theshadavid said:
hURR dURR dERP said:
theshadavid said:
hURR dURR dERP said:
Still not buying it. Community backlash obviously doesn't mean much to Ubisoft, so the only way to tell them you don't like it is to, as they say, "vote with your wallet". I doubt it'll make a big impact because it's been proven again and again that people will eat their shit-twinkies anyway, but I'm not wasting my monies on this.
I think the worst thing is that this will (yes, will, not might) happen:
- Ubisoft puts shitty DRM on games to fight pirates.
- Most gamers will eat their shit because they still like the game underneath it and it's "not a big deal" compared to other DRM.
- Piracy continues, unaffected by the taste of shit on their games.
- Ubisoft puts more shit on their games to fight pirates.
- Most gamers will gladly shovel more shit down their own throats because it's not a big deal compared to previous flavors of shit.
- Piracy continues, unaffected by the taste of shit on their games.
- etc.
In short, refer to the <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog>boiling frog story but replace "boiling water" with "DRM" and "frog" with "gamers". Also add a boat full of pirates laughing in the face of everyone involved. That's pretty much how I see the future of DRM.
So you think the best defense of piracy is to not do anything? It's better they make money off their products and people think they are stingy than give something they've been working on for years for free.
No offense, but that's a really dumb way to interpret my post.
First of all, pirates will pirate. Whether you put no protection at all on your game or you invent the most draconian DRM in the history of computing, someone will crack your game and put it on the internet, and a lot of other someones will pirate it. I really can't imagine that anyone who wants to pirate a game has ever been put off by DRM since pirates download those games with the DRM already cracked anyway. It's just a matter of copying one patch file and they've got the full game. The presence or lack of DRM does not influence piracy in any way, expect perhaps that the crackers will spend two days patching a game in stead of one. And if you're planning to steal the game anyway, I don't think one day will change your mind.
Assuming all DRM will get cracked, you could say that DRM is useless. But wait, it gets worse. You see, DRM costs money. That money could've gone into the game itself, or into advertising, or into hookers and blow for the programmers. All of these are better than spending it on something that doesn't work anyway.
Doesn't work anyway? Hah, if only that was all. Because yes, it gets worse still. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who the real victims of DRM are. Certainly not the pirates, as we've established earlier on. They hardly even notice the DRM. The second-hand market?
What second-hand market? Who then? Well,
you and me of course. Us, the legal, paying customers get screwed with online activation, limited installs, and
getting kicked out of your game when your connection has a momentary hickup. The publishers aren't thanking us for buying the game, they're putting on rubber gloves and telling us to bend over, because while we're supporting the company with our money we
just might suddenly become pirates of a game we already bought. That's lunacy.
Now, to the point why I said your post was dumb: "
It's better they make money off their products and people think they are stingy than give something they've been working on for years for free."
That's the most lame-brained argumentation I've heard in quite a while. Who ever said anything about giving away a game for free? Do you really believe that if a game is unprotected suddenly noone would buy it anymore? Do you honestly believe that a game without DRM would be pirated more than a game with DRM? Do you honestly believe that Joe Q Public will go "Normally I don't pirate games, but this one doesn't have DRM so let's steal the shit out of it!"
Joe Q Public hardly knows what DRM is, let alone cares about it! Do you honestly believe that pirates will suddenly
not pirate something just because it has DRM? If you do, we've got games like Galactic Civilizations II proving you wrong (look it up if the name doesn't ring a bell).
Having said all that, I do recognize why publishers want DRM even though I believe that at least the current forms of DRM are completely useless. I don't necessarily dislike DRM itself. However, when DRM treats paying customers like thieving criminals and hinders legal buyers in playing the game they payed for, that's pure idiocy and I will not be a part of it. Of course as I pointed out I'm the minority here, and there will be plenty of people who'll happily swallow this crap to play a cool game. I can't even really blame them for that. But I'll be standing at the sidelines going "I told you so" every time they decide to screw over their own customers again with an even more restrictive DRM.
DRM should target pirates, not customers. That's the bottom line.
Well I'm sorry my response made you feel the need to write that much (not attempting a rude statement, but no one is gonna read that, it's on the sixth page). My point is that drm is necessary and I don't see a problem with this one. I mean who owns a rig that can play asc2 and doesn't have an internet connection? I see your point in that it effect (affects?) paying customers, and in that way I like how they did Batman: AA's drm (no jumping on pirated versions) but this just doesn't seem to be a big enough deal to get upset over.
ps: I know nothing about cracking. Did they ever crack the Batman AA drm?
There's no need to apologize for getting me to write a lot, because I write exactly as much as I feel like writing. Fact is, there are only two people I care about when writing this, and that's myself (I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't feel like writing it) and you (after all, it's you I'm replying to). If anyone else reads my posts that's nice, but certainly I don't tailor the length of my posts to the amount of attention they're meant to get. In fact, I'd write
shorter posts if the goal was to get people to read them. In this case I'm assuming you'll do me the favor of reading my post because it's directed at you (and unless you've turned off the feature, you'll get it delivered to your inbox), but otherwise I find short posts tend to get people's attention more effectively.
Anyway, I don't entirely agree that DRM is
necessary, but I can certainly see why it's
desirable. The point I'm making isn't that DRM is an inherently Bad Thing. It's that this form of DRM is a Bad Thing. Who can play AC2 but doesn't have an internet connection? Well,
me for example. Well, obviously I do have an internet connection or I wouldn't be typing this, but I've got a gaming laptop, and I often play games in places I don't have an internet connection. Furthermore, wireless internet isn't exactly the most reliable thing and my provider certainly isn't either. Not a day goes by that I don't temporarily lose my connection even when I'm sitting at home. It's usually just a few seconds and almost never more than a minute, but I'd hate it if I'd have to start from my last checkpoint every time this happened. It's hard enough for me to enjoy online games, so I consider it a very bad thing that a singleplayer now employs such restrictive measures.
I understand that you and many others don't see the big deal. I can see why you'd say that, honestly. But that's the whole point of my posts. "First they came". All things you might be familiar with, that describe this very sort of situation. Every next step employs heavier methods that are more harmful to honest users, but every step is accepted with relatively little opposition because we're lead to believe it's necessary, that the industry somehow needs DRM to survive. To be blunt, that's
bullshit. As I've mentioned before, one only has to look at a game like <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_Civilizations_2#Distribution>Galactic Civilizations II to see that. GalCiv2 came with no copy protection at all. And yet this game, developed and distributed by a relatively small player in the industry, did well enough to earn two big expansion packs. Did it get pirated? Of course it did. But so do all the games with expensive and obtrusive DRM measures. The point?
DRM has no effect.
As I said, DRM has no effect on piratesFor the record: Arkham Asylum did get cracked. It took two tries IIRC -one restored the gliding, the other restored the grappling- but within a relatively short time of the official release the entire game was playable by pirates. I keep track of these things because DRM is something I care about, as demonstrated by these retardedly long posts.. But if that was all, I wouldn't care so much about it. The reason I do care about it, is that DRM
does affect paying customers. Some DRM affects people who happen to have CD-copying/image-mounting software installed (which can be used to copy games, sure, but also has a lot of legitimate applications), some DRM affects people who frequently format their harddrives by limited the amount of times they can install the game, some DRM affects people without an internet connection with online activation, and now this DRM affects people without a 100% stable internet connection. And it's not just on your end that connection issues can occur. Everywhere between your computer, your router, your ISP, all the way down to Ubisoft's servers; something can go wrong. When that happens, you'll get kicked out of the game you paid for, because in some twisted way, they assume that you're going to suddenly start pirating something you already paid for.
And if that insult isn't enough, imagine what the next step of DRM will be. You're fine with it now because you can't imagine this DRM idea affecting you, but what about the next draconian form of DRM when they come to the inevitable conclusion that this one isn't working, just like all the ones before it? Perhaps you think the DRM will take care of the big bad pirates. What I'm saying isn't news because I've been saying it all along, but I'll say it again: The bad guys aren't being affected by this, only (yes,
only) people who've paid for their games and thus get an uncracked DRM-infested version on their plates.
As I said before, I'm not really against DRM even though I do believe it's pointless. I'm against DRM that fucks over honest customers to give people the false idea that something is being done about piracy. I do like that you brought up Arkham Asylum, because that's a great example of good DRM. Sure it didn't stop the pirates for more than a couple of days, but at least it didn't screw over the real customers (as far as I know). With DRM like that, you won't hear me complaining. But DRM like Ubisoft is putting into AC2 just means that I'm not buying any more Ubisoft games from now on.
The line needs to be drawn somewhere, and as
Rage Against the Machine said: "What better place than here, what better time than now?"
