DRM - When you push too hard ...

.. this is what you get

SPORE - The DRM-protected PC game is the most pirated PC game of 2008 !!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7772962.stm

There was me thinking DRM was some sort of super-sophisticated un-crackable copy protection ??

I have to laugh at EA spending so much money on protection methods which do nothing more than get peoples backs up
It seems, if you are willing to be a law-abiding citizen who abides by every single piece of legislation ever put in place (shorter description being a 'Sheep') then you will be punished and made to jump through hoops .. because of all the bad criminals

The criminals on the other hand have games and programs which seem to be running great without stuffing up the PC, telling the user they have the wrong disc, invalid license issues, limited installs, or activation processes which they need to faff around with

DRM 0 - CRIMINALS 1

I love games which just "get on the job" of entertaining you and have NO problem paying for them
The one's which treat me as a potential criminal (GTA 4: PC) I simply steer clear of and will not purchase

I think you got the scores wrong, criminals have scored more points than that...

And now Ubisoft are going down the whole "our new game won't have any DRM because we're so forward thinking!" route, like any number of publishers before them, justto get publicity for a second-rate title.

Count Rockstar's GTA IV into the fiasco as well as Sport Interactive's/Sega's Football Manager 2009. Both of them seemed to go out of their way to annoy paying customers.

I don't know i wouldn't call them criminals. Actually i'm pretty glad that some people crack software so that i'm able playing the games i've bought in a reasonable way, without annoying copy protection and having my drivebay empty for stuff i really need it for.

Wayyy more.

I'm not even going to buy Fallout 3 anymore, not because it has a special Securom that "doesn't do anything but cd checks", but because Bethesda lied to its fans.

(I don't like spyware either)

I have Fallout 3 on Xbox. Consoles (sans modchips) seem to be the last bastion of quality, trouble-free gaming.

I have Fallout 3 on my laptop too. It's not quite as compelling, somehow.

I don't know which title you're referring to specifically, but to be fair, Ubisoft have been taking a stance against invasive DRM for years. They used to use Starforce in many of their games, but stopped using it entirely when the big fuss about Starforce happened. So yeah, they might not be the first to ignore DRM, but they have always tended in that direction.

On the other hand, if some people didn't crack software we wouldn't need copy protection in the first place. ;)

No, that's not true because copy protections showed up first and then came the cracks and secondly i somehow doubt that the majority of those buying games do use cracks or maybe i'm wrong here? Anyway it only makes sense if you see it from a statistical side, for my personal situation it just sucks.

That's not true either. The majority of 8-bit computer games (delivered on cassette) didn't have any protection at all.

The number of people that copied those games set the DRM ball rolling in the mid 1980's.

I was joking above..

Yes its criminal in china to use DRM. so whay have to remove it. its not so good for gigantic chines FireWall..

@GFK
Well, i remember my introduction on how cracking works actually was with a C64 game delivered for dataset. And just for the record this was for pure personal enjoyment, no releases.

But hey !

I use Steam as well.. it works like a charm for me.. alows me to play the games on difirent machine.. but not at same time :)

Hilarious...same arguments...on the Atari 8bit, C64, Amiga, Atari ST....what goes around comes around. jeesh....

p.s. Didn't you just love that grinding floppy disk sound as it checked for the physical protection? :) lol..

Well, the disk sounds i remember the most are those ribb ribb *pause* ribb ribb sounds when you had some read errors on the Amiga. Generally i'm glad that we got rid of floppy drives, at least those smaller than 5.25 inch size but i somehow miss the bootblock fun.

Hah!

I remember in the 80's, when I first started with MSX, the tapes were recorded with a special header, which would render useless "tape copying programs" and stop piracy.

Which was really stupid, since everyone with more than one tape recorder could copy it even without a computer :P

Copy protection was created because people started copying the programs, some to share them with friends, some to purely copy and sell them.

Then came the "cracks" to remove the protection. From special headers on tapes, purposely created bad sectors on disks, interleaved data, special formatting, to SecuROM, nothing worked.

The game industry is repeating itself *at least* for the last 20 years, trying to stop piracy :P

But things like GTA's and Spore's DRM are just absurd. Thank God I don't want to play neither; but if all games on PC follows this trend, then I stop playing games altogether :P

QOTD.

Because no one would ever dream of copying a disc that doesn't have copy protection.

Name me one crack for Galactic Civilisations 2.

No, sorry, I think you have it the completely wrong way around.


Which has nothing to do with the availability of cracks, which is what the quote you quoted had to do with. Go your conversation flow abilities.

It has everything to do with it. Piracy started when there was NO protection. The best you got on a cassette was "Rewind tape to <counter position> and press Play".

People are talking about "cracks" when what the really mean is copied software, regardless of whether or not there was anything to be 'cracked' in the first place.

I think your tampon needs changing.

Seriously - why so arsey?

You've answered your own question there.

No, when I mention an orange I do not talk about fruit in general. Cracks are cracks, piracy is piracy, there are two seperate words with two seperate definitions and these seperate definitions are what seperate your incorrect perspective of taumels comment with taumels correct, original intention.


I could ask the same of you, but you're probably so ingrained with your way of thinking you wouldn't get why without a thorough explanation...

I don't mind 'common sense' transparent protection which is put in place to stop average Joe from copying CD's and passing them around the playground etc ..

It's the total OTT methods (Rockstars GTA4 for instance) which peeve me off. I don't want to spend half a day installing, activating, signing up on muliple accounts, patching, and whatever else they want me to do just so I can play the game

I have GTA Vice City on the main laptop and that can be run without the CD (via a NOCD patch). I'm guessing other PC owners want this level convenience where your favourite games are available on tap

Perhaps you should just not converse with me in future if you can't do it without the condescending attitude.

....The more star systems will slip through your fingers

It proves there really is no point in DRM anyway.

and most large producers still make a killing and many are still around (or have been swallowed up by bigger ones)

All the companies see is "oh what a lot of money we have lost from the 1000000s of pirate copies" (most of which would not have been sales anyway). "Instead of making these many many millions of $ we should have made many many many millions (but not really as only a small % would have bought it in the first place).

Tbh the harder companies try to protect their games, the more determined it makes people to crack them. If you're an experienced cracking professional, and a company has just released its flagship "uncrackable" game, what ya gonna do? Try to crack it is what.

Funny story. GTA IV which is generally agreed upon as having the to date most ridiculous DRM, was actually released by Razor1911 12 hours before my copy of GTA IV, ordered from play.com arrived in the mail.

There is no way to prevent piracy, other than by doing what Stardock are doing. Stop making games that mostly appeal to pirates.

More accurately, the ones that did die, did so when they embraced DRM. Ocean was doing okay on the Amiga, supposedly the most pirated platform ever, but died shortly after moving to "pirate-free" consoles like N64 and PlayStation.

I remember that in the C64 days it even took almost a year before some originals made it into germany and no this wasn't due to localisation issues.

Ocean was no great loss in the end. I will always remember them fondly for their dodgy movie licensed pieces of crap.

DRM keeps me from buying most games now, the only 2 titles I got original with DRM is Fallout 3 and Crysis on steam.

I wonder the DRM in EA games has something to do with the following news :

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/ea-lowers-outlook-officially-announces-plans-to-cut-staff-and-product-slate/?biz=1

I hope this is a hint for other companies to start thinking how many customers they scare away with their DRM.

Me too.

I occasionally buy the odd bargain bucket game but i am not going to pay full price for something that treats me like a passport application or benefit dept.

I have not bought a full price PC game since HL2 installed that horrid steam software.

The best things ocean did, beside of the ocean loaders ;O), were Hunchback and Eco.

fallout 3 has securom on it, but it seems that it's only on the launcher, i can play fallout 3 without any cd check by just running the fallout3.exe instead of using the launcher...

i only have to use the cd check if i plan to add addons or patch the game so it's not annoying ;)

as a side note i'm actively boycott publishers that use online checks, and invasive drms from a long time now i can live without any of theyr new game. instead i bough some stuff from indies.

I think even if SecureROM does nothing more than 'check' the CD there is always the issue of compatibily between games with security features. I would be very annoyed after installing another game only to find it stuffs up security protection on an existing game

See this VIDEO for a perfect example /!\ WARNING - Excess language!!!

Another instance of copy protection/DRM screwing up the consumer:

The first campaign pack for Neverwinter Nights 2 was finished and waiting to be published since 2007. Atari sites that they will wait for the next NWN2 update to come out to support the DRM they want to use, before the module goes on sale. 4 patches later and the module is still not available.

Stuff not being able to run the game, these poor people can't even buy it because of DRM.

Funny story. I only just installed a critical update from Microsoft. Now the GTA IV SecuROM protection doesn't think my GTA IV DVD is an original any more.

It's ironic because I'd always thought it would be excellent console games like Little Big Planet (or practically anything for the Wii), that would eventually push me into console gaming, rather than draconian DRM software for the PC. At least now there's no longer any reason for me not to install Linux.

@video
*lol* I think he's pirate... ;O)

I agree its pointless and not needed. All my friends have mostly pirate copies of console games anyway. -Everyone- I know has a chipped console, including me so i can use it as a media center (XBMC) The few games i do have i have actually bought, as i like to have a nice box.

Maybe just make all games compulsory online, quake used to check the master server to authenticate you. That would mostly fix issues.

If we had statistics, I think that the number of potential pirates with a valid internet connection would outweigh anyone without a connection who would not usually pirate this game, and thus bring more revenue (if it was a killer app) or break even.