Online Activation Is a Ripoff

[scrape]

The assumption on the part of the publishers is this: most, if not all pirates are (theoretically) gamers, but not all gamers are pirates. Statistically, means that all the publishers have to do is police gamers, since they'll be sure to be policing the vast majority of potential pirates in the process. This is not the only law enforcement arena where this phenomenon occurs.

Basically, DRM turns gamers into digital minority - virtual black people. And thusly we all get profiled.

Think about it -- "cops" look at you suspiciously, so you get "pulled over" more often (sometime even while just walking) and sometimes, rarely, you might even get "roughed up" or "jailed" for no reason. The equivalents being: games get saddled with DRM since they know the most likely pirates "look like" gamers. When there's a mistake and you somehow get locked out of the game you bought, whose fault is it? Yours. There's no apology, no reparations made (that's a pun) and you just have to buy the game again. We're all living in the digital ghetto, now. Get used to it.

Making this comparison puts some of the pro-DRM rhetoric (not all of which is incorrect) in a different light, though. Imagine people saying such things about racial profiling or police brutality. I'm not saying it's a perfect metaphor, by any means, but it's not uncomparable, is it?

 

[RufusMcLaser]

So you buy the game, if you get screwed on the online activation DRM then you go download a pirated version. You paid for a software license, so what do they care so long as they made their money off you?

We've heard that one before. The problem is that you've still forked money over to the publisher, thus supporting (and in your own lil' way, perpetuating) the DRM you hate. If you're not willing to put up with online activation and other pernicious DRM the only way to have anything approaching a say in the issue is to not buy the game.

The last time a game's DRM actually pleased me was Company of Heroes- you must either authenticate your serial against a server, or have the disc in your drive. I'm okay with that.

 

[CaptDom]

Maybe we should licence them to "ask for permission to use" OUR MONEY! (but leave ourselves room to remove that support at our discretion) (HAHAHAHA! *maniacally*)

BUT SERIOUSLY
The keyword here being OURSELVES. It's us that 'really care', it's OUR interests at stake/heart, and HELLO! online?/offline? here we all are here ONLINE. I understand we're a pretty disparate bunch, BUT - define a valid excuse?

A serious high bandwith internet is surely one of the things we need to have as a society? WE HAVE THAT (some of us) we should use it to for petitions or whatever (see PS), and set an example for those that can't or WON'T get access to one.

DRM? better high speed data infrasructures? Persistant user data/licence support? expecting these things to get sorted by someone else? just like that? > "If you want a job done..."

They don't 'really' care about us AND - I/we DON'T 'really' care about them. Dev's/consumers we don't 'really' know or care about each other at present. SOMEONE has to MAKE someone care(constructively I hope).
We have a tool to do just that right underneath our fingertips. we just need to make use of it.

(PS anyone know how that's done?...)

 

[brunothepig]

If someone pirated UT3, they could acquire a crack, and I've seen LISTS of activation keys, even on youtube. It's not stopping piracy, it's encouraging it. After all, if the servers go down, at least people who pirated it aren't going to lose money. And, you know, if I lose UT3, next time Epic Games bring out a game with that same system, I will be sorely tempted to pirate it. Also, I got UT3 whilst staying with my dad for a while, who is without the internet, so I had to wait almost a week before I could activate and play the game. All a pirate needs is an email address and internet access. Which they obviously have.

 

[bmgibben]

I agree completely with the article. Although you made it seem like you had to phone home every time you launched; every install is just as annoying. I just recently reinstalled SC1. If blizzard had tanked after Brood War and had the DRM model its currently planning, I'd be out of luck.

Oh well. I guess with the annoying DRM model and lack of LAN function, I'll just be pirating it for the single player. At least the crack will likely be easier than the DRM.

 

[LonelyWizzard]

Recently I bought 2 games from Amazon. Nowhere on the site was it explained that I would have to activate it through Steam, but when I put it in the computer I didn't think this would be a problem. But as I tried to Install it, I realized that Steam was attempting ot download 17 Gigabytes of data on to my computer. I am on a limited data usage plan of 15 gb a month, If I downloaded 17 gb of data I would encur a minimum penalty of 100euro.I can't play either of these games that I bought with my money because I don't live in an area with a good enough internet connection. And, the final straw, I can't return the games because I might have made pirate copies of them. As a result of this experience I have quit PC games entirely, and will from now on be sticking to my good old XBox, at least until it starts stealing my games as well.

 

[taltamir]

Why do we keep on letting them define the debate with falsehood?
Online activation has absolutely NOTHING to do with piracy. It has everything to do with the second hand market.
The purpose of it is to prevent the sale of used copies. The cost of it is that the game can stop working at any time.

For example, the bioware activation servers are currently down. Have been for 2 weeks now.