DRM Systems and the Publishers Who Love Them

[Odjin]

I'm working with steam both as a client and a developer and I've seen nothing but troubles including the ones mentioned above. It's a huge pile of crapiness in a sauce of incompetence followed by the smell of money-making waving the flag of "fuck you clients and devers we only want your money so eat shit". I'm not throwing this around without knowing what I do. I know steam since the very beginning so I know very well what it is or rather is "not".

Just OOC what games have you released with Steam? Most small developers I've talked to/read about seem to appreciate the platform, if nothing else than for the simple fact that it gets your name out. What were some of the problems you've had with them as a developer?

You are lucky then. Because I know more people than not which have huge troubles with steam and the customer service gives a shit about it. I just use it with grinding teeth since I have to. Whenever I can I choose games from the shelf instead of steam as it saves me tons of troubles and the game is installed much faster.

Interesting. Most people I know have never had problems with it, and in fact the only "horror stories" I've heard from steam have been in online forums.

Messing up updates and other oddities, as mentioned.

 

[Odjin]

You are lucky then. Because I know more people than not which have huge troubles with steam and the customer service gives a shit about it. I just use it with grinding teeth since I have to. Whenever I can I choose games from the shelf instead of steam as it saves me tons of troubles and the game is installed much faster.

And moving steam games around? Not without hacking around in the registry. Did it myself when we switched developer machine from an nVidia one to an ATI one. Both XP back then and the dever files on an external HD. That had been a damn drama until steam worked on the other machine. The other games outside steam just ran out of the box while the steam games caused tons of troubles as they failed to find various path. We even had to use the exact same path for steam which sucked since the file structure had been different on the two machines. An experience I never want to see again.

Simply to point out how equally anecdotal our two points of view are, I personally don't know a single person who has had an issue with Steam.

As far as mucking about with the registry, in between XP builds (the XP machine went through 3 hardware iterations before I started from scratch for my Win7 build), and from XP to Win7, I never had to do any registry tweaking at all. Move the files, tell Steam to "install" the game, Steam would see that it already had the core data files, and it would register the appropriate pieces of information, then be good to go in less than 5 minutes.

If, as shadow skill pointed out, you had issues due to not using the default/required Steam folder structure, then I'm sorry. I agree with shadow skill that not making more flexible file paths is nothing but lazy programming, but it has caused me no issues.

Steam doesn't come up without the path correction so this entire install situation can not even kick in. And calling people morons because they use different path shows only how moron you are. Ever heard of countries outside America? Yup, their Windows XP copies use different program path!. So much for calling us idiots... thanks go home buddy.

 

[BonGookKumBop]

My complaint is that console users and PC users are treated so differently. I recently visited my brother and he was showing me how cool Mass Effect 2 was. The story line confused me, so he suggested that I borrow his copy of the first Mass Effect game to get caught up. I was surprised to learn that since my wife and I recently got rid of our internet connection, I couldn't even start the game. I don't even know if I would have been able to play the game with a connection (I've heard it had some other draconian DRM), but if I owned an XBOX, borrowing a game from a friend or playing without an internet connection would not be a problem. Why do companies punish gamers that only play on PC's?

 

[DTWolfwood]

SHAMUS FOR PRESIDENT!! XD

man your the only dude i care to read every article. perhaps the few out there still speaking out for PC users. bless you sir BLESS YOU!

granted all of this will probably still amount to nothing. Devs and Publishers are doing their best to kill off computer gaming altogether it would seem. XD

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD work: Unobtrusive, reliable, versatile and with a ton of benefits.

I corrected this for you:

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD NOT work: Obtrusive, unreliable and with a ton of bugs/problems.

How can any sane man on this earth love steam? Seriously... you must be sick... or understand nothing of computers at all... <.=.<

I was going to make fun of your ludicrous sweeping remark and contempt for the insane people who pay game developers to develop games, but then I saw that you listed "hacking" in your interests and I got scared. Scared of the big terrifying hacker.

Yes you are. You're so scary. Sooo scary! :3

 

[Odjin]

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD work: Unobtrusive, reliable, versatile and with a ton of benefits.

I corrected this for you:

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD NOT work: Obtrusive, unreliable and with a ton of bugs/problems.

How can any sane man on this earth love steam? Seriously... you must be sick... or understand nothing of computers at all... <.=.<

I was going to make fun of your ludicrous sweeping remark and contempt for the insane people who pay game developers to develop games, but then I saw that you listed "hacking" in your interests and I got scared. Scared of the big terrifying hacker.

Yes you are. You're so scary. Sooo scary! :3

Somebody who doesn't know what a hacker is should be banned from the internet altogether. No need to talk anymore with an illiterate person like you... *sigh*.

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD work: Unobtrusive, reliable, versatile and with a ton of benefits.

I corrected this for you:

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD NOT work: Obtrusive, unreliable and with a ton of bugs/problems.

How can any sane man on this earth love steam? Seriously... you must be sick... or understand nothing of computers at all... <.=.<

I was going to make fun of your ludicrous sweeping remark and contempt for the insane people who pay game developers to develop games, but then I saw that you listed "hacking" in your interests and I got scared. Scared of the big terrifying hacker.

Yes you are. You're so scary. Sooo scary! :3

Somebody who doesn't know what a hacker is should be banned from the internet altogether. No need to talk anymore with an illiterate person like you... *sigh*.

I kid because I care.

In all seriousness though, get to a 2600 meet and ask 'em what they think will happen if anyone lists "hacking" as an interest. They'll laugh, but you'll lots more from the inevitable conversation that follows.

 

[Odjin]

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD work: Unobtrusive, reliable, versatile and with a ton of benefits.

I corrected this for you:

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD NOT work: Obtrusive, unreliable and with a ton of bugs/problems.

How can any sane man on this earth love steam? Seriously... you must be sick... or understand nothing of computers at all... <.=.<

I was going to make fun of your ludicrous sweeping remark and contempt for the insane people who pay game developers to develop games, but then I saw that you listed "hacking" in your interests and I got scared. Scared of the big terrifying hacker.

Yes you are. You're so scary. Sooo scary! :3

Somebody who doesn't know what a hacker is should be banned from the internet altogether. No need to talk anymore with an illiterate person like you... *sigh*.

I kid because I care.

In all seriousness though, get to a 2600 meet and ask 'em what they think will happen if anyone lists "hacking" as an interest. They'll laugh, but you'll lots more from the inevitable conversation that follows.

Which is a good sign that these people know nothing about the art of programming. You would be astonished how many people run around in "business" calling themselves programmers but what the churn out is an insult to a true hacker. And no... I'll never submit to word-alienation. If you call a black colored person a ****** then this is a plain insult. Calling a hacker a criminal is the same form of insult. Think twice the next time before you honk out such crap buddy.

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD work: Unobtrusive, reliable, versatile and with a ton of benefits.

I corrected this for you:

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD NOT work: Obtrusive, unreliable and with a ton of bugs/problems.

How can any sane man on this earth love steam? Seriously... you must be sick... or understand nothing of computers at all... <.=.<

I was going to make fun of your ludicrous sweeping remark and contempt for the insane people who pay game developers to develop games, but then I saw that you listed "hacking" in your interests and I got scared. Scared of the big terrifying hacker.

Yes you are. You're so scary. Sooo scary! :3

Somebody who doesn't know what a hacker is should be banned from the internet altogether. No need to talk anymore with an illiterate person like you... *sigh*.

I kid because I care.

In all seriousness though, get to a 2600 meet and ask 'em what they think will happen if anyone lists "hacking" as an interest. They'll laugh, but you'll lots more from the inevitable conversation that follows.

Which is a good sign that these people know nothing about the art of programming. You would be astonished how many people run around in "business" calling themselves programmers but what the churn out is an insult to a true hacker. And no... I'll never submit to word-alienation. If you call a black colored person a ****** then this is a plain insult. Calling a hacker a criminal is the same form of insult. Think twice the next time before you honk out such crap buddy.

No one called a hacker a criminal. What's your boggle?

 

[Odjin]

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD work: Unobtrusive, reliable, versatile and with a ton of benefits.

I corrected this for you:

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD NOT work: Obtrusive, unreliable and with a ton of bugs/problems.

How can any sane man on this earth love steam? Seriously... you must be sick... or understand nothing of computers at all... <.=.<

I was going to make fun of your ludicrous sweeping remark and contempt for the insane people who pay game developers to develop games, but then I saw that you listed "hacking" in your interests and I got scared. Scared of the big terrifying hacker.

Yes you are. You're so scary. Sooo scary! :3

Somebody who doesn't know what a hacker is should be banned from the internet altogether. No need to talk anymore with an illiterate person like you... *sigh*.

I kid because I care.

In all seriousness though, get to a 2600 meet and ask 'em what they think will happen if anyone lists "hacking" as an interest. They'll laugh, but you'll lots more from the inevitable conversation that follows.

Which is a good sign that these people know nothing about the art of programming. You would be astonished how many people run around in "business" calling themselves programmers but what the churn out is an insult to a true hacker. And no... I'll never submit to word-alienation. If you call a black colored person a ****** then this is a plain insult. Calling a hacker a criminal is the same form of insult. Think twice the next time before you honk out such crap buddy.

No one called a hacker a criminal. What's your boggle?

You. You make fun of my profession and that's an insult, plain simple.

 

[drivetheory]

yeah... it's a shame. DRM doesn't stop piracy, it only punishes paying customers.