I have been reinstalling DRM-type games

I have formatted and reinstalled WinXP on my main gaming PC.

When I reinstalled Windows, I used the Product Key that was supplied with the Windows CD, not the original PC builder/manufacturer one that it comes preinstalled with.

When I started to reinstall software, Ad-Aware Plus would not reinstall as it spotted the change and wants me to contact them. HOWEVER, DRM-type games installed and ran without a hitch:

All 10 Steam games - I expected these to work fine;
Far Cry 2;
GTA IV;
Fallout 3;
Football Manager 2009;
EDIT:
Including Crysis and Crysis Warhead.
Plus others that require some sort of registration.

Far Cry 2 - initially complained that the Licence Key was registered, but works fine after I re-Larged it in Games for Windows Live;

The thing is, as far as the registrations are concerned, I have reinstalled to a different copy of Windows and they all work fine.

It seems that Games for Windows Live is actually a good idea as, like Steam, it remembers who you are and what you have registered to play.

So, people can begin to rest easy with DRM games - not only can they be reinstalled fine, you can effectively reinstall them to a different copy of Windows and they still work. As far as the registration is concerned, I have put them on a different PC.

Initially, I thought I might be punished for being honest and reinstalling the un-used Windows Product Key.

Um... How about NOT!

You still have the good ol' "I'm sorry, this game has been installed three times already. Go pound sand"-situation. Just because you have anecdotal evidence that you didn't have any show-stopping problems after your first re-install doesn't mean that DRM isn't broken by design.

Plus there is much bigger fundamental issue that you didn't run into yet, but that's always hanging over your head: If the provider of the software decides that there is no longer any money in a specific product line, they can pull the plug at a moment notice, at which point you're completely out of luck. Too bad. go Away.

For example, remember this little gem regarding Microsoft's oh-so ironically named PlaysforSure DRM technology?

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2008/04/drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys.ars



DRM doesn't give rights, it imposes restrictions. Some of those may be acceptable trade-ofs to you, but in the long run it is BAD for the consumer because it typically prevents them from excersizing their RIGHTS through artificial limitations.

DRM doesn't give rights
it does to the provider

No it doesn't -- it hinders YOUR rights, but those aren't theirs to take.

(I completely understand why a big publishing house thinks DRM is the best thing since sliced bread, but that doesn't make it right)

One thing that those DRM 'solutions' actively try to take away from the consumer is the right of first sale -- any physical product that you purchase you have the right to re-sell: think CD's, DVD's, books, hardware, etc.
Those DRM 'protected' games like steam are tied into your login account. There is no way to resell your used copies once you're done with them without handing over your login account to go with it. They advertise it as a purchase, but conveniently don't treat it that way afterwards.

oh i see it as
i have the right to totally f**k with the customers cos im the publisher ;)

in the end we are only buying a licence to use the game, even if the eula is invalid in most courts
kinda makes consoles look nice, sure you need the disc in to play, but thats only cos you cant install all of the games on one drive
would be nice if they could make a drive that didnt scratch game disc's mind

edit:
all my music is DRM free, i rip from CD's cos
A> it was quicker than getting em off old napster on dial up
B> if i buy via itunes im paying twice as im on a mobile broadband package so every song download eats into that
C> even if i click the buy whole album option i can sometimes get the same album cheaper in the shops, hell i got chineese democracy for £5 (not listened to it so perhaps there is a reason it was in the sale ;) )
basically i cant afford to steal music, it costs me too much to download
just recently i got 12 ac/dc albums for a fiver each (well 2 for £10) and ripped em at 320kbps, they are now on an unplugged external so i cant say how big a download it would be, but at £15 for 3gb i could see that being eaten up with record sales
and the price per track, probably cheapr than itunes too :)

That simply isn't true. Leaving aside some of the other systems and sticking purely with Steam - because it's the only place I've bought any PC games in ages - you're given a number of rights, several of them very useful.

For one, you have the right to download your software over and over again, even if you lost the cd. You certainly didn't have that right if you bought it retail. You *might* have got a replacement CD for $10 if you could send the old, damaged one in, but you were SOL if you lost it.

For another, you (usually? always?) have the right to install your purchased games on multiple machines simultaneously. Previously, many EULA's forbid you from doing that, but the "restrictions" DRM "imposes" have made publishers more comfortable about allowing multiple installations, because they have faith that the system will prevent people from using the same game on different machines at the same time. Not that Steam is inherently any more crackproof than any other system, but just the general sense that someone who cracks the game to get it running simultaneously on multiple machines would have cracked it to prevent from having to buy it in the first place. Now you may always have had a physical ability to do that, but you didn't have the "right".

Other new rights you have include the right to download the game before the release date, so that you can be playing it within moments of the release* and the right to have patches downloaded and applied automatically through one central place rather than 97 different patching tools of various standards. I may even have missed a few.

Now that's not to say that it doesn't impose restrictions. Of course it does. That's the point. It's also not to say that those restrictions don't outweigh the rights. That's a personal judgement. I just think it's very disingenuous - and you're one of many people saying the same thing so I'm not singling you out - to say that there are no right or no "give" to go with the "take" if you will.

Personally, I think the conveniences that Steam offers massively outweigh the inconsequential (to me) inconveniences. In fact, pretty much all the inconveniences seem to be "what ifs" dreamed up by people who never seem to consider that CD's and DVD's have a pretty short readability lifespan and will probably have given up the ghost long before Steam shuts down and stops me from downloading HalfLife 2 for the 23rd time.

I have no idea how or if Games For Windows, Gamers Gate, Impulse and others relate to Steam. On the face of it they seem similar, but they could be completely different for all I know, so don't take any of comments as being in relation to any of them.

* Not that all games use this feature, but it's there.

None of the things you mention are *rights*, they are merely temporary allowances made by a contracting party. Rights can't be taken away on a whim.

Are those features of DRM, though, or just features of a central distribution system?

Any online store may allow you to download the software again later. No DRM needs to be involved, just some sort of authentication on the website. Eg. Blitz can be downloaded over and over again... As for the lifespan of optical discs, that's what backups are for. And DRM takes the right to backups (as stated in law, in many places) away.

Granted, the pre-download thing may be totally new to DRM. However, you could do that with a simple product key scheme, where you only receive the key on the release date.

I'm not saying there is no good thing about DRM, but the things you quote aren't about DRM per se - just about game authors giving you rights that they took away before.

I would personally buy steam games (I have loads already), I also have some windows live games too like Fallout3 for instance. Steam is easy to install and remembers what you have bought you can play it on anything you can install steam on, for me that doesnt seem a problem. Who can say they can download a game years after buying it, and still download it and play it again.

Fallout3's live system is only required for multiplayer for me this isnt an issue as I only bought it for the single player experience.

The only issues I have with any game is the GTA4 problems where you have to have accounts to get the thing to run, thats DRM gone bad.

The thing is, it's only a matter of time when, installing a new application/game, the DRM protection breaks the protection of an existing installed program

Imagine if DRM becomes the norm. How many background services will you have running constantly monitoring your program startups?

Also, EULA's tend to have way too many gotchas in them - Such as, "We reserve the right to change anything in our terms. It's up to you to check our TOC online blah blah"

What will you do 2 years down the road when you come to play a DRM'd game only to get a "Unable to verify authenticity. Server not available"


Ask yourself this question:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is a reasonble length of time in which I can play this game before the owner pulls the switch?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 year? 6 months? 1 month
The owner being the company or whoever controls the DRM rights of your program. THEY can decide when to pull the rug under your feet
THAT IS NOT RIGHT
Remember, there are NO stated terms guaranteening a minimum operational time. You are 'assuming' you can play the game all the way through whenever you feel like it

People will turn more and more to cracked copy solutions because they at least remove all the annoying DRM (at the risk of getting virus or spyware installed though!!)

DRM is broken by design and it's the main reason why PC-gaming completely sucks. So far the only exception to this is Valve's Steam platform, because it's quite customer friendly and Valve hasn't pulled any plugs yet. I think they even promised to provide patches in case their DRM servers should go offline one day - but a promise is just a promise and not a contract. There is no guarantee that this will actually ever happen when the day comes when it is needed.

The only place where DRM is half-way bearable is on consoles, because there DRM is basically running on 'please insert the game DVD' mode only, which I can live with - it's not more than a very simple copy protection mechanism and it doesn't require any form of online activation and activation servers. But I must note that I do not purchase anything from any console's "online market place" - that's where their DRM will hit you hard again.

Outside of the game console world, I refuse to purchase DRM-infested products wherever possible. But it's hard to get around Adobe products, for example, so I grudgingly suck it up in these cases. I think that there should be laws AGAINST DRM.

Many of the former posters on this thread are right: DRM is a technical means to take away LEGAL rights - read: granted by LAW - from the customers. It's a tool corporations invented to be - once more - above the law. And by buying DRM-infested products, you actively support and finance their development and distribution. Since money is the only language corporations understand, simply do not give them their money. And when it comes to DRM-"protected" PC games, the only option is not to buy them. There's a better alternative available anyway: Buy the console version; not the downloadable version, but the DVD (or BluRay disc).

DRM generally doesn't care what OS you have. Try changing some hardware, then tell me DRM isn't evil.

Digital Restricions Management is never good :)

Steam ive installed on five different computers, as long as I have the login and password I can access all my games.

What happens if you play the same game simultaneously on separate computers? Do Steam cheack for such events?

I would recommend supporting sites who are against DRM such as GOG (Good old games)

What I think will happen with DRM is that there sometime in the near future will be a huge scandal with some company that for some reason will revoke the right for customers to use their games. (Because of buyout, force customers to buy version 2 or anything like that)

There will probably get to a huge class action trial where something will get to be decided about program distributors responsibility to provide access to software that has once been sold to a customer.

Our current laws are like stone-age when it comes to giving guidelines about issues like these.

I'll borrow some slashdot commenters words here as they stuck in my mind for being so perfect: "It's time that software houses learn the true cost of DRM: To provide access to authentication servers forever!" - I hope this will become true.

(I personally hate DRM, as I as a serious customer feel that it makes my life hard, and at the same time i know there are torrents around the globe with DRM-free versions of the same game i.e. I as a serious customer get a far worse version than the average pirate. It's all bad!)

PS: I've skipped GTA4 because of this even though I've bought every previous version in the series. (even multiple times for some titles as I played both on PC and on PS2)

To my mind DRM is an attempt by the old establishment who are used to a market where there is a finite supply of a product. Control the supply and you can control the price (this is why monopolies and oligopolies are bad).

Problem is that software is effectively infinite in supply. So the old business models don't apply and will generally not be very effective. So what to do? Come up with new and innovative ways to garner revenue or refuse to think outside the box and force the product to become something that they are much more familiar with? Guess which way the big publishers went?

There are good guys out there though. Personally I prefer Impulse (the Stardock equivalent of Steam) as it allows you to purchase download and install all DRM free. If you're interested check out the Stardock "gamers bill of rights" at some stage:

Gamers Bill of Rights - at Gamasutra

Steam, while nice if everything is working as advertised, tends to be a pain in the arse if your internet connection falls over or if you use the wrong virus checker or if you prefer Firefox over internet explorer (Steam uses the IE version of Flash to display content - so if you don't update Flash in IE steam eventually breaks).

I would really like to know the statistics of rates of piracy for games with DRM vs those without. I have a suspicion that they are both the same.

I also think that most big publishers who use DRM know how ineffective it is - but they're forced into including it by the companies shareholders (who really don't get the industry for the most part) or it as seen as not taking due diligence to ensure the security of the product.

That's exactly it, but it isn't just computer software. Digital media is inherently based around duplication. The content itself is carried via binary, because that way it can be jumped from one medium to another seamlessly. Here the content is of better value than whatever it is "printed" on.

They're afraid of that now because they've foolishly built their resources on imaginary numbers. Look at the little Amazon vs. Writers Guild of America scuffle for an example. Writers create one thing: content. Publishers take that content and turn it into soft cover books, hard cover books with prettier covers, and audio books. They can charge differently for all of them, knowing that someone who wants both to read and to listen must buy both things. People feel that they are paying for the presentation, which is fair since it does cost quite a bit to print a book and ship it halfway across the planet, or to have someone speak into a microphone for six hours.

Recently (thanks to Amazon's Kindle), ebooks have become more mainstream so publishers are getting serious about them. An ebook presents the content digitally, generally as it was written. The technology is meant to be portable; the content can hop devices, get different fonts, different colours... and it can be run through a text to speech engine. The first three are minor issues (a book can be lended, and buying a book for the font is unusual). The latter scares them because the technology enables the disabled, for example (who just want to read and don't mind the quality) to buy the same content as everyone else because changing the presentation is no longer a thing which must be done by an outside party.

But isn't that what this is all about? Making things cheaper? Cutting back on bother so we don't need Gammas and Epsilons to prop up our civilization? If digital content acted just like analog content, that would completely waste 20 years of development.
So stop it, please, or your DRM will make me very sad.

I'm sure stockholders and CEOs the world over just shed a tear.

Mainstream publishers embrace DRM encumbered digital distribution because it lowers their overhead cost vs. old-fashioned physical distribution, meaning more profit in their pocket.

Things rarely get cheaper, if anything it's now more expensive for the extra 'convenience'.

ive never got anything on steam because its a ripoff its far far cheaper to get a retail version from play.com or most other online stores. Alot of new games being £17.99 you cant lose.

Tom Clancy's EndWar (steam price) £34.99 download

Tom Clancy's EndWar (Play.com) £17.99 free postage

plus i quite like having a box and disk.

That's what they want you to believe .. except:

As with Petes example above I also find digital download versions way too expensive. Example of GTA IV for the PC:

Amazon - Distro + P&P = £20.44
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-PC/dp/B001EO74NW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1235911536&sr=1-1

Play.com - Distro inc free delivery = £24.99
http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/6187127/-/Product.html?searchstring=gta+iv&searchsource=0

GamesPlanet - Download version = £39.35
http://www.gamesplanet.com/UK/pc-games/buy-download-GTA-IV-1029-13.html

So it would seem the cost of bandwidth usage involved in downloading the game is outweighing that of manufacturing the DVD, box, manuals, and store distribution ????

Or, are companies just making you pay more to cover all this online activation crap, downloading of updates, and re-downloading when the files are corrupt or you want to re-install the game on another PC?

The supply of software is not infinite. When you buy software, you aren't paying for the product you are delivered. You are paying the company for all the resources they sank into creating the product.

You're falling into the trap of believing that DRM is another word for copy protection, something the complainers are trying to get you to do. DRM is the whole thing. But since you asked, yes, I do think that the rights you are given are dependant upon the copy protection being present. You only have to look and see how paranoid all the big publishers are about piracy to see that they're not going to allow you to install your game on five machines without some kind of payback. It's a tradeoff.


Well by your definition - and ignoring the fact that I wasn't the one who determined the semantics in the first place - there are no such thing as rights. The government could take away your right to anything Denmark gives you the right to do if it so chose. And if your parliamentary system is remotely like ours, it really could be on a whim.


Unless you want one of the games which isn't. The other day I wanted to buy Football Manager 2009, and checked the price at Play.com. It was £34.99 at that time although I see it's now dropped to the same £29.99 Steam wanted.

When he said "infinite" I think he meant that the number of copies is "infinite" in the sense that copying a program can be done thousands of times for a very low cost.

I agree with you about production costs and I buy all the software I use (well, the non-free software of course) but I think that this "easy copying" and DRM (to counter it) creates several issues on its own.

As I said before DRM often is problematic for real paying users while the pirates get to have a cracked version where the DRM is disabled. I think this is very unfair to the paying users.

I have several times chosen not to buy software because it used online authentication. This is because I change my main working computer roughly every year. If I have to get email contact with the author once a year about this it's irritating, but what if the author dropped support? What if it's a small garage company and the author had a car accident and died? What with all the work I've done, stored in a proprietary format using this DRM protected program?

When i buy a program/license I want to buy the right to use this program (at least the bought version) forever. If the seller does not agree on this I'm forced to chose other alternatives.

Yes this would be nice, In a few years time if you fancy playing one of your old games and the company has stopped supporting it, you must ether crack it or throw it in the bin. I still play dos games now and then, so i dont think its unreasonble to want to play games im buying now, for years to come. with DRM style licences this type of retro gaming will not be posible without cracks.

I dont really see any point in any form of copy protection as apart from the dreaded starforce they have all been cracked in days. so the only people who are bothered by them are the legal customers.

its one of those subjects that will go on and on.

Gone are the days of nice colour manuals and nice boxes so a download is alomost as good as a retail version. but i still dont see why they are more expensive than retail on average. its alot better with apps like Ableton live you get quite a chunk knocked off the price of the download version although you do get a massive sample libery with the boxed version, so swing and roundabouts again.

Pete

FOR NOW.

Steam still has a fun little 'feature' that if their servers detect a lot of login attempts for a single account (as in, someone is tring to brute-force guess a username/password), they will lock out the account in question.

Just because some random person on the internet is trying to break into your account, they WILL lock you out, and you'll lose access to ALL your games that you purchased from them with pretty much no recourse.
(Didn't this happen to someone on these forums a few weeks back?)



Misplaced sense of entitlement by the publisher?

I can't honestly see why anyone would think, from a gamers point of view, that DRM games are in anyway good... I really don't. If you have the CD, then you can install it anytime you want. If they want to limit your installs, they should think about limited the price more.

The music industry has went about it better (forced too basically). Look back 5 years say? A CD album was like £16 - £18. For 10-12 tracks? That's over a pound per song. Now look at it. Your picking up albums for £10 tops mostly (hard copies), cheaper downloading.

I know alot more goes into making games, with more staff being used. But if they made decent end products, then, who knows. You'll always have pirates though. DRM doesn't stop hardcore pirates.

I use Steam myself and really like the concept, but I don't like DRM. Some games I have use DRM like Spore. They created a tool to deactivate Spore on a computer, but I rather see that everyone has no limits in installing any game anytime wich they bought.

I don't mind logging into Steam everytime I use it so why not use that as a check if you bought a game instead of DRM's with install limits? Sure it can be cracked if you wanted, but the same goes for any kind of DRM.

The best protection I think is to block online play/features and easy to add in every game like online hiscores and so on.

Some rights may be less with Steam but I don't mind, at least i cannot loose my games, don't have to worry about broken/scratched cd's and so on. Even if my house burns down to the ground with all my pc's I still don't loose my games. And yes if they Steam decides to stop what will happen to the games then, but I'm sure if that will ever happen Steam users will make sure to find a sollution to that too, but I'm not worrying about that at all.

The thing is you don't need any hardcore to do this. Even though I buy my software I have seen quite a few pirate releases of copyrighted software, and the normal thing is that either there is a special installer (that the pirate crew wrote themselves) or you just look up a README file in the root of the CD with easy step-by-step instructions on how to install the game cracked.

I know for a fact that many normal kids (like the boys in my daughters school-class) know how to install cracked games, and they are not no computer freaks. They just read the README and do what it says.

So DRM is all bad. Bad for the real customer, restricting his rights. Bad for stopping piracy because it doesn't.

@Mahan - I agree completely

I would actually say that in a lot cases DRM actually encourages pirates. Look at their behaviour during the release of Spore (which EA attached with insane levels of DRM). Posts on The Pirate Bay were talking about downloading a pirated version as being a valid form of protest and the 'morally right thing to do'. The huge customer review backlash response to Spore on Amazon. A load of bollox of course but this was the sentiment.

Then look at the recent DRM free PDF version of Wil Wheaton's book 'Sunken Treasure'. He's sold more copies of the DRM free PDF version than of the 'dead tree' or hardcopy version and people who've bought the PDF have also gone on to buy the printed version.

Wil Wheatons Blog Post on his PDF version of the book

To my mind DRM is also an added overhead to game development costs (both real and opportunity) as the DRM has to be licensed from third party vendors and if it's too draconian then you run the risk of user backlash and poor PR for your title.

So apart from it being waved in front of shareholders who don't know any better as a solution to the terrifying threat of piracy, it would seem to be detrimental in all cases.

The problem is that when Valve goes bankrupt, or even are financially challenged, your Steam games are going to be worthless. Over night. Don't think this'll ever happen to Valve? I'm pretty sure people didn't think it would happen to Yahoo! Music or MSN Music. I mean if Microsoft and Yahoo! can't afford to keep their DRM servers up and running, what makes you think Valve is going to be able to perpetually foot an exponentially growing bandwidth and server requirement bill?

DRM is broken by design. Unless you have a subscription model, like an MMO or XBox Live, eventually you are not going to be able to afford keeping the servers running. It costs money to have DRM servers running, and nobody is willing to pay it.

Agreed! It's a joke how we were all told that Steam would lower the cost of videogames, and yet play.com is selling Dawn Of War II on DVD for €30, while the exact same version of the game (without a DVD, case or manual), sells on Steam for €50.

...Or even if people are paying, the company in question can still completely arbitrarily decide that there isn't enough profit to be made and still yank the plug.