Zygoptera on 19/10/2008 at 21:47

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Aja, you're missing the point, at least partially. Sure, it probably wouldn't effect most people in terms of bricking the DVD any time soon (well, until EA/ Ubisoft gets them to turn off the servers. That's a minimum of one year for EA, or 18 months for Ubisoft, based on past actions...) and I'm sure a reactivation is only a colon invading $20 phone call away from one of EA or Ubisoft's superb and award winning customer care representatives, but:

1) The talk about 'freeing' the DRM after an initial period is a load of bollocks. Won't happen (in the vast majority of cases, and no, it hasn't happened for Bioshock as all they've done is removed the limit, the DRM's still there) because it's an additional cost to them for a title whose profitable days are over. And the thought of a company going out of business releasing a patch is patently ludicrous. More to the point those saying that know they're bullshitting. Fact is, in X years if you want SecuROMed games to work we'll be beholden to pirates to provide us with a working copy. And that, surely, if a situation made of :picard:

2) Why should I support, even by apathy, something which SecuROM markets as an ideal way to get clandestine info on me? I quote: "(http://www.securom.com/solution_pa.asp) Let your end-customers register first and collect important market information prior [sic] allowing them to use your software products."

Dear Sony, owners of SecuROM, if you're going to write a Trojan you could at least be subtle about it, and maybe employ someone who can write proper english too? Most telling is that you are actually proud of its behaviour and see it as a selling point. Kindly FOAD. PS I'm not buying a PS3 no matter how much you try and fuck up PCs.

3) What do I gain from it? Data Miners or coasters I can get anywhere. Anything provided to balance the rights I'm giving up? Anything? Anything?

4) It achieves nothing except being an absolutely deliberate attempt to undermine fundamental consumer rights such as the right to resell and the right to a durable product. Doesn't stop pirates, doesn't stop casual copying any better than standard copy protection schemes.

Fundamentally though, the whole thing is a gross insult to legitimate users and shows an enormous overestimation of their own importance by publishers. It isn't a priviledge for me to be able to buy some piece of EA/ Ubisoft shovelware, if I deign to purchase it it's a fucking priviledge for the software maker. Because I, and anyone else for that matter, would be here and perfectly happy without Spore/ Mass Effect/ Sacred 2/ Crysis Warhead/ Far Cry 2 but they wouldn't exist without people buying their programs.

redrain85 on 20/10/2008 at 00:18

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Maybe you wouldn't. But I'm betting a hell of a lot of people would. It would kill the used games market. And no more game rentals.

(http://www.joystiq.com/2005/11/08/playstation-3-wont-play-used-games/)

Sony already wanted to do this with the PS3, but backed off. I suspect they won't next time.


I don't want to have to call a game publisher and give them my name, address, phone number, photo of disc and manual, photo of receipt, pint of blood, first-born child, etc. every time their stupid DRM system causes a problem with one of the games I've bought.

It's a completely unnecessary inconvenience from the customer standpoint: that wastes time, and possibly costs additional money if the call isn't toll-free.

Here's one guy's horror story with Spore:
(http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/6800.page)


Yeah. The only difference is: before, it wouldn't have been absolutely necessary to hunt down a crack when a publisher went out of business. You could be blissfully unaware of that company's non-existence while still being able to play your games.

Now, there's a huge shadow of doubt being cast over whether you'll still be able to play them several years down the line. At this point, I don't trust the publishers to follow through on their "we'll patch it if we go out of business" spiel. Patching a game several years old will be the last thing on their minds, when the creditors are putting locks on the doors. You'll actually be forced to behave like a "criminal" in order protect your investment and remain able to keep using it freely.

The_Raven on 20/10/2008 at 03:18

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Game publishers will only be able to pull crazy shit like this if the market supports it. If intrusive DRM has developed a stigmata that significantly hurts their bottom line, then they won't use it. It took awhile, but almost all the major publishers have now turned away from Starforce. CD-checks were bad enough before, because cracks had to be used in order to get games running on different environments that they weren't originally designed for, but this whole activation crap has gone too far.

While I won't go so far as to blame all of this on Valve, they did set a major precedence for this type of behavior years ago. I was quite the fanboy until my struggles with Half-Life 2 turned me off of them for good. Unlike, Dethy, I didn't bother sticking around until STEAM was fixed. The whole thought of Valve rolling out and making STEAM mandatory for a single player game, when it was painfully obvious that the thing shouldn't have made it out of the public beta stage to begin with, was incredibly insulting.

(http://www.xkcd.com/488/) This recent xkcd comic is all too relevant to the current discussion.

EDIT:


Neither is blaming everything on pirates.

Scots Taffer on 20/10/2008 at 05:01

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It's a sticky situation that they find themselves in, that's for sure (games companies, that is), and they do need to find some measurable way of protecting their product - or at least, acting in the best interests of protecting their product - but whether or not it works is only quantifiable by the Bought vs Pirated argument, which is pretty impossible to get a metric on. So in that respect, I guess it fails in practice but they've got their theoretical end covered (more or less).

However, the concern for the consumer is also very valid and the risk is entirely on their side after the purchase goes through - the companies have produced a game and then protected it as best they can to retain their (hypothetical) highest chance of converting that product into dollars, then the consumer wears all of that risk after the fact.

I don't know how this can be gotten around.

Surely we're near sophisticated enough encryption that can provide a key that would essentially take hackers/crack-teams ages to find a crack/fix for?

Can't the companies pitch together to fund the lifetime of a server that would just provide randomly automating tokens for all the games? Is this too Communist?

I'm not a fan of all this online activation nonsense, but I guess if it's the only thing that the companies feel they can do to protect their IP and I want a piece of that IP, I'll live with it if I want to experience their IP badly enough.

People who are actively boycotting DRM are going to find themselves in an increasingly untenable position in the future as more and more games adopt a similar method of protection. I don't see what they're going to get out of not experiencing games that, most likely, they won't play often enough to encounter the much-maligned issues involved.

The_Raven on 20/10/2008 at 05:07

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Complete apathy and acceptance never brings about change.