Test Drive & SecuROM

GraemeUK · 22 Mar 2007 at 18:24

Hi guys, quick question,

I notice Test Drive installed SecuROM software on your PC and this brings with it a little concern. I read about Starforce and the damage it does and basically want to know if I should have the same concerns over SecuROM?

Psypher5 · 22 Mar 2007 at 18:36

never had a problem with either.
It just..works

Darkwave · 22 Mar 2007 at 18:38

Psypher5 said:
It just... Punishes people who pay for games.

Fixed. These companies could learn a lot from Bethesda's release of Oblivion, no copy protection and it still sold an absolute fortune. If games are worth buying, people will buy them.

sniffy · 22 Mar 2007 at 19:10

I totally agree Ulfhedjinn.

tomanders91 · 22 Mar 2007 at 19:12

i dont get it? what is this secureRom thing?

Psypher5 · 22 Mar 2007 at 19:15

I dont see the fuss...

It hasnt effected anything to do with the game, or my pc.
I didnt have the disk it, it prompted me to put it in.. like most other games.

Wheres the problem o.o

MadMatty · 22 Mar 2007 at 19:22

if a game requires the disk why dont they make it so it just plays off the game disk (just like console) instead of wasting gigs of hd space :/

nocd patches are a nasseccity for original games for pure conveniance.

company of heroes and the dawn of war games are another few games that im sure have done well without need of the cd. Ut03/04 also.

Psypher5 · 22 Mar 2007 at 19:26

I hardly think a few gb of space is such a hard deal...

Just saying, imo it hasnt hurt me so I wont say anythign bad about it.

GraemeUK · 22 Mar 2007 at 20:10

Psypher5 said:
I hardly think a few gb of space is such a hard deal...

Just saying, imo it hasnt hurt me so I wont say anythign bad about it.

Google Starforce and see the damage it has done to peoples systems and some hardware i.e. opitcal drives

Darkwave · 22 Mar 2007 at 20:15

GraemeUK said:
Google Starforce and see the damage it has done to peoples systems and some hardware i.e. opitcal drives

Starforce did something to my LG DVD+RW drive once, I had to go into BIOS to fix it. Someone who isn't computer literate might've been conned out of a fair bit of cash going to a shop to get that fixed.

I'm against copy protection in general because it's unreliable and punishes people who buy games.

GraemeUK · 22 Mar 2007 at 20:23

I totally agree. I also like to be in control of what software I want on my machine, I don't want some hidden software that I have no idea what its doing any why.

number41 · 22 Mar 2007 at 20:34

I've downloaded many games due to the tripe produced nowadays. I buy all the good ones. Recently bought Supreme commander, company of heroes and a few others as I thought they were great and wanted to play MP. If the game is great then people buy it as mentioned above. Company of heroes didnt even need the disk in the drive once it was installed but sold loads of copies and is regarded as one of the best RTS out there!

Problem I had buying loads of games was those that were utter rubbish or bugged to hell and back (like Silent Hunter 4 recently) is that I've wasted £30 on them and unlike console games you can rarely take a PC game back if its bad!!

At least with a console game they cant patch it so if they make a bad game, people can simply return it and get a refund hence the company makes no money. With PCs people cant return the games hence piracy is rife as people simply dont want to risk spending £30 on a buggy/poor game

sniffy · 22 Mar 2007 at 20:35

Ulfhedjinn said:
I'm against copy protection in general because it's unreliable and punishes people who buy games.

That's exactly what it boils down to.

My mate rarely buys games, he just downloads them. The one game he did buy (because it was four quid), he had loads of hassle because of copy-protection. He got a refund and just downloaded an illegal version which worked great.

Phalanx · 22 Mar 2007 at 20:55

Ulfhedjinn said:
Fixed. These companies could learn a lot from Bethesda's release of Oblivion, no copy protection and it still sold an absolute fortune. If games are worth buying, people will buy them.

yeah, because it was sold on the Xbox360 (which is harder to pirate).

File Sharers just loved Oblivion.

Hamoodii · 22 Mar 2007 at 21:13

securom has driven me made sometimes, I had a legit version of double agent and it didnt work. I had to wait nearly 2 months before securom sent me an .exe to fix it.

HangTime · 22 Mar 2007 at 21:26

MadMatty said:
if a game requires the disk why dont they make it so it just plays off the game disk (just like console) instead of wasting gigs of hd space :/

Optical drives have a MAX read speed of around 7.8meg/sec for CDs, and 24meg/sec for DVD. That represents the speed when reading from the optimal location on the disk; the average and minimum speeds are in fact much lower.

Compare this to an average harddrive, which can read data at well in excess of 100meg/sec in burst mode, with sustained speeds over 50meg/sec. So loading data is much faster from a hd.

Then look at the response times; a hd can respond to a request in around 10ms, whereas an optical drive which take much longer. Is that the kind of lag you want when reading from the device?

Now consider the fact that many games need to write stuff to the hd anyway; config files, log files, save games, cache files etc.

And how about patching? Much easier to patch a game on a hd than a readonly disk!

Darkwave · 22 Mar 2007 at 21:29

Phalanx said:
yeah, because it was sold on the Xbox360 (which is harder to pirate).

File Sharers just loved Oblivion.

File sharers did love Oblivion, file sharers love every single game that is ever released. That's kind of their modus operandi, don't you know?

Oblivion would've made a fortune in profits for Bethesda even if it was PC-only and still had no copy protection. I absolutely dare and defy you to say otherwise, because if you do then you've been brainwashed by all this "piracy bankrupts game developers" codswallop.

Fact: People will pay money for games if they are good games.

Fact: The vast majority of people will even pay money for rubbish games.

Fact: The gaming industry turns over the equivalent of the GDP of a small country.

Anyway, this thread isn't here for me to defend piracy, which I don't. This thread is here to discuss how SecuROM affects Test Drive Unlimited (and it negatively affects many games.)

A lot of copy protection software out there today causes a lot more trouble than it's worth.

This thread is merely one example.

Phalanx · 22 Mar 2007 at 22:12

Ulfhedjinn said:
File sharers did love Oblivion, file sharers love every single game that is ever released. That's kind of their modus operandi, don't you know?

Oblivion would've made a fortune in profits for Bethesda even if it was PC-only and still had no copy protection. I absolutely dare and defy you to say otherwise, because if you do then you've been brainwashed by all this "piracy bankrupts game developers" codswallop.

I never said piracy bankrupts games developers (although nobody likes to get robbed, games developers make money on the games they produce like you said).

I agree with what you say, if a game is good, people will buy it. The thing is however, that not everyone will, lots and lots of people will download or attempt to download games, heck, I know people who actually download games just so they can update their extremely large game libraries. It's things like SecuROM and Starforce protection that purspone the cracking of games till after a majority of sales have been carried through. And to be quite frank, people are simply too cheap to pay for something they've got 95% of the value out of.

BigRoger · 22 Mar 2007 at 22:28

Pirates will always find away to get around copy protection and people will always download them illegally.If they make the games good enough im sure people will buy them.

HangTime · 22 Mar 2007 at 22:29

Phalanx said:
It's things like SecuROM and Starforce protection that purspone the cracking of games till after a majority of sales have been carried through. And to be quite frank, people are simply too cheap to pay for something they've got 95% of the value out of.

Definitely agree with this (although "purspone" cracked me up!)

People are willing to pay for games but a big problem comes when games are available for acquisition via means of non-payment in advance of them actually being available to buy. The temptation is there, and when AAA titles like Doom3 are becoming available more than a week ahead of their shelf date, people may choose to go down that route.

Contrast this with something like TOCA RD 2, which was one of the first Starforce3 protected games and was not properly cracked for months. Pretty much anyone who was serious about wanting the game would have bought it by then.

Just to re-iterate: The problem with piracy for the gaming industry is not the geeks who are downloading everything they can get their hands on; they aren't losing many sales to these people because the vast majority of the games they download, they would not have bought anyway. The problem is when genuine customers get tempted to be a little naughty and get their hands on a game ahead of schedule. They complete the game and then decide not to buy it, since as mentioned, they have already got 95% of the value out of it. This is where tough copy protection can help.

Incidentally, the above is one of the main reasons why I'm in favour of globalized release dates (where possible). Games coming out in the US say 10 days before a European launch is asking for trouble.