Digital Rights Management

[Frostic]

I never hear any one compalin about digital rights management on PC games. Am I the only one bothered by it? I'm an old school power gamer and DRM is keeping me from buying 90% of PC games in stores nowadays for several reasons.

1) I don't have internet anymore. (I'm at the library right now.) I don't need internet. I'm not into multiplayer. I'm not into social networking. I'm not into downloading movies, music, etc... I'm not in school so I don't need to do research. When I had internet I never used it so I decided to save myself some money and get rid of it.

I download drivers and patches at a friends house occasionally so I don't need the internet for that either. Why should I have to pay $50 a month for internet just so Electronic Arts and Steam can verify that I own a game? In my mind I verified ownership when I paid $55 at the cash register and got a receipt.

2) DRM makes me feel like I don't own a copy of the game. I feel like I'm renting it. Why? Because a lot of these software publishers/developers go out of business. When they go out of business they aren't obliged to maintain activation servers.

I can take a 50 year old phonograph record of Elvis Presley and play it on a turntable. How many of these games do you think will install and play 10 years from now when the game can't find an activation server because the company flopped.

If you read the EULA on games nowadays, they reserve the right to discontinue any online features; so technically, they don't even have to go under to get rid of their activation servers. So for example, if Electronics Arts decides to get out of PC gaming 5 years from now and concentrate solely on consoles, they can turn off their activation servers and there is nothing you can do about it.

I'll admit I don't play a lot of my old games but sometimes I do. Besides that it's just the principle of the matter.

3) I don't have to activate DVDs, CDs, books, magazines, newspapers, etc... Why shouldn't I be upset when PC gaming sets this precedant (SP?) and opens the door for other media to do the same?

[Mole]

Everyone hates DRM.

Anti-piracy measures like DRM are actually causing more and more people to download pirated software, just to be free of the pain and hassle of anti-piracy measures and all their bullshit.

Who's the pirates now?

[Gibb]

gog.com is your friend Orion.

They're releasing a bunch of old school games completely free of DRM, and making them work with Vista and XP.

For the record, I hate DRM as well, but Steam is actually quite handy because they don't have obnoxious root kits or secuROM stuff on their games.

[Frostic]

By the way, I wasn't complaining about CD Keys, copy protection or anything like that. I view that as a necessary evil because a lot of people want something for free. Online activation just flat out prevents a paying customer from buying a game if they don't have internet.

I read a comment in another thread discussing the limited retail space for PC games nowadays. DRM had created a catch 22 and rendered retail obsolete. If you don't have internet then you can't buy the game. If you have internet then you can just download the game and don't need a hard copy. You're just renting the game any way. (See above post.)

I'm a die hard PC gamer but I can see myself just getting an XBOX so I can play single player. There are two bad things about that. First, that's what Microsoft and the publishers want. Secondly, there are just a lot of PC game genres that haven't taken off on consoles. I like deep strategy games and simulations like Civ 4, Total War, Sim City, Galactic Civilizations, etc...

There are a couple of strategy games on the XBOX but they are gradually dumbing them down so they are more accessible. Civilization Revolution comes to mind. (Great strategy game for DS but lame if you'e looking for a 20 hour weekend marathon.)

I used to buy 2 or 3 games a month. (like I said, I'm a power gamer.) Last game I bought nowadays was Fallout 3. (No Oline activation. Great Game.)

Here's a short list of games I would have bought in the past few months if it wasn't for online activation:

Empire: Total War
Free Space
Mass Effect
Spore
Sims 3
Warhammer: Dawn of war 2
GTA 4
The new valve zombie game. (Can't remember name.)
Mirror's Edge

If you had that up then some one has lost about $450 of my money.

[Frostic]

p.s. Free Space was supposed to be Dead Space.

[sj_hurst]

What's the true reason behind DRM and/or games which require downloads? Just as you said, DRM does not prevent piracy. If anything, it encourages piracy. So how does this business model benefit publishers, etc? Well, maybe it helps to curb the market for used games (which obviously has a big impact on new game sales/profits). See, you cut out peoples' options to buy cheaper 2nd-hand used copies and they're that much more likely to purchase new ones (even if that means downloads and discouraging a portion of consumers who are vehemently anti-DRM... overall, sales are still up).

[Frostic]

Are sales up because of DRM or are they up because all game sales are up due to the recession?

[sj_hurst]

Are sales up because of DRM or are they up because all game sales are up due to the recession?

Or both?

hey, i know it's a rotten tactic. I'm only giving a reason for why it might actually work to their benefit, not to the consumers' benefit.

[Frostic]

I just read a news article on a gaming site. It said that EA isn't going to require online activation for the Sims 3. The article says that maybe EA learned from the PR nightmare it created. Article also says that Spore had the hightest rate of piracy ever. Apparently people were downloading Spore out of spite.

Woo hoo! Maybe that means they'll get rid of it on their other titles.

[WedgieMan]

I skipped plenty of titles that were given rave reviews because of that crap.

One day I decided to give Command & Conquer 3 a chance. That was the last straw for me. I spent a good hour just trying to play it. It kept giving me meaningless errors when I ran it. Apparently, it won't work if you have any background applications it thinks are piracy aids (i.e. Daemon Tools). I had to shut everything down, disable stuff from running at startup, then reboot cleanly. After playing the game, I brought my configuration back which took some more time. All to play a game I spent $50 on. No game is worth that much hassle.

The only PC game I have purchased since was Unreal Tournament 3 which completely lacks copy protection. :headbang:

[Frostic]

Fallout 3 doesn't have online activation. I can't remember for sure but I think it either didn't have a CD key or it didn't need the CD in the drive to play either. It's one of the best games in years. This is coming from some one who thought Oblivion was just okay.