Just from reading some of the notes on the Pirate Bays current legal battle, which I must say makes interesting reading, who else is getting sick of this DRM. I actually borrowed GTA4 of a mate of mine to try, and god was I glad i didnt buy it, Windows live games and the Rockstar club, all making the whole gaming experience awful and the rubbish it installed on my PC, I can honestly see why people turn to sites like pirate bay, much easier. Does anyone think that companies like EA, Activison and so on will ever turn away from drm.
DRM
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Caporegime
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well, iirc the pirate version needs both windows live and rockstar games, and adds in a loader aswell so theres actually MORE of the "crap" needed to be installed to get it working. So thats maybe the worst possible example ever of games DRM being a pain and pirating being easier.
But for all people peeing about crying and complaining about DRM, it actually effects and impede's almost nobody at all. games for windows live has NOTHING to do with DRM and has everything to do with MS being stupid enough to think because you need a service like live on a console, where you've got internet gaming capability but basically no easy control method or way of installing your own game hosting software. They think if they add all this crap to it you'll suddenly get friends on your PC which you never had before live, and finding a room to play a game in is suddenly easier.
In all honesty, if almost every game with multiplayer functionality has games for windows live, you'd have it installed anyway, and they might even make it work well, not look like crap and maybe even be useful.
But people just like to jump on a bandwagon "you mean sony accidentally had a rootkit on a cd like, a decade ago?? and starforce has root access because it has a driver...... must be the same thing, its like asking them to delete your computer and send it to hell". Be realistic, ati/nvidia, ms, every single device you own all use drivers that could all be faulty also, such is life. I've yet to see a proper downside to any of the drm software or see more than a handful of people in the past decade have a problem besides complaining there "could" be a problem and thats why they don't like it.
Every thread on here is full of people who have an issue with say the idea they can only install something 5 times, and misread what the actual deal is, get in an uproar for 15 page threads before someone notices you get an install back everytime you uninstall the game and the uproar dies down, no one actually had a problem but everyone rememebers a 15page thread of complaining and the next time it comes up everyone just barely remembers and assumes it created a massive problem last time when it didn't.
Every game with DRM that comes out gets 4 different 20 page threads and only 2-3 people actually ever have a problem, the rest are just assuming there will be problems.
But out of the several hundred people in that thread a hundred will have crashes due to a buggy game, another 100 will have their gfx drivers crash, and another 100 will have random incompatibilities and thats all fine and dandy, but if drm causes one issue its the end of the world?
Drm hasn't and never will be an issue, we will always have it and people will always over react to it, that is life.
But for all people peeing about crying and complaining about DRM, it actually effects and impede's almost nobody at all. games for windows live has NOTHING to do with DRM and has everything to do with MS being stupid enough to think because you need a service like live on a console, where you've got internet gaming capability but basically no easy control method or way of installing your own game hosting software. They think if they add all this crap to it you'll suddenly get friends on your PC which you never had before live, and finding a room to play a game in is suddenly easier.
In all honesty, if almost every game with multiplayer functionality has games for windows live, you'd have it installed anyway, and they might even make it work well, not look like crap and maybe even be useful.
But people just like to jump on a bandwagon "you mean sony accidentally had a rootkit on a cd like, a decade ago?? and starforce has root access because it has a driver...... must be the same thing, its like asking them to delete your computer and send it to hell". Be realistic, ati/nvidia, ms, every single device you own all use drivers that could all be faulty also, such is life. I've yet to see a proper downside to any of the drm software or see more than a handful of people in the past decade have a problem besides complaining there "could" be a problem and thats why they don't like it.
Every thread on here is full of people who have an issue with say the idea they can only install something 5 times, and misread what the actual deal is, get in an uproar for 15 page threads before someone notices you get an install back everytime you uninstall the game and the uproar dies down, no one actually had a problem but everyone rememebers a 15page thread of complaining and the next time it comes up everyone just barely remembers and assumes it created a massive problem last time when it didn't.
Every game with DRM that comes out gets 4 different 20 page threads and only 2-3 people actually ever have a problem, the rest are just assuming there will be problems.
But out of the several hundred people in that thread a hundred will have crashes due to a buggy game, another 100 will have their gfx drivers crash, and another 100 will have random incompatibilities and thats all fine and dandy, but if drm causes one issue its the end of the world?
Drm hasn't and never will be an issue, we will always have it and people will always over react to it, that is life.
No, he had not played it, he works at a charity collection warehouse and it was a donation, he paid 20 pounds for it, just to realize his p3 would not run it, so he wanted to have a play on this machine, unfortunately to say its now un-installed
I can see your point, I think calling it all "DRM" is a bit strong, but all that junk and rubbish installed as well. I just installed my old version of UT2004 and typed in my key, away I go, maybe just inpatient but it does seem as if we cannot be trusted anymore.
What a fantastic article, excellent use of a train journey reading that one, I now feel I understand it a lot more, and also what the game publishers are against, whilst I still do not agree with aggressive DRM I believe its doing a good job.
Man of Honour
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My main problem with DRM are the limted installs it brings. It basicly puts barriers in the way of the legitimate user whilst most pirate copies have these restrictions removed anyway. Considering that the majority of people don't like the limit that DRM imposes and adding anything extra to the registry can potentially bring in problems for the user. Piracy protection is necessary, but the idea of an account to log in to with an optional offline mode, such as Steam is a far better then limiting installs. Also, in most cases you DO NOT get an install back when you uninstall. Even those that do, what happens if you are forced to reformat?
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I'd say that's an over exaggeration. Yes, there were some well known games that didn't include a revoke option (Bioshock, Crysis Warhead to name but two), but tools were released to let you do that. I would agree though that any game using a limited install should have the ability to revoke the install straight out of the box. Having to wait for for a tool to do this isn't acceptable. Warhead does do something though that other games should follow. Using this method of protection, they decided that you don't need your DVD in the drive to play the game.
More recent games (Mirrors Edge, GTA) have the revoke tool included. I'd bet that most games from now on will, as it kicks up too much of a stink if a revoke util isn't included.
As for formatting - well, you get multiple installs, so you aren't stuck with the inability to play your game, but I agree, it isn't ideal and you shouldn't ever be left with a reduced amount of installs. Don't really have a solution for that one, apart from contacting their support department (which again, isn't ideal).
GTA4 is so easy to setup and run.Install GFWL & R* and thats it the game auto installs for you anyway. R* even release a no dvd patch after a month so you would not need to keep the DVD in the drive.
DRM is likely to increase in strength as PC games are not selling well at all so its either more DRM or no games. Take your pick.
Already PC gamers are getting 2nd class treatment as most ports are poor and some I discovered lack even basic shader FX of the 4 years old gfx card in the console versions as the devs obviously put little effort into it as the sales are just not there. Apart from WOW & some of the Eastern Asia & Russian markets (all very strong PC markets) PC gaming would go the way it did in 2002-04 with very few releases. Consoles come with DRM as well so its nothing new.
People who have something to hide as they like to steal will obviously not like it.!
DRM is likely to increase in strength as PC games are not selling well at all so its either more DRM or no games. Take your pick.
Already PC gamers are getting 2nd class treatment as most ports are poor and some I discovered lack even basic shader FX of the 4 years old gfx card in the console versions as the devs obviously put little effort into it as the sales are just not there. Apart from WOW & some of the Eastern Asia & Russian markets (all very strong PC markets) PC gaming would go the way it did in 2002-04 with very few releases. Consoles come with DRM as well so its nothing new.
People who have something to hide as they like to steal will obviously not like it.!
Complete rubbish. Any software that installs anything on your PC has the potential to be a problem. It's also the way it installs itself in the background that is annoying - it's install behaviour is EXACTLY like rootkits. Certain versions not liking each other, causing software conflicts, etc. are only a few of the problems. I'm sorry but do you really think that DRM is a good thing? Whether or not you are a pirate or crusade against piracy it's still a very bad thing. The only thing that stops piracy is CDKeys and great online functionality - nothing else works. IMHO they may as well do away with protection and save some money. Pass this onto the consumer and you may see sales going up.
M.
Again quoted for not understanding it. There was a great little cartoon on a very popular Swedish site. It basically went like this:
Cassette would kill the muisic industry.
Cassette duplicators would kill the games industry.
Video would kill the movie industry.
Writable media would kill every industry.
Yet it has never, ever happened. Why is this? Because they are still making money hand over fist.
If companies make a decent game then I'll buy it. Simple as that. If it's a buggy, pile of rubbish and DRM'd to hell then I won't. Do people not get that? The reason why certain companies make no money is that they produce utter rubbish. Crappy console ports or a rehashed FPS.
M.
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DRM sucks.
All DRM is going to do is push users away from PC gaming with genuine copies of games, why pay for a limit when the console users and piracy users don't get such treatment?
And with consoles there is a huge second hand market.
PC users get the **** taken from them, and DRM is nothing to do with trying to stop piracy, it is about market control, ANY company who claims otherwise is either niaive incompetent or lying, these companies are not interested in supporting PC users, they are interested in the concole market, period.
Could you imagine buying a CD, and only being allowed to play it on five audio systems? Or finding out you cannot use some of your movies as you are on your upteenth player?
Or a computer management system in a car which shuts the engine down after too many upgrades?
Even Microsoft have a sort of DRM!
I am still wondering if my old XP computer will be valid, as it has had a few hard drives, a few dvd/cd drives a few graphics cards, a sound card or two and a tv card in and out a few times, over the last couple of years, and another rebuild with old memory and an old graphics card re-fitted due to my Windows 7 build, I put my soundcrad in the wrong slot too so that probably counts as a hadware change, I did notice Windows Validation tool putting its nose in, I don't mind an OEM copy neing tied to a mobo but scoring hardware changes takes the ****.
All DRM is going to do is push users away from PC gaming with genuine copies of games, why pay for a limit when the console users and piracy users don't get such treatment?
And with consoles there is a huge second hand market.
PC users get the **** taken from them, and DRM is nothing to do with trying to stop piracy, it is about market control, ANY company who claims otherwise is either niaive incompetent or lying, these companies are not interested in supporting PC users, they are interested in the concole market, period.
Could you imagine buying a CD, and only being allowed to play it on five audio systems? Or finding out you cannot use some of your movies as you are on your upteenth player?
Or a computer management system in a car which shuts the engine down after too many upgrades?
Even Microsoft have a sort of DRM!
I am still wondering if my old XP computer will be valid, as it has had a few hard drives, a few dvd/cd drives a few graphics cards, a sound card or two and a tv card in and out a few times, over the last couple of years, and another rebuild with old memory and an old graphics card re-fitted due to my Windows 7 build, I put my soundcrad in the wrong slot too so that probably counts as a hadware change, I did notice Windows Validation tool putting its nose in, I don't mind an OEM copy neing tied to a mobo but scoring hardware changes takes the ****.
Is your mate somehow retarded? He honestly bought one of the latest PC releases and expected it to play on a Pentium 3 system? Did he not think to read the requirements before purchasing it?
I call shenanigans!
i was gonna buy it for pc on my althonxp 3200 system
I downloaded it to see if it would work
turns out it need SSE2 support on cpu - i'll wait until i upgrade pc and buy it again
got it on PS3 anyway
shame there no mod yet for customing cars, i want the truck trailers!!
If PC gaming was in such a healthly state & or PC games sold well (most don't and struggle to reach 6 figures which is pathetic) compared to the user base (around 100M gaming capable PC's sold in the past 3 years alone according to Nvidia/ATI) do you really think they would bother paying for DRM? If PC gaming was so healthy you would see developers support it with hardware intensive titles instead of 3rd rate lazy multiplatform ports which 95% of the PC games are now.
No, most PC games are heavily pirated and more people pirate PC games than buy them which is why DRM is getting to be more of an issue. DRM has gotten worse as piracy has risen. This is unlikely to change and if anything will either result in no PC games (which is already happening anyway as PC is an afterthought for many publishers now) or more DRM. Technically the PC is a long way ahead yet no-one apart from Crytek & Capcom are taking much effort in making PC hardware specific titles. Even long time PC champions like ID & Epic have gone multiplatform console both citing piracy as the reason why.
The argument about quality games= less piracy is both stupid & naive. COD4 PC sold less than 1M copies yet its highly acclaimed. Fallout3 PC has not even hit 1M copies yet but on the consoles sold over 2M each. If the 100M gaming PC's cannot even buy 1% of a top title there is something seriously wrong there as both examples have minimal DRM or bugs and the PC is the best version
When DRM interferes with the user experience it becomes a problem and its something that happens on a regular basis. The problem is that people don't want certain programs on their pc's and buying a game in which you need these programs to play it is stupid. It just seems that even after you've bought the game, the developers and publishers want to tell you how to play it.
Just because you may not have had a bad experience with DRM doesn't mean that no one else has.
The Sony rootkit problem was also well documented and caused a lot of problems for the company including several lawsuits and a mass recall of cd's. To say people don't have a problem with DRM is to deny that the consequences of Sony's actions ever happened.
The drivers that ATI supply are needed to help the user run games and bundled software is noted on the download page (there's even an option to just download the drivers).
As for your 5 installs thing, they only added a redeem tool to Bioshock after around a month of community uproar. Most games companies have been clever enough to follow suit since then.
Its worth noting that those PC Game sales rarely take Digital Downloads in to account.
As for ID and Epic, they cite piracy as the reason but everyone knows they've done it for money. Do you really think Gears of War would have sold THAT well had it been a PC exclusive (even sans piracy)?
100 million gaming pc's? Surely any pc with a graphics chip is a gaming pc. My sister has a pc capable of gaming, she doesn't play though.
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