The Needles: How Dumb Do They Think We Are?

[Void(null)]

Firstly, you're not perfect yourself. In your list, Far Cry 2's DRM is now patched out.

I have never claimed to be perfect, rather the opposite. It's a good job I am not working in Game Journalism.

Secondly, the Far Cry 2 Patch v1.03 removes machine install limit, yes. But this requires the game to be patched.

I'm curious if UbiSoft required the game to call home after the game was installed, thus getting around this problem by allowing users to install Far Cry 2, and then patch over the top of it and thus the user never has to deal with the DRM?

That seems to be a far more graceful way of going about it.

 

[Bobbovski]

I actually know a game company that actually trusts their customers... Paradox interactive. Their games don't have copy protection... heck you don't even need the DVD-disc to play most of their games. You could technically install the game on as many computers as you want and still be able to play the game on all of them.

Why can't more game developers be like them? =(

 

[Void(null)]

I actually know a game company that actually trusts their customers... Paradox interactive. Their games don't have copy protection... heck you don't even need the DVD-disc to play most of their games. You could technically install the game on as many computers as you want and still be able to play the game on all of them.

Why can't more game developers be like them? =(

CD Projekt (Good Old Games)
Stardock (Gamer Bill of Rights, GalCiv)
Ironclad Games (Sins of a Solar Empire)
Bethesda (SecuRom was removed from Morrowind in the very first patch and Oblivion only had a basic DVD check)

Sadly there are not many of them.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Which is worse? The fact that 2K seem to think that we're idiots, or the fact that we actually are? Think about it, for all the bitching and moaning people are doing about GFWL and install limits and so-forth, the publishers aren't going to change a damn thing. They're going to release the game, and we're going to willingly bend over so they can shove whatever they want up there.

The gaming industry is completely backwards. If I goto a McDonald's and tell them that I don't like pickles, then they aren't going to serve me a burger with pickles and tell me to just choke 'em down and like it. No, they pick the pickles off (or rather, they just don't put them on in the first place), and if they don't do that, then I can throw a fit and they'll make me a new burger. Heck, I don't even have to specify that I don't want pickles, I can be a douche about it and just order a regular burger then walk up after I've received my food an insist that I ordered without pickles.

Not in the gaming world though. Gamers are the weakest people I've ever seen. They'll piss and moan about something that a developer is doing that they don't like, then when the game comes out we're so hard-up to get a hit of whatever their selling that we make them millionaires. So of course 2K seems to think that we're idiots... BECAUSE WE ARE! Maybe I'm not talking about you specifically, maybe you as the person reading this have actually abstained from buying a game (and even resisted pirating it) because you disagreed with some aspect of what the developers did. Well, guess what? For every person like you, about a thousand others are buying the product.

The absurd thing that gamers will even defend this shit. If you goto a Borderlands forum to complain about the DRM install limits on the DLC for PC, there are actually people who stick-up for it like they're paid lawyers. Heck, who needs lawyers when you have such blind zealous fanboys to back-up every douche move you make? Never mind logic or any of that shit, the developers have every right to do anything they want, and you as the customer have no right to *****. EXCUSE ME!? Goto any other industry and that's precisely my job to ***** at the provider when they fuck something up.

I would gather that most publishers out there view gamers as a bunch of babies (literally speaking). Sure we whine and throw a fuss, and every now and then we might knock something over and make a huge mess, but at the end of the day we'll tire ourselves out and just go to bed and there will be peace. So of course they're going to pull a switcheroo like this on us, same way we'd pull a switcheroo on our own kids. Because we don't expect they'll even notice. After all, at the end of the day after all our fussing, we're still going to make Bioshock 2 into a massive hit.

 

[Void(null)]

I would gather that most publishers out there view gamers as a bunch of babies (literally speaking). Sure we whine and throw a fuss, and every now and then we might knock something over and make a huge mess, but at the end of the day we'll tire ourselves out and just go to bed and there will be peace. So of course they're going to pull a switcheroo like this on us, same way we'd pull a switcheroo on our own kids. Because we don't expect they'll even notice. After all, at the end of the day after all our fussing, we're still going to make Bioshock 2 into a massive hit.

Q: What do you do when you can't do anything?
A: You do what you can.

You can not pay money for BioShock 2 until a more satisfactory solution is found. You can complain to 2K on their forums, on the phone and write letters to them. And you can hope that eventually enough people become dissatisfied with the situation that it will have an impact.

Spore was a massive success in terms of Gamers banding together, Its a shame that the lessons learned there, did not carry over.

EA seems to have learned from the Spore fiasco, the rest of the publishers and we Gamers as a whole... sadly, did not.

 

[theQuickenining]

Taken from the Cultofrapture site:

There will be no SecuROM install limits for either the retail or digital editions of BioShock 2, and SecuROM will be used only to verify the game?s executable and check the date. Beyond that, we are only using standard Games for Windows Live non-SSA guidelines, which, per Microsoft, comes with 15 activations (after that, you can reset them with a call to Microsoft.)

They may have trojan horsed us a bit, but from my understand with GfWL you have two options as a developer. Unlimited activations with a unique ID bound to an individuals account. OR no unique ID required but 15 install limits.

The unique ID became a problem because some countries are not supported by GfWL. So if you registered in a non supported country you were locked out of the game and couldn't change your profile. However, you could register with any country such as the US and be fine, regardless of your actual location. But that was not told to people. With the option that 2k is going with, that confusion will not happen. 15 installs is still quite a few. Not infinite but better than one.

I would feel cheated if the message had read:

There will be no install limits for either the retail or digital editions of BioShock 2, and SecuROM will be used only to verify the game?s executable and check the date. Beyond that, we are only using standard Games for Windows Live non-SSA guidelines.

But, they clearly said there would be no SecuROM limits, there would be GfWL limits. Something they don't control but likely have pressure from the publisher to package the game with something.

There will never be a solution, only a better compromise.

EDIT: I also think it would be a shame to begin to judge games based on their DRM and not their actual content and gameplay. Sort of like skipping a book because it has an ugly cover.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I would gather that most publishers out there view gamers as a bunch of babies (literally speaking). Sure we whine and throw a fuss, and every now and then we might knock something over and make a huge mess, but at the end of the day we'll tire ourselves out and just go to bed and there will be peace. So of course they're going to pull a switcheroo like this on us, same way we'd pull a switcheroo on our own kids. Because we don't expect they'll even notice. After all, at the end of the day after all our fussing, we're still going to make Bioshock 2 into a massive hit.

Q: What do you do when you can't do anything?
A: You do what you can.

You can not pay money for BioShock 2 until a more satisfactory solution is found. You can complain to 2K on their forums, on the phone and write letters to them. And you can hope that eventually enough people become dissatisfied with the situation that it will have an impact.

Spore was a massive success in terms of Gamers banding together, Its a shame that the lessons learned there, did not carry over.

EA seems to have learned from the Spore fiasco, the rest of the publishers and we Gamers as a whole... sadly, did not.

Spore was never going to be a big seller anyway. I find it ironic, actually, that EA learned this lesson from selling a game that would have done poorly even if it was DRM-free. What you call a "massive success of gamers banding together", I call an incidental coincidence that happened to play-out in our favor. The fact that Spore had DRM and sucked enough to make few sales worked-out because it made EA think that the DRM was the reason no one wasn't buying the game when the sales tanked because publishers seldom consider the quality of a game. They just assumed that they had hyped it up enough that it would make plenty of sales.

Take Modern Warfare 2, for example. No way in hell the same scenario would have played out if it had the same level of DRM as Spore. It would have sold millions (or was it billions by now?) regardless. Heck, there was a so-called boycott on the PC version of the game to protest the lack of dedicated servers. So what happened when the game came out? PC gamers flocked to the stores because their desperate addiction to the game over-writes their common sense. It's my understanding that the PC version of the game has really dodgy online multiplayer as a result of decisions made on the game, but if you were to go to a forum for the game and complain about it, you'd be told to shut up because it isn't an issue.

A publisher/developer can do whatever the fuck they want. As long as their game is good enough, they could plot to assassinate the president and gamers would support them in their cause 100% because they just can't be bothered to suffer through missing-out on a game. Not once have I ever seen a good game tank because gamers decided to take a stand against something the publishers did.

 

[DayDark]

Surely the author would make more money if everyone just bought his book, correct? But by this logic so long as someone throws him a bone, it's just fine.

I wouldn't call it throwing him a bone, because as I see it, the library have a contract, and will pay him adequately. and clearly he agreed to that contract if he's book is in the library, so it is with his consent.

My real point behind this is using strained metaphors is a bad idea. You bring up the Ferrari and I bring up books, but it's apples and oranges here. With books and cars, for instance, you can lend them to friends.

well it wasn't really me that made the ferrari argument, but I'll take it for the sake of conversation.

Thanks to DRM (the point of this thread) with PC games you can't do that. With books and cars you can resell them. With PC games you can't do that. With books and cars I don't need to make sure I'm connected to the internet to use them. Too bad, you do if you want to play games on the PC.

I get the problem with DRM, and frankly I believe a CD key would be adequate, since the problem with piracy is that the protection only lasts until the first pirate cracks it. They need to make it hard to copy the disk, so that normal people can't be bothered to do it. It's useless try to make it harder for the people who are already pirates, they already have a broken moral compass, it's not even about the games to them, it's about breaking the code.

Console games don't have this problem, but PC games have had it for a long, long time - and it just gets worse. Despite what companies think, pirating on consoles is a relatively popular thing but no one does a damn thing about it. Plus they can trade in and lend games, why can't I do that?

Pirating on the console takes more energy to do than on the PC, that's the key difference, the learning curve is higher, and so more people would rather just buy the game, instead of being arsed to mod the console, download the content, and burn a disk. That's what the companies should try to do, make pirating a difficult skill, and make it special to have an original game.

 

[Dogmeat T Dingo]

The rare valid point.

As a purely business decision, it may be a bad one, I don't doubt that.

What riles me is the "pirating isn't bad" arguments that pop up. We should be able to take a breath and discuss this rationally (using proper and appropriate analogies).

Oh absolutely, though I think part of the problem is the over-the-top forced analogies of the media as well. Like with the anti movie piracy "you wouldn't steal a car" tripe. It just lends credibility to the "it's not stealing because they're not being deprived of merchandise" argument. Since a video game copy is less tangible it's less stealing and more like avoiding paying for a service, like not paying a mechanic after they fix your car. Developers are providing the consumer with replayable entertainment for a fee rather than a product with depletable stock, if that makes sense.

As you said, my gripe is mostly to do with their business model. I disagree with the idea of restricting people to a physical disk because it can be lost or damaged, and I don't like limited installs because as someone with limited finances for games I will often find an old game in my collection rather than pay for a new one. Maybe I'm unique in that way but I really doubt I'm the only one who does that, and having limited installs very much sours my opinion of a game before I've played it because replay value is a big if not the biggest factor for me when buying something.

Steam is a good example for both reducing piracy and providing an acceptable digital service, I have plenty of games on there and not only is there no box and disk cluttering up my shelf and getting lost or damaged but the games are available for use whenever I want them. I can't tell you how great it is to have a hankering for an old game and just looking it up on my Steam list instead of sifting through boxes and spindles packed with disks.

 

[Void(null)]

The rare valid point.

As a purely business decision, it may be a bad one, I don't doubt that.

What riles me is the "pirating isn't bad" arguments that pop up. We should be able to take a breath and discuss this rationally (using proper and appropriate analogies).

Oh absolutely, though I think part of the problem is the over-the-top forced analogies of the media as well. Like with the anti movie piracy "you wouldn't steal a car" tripe. It just lends credibility to the "it's not stealing because they're not being deprived of merchandise" argument.

I had never thought of that before, but you are absolutely right. The ridicules lengths that the "Piracy is not theft" arguments go, really do seem like a Newtonian counter force to the ridicules lengths the "Piracy is Theft" arguments go.

 

[MGlBlaze]

So... basically they're taking out SecuROM and replacing it with a system that imposes the same brain-dead restrictions on legitamate customers, and yet tries to pass it off as something much better...

 

[Seldon2639]

The rare valid point.

As a purely business decision, it may be a bad one, I don't doubt that.

What riles me is the "pirating isn't bad" arguments that pop up. We should be able to take a breath and discuss this rationally (using proper and appropriate analogies).

Oh absolutely, though I think part of the problem is the over-the-top forced analogies of the media as well. Like with the anti movie piracy "you wouldn't steal a car" tripe. It just lends credibility to the "it's not stealing because they're not being deprived of merchandise" argument. Since a video game copy is less tangible it's less stealing and more like avoiding paying for a service, like not paying a mechanic after they fix your car. Developers are providing the consumer with replayable entertainment for a fee rather than a product with depletable stock, if that makes sense.

As you said, my gripe is mostly to do with their business model. I disagree with the idea of restricting people to a physical disk because it can be lost or damaged, and I don't like limited installs because as someone with limited finances for games I will often find an old game in my collection rather than pay for a new one. Maybe I'm unique in that way but I really doubt I'm the only one who does that, and having limited installs very much sours my opinion of a game before I've played it because replay value is a big if not the biggest factor for me when buying something.

Steam is a good example for both reducing piracy and providing an acceptable digital service, I have plenty of games on there and not only is there no box and disk cluttering up my shelf and getting lost or damaged but the games are available for use whenever I want them. I can't tell you how great it is to have a hankering for an old game and just looking it up on my Steam list instead of sifting through boxes and spindles packed with disks.

That's perhaps the best analogy I've heard. We do tend to parse the debate as a question of physical product replacement, rather than of failing to pay for services rendered. In fact, that would be an interesting tactic for the games developers. Instead of phrasing the debate as "you're stealing the game", parse the issue as "we provided a service to you, and you're refusing to pay". You wouldn't not pay your dentist.

 

[smjck]

Maybe you should try linking to the coverage that's already here.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/97778-Ubisoft-Details-New-Anti-Piracy-Plan

report

Sorry about that Mr.Chalk I didn't find one in my quick skim of the website, will look a bit harder next time, didn't mean to offend anyone

 

[Andy Chalk]

Nobody's offended, it's just a gentle zing. Hence the winkie face.