provide me that much entertainment. The only reason I ended up doing this is that I was realllly bored at the time and the torrent was running very slowly. Anyways, the companies that tend to use the most/worst DRM, in my experience, also tend to be producing the games least likely to be worth what they're charging. So not only does it make sense for me to avoid most games because of the restrictions, but they often end up barely being worth the time of downloading them. In the past I HAVE been burned by DRM, and downloading a cracked copy fixed the problem. Heck, I've had a publisher send me the crack before, as a result of a support call. The more code you have in anything, the more points of failure you have. When you take the fact that DRM is unnecessary for a game to run and combine it with the fact that it's DESIGNED to cause failure under certain conditions, you can see why it's an unwelcome presence. So is what I do legal? No. But it causes zero moral conflict for me, and I consider myself to have pretty high moral standards. People that provide me entertainment still get my money, it's just on my terms. However, DRM is getting so crazy that I'm considering no longer doing this for companies that use it. There's an indie game developer that posts to slashdot a lot who says that writing the publisher saying that you're not buying the game because of the DRM is effective, but while that works for indies where you can actually get in touch, it's really quite impossible for the mega-companies like EA. If that ends up becoming their loss... too bad.
I bought a pair of copies on release day. I feel as though I've been bent over on this one. The game is dumbed down, the innovative features are mostly gone, and I'm still fighting that DRM assery. I'm giving this to my kids, as they still think it's cool. They're 11 and 12.
I stopped buying games straight-up a while ago, I'll download them, play them for a day or two, if I like them, I'll go out and buy it, if I don't like it then I uninstall and delete it. So far though, all the games that have had horrible DRM haven't been fun to play at all and thus all ended up getting deleted and saved me 50$ a pop. I think developpers have started getting more worried about DRM than the content in the game. I haven't bought a PC game since CoD4, and before that was Bf2142. It just seems devs get so worked up on pirating that they don't even really focus on what the game has, but rather on the ways to lock the game down in hideous ways. So w/e, I just don't buy games anymore. Not like there's anything worth buying really.
I don't see why people make such a big deal about most DRM - it's obviously a flawed, useless system that'll soon die. The Spore problem where they restrict accounts sucks, admittedly, but it's not that big a deal imo.
I've been trying, and I mean really trying, to hate Spores DRM system, but I can't find a good, honest, reason to. I installed it. I don't have to put the disk in to play it, I don't even have to be online. It's legal, and it works. As a side note, I don't understand the big issue with only one account thing. There are multiple planets per account - Why do they NEED a second account? It's a bit weird that you can't do seperate accounts, but it's not imperitive.
A limited number of installs sucks, you should get them back if you uninstall it and they should do something like give you one back every x month to account for those who forget or are unable (due to hdd failure / data corruption / whatever) to uninstall. That said, I bought spore anyway, even if only to because its the first quality game to be released since GRID. as for future games using it, well, one of them will be the new C&C, C&C is a name so big that it will probably sell anyway, for whatever games will be released after that, well, I hope until then DRM will be dead and buried.
Im going to buy c&c when it comes out, and by the time i use all my installs a good few years have passed and they will need to remove the DRM anyway. but it would be a lot better without it.
i had a SecureROM folder someplace with a message in saying not to do out to it or bioshock would not work, and i bought it on steam.
