sh0ck3r on 28/10/2008 at 20:36

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John Milton is the English Neet-chuh

(I am not opposed to someone saying, "What the FUCK does that have to do with anything?" In fact, I would almost prefer it.)

catbarf on 2/11/2008 at 01:52

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They're making it so that you can't buy the game and then torrent it- Far Cry 2 only installs the first four missions, then you need to connect to the internet and validate your game in order to download the rest of it- and SecuROM comes along too.

belboz on 2/11/2008 at 07:16

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well that wont work, the pirates are now installing the games then making pirate copy's of their install, so you get a full working copy of the game that was installed on their machine. With all the protection stripped out and all the extra's added, does not come with viruses.

Not only is it not a disk image, its just the files for the game, and the file package is densely packed with custom packers that are better that what you can normaly get, the file size is a lot smaller due it to not being a disk image, and more copies can then be spread via torrent. So the games companies will lose even more money.

And EA lose out the most because they charge so much for their games, generally if you are in england games come into the shops at 34 pounds, 99 pence. then after 2 weeks drop to 24 pounds, 99 pence, and after six months drop to 10 pounds. EA games are always 45 pounds, after six months the games are 45 pounds.

If you use steam you'll notice that games that have nothing to do with EA drop in price over time regardless of which country you are in, while the EA games are still the same price after a year.

Shakey-Lo on 2/11/2008 at 10:58

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Sounds like bullshit to me unless you provide a link. Google came up with nothing. It sounds like it might be a chinese-whispers distortion of the fact that pre-ordering the game gave you access to four exclusive missions. I'm pretty sure copy protection that stringent would be all over the news sites, and I haven't heard it from anyone I know with the game.

I also find it disappointing that people are 'voting with their wallets' based on copy protection alone. I would rather 'vote' for the quality games instead of some minor detail outside the game itself. Copy protection schemes will change and improve as technology develops (they are certainly NOT going to go away), but the relative success of different games and genres will have a lasting effect on the industry. You can bet the publishers are more readily going to associate sales figures with a game's genre and target audience than some extraneous feature like copy protection.

Far Cry 2 looks like it's going for the emergent "immersive sim" gameplay, and I'd much rather vote for that, than against inconvenient copy protection.

baeuchlein on 2/11/2008 at 12:26

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Other people obviously think different. What a surprise.

For me, copy protection matters in several ways. First, if a copy protection makes playing the game a hassle, and I know of that copy protection before I buy the game, it is likely that I won't buy that game.

When I bought Thief 3 along with my first DVD drive (a burner, in fact), there were only a few rumours about a copy protection and a few people having problems with that. A short list of DVD drives was known which had problems with the Thief 3 DVD. I checked that list, and my drive wasn't on it.

However, the DVD writer did not recognize the disc, while my DVD player could at least show me that there were some files and folders on the disc. I found out that something on the disc prevented this writer from recognizing it.

I bought a DVD-ROM drive from the same manufacturer, and the disc was recognized. I could copy the whole contents of the disc to my hard disc and received no error messages, so the disc was not damaged. Copying the files on another DVD and putting that into the DVD writer did not work: The game wanted to have the "right" disc.

Obviously, there was a copy protection present (which did not prevent the disc from being copied, since other drives could read it and then the contents could have been copied with the writer - great). Obviously, the list of "problematic" drives was not complete. And obviously, this copy protection turned into a "play protection" for me.

Second reason for being cautious with copy-protected games: Discs usually get scratched, the more you play the game, the more the disc gets scratched. I have been careful with inserting CDs and DVDs, but found some of them to be scratched as if someone put them under his shoes and walked a mile on rocks. Usually, the ones I use much are the ones exhibiting many scratches - but only a specific part of the disc is affected, about one inch from the outer rim of the disc. This is exactly where the tray of most CD and DVD drives is shallower. Obviously, the scratches occur when the drive spins the disc up or down. And I have not seen a drive in about eight years which does not add scratches to the discs.

So, the drives damage the discs. And I guess I cannot sue the drives' manufacturers for discs which are eight years old (or more). That means I have only a limited time in which I can play the games I paid for. Furthermore, after a few years it is difficult to get older games to work with newer operating systems - there's a whole thread reserved here at TTLG for such problems.

And that's why I do not like games with copy protection on their discs. I have already copied the Thief 2 disc a second time because the original and the first copy became scratched like the moon's surface and the first read errors occurred. Of course, the copy protection had to be removed for that.

However, the law and the law enforcers of Germany have become increasingly hostile towards anyone circumventing any copy protection for whatever reason. Today, if I copied my original Thief 2 game disc, for which I paid some years ago, I would commit a crime. (At least once I get rid of the copy protection.) No ifs, no buts. It's forbidden, and therefore I may not do it. OK, what would one expect from a country where it is forbidden to park your car with its front facing into the wrong direction (yes, that is actually forbidden here)?:weird: And on the other hand, the law enforcers have no problems with people among them freely saying they pirated games themselves ten years ago. Yes, there was actually a law enforcer, hunting people illegally copying games and music, who stated freely on the radio that he pirated content ten years ago. Great.:nono:

I have books which I can read until they fall apart, which usually does not happen. I have audio CDs and video DVDs which I can play until they fall apart, and that does not happen very often - strange thing, there are almost no scratches on my audio CDs, including the ones which I heard a lot. Perhaps hi-fi manufacturers use better drives in their products?

Ideally, I want to play even ancient games for as long as I want to play them, and while I can understand that there are a lot of reasons why this is different (new hardware, old games, changing operating systems), I get pissed-off if someone puts a totally artificial barrier between me and his game (shouldn't it be my game?). Especially if this copy protection gives me trouble even if I only want to play this game like it is supposed to be. See the Thief 3 example above.



I want more than just a good game. If I have troubles playing the game just because someone felt he had to put a copy protection on the game's disc, then my fun goes down. Therefore, I take this into consideration as well when I inform myself about a game which I might buy. I'm not buying games without reading a lot about them first, and playing a demo if one exists.

And even if I put the copy protection subject aside, the "vote with the wallet" idea does not work for me. I like some game genres which most people don't, and I usually don't care too much for graphics and sound. I can live with 640x480 resolution and stereo sound as long as the game is good enough. Most people today think different and buy other games, so the "vote with the wallet" thing does not work for me. I can choose only from these games which are sold, not from all the games I can imagine but which are seldom published. "Vote with the wallet" is an idea which only works well if you have enough available choices, but that is usually the problem with this idea: For one reason or another, some choices are present but blocked for you, and some other choices you would like to make are not present at all. The whole "vote with the wallet" thing is an illusion commonly created by marketing people and salesmen - and many of them do not care what you buy as long as you pay a lot of money for it. They do not sell you things to satisfy you, but to fill their wallet.

And that's why I don't adopt their point-of-view - it does not serve me well. Which is similar to the copy protection thingy: I don't need it, they think they need it. And while they may be right (if there's no copy protection, they will likely make less money from it, but that's what their company needs to produce more games), once they are going too far I will give them the finger and choose something which pleases me instead of satisfying them - and only them.

That's why I am very careful when it comes to copy protection. Not much has changed in the last decade concerning the people illegally copying software, but a lot has changed in a bad way for regular customers. And I don't want that to continue, so the salesmen get my money only for satisfying me, not for bothering me.