It was fun, but it cannot go on like this. I'm breaking up with you.

[Scrustle]

You should email that to them and see if you get a response. Might be interesting.

 

[Ranorak]

Hang on a minute, I'm running out of game developers who I'm allowed to like. Maybe I should just go by whether I want to get a game or not and ignore the publisher/developer.

How dare you!

by the gods, still enjoying a product no matter what the corporation does that produces it!
This is insanity.
INSANITY I TELL YOU!

I mean, we're talking about a Entertainment product here!

 

[Twilight_guy]

Hope you have plenty of cloths in your drawers. Those little tags on cloths int eh store, there designed to prevent shoplifting, clothing stores don't trust you either. As a matter of fact, any store with a cash register doesn't trust you since they are designed to prevent you from taking money.

I will never understand why people think 'but they treat me like a criminal' or 'they don't trust me' or similar arguments make any sense. Nobody trusts you on the internet because nobody knows who you are. They never have.

I can see where you are coming from, but you're kind of missing the point.

The companies aren't treating all of their customers like thieves, they are merely putting measures in place to prevent any potential thieves out there.

The OP is referring to DRM, a system which actively punishes paying customers, yet does nothing to prevent piracy, and in fact leaves pirates with a superior product.

Lets take your clothes tag example. If someone steals a shirt with a tag on, and doesn't have the tools to remove it properly, they may damage the shirt, meaning the paying customer who has had the tag removed properly is left with a superior product.

You think pirates had to put up with problems like [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115298-PC-Upgrades-Trigger-Ubisoft-Activation-Limits] this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115375-Ubisoft-Defends-Then-Changes-Anno-DRM]?

DRM isn't supposed to hurt customers and make a pirated product better. Steam is a good example of that. DRM technology sucks, anyone will admit that, but most people, rather then saying, let's work on making DRM that is even more convenient and better designed then DRM like Steam, would rather complain and say it will never work. That strikes me as short sighted.

Anywho, I think piracy is more like buying from the black market. Some other guy steal a product and then makes it available for free (or for cheap in the real world since physical goods aren't duplicated for free) thus the customers gets a superior product (since its the same product, only illegal, and its cheaper and the thief will have removed security measures in order to have stolen it). Thus in the real world too, buying an illegal copy or pirating something offers a superior product.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

"That's correct, officer, my vehicle did not become stolen in the fifteen seconds it took it took to get from Huxley Avenue to Orwell Drive."

That's a clever way to say it. And I want to join your book club lol.

Also, I feel exactly the same way. It's insulting. It demonstrates how low a priority the user experience is for Activizzard (that's my favorite portmanteau). And it's not just an academic criticism, that shit is really fucking inconvenient and robs us of essential features like LAN that used to be expected. They are intentionally making their product worse to shift their own goddamn problems onto the consumer in a very visible way. Fuck that.

And they don't make games worth putting up with it for. Starcraft II was fine but surprisingly ho-hum. And you can ask anyone about Diablo III. They'll tell you it is the most "polished" game they have ever played. Their only complaint is EVERYTHING. It really cracks me up how people call it polished before saying everything about it is wrong and it's a shallow husk of it's predecessor that can't be enjoyed for the entire first play-through. How fucking polished can a game like that be lol?

That's how I feel about this site and it's why I post here less and less. Every poster has to prove that they aren't a bot a few times every hour. It never ends and instead of giving you the benefit of the doubt (ie, you are not a bot until given a reason to think you are), we are all constantly tested.

Yes, I have had it with being treated like a criminal by game companies too.

Agreed. The cure is a thousand times worse than the disease ever was both in a practical sense and how it makes me feel the user experience is valued. It makes the escapist's job easier by making the user experience shittier.

 

[Defenestra]

It's also hard to take this seriously considering that Starcraft 2 was first released 2 years ago. Really what were you doing all this time then? Or did you just get the game now?

Funny story. I bought the game when it came out.

Then I moved to a place where my main gaming PC, a desktop, was inconvenient to get consistently hooked to the 'net. Landlord said he'd fix that. Perhaps he has by now, but regardless, I have moved again.

So now I can actually play the goddamn game. And I am. And it's fun. But it's less fun than it would be if it did not insult me between levels with a server synch at every loading screen.

So no SC2 expansion packs for me, no Diablo 3 (I celebrated the release of Diablo 3 by playing Torchlight).

This is not to say that I'll never again do business with a company that has ticked me off. Just that said insult is going to be factored in to my shopping decisions, and it's very often going to lead to me playing something else instead.

 

[Ranorak]

Hang on a minute, I'm running out of game developers who I'm allowed to like. Maybe I should just go by whether I want to get a game or not and ignore the publisher/developer.

How dare you!

by the gods, still enjoying a product no matter what the corporation does that produces it!
This is insanity.
INSANITY I TELL YOU!

I mean, we're talking about a Entertainment product here!

God forbid someone decides that they don't want to support practices that they don't agree with.

Don't they know that they're supposed to let publishers forcibly ream them up the asshole, so long as they're given a passable but arguably sloppy reach-around?

Oddly, if that was the case, then there wouldn't be any publisher around judging by the hate spewed around on these forums.

Not targeted at the OT or any one personally, but I'm so sick and tired of all the "hate" and general awefulness that gets flung around, I was just happy to see someone buying a game just because it seems like a fun game.
Not because the Publisher has won some hidden bluff roll.
Because hate EA, Activision or whatever, in the end, all this industry (well publishers) want is money.
They don't want your smiles, they don't want your butterfly feeling, they want money.

And yes, I agree you can be opposed to certain actions, but does that REALLY lead to HATE?
Does the mild annoyance of a always on-line feature mean you can't play the games you like?

Or maybe I just prefer taking some bullshit if that means I get to play a game I like.

 

[hurfdurp]

NO DON'T, I can change, I swear!

 

[V8 Ninja]

I am totally going to try and use the spell "Activizzard" in my next D&D game. Too bad I have not and most likely never will play D&D in my entire life...

 

[wadark]

I love all the people who talk about Diablo 2 in the context of demonstrating just how far Blizzard has fallen.

I played D2 for many years. The single player was a joke. Sure, you COULD play offline, but it was practically a waste of time...but then you log on and what do you get? A player economy in the toilet, rampant hacks and duping that ruined the game, and the list goes on. So yeah, if they wanna throw in an online-only requirement to curb some of that...I'm all for it. Sue me.

 

[TallanKhan]

Im all for anyone who votes with their feet because at the end of the day its the only message a company will understand. No one cares what anyone says about their product as long as its commercially successful. I would never demonise people for giving custom to a company whos practices i dont agree with, but equally i admire people who take a moral stance about these things. In the long term its more productive than just whining about it.

 

[WaysideMaze]

DRM isn't supposed to hurt customers and make a pirated product better. Steam is a good example of that. DRM technology sucks, anyone will admit that, but most people, rather then saying, let's work on making DRM that is even more convenient and better designed then DRM like Steam, would rather complain and say it will never work. That strikes me as short sighted.

Anywho, I think piracy is more like buying from the black market. Some other guy steal a product and then makes it available for free (or for cheap in the real world since physical goods aren't duplicated for free) thus the customers gets a superior product (since its the same product, only illegal, and its cheaper and the thief will have removed security measures in order to have stolen it). Thus in the real world too, buying an illegal copy or pirating something offers a superior product.

doesn't matter if drm isn't supposed to hurt customers, the fact of the matter is that it does. Drm doesn't work. Pirates still get a free copy of a game, and customers have to jump through hoops.

Drm treats the paying customer like a criminal after they have already paid for the game.

And your black market example is flawed. In it you state that the customer gets the same product only legally. Not true. With drm the customer gets an inferior product and they get the privilege of paying for it. If I have to sign in to a server to play a single player game, or if I can be kicked off my single player game because of connection drop, or if I can only instal my game a limited number of times, yet pirates have none of these problems, then my product is inferior.