BioWare Lifts the Lid on Dragon Age 2 DRM

[Caliostro]

Never saw anything interesting in this game... Still don't see anything that's relevant about this game. So I think I'll live with this DRM as I proceed to not buy it.

Yet another blow against piracy... now... only time will tell how they'll react.

Ahaha... I find it absolutely adorable how naive some people are.


This will be in every torrent site within a week of release, probably before, LIKE EVERY OTHER GAME AND ANY OTHER DRM EVER MADE.

I'll paraphrase Gabe Newell's words: Wanna stop piracy? Make your games worth buying. Make the legitimate customer feel like they got their money's worth.

 

[Pictoru]

We have now reached a point where people without an internet connection cannot play games.

That's right , but think about you , with an internet conn. does it NEVER crash ? what if your snowed in , your internet cable froze and snapped (or modem EXPLODED , or whatever system your using) and you have nothing to do...you got your mind set on some gaming ... what do you do then ?

And another MINOR thing...at what point will this so called "anti piracy war" or whatever you wanna call it , end ? Next step might require you to do a DNA test each time you start the game ...retina scan anyone ?
Piracy will never ever EVER EEEVVVEEEERRRRR stop , the only way to NOT loose money is to make it more efficient to make the games in the first place and maybe....make better games ...? that sounds sooooooooooo unreasonable ...or does it ?

 

[bz316]

Ehh...Bioware's done alight by me in the past. I'm willing to let this one slide. I'm really looking forward to this game!

 

[Gindil]

Fine then, if you have factual data that shows that I'm wrong then I won't argue with little more than my word and a few websites that state which industry as dropped in sales. However I would like to see your sources before I drop out of this arguement.

We'll split this up. Hope ya like reading and have a few hours:

Spoiler: Movies

If you look at the overall market of Movies, it's actually been increasing steadily since 1995 in revenue. Recently, we've had Avatar come out as a movie that has made $1 billion dollars and yet it was also the most pirated [http://www.the-numbers.com/market/].

So, if it's made $1 billion [http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/avatar-will-be-passing-1-billion-worldwide-this-weekend/], does that mean that piracy hurt it? Or helped? This doesn't mean we forget about the little guys. Nina Paley [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090824/1723375986.shtml] put her movie out (Sita Sings the Blues) for free on Youtube. She's still making money in other ways.

Of course it doesn't help when Hollywood Can't add [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml]

We'll come back to the argument at the bottom, I'm just giving details so you understand each industry a little better.

Spoiler: Music

Music has so many problems within that it's not funny. It's amazing how much goes into their accounting details [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml], how much the artist gets screwed [http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html], how the CEO of the major Four is clueless [http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/15-12/mf_morris?currentPage=all] about technology, and all around how it's a hassle to find good music on the radio [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/payola-or-how-to-undermine-your-own-argument-to-congress.ars]

Now, are there artists taking advantage of the new media? Yes [http://www.jamendo.com/en/] are they getting paid as much as Courtney Love? No. But think about all of the ways they can go around the old gate system or the Big Four (RIAA, Sony, Universal and EMI). And let's also not forget the fact that Radiohead [http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/] and NIN (at the bottom) paved the way for digital downloads being a part of the experience in a post-Napster world. Matter of fact, Napster had increased CD sales back when it was the genie [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2000/06/36961]. More people were exposed to more music and it was all digital. Add to this, the fact that there's now a LOT of remixers. I'll name three: OCRemix [http://ocremix.org/], DJ Danger Mouse [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grey_Album], and Girl Talk [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Talk_(musician)].

So we have MORE artists, not less. The pie has gotten bigger but people contend that it's smaller with dubious numbers.

Alright, the shortest section is gaming:

Spoiler: Gaming

First, Blizzard, EA, Activision, have competition. Newgrounds [http://www.newgrounds.com/], Armor Games [http://armorgames.com/], Kongregate [http://www.kongregate.com/] among the other Free 2 Play [http://www.nexon.net/] games out there. The new ways to make money aren't guaranteed but if you look at them, the rewards are tremendous [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100331/1631278819.shtml] in the industry. If you don't have to pay for the game, it seems to be better overall. You have more players, you're focused on making new content, and the developers have reasons to make the patches work. But what about regular single player games?

They're still around, but there's more evidence of gamers picking these titles up as used sales (wherein the developer has made its money on a new game) or the pirate can be considered the same as a non customer. They don't exist. Hell, if Atlus [http://www.siliconera.com/2010/10/21/the-demons-souls-effect-on-atlus-usas-profits/] can find a way to make money on their games, I'm sure anyone can once they find the right audience.

Finally, my view.

Spoiler: Piracy is BS

I have at least two different references that are long so they go here:

Trent Reznor Model:

New ways to make money for music.

Movie Distribution:
Economic response to how people find what they want online. (1 hr long)

Now, with these two out the way, it's better to understand where I'm coming from. I like old SNES games and it barely hurts anyone to see me play games from my childhood. While emulators and such are legal, the roms are not, which I find amazingly stupid. Regardless, such is our laws that take away from the fact that I like old games and wants to limit me. If you notice, most of the articles explain the reasoning behind why those in top positions continue to use piracy as a scapegoat. It affects their business models. The movie industry (MPAA) would be affected by the Bittorrenting of the future generations. Problem is, there are legal movies [http://vodo.net/] that aren't using the Hollywood route. Why pay for a movie if you can watch it through your computer? Depends... Why does it take 28 days to get a DVD to market? [http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/16/business/la-fi-ct-paramount-20100616] That's an example of an arbitrary limit. Something that the internet works around by making piracy more efficient and making Paramount look stupid in this case. We can't forget that Napster filed bankruptcy over its legal woes. With the RIAA losing credibility in the US, this comes up yet another way. Spotify can't come to the US [http://www.applebitch.com/2011/01/18/unfortunately-awesome-music-streaming-service-spotify-not-coming-to-usa-in-near-future/] because of their "freemium" model being akin to Napster. If you like free music, the labels are against it. Again, that's stupid since Napster increased CD sales by pointing consumers to other music conveniently. In gaming, if it's causing the downfall...

I'd eat my ponytail on my avatar. More than likely, people aren't factoring in all the competition that I've linked to. People are paying for their games. They are just doing it through various other means than the ones reported

Spoiler: Other articles of reference

Government Accountability Office - Piracy Report [http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20002348-261.html] - "It ain't that serious"

Copyright weakened, helps society [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/file-sharing-has-weakened-copyrightand-helped-society.ars]

Copyright History [http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/article/khan.copyright]

...Thus, the statutes explicitly authorized Americans to take free advantage of the cultural output of other countries. As a result, it was alleged that American publishers "indiscriminately reprinted books by foreign authors without even the pretence of acknowledgement." The tendency to reprint foreign works was encouraged by the existence of tariffs on imported books that ranged as high as 25 percent...

Effects of Copyright Piracy
What were the effects of piracy? First, did the American industry suffer from cheaper foreign books being dumped on the domestic market? This does not seem to have been the case. After controlling for the type of work, the cost of the work, and other variables, the prices of American books were lower than prices of foreign books.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

What, is the standard response to any article that says "This game has this DRM" that it "hurts players, feeds pirates, not gonna buy"? Haters gonna hate. This DRM system looks like the most sensible choice for an AAA developer and publisher, from what I've seen so far. And yes, it will still be pirated, so what?

So what's the freaking point? They should only have the minimum security measures to keep everyone from installing it on everyone and their grandmas computers obviously but going this far is pointless.

How much do you all want a bet that right when this game comes out, the pirates will strip the DRM protection right off of this game faster than a high school slut can take off her clothes at a kegger.

 

[Gindil]

What, is the standard response to any article that says "This game has this DRM" that it "hurts players, feeds pirates, not gonna buy"? Haters gonna hate. This DRM system looks like the most sensible choice for an AAA developer and publisher, from what I've seen so far. And yes, it will still be pirated, so what?

So what's the freaking point? They should only have the minimum security measures to keep everyone from installing it on everyone and their grandmas computers obviously but this is pointless.

How much do you all want a bet that right when this game comes out, the pirates will strip the DRM protection right off of this game faster than a high school slut can take off her clothes at a kegger.

....

Forget the DRM, what is that girl's name?

 

[Spy_Guy]

-snip-

DRM = Digital Restrictions Management.

While I do like your version better, since it's a lot more honest, the real term is:
"Digital Rights Management"

That being said, I still prefer your version.

 

[IamGamer41]

Pirates will always find away around DRM. I'm not saying don't bother with it but having to always be or at least limited internet connection is lame.Whatever happened to just having the cd in the drive?

 

[superline51]

Glad I don't have to deal with any of that BS

 

[mogamer]

I wish Steam had the BioWare Signature Edition available for pre-order.
They didn't start their sales until after the Signature Edition promotion was over.
I had to pre-order it on Direct2Drive. D:

How is the Steam DRM any better than the retail DRM? They both require an internet connection.

Steam sweetens the deal of having some minor, background DRM that never gets in the way after install, in exchange for community, achievements, auto patching, steam cloud online saving, friends lists, and epic sales.

Other DRM offers you nothing and can be more intrusive.

However, while I understand the annoyance of invasive DRM that forces you online, can anyone really give a decent reason how having your one copy of a game limited to be installed on 5 PCs at once is really crippling your freedoms?

Again, I'm in favour of scrapping the lot, but as DRM goes, limited installs on multiple machines at the same time shouldn't affect anyone but internet cafes trying to drag one cd key over 20 machines.

My steam games, I have em here at home, and I have a few installed at a mate's house and at my parents, 3 covers me, 5 should cover pretty much anyone.

Everyone's main complaint about this DRM is a required internet connection for a single player game and in that aspect, Steam is no better.

We have now reached a point where people without an internet connection cannot play games.

Yep, that is the truely pathetic thing about this. Even if you don't buy the dd copy, you still need to report in. And I don't care if it is Bioware. The "free" dlc drm was pretty dispicable (it wasn't free because you paid for it by getting drm).

And Steam is just as bad as every other scheme. Look at drm as a turd. You can have a turd that is shoved down your throat (Ubisoft always online). And then you have a turd that is covered with whipcream and nuts (Steam with it's extras). But a turd is still a turd and doesn't taste so good.

But we all know the real purpose of this. It's to stop re-sales. Like was mentioned earlier, what has drm stopped. Piracy or second hand sales? And you just know that the console makers will be doing this. THQ and EA already are trying to screw with used game sales with their online codes.

 

[Royas]

Well, dammit.

I was really looking forward to this game, but I will NOT buy any game that requires regular connection to the internet to run it. It was unacceptable when proposed for Mass Effect, it's no more acceptable now. EA can go to hell.

 

[matrix3509]

[In Bioware Voice]"For our awesome fans, we will now promise to only rape you up the ass every other Tuesday."[/Bioware Voice]

 

[Macgyvercas]

Wait, DRM that is as minimally interuptive as possible? HOLY CRAP!

Pitty it's not funny like the DRM on that Japanese dating sim Love Plus.

 

[theultimateend]

With the announcement of this DRM setup one can acknowledge that it is just assumed at this point in time that everyone who will buy this game has access to the internet. What do you think of that?

Well if you don't limit your customer base how else are you going to get lower than projected sales to support your world view that it's Piracy's fault?

It's kind of like holding down a race of people you don't like in Poverty, they respond negatively as any race would, but because they specifically were held down you get the benefit of making it look like its "just in their nature".

That's a VERY hyperbolic tangent off of piracy but it's fairly easy to see which is why I used it. I don't think racism and this silly war on piracy are on the same level at all, but they both look mighty retarded to me.