I was reading about this on there forums a few days ago, and it pretty much turned from Instant Buy to................no your alright. I absolutely hate things like this, it really does just add more annoying problems to an already pain in the butt platform, and pirates just carry on laughing. Its cool that it removed the need for the DVD (cheers BioShock.............) but the 3 install limit...... who here doesnt change stuff around in theres PC's quite a bit ?
Mass Effect Requires Online Validation Every Ten Days to Function
- Thread starter Tejstar
- Start date
Also to add, when people buy something like a game they do so expecting to own it, whether thats technically true here its beside the point people buy things expecting it to work forever, what if something happens when you have no internet or the company disappears?
Then theres the slippery slope, where will this sort of intrusiveness end, will we have to give our details away to every company who demands it or worse, no i think this is already getting out of hand and people need to put a stop to it.
Then theres the slippery slope, where will this sort of intrusiveness end, will we have to give our details away to every company who demands it or worse, no i think this is already getting out of hand and people need to put a stop to it.
That's true. I love how games I've hated have conveniently not had a demo until quite a while after release (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Frontlines come to mind). That said, the demo does have to be a decent demo too.
Man of Honour
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Incorrect. It took about a week to get a working crack - almost the longest I can remember
I doubt it'll take as long for this though...I suspect a lot of people who buy the game will end up using the cracked version anyhow - just like BioShock.
Sware it is getting harder and harder to just enjoy a PC game now. If your not tweaking your whole system and disabling software to get a game to run at a smooth fps then it is having to mess about with anti piracy software.
Used to be such a PC fan boi but I have had my 360 again for about a month now and I can't say I miss PC gaming much at all.
Odd 1.6 mix but really it is just used for browsing the web.
Used to be such a PC fan boi but I have had my 360 again for about a month now and I can't say I miss PC gaming much at all.
Odd 1.6 mix but really it is just used for browsing the web.
I love how people assume pirates always have noble intentions of merely trying the game first then buying it if they like it. Might be true in your case, but I'd wager the serious majority of pirates are serial downloaders and are only interested in getting free stuff. I have lots of mates who quite simply don't buy games, they just download 24/7, its like an addiction. Obviously they never have the time to properly play the games they download, but hey, who cares, its free...
Man of Honour
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It's not like they'd be out buying that many games though - a lot of of people wouldn't buy more than one or at the most two games a month. I'm not trying to say that piracy is okay, but the whole looking at the number of games downloaded as representative of lost sales is never a good way to do things.
I hope this isnt true. This protection could possibly be worse than the dreaded starforce. Why cant publishers just drop the price and stop making games that cost an arm and a leg and just do them cheaper so they can sell them cheaper then we wouldnt have these problems. That or just publishers need to relise that pc and console and movie and music will always be copied due to the internet either deal with it and stop making protection worse for ppl or leave the biz. Plenty of new companys that dont do protection and do well.
Also i dont like online activation rubbish because i dont know how long i can stay on the net so when im gone and i have mass effect where the heck does that leave me and others without the net.
Also i dont like online activation rubbish because i dont know how long i can stay on the net so when im gone and i have mass effect where the heck does that leave me and others without the net.
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It actually didn't take a week to crack Bioshock - it was just a week before you saw it on the sites you use.
Unfortunately this will not stop piracy. As pretty much every format in existance has found out nothing will stop piracy (even cartridges which were transferred to CD's) has found out.
If people want to pirate then they will. Making it more and more difficult for home users to play games (remeber Starforce and the hell that caused) is not the answer.
The more and more I let through my firewall the more suseptable I am to one day opening up something that is going to cause my problems (how hard would it be for a trojan to call itself masseffect and then have a message popping up saying masseffect.exe requires access to the internet do you want to allow this?)
The best way at the moment is to have online validation against the CDKey for the multiplayer parts. People will then still pirate the single player but hopefully buy it for the multiplayer aspect.
I'm not condoning piracy I'm just saying this is a lame attempt to resolve it. The online activation works well with operating systems (as they patch them regularly) but the games industry isn't suitable for this technique.
M.
Unfortunately this will not stop piracy. As pretty much every format in existance has found out nothing will stop piracy (even cartridges which were transferred to CD's) has found out.
If people want to pirate then they will. Making it more and more difficult for home users to play games (remeber Starforce and the hell that caused) is not the answer.
The more and more I let through my firewall the more suseptable I am to one day opening up something that is going to cause my problems (how hard would it be for a trojan to call itself masseffect and then have a message popping up saying masseffect.exe requires access to the internet do you want to allow this?)
The best way at the moment is to have online validation against the CDKey for the multiplayer parts. People will then still pirate the single player but hopefully buy it for the multiplayer aspect.
I'm not condoning piracy I'm just saying this is a lame attempt to resolve it. The online activation works well with operating systems (as they patch them regularly) but the games industry isn't suitable for this technique.
M.
I agree. Most people are serial downloaders and will just try to steal or hack this game anyway. But I only said I wouldnt steal it. There are a surprising amount of people who only download games because they dont want to pay the full price and then not like the game. A demo helps this. I remeber almost all my PS1 and PS2 game purchased being based on demos. Plus, its almost impossible to get a hacked game fully functional, especially when online stuff is concerned. It wont stop piracy, but it will reduce the number of people who download it to 'try' it, which is what a lot of people do
A fair point, tbh.
The first time I bought a game after playing the cracked version was Bioshock.. I felt it was well worth the £35. Same with the Orange Box. Same with the Unreal series. When the new Witcher update comes out, I'll buy it and play the game again.
Pirates - well, some, anyway - will pay for good games.
Soldato
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I was really looking forward to Spore, then it turned to mildly interested as it was dumbed down
Now i think i will give it a miss until it has the copy protection removed
Sad fact of the matter is they will just blame lost sales on pirates and proclaim they are going to make games exclusively for consoles
Now i think i will give it a miss until it has the copy protection removed
Sad fact of the matter is they will just blame lost sales on pirates and proclaim they are going to make games exclusively for consoles
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Yep, they honestly believe piracy isn't just as rampant on consoles, absolute madness and scapegoating. This is not a sarcastic post, all of you who can should go to your favourite torrent/usenet and look in consoles.Sad fact of the matter is they will just blame lost sales on pirates and proclaim they are going to make games exclusively for consoles
Food for thought from my favourite usenet source: -
Title: Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)
Platform: Xbox 360
Reported: 23rd April 2008
Views: 13,241
Also, one of the comments just to really hit it home: -
"Tested: Worked on banned box, PAL, 100% real. hell yeah!
"Anyone who tells you piracy is not rampant on consoles, company or not, is lying to you.
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Pathetic. Bioshock proved that this is a totally naff idea. It didn't stop piracy and quite frankly it just ****** off legitimate customers.
I cannot see this working and again it'll just annoy those who buy it. It *will* be cracked no question. As Ulfhedjinn has said - these guys see it as a challenge. The harder the better.
I cannot see this working and again it'll just annoy those who buy it. It *will* be cracked no question. As Ulfhedjinn has said - these guys see it as a challenge. The harder the better.
- It costs a lot of money to develop this activation
- It costs a lot of money to have server for the activations
- It will cost them a lot in missed sales
- A cracked executable will be available even beore the release
- More people will see how easy it is to get pirated games
So in the end it costs them even more money and piracy will be increased.
People getting a pirated version would not have bought the game anyway if a pirated version isn't available anyway so it is all wasted money and resources.
- It costs a lot of money to have server for the activations
- It will cost them a lot in missed sales
- A cracked executable will be available even beore the release
- More people will see how easy it is to get pirated games
So in the end it costs them even more money and piracy will be increased.
People getting a pirated version would not have bought the game anyway if a pirated version isn't available anyway so it is all wasted money and resources.
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I could never see what all the fuss was about really..
If you uninstalled it, then reinstalled it, it didn't count as one of your five go's.
If you had a major OS problem and had to reformat, and via this lost your Bioshock install *five* times, then you could contact them and they'd reset the count. If you muck up your install and have to reformat your drive containing Bioshock five times, then you're a n00b.
I bought the game legitimately, and whenever I wanted to reinstall Windows, I uninstalled the game first. Never had any issues, and it never particularly bothered me. I guess it might bother someone who hasn't got a decent crack for their pirated version, but whatever.
The fuss is that some of us don't like being treated as criminals when we just spent up to and maybe over £30-40 for a game, especially when it doesn't affect pirates one iota.
At least that's how I feel about it, and why it bothers me so much.
I paid ~£40 for Bioshock through Steam. I didn't feel like I was treated like a criminal. I find cd-checks annoying, as I cba putting CD's in the drive, but apart from that, I'm all for whatever protection the developers feel is necessary.
I think more games should be free for SP and Lan, but pay to auth and play online.. like Savage2. People can then download the game freely, play it freely with their freinds, but will *have* to pay to play online.
Either that, or f2p, but with premium content available, a bit like Trackmania.. 1/5 of the game is free, and it's an awesome game.. if you want to play more styles of track and whatnot, then you need to pay.
I honestly believe that in the long run, these kinds of product marketing will win out, and actually be profitable for devs/pubs.