Activation Bomb

[Sporky111]

I do like the analogy of the dead man switch. It's incredibly selfish of publishers, as you said, to ensure their own survival and, failing that, take everyone with them when they go down.

I think now, people should really start thinking about the dollar-vote. If you're against online activation, don't buy the games. I stick to consoles, and it's quite satisfying to have a tangible copy of the game you paid for and not have to rely on the publisher to let you play it.

Eventually, if games that require activation sell badly enough, publishers will get the clue and start making the games for the consumer instead of for themselves.

 

[AceDiamond]

All I got from this article was "don't buy PC games period." I'm sure that wasn't the intent but given that half the things mentioned in this article will happen anyway regardless of outcry (companies will still go out of business, servers will still go down, etc.), it seems that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Since I've already done this, and have quite the Steam library, worrying about this is pointless for me. I can't undo what I've already done and by the time Steam dies out I'll probably be beyond worrying.

Actually I take that back, I got one other thing out of this article. The further confirmation of my belief that complaining about every little change isn't going to solve anything because again, things will still always happen regardless. You can at least stop a lot of the online activation stuff but beyond that you can't save a corporation by yourself, nor can you stop them from doing things you don't like by not talking to them directly or at least putting in the effort, and even then some things just have to happen. Just like people bitching about original Xbox titles not having live support anymore soon is pointless because it's been 5 years since the first Xbox was done. It's time to let it go and move on.

 

[Nova5]

XKCD says it best:

[http://xkcd.com/488/]

[small](image links to original page, used in accordance with their license, blah blah)[/small]

 

[Tears of Blood]

I don't eat games like chips, but I do play on consoles mostly. The games that I do have for PC I can live without, so this doesn't affect me much. However, I totally agree with Shamus on this point. Gotta' give this online activation thing a rest.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Your argument is inherently flawed, pirates are a red herring, the assumption always goes "if they didnt pirate it they would buy it" but thats a flawed argument since in all likely hood they wouldnt have unless its a special case like spore when pirating it was also a form of protest against the heavy handed tactics. Pirates are just a way for a company to say "look this is why our game had low sales, its not our fault the game sucked/was too system intensive/no body knew about it" altho piracy would probably help that last one.

Your argument with alcohol is flawed also, it didnt matter what the outcome of drinking was to the moral crusaders, they viewed it as the cause of many of sociaties ills and would not be disuaded untill it because obvious that banning it created bigger problems then allowing it did, its one of the few times in history you can see someone blaiming all of sociaties ills on something and literaly watch it blow up in their face. Other things that have been blamed include gays, women, cathlics, athiests, commies, black people, irish, mexicans, chinese, japanese, eastern europeans and many more. Some spelling may have shifted during the course of this rant.

Actually, my argument isn't as flawed as you might think (at least I don't think so, heh). I am not coming at this from a moral viewpoint, but rather from a purely economical.
Let me give you another example, Titanic would never sink right? So why invest in enough life boats to save everyone in case she sank? The smart economic move is to only buy the minimal necessary amount of life boats, because you won't need them anyway and they cost money.
The alcohol argument is kind of the same, because it wasn't a moral choice. The people holding these events sure wanted to sell that alcohol, it was a great profit. But in the end, they faced the prospect of losing money because a certain demographic of attenders got drunk and disorderly and that threatened to scare away other paying event goers. So, the profit form the alcohol had to go in favor of keeping the event goers coming.

DRMs are the same. They are usually third party software (such as StarForce, SecuROM etc.) and I can bet that they are rather expensive to buy a license for. These servers that Mr. Young are talking about also cost money to keep up and running. Now, I am not in anyway affiliated to any publisher except for buying the games they offer. But I think that if piracy was percieved as a negligable problem and not as severely affecting the projected income in a negative way then these invasive DRMs, Online Verifications and similar would never be used.
Think of it as this, you wouldn't buy a gun or hire a guard if you didn't feel threatened. Game Publishers aren't putting in DRMs for fun or beacuse they can, they are doing it because they believe the cost of using one will be justified by an increase in profit from denying casual "pirates" the chance to use an illegal copy.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

There is one argument you missed:
No body is going to want to play this game X years from now, and if they do there will probably be a strong enough community that a community made hack will be available. There will be classic games in every generation, those games will find a way to be preserved for the ages. The rest is just chaff people buy and throw away.

You need to experience a little more than the tiny little bubble which you live in. I personally still have my old NES games, as well as all my games for every system I've ever purchased from there on up. Do I play them constantly? No. But when I decide I want to play them, nothing is to stop me from hooking-up one of my old systems to play one of my old favorites. When I plug-in my SNES, it doesn't go online to ask Nintendo if it's okay for me to play some Castlevania IV, it just lets me. And why? Because it's my system and my game. Other companies might hold the rights to the content of the game and system, but I own the right to play said content.

I'm all for companies protecting their profits, but not when it comes at the expense of the people who give them said profit.

 

[Aardvark]

This kinda reminds me of that Star Force copy protection that was the bane of legit PC gamers until they were stupid enough to post torrent links on an indie company's forum to prove that copy protection is necessary. Never mind the fact that the same torrent site had Star Force protected games from which the copy protection had been removed by nefarious rogues.

Anyway, back to the point. I can't remember what game it was, I think it was one of the Prince of Persias, I'd bought, tried to install, but the thing wouldn't install because of the Star Force activation detecting some driver I had as emulation software that is used to be a filthy pirate pants. So I hit up a torrent site and got a crack for it.

A crack for a brand new game that I'd legitimately purchased.

I just took a look, those cracks are still there if you look hard enough. So don't worry about your old games being unactivatable. This is one of the cases where breaking the copy protection through means nefarious is morally right, if not legal.

Eventually, all the activation and CD key fuckery that I was forced to endure just to play a game got to me, causing me to stop PC gaming altogether.

 

[Latinidiot]

hhmmmff....tough question.

I was almost going to say I'm a console gamer, and it shouldn't affect me, but last week we were explained that we , in fact, are affected.

 

[Jackel86]

This is way I like hard copy of games, you don't have to worry about someone else maintaining it for you.

If Steam ever went out of business, I'd be buggered, but if Microsoft went out of business, my Xbox would still run those games.

Kinda an issue for me.

You wouldn't really be buggered if Steam went out of business (Offline mode, anybody?)


This really is a ticking clock for our screwedness. Every 'educated' gamer gets how this will destroy the industry, why doesn't the industry itself see?

I'm afraid it doesn't actually work that way though. I've been in offline mode a number of times, and it always seems to happen that the game won't let me play because it's "updating" or some crap that it can't do offline. I updated everything the night before I left the state, and when I tried to play when I got there, I couldn't without internet.

Personally, I'm fed up with PC games. Freezing, glitching, crashing, upgrading, incompatibility issues... I'm done with it. When I put L4D in my 360, it plays. No ifs ands or buts.

 

[incal11]

if piracy was percieved as a negligable problem and not as severely affecting the projected income in a negative way then these invasive DRMs, Online Verifications and similar would never be used.
Think of it as this, you wouldn't buy a gun or hire a guard if you didn't feel threatened. Game Publishers aren't putting in DRMs for fun or beacuse they can, they are doing it because they believe the cost of using one will be justified by an increase in profit from denying casual "pirates" the chance to use an illegal copy.

You're comparison with the alcohol problem is understandable, but it is tangencial (to begin, no gamer will barf on another for torrenting too much ).

Despite your different view you reach the same essential conclusion : DRM exist to "protect" revenues.
The soul bending truth is that DRMs DO NOT protect anything.

If the games are good, people with an ounce of self respect and a decent income WILL pay for them;
and they do,
which is why the game market is so profitable despite the piracy; despite, in truth, of the DRMs !
Bad games won't make money; they won't even be downloaded .

If the players suffer it is not because of piracy; but because of the corporate's greed, misinformation, and ignorance (and the all out greed of the DRMs publishers).

 

[Telperion]

Something has been bugging me about new XBox games lately: namely Cerberus and EA. I haven't actually gone ahead and tried it, but can I play ME 2 without logging into EA/Cerberus? It's not a big deal, but sometimes I just don't feel like hooking my xbox to the internet just so I can play a game on it. And we are talking about a single-player title here. Same deal with Arkham Asylum and Dante's Inferno: both automatically check for new content online on start-up, and that has me wondering. This feels an awful lot like Steam all of sudden, and the reality with that service is that when my internet connection is down I can kiss any and all Steam content goodbye.

I don't like this kind of "helpful" support that leads all too easily to constant internet watchdogs.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

That's why I stick to Playstation versions. PC gaming is completely fucked up with all those DRM and activations.

 

[veloper]

When the game company decides to deactivate a game you play, or when they simply go bust, you simply got 1 option: DL a crack.
That's one of the advantages of being on PC, you can solve it. It will become a problem when this activation scheme also moves to consoles to kill resales.

 

[pdgeorge]

Just lovin the fact I moved away from computer gaming a fair while ago. Console gaming doesn't have this problem. (It has many other problems, but this is one problem I will not likely have to worry about for my console games)

 

[Arachnid]

As much as I hate DRM for being anti-consumer, activation done right could avoid the dead-mans-switch problem. Here's how:

1. Have the game check for a particular file on startup. If the file exists, hash it using a secure hash function. If the hash matches a pre-programmed one, skip the activation check. This mechanism can be 'protected' from tampering in the same manner as the regular activation check is.
2. Generate a random string and store it in escrow with a legal firm. Embed the hash of this string in the game. Arrange with the firm that they will publish it if you go out of business or (optionally) X years from today.
3. Write a clause into the EULA that obliges you to release the key under the above circumstances. If you're extra brave, build in a financial obligation to the consumer if you don't.

Now, not only can you remove activation from any game if you go out of business or stop selling the game, but it requires no extra effort - no digging up old code, etcetera - and because you added a clause to the EULA, you're contractually obliged to do this, so anyone who buys you can't prevent you from fulfilling those obligations.

 

[veloper]

As much as I hate DRM for being anti-consumer, activation done right could avoid the dead-mans-switch problem. Here's how:

1. Have the game check for a particular file on startup. If the file exists, hash it using a secure hash function. If the hash matches a pre-programmed one, skip the activation check. This mechanism can be 'protected' from tampering in the same manner as the regular activation check is.
2. Generate a random string and store it in escrow with a legal firm. Embed the hash of this string in the game. Arrange with the firm that they will publish it if you go out of business or (optionally) X years from today.
3. Write a clause into the EULA that obliges you to release the key under the above circumstances. If you're extra brave, build in a financial obligation to the consumer if you don't.

Now, not only can you remove activation from any game if you go out of business or stop selling the game, but it requires no extra effort - no digging up old code, etcetera - and because you added a clause to the EULA, you're contractually obliged to do this, so anyone who buys you can't prevent you from fulfilling those obligations.

We, the consumers, eventually PAY not only for the game development, but also for any other expense the game company makes.
I'd rather DL a few cracks for those games still worth playing, than pay extra money for this scheme.


The opposite would actually turn out much better: have game publishers throw the switch on any game after only a couple months. Cracks would be viewed just as another kind of patch and become available everywhere after the initial period and without legal risk, because this shit wouldn't fly in court.

 

[CezarIgnat]

If the pirates already beat DRM...what's the point of it entirely? Just check the CD-Key if the player wants to play online...

If pirates want a game they will have it and they will remove your game's security for at least singleplayer. All the people who want to buy it legit will also buy it anyway...

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.