Any plans for DRM on this game?

[tokamak]

[QUOTE=Senethro;211240]Shiro, you know that all your silly plastic is decaying even if you don’t scratch it and will one day be unreadable? Hell, maybe in 5 years no computer will be sold with a DVD drive!
[/QUOTE]

More like 15 years.

[shirosae]

Shiro, you know that all your silly plastic is decaying even if you don’t scratch it and will one day be unreadable? Hell, maybe in 5 years no computer will be sold with a DVD drive!

And if my stalker DVD breaks, it doesn’t simultaneously kill all my other games too. Unless you’re suggesting that because DVDs aren’t a perfect medium there can be no problems with Steam or that problems with Steam don’t count because they’re not the only problems I can come across or something? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

Sockdog asked what reasons anyone could have to avoid Steam. I gave him a couple. I don’t see how the limited lifespan of DVDs relates to that?

So why is it only Steam that people get up in arms about? Barring a sea change in the games industry or a frivolous lawsuit that somehow gets legs, I don’t think the risk of Steam dying in a particular year is any higher than any other delivery medium, save absolutely free downloads.

This thread is filled with people complaining about DRM that isn’t Steam? I can moan about Securom for a bit if it helps?

[Senethro]

[QUOTE=shirosae;211261]And if my stalker DVD breaks, it doesn’t simultaneously kill all my other games too. Unless you’re suggesting that because DVDs aren’t a perfect medium there can be no problems with Steam or that problems with Steam don’t count because they’re not the only problems I can come across or something? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.

Sockdog asked what reasons anyone could have to avoid Steam. I gave him a couple. I don’t see how the limited lifespan of DVDs relates to that?[/quote]
But in the long run everything breaks. Old risks associated with new delivery methods shouldn’t cause such fuss because we’ve lived with them for years already.

This thread is filled with people complaining about DRM that isn’t Steam? I can moan about Securom for a bit if it helps?

The flavour of moans is different though. Securom and co are anywhere between annoying, evil and infiltrating your system, or damaging to your computer. The Steam moans, which I failed to make myself clear in the previous post, are the dire prophecies of the service dying and taking everything with it as if thats a new risk.

[hozz]

Shiro is right.
BTW you can copy DVDs, like the ETQW one, or store a virtual disk of it anywhere.

Also, try playing the AVP3 demo in Germany… if you somehow can install it from dubious other country steam versions, it’s getting deleted by Steam… some people also complained that their entire account was shut down due to this (you know, EVERY game). And it’s not like it’s forbidden here, just not officially published.
So much for hoping you can control what you play wihen using Steam.

Good thing SD will sell Brink on Steam only optional :)… right?

[DarkangelUK]

Right, so your country blocks a game, you sneakily install it when you’re not meant to… and then there’s repercussions… and this is Valve’s fault how?

[SockDog]

@shirosae
I understand the all in one basket thing as far as purchasing but from a social/interactive point of few surely having a single service with lots of users is preferable with lots of individual services. Of course the ideal situation would be for publishers to get together and develop and open platform they could all share and interoperate with. It’s actually something that could catch Valve and Steam on the hop.

Regarding purchasing I have to agree again and repeat that consumers need some solid digital rights for our purchases. Although I will say that the digital medium does offer clear advantages over a physical disc. These things go beyond games though and I expect we’re going to see a lot of drama around this over the next ten years.

[brbrbr]

More like 15 years.

about 7-8 years are maximum realistic period.
but what more important DVD-xx mediums itself[both manufactured in fabs and burned at home, stay alive about 5 years.

[darthmob]

[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;211300]Right, so your country blocks a game, you sneakily install it when you’re not meant to… and then there’s repercussions… and this is Valve’s fault how?[/QUOTE]Argh, that topic has potential to get me into a rage! Germany is not blocking anything; the game simply won’t get released over here. In the past that wasn’t really a problem. You bought a game on a CD (there are always imports) and it will install no matter where you live. Steam still links a game version to where it was purchased (a game purchased in the UK will be uncut when installed in Germany) but who knows how long it will be like that?

One might expect that with the internet things might get more open. You know, it’s one giant global network. Bullshit! More and more services restrict IP ranges. Want to watch an American chart hit on youtube? Forget it! And it gets worse all the time with DRM. I bought the last Riddick game in Germany. According to an article on Gamestar.de it was supposed to be uncut. Guess what? It isn’t! It’s a fricking gamebreaker for me and I didn’t find a solution. My guess is that the DRM registration checks your ip because I had the same problem with an image of the international version. And it seems like the game wasn’t cracked either so I can’t avoid the DRM.

It’s worse with GfWL. I didn’t find a way to select a default language. My Win7 is running in English but GfWL runs in German. I bought the UK Dirt2 version which uses GfWL as well. Guess what? The game is now part German and part English. It’s the same with Fallout3 DLC. The irony? If you pirate the DLC there is no problem at all.

You may say “meh, what should I care it doesn’t effect me!”. From what I’ve gathered in the news the UK seems quite eager to advance on all kinds of stupid internet / surveillance laws and regulations. I guess it’s only a matter of time until you will see how ****ed up and annoying that can be.

[shirosae]

But in the long run everything breaks. Old risks associated with new delivery methods shouldn’t cause such fuss because we’ve lived with them for years already.

Three things:

1. I wasn’t asked ‘What are the relative risks of traditional media versus digital downloads?’, I was asked ‘What reason could anyone have to avoid Steam?’. These are different questions.

Had the question been something not explicitly about Steam, I’d have probably have said something about the relative risks, shared and otherwise. I wasn’t, though.

2. ‘Such fuss’ in this instance involves me answering a question about Steam and not buying games on the service. That’s a pretty low threshold.

3. They’re not identical risks. With individual media, individual games break individually. Running Steam is (,if you’ll forgive how OMG DRAMA this sounds,) like having all your games on one DVD and hoping it doesn’t expire. So far I haven’t said anything about the relative weighting of each risk; I swear, if you complain that Steam won’t die in 5 years like a DVD I’ll find out where you live, obtain your contact details, hand them over to Tokamak and have him talk to you about tk revives and close quarters sniping until one of you dies.

The flavour of moans is different though. Securom and co are anywhere between annoying, evil and infiltrating your system, or damaging to your computer. The Steam moans, which I failed to make myself clear in the previous post, are the dire prophecies of the service dying and taking everything with it as if thats a new risk.

I hasn’t mentioned Steam dying? I said that I’m not comfortable with the idea of putting all my auths into one location that can (for example) be bought by Activision.

I didn’t think it was necessary to also list a bunch of other utterly guessed things that might happen (with various unlikelyness), like the ridiculous UK government banning games, Steam dropping support for older OS, my system getting teh h4xxed and someone stoeling my megahurtz, my idiot ISP accidentally banning Steam over and over because it looks like P2P.

‘Steam being bought’ is just an example to clarify a sentence, not some doomsday prophecy.

For example, I’m not convinced by all this cloud computing silliness currently being hoisted as the next great thing. I don’t feel that way because I think Microsoft, Google and Apple are going to magically go Bankrupt.

Right, so your country blocks a game, you sneakily install it when you’re not meant to… and then there’s repercussions… and this is Valve’s fault how?

It isn’t Valve’s fault. But if it were likely to happen, would you buy your games on Steam, or would you want a non-Steam option?

Not everyone who wants to avoid Steam is on a holy crusade against them.

[QUOTE=SockDog;211310]@shirosae
Of course the ideal situation would be for publishers to get together and develop and open platform they could all share and interoperate with. It’s actually something that could catch Valve and Steam on the hop.[/quote]

So rather than have a system that provides the DRM itself, it acts like a central digital distribution shop and frontend for the multiple sets of backends stuff, so if a game/studio/publisher gets flagshipped it doesn’t pull everything else down?

That would go a long way towards tempting me in.

Regarding purchasing I have to agree again and repeat that consumers need some solid digital rights for our purchases. Although I will say that the digital medium does offer clear advantages over a physical disc. These things go beyond games though and I expect we’re going to see a lot of drama around this over the next ten years.

I don’t think there’ll be much progress, tbh. Too many people enjoy using Steam for there to be any significant pressure to change the system which obviously works for them.

[SockDog]

[quote=shirosae;211366]So rather than have a system that provides the DRM itself, it acts like a central digital distribution shop and frontend for the multiple sets of backends stuff, so if a game/studio/publisher gets flagshipped it doesn’t pull everything else down?

That would go a long way towards tempting me in.[/quote]

Yes. Of course everyone is too ($)c($) to see the potential of an open platform. And right now Steam’s small selection of functionality is still way more than the competitors can offer so they won’t be looking to share any time soon.

I wouldn’t mind if SD could weigh in on the Steam DRM question though. Is Steamworks available independently of any Steam DRM? If someone buys a retail disc that uses Steamworks for matchmaking, friends lists and cloud saving, could you install the steamworks libraries and avoid the steam client? Or if you had to install the client to get the functionality, is it optional whether Steam uses it’s DRM to verify the game?

That raises another interesting question. As we’ve seen with ATVI, EA and MS recently, they shut down services that are a burden to them to run. If developers use third party software like Steamworks, what assurances are there that should Valve disappear or get bought that Steamworks wouldn’t just get switched off and in consequence kill a whole swath of games?

I can still pull up Quake and play it as intended. Are these third party systems becoming killswitches for games?

I don’t think there’ll be much progress, tbh. Too many people enjoy using Steam for there to be any significant pressure to change the system which obviously works for them.

Agreed. Until there is buyout or bankruptcy and people start shouting or suing for loses I don’t think anyone is going to offer us protection.

[jazevec]

DRM, and physical medium as well, as flawed. So far, the only reasonably reliable way of storing your data forever is to keep multiple perfect copies (thanks to digital system). You should also periodically move your copies onto newer hard disks or whatever.

DRM is bad. So are plastic discs. Neither allows you to keep data for very long. In the future, I expect developers to release games for free, but take money for developing them. Developing games and other software is a lot like research, not like producing physical items. With physical items, it costs you money each time you make a copy. With software, it only costs to develop the initial copy, everything else is almost completely costless. In most markets, there’s direct relation between the cost of producing something and the price. That’s why people are so bothered with paying for software. Software creation process is not transparent, and - very clearly - there’s no connection between the price of a game and the cost of making another copy.

[Jamieson]

I dont want no crappy service like GWFL thrown down my throat and I don’t want to have to rely on Steam.

I just want to go to the shop or use a online site like play and buy the game then install it. No pissing about with crappy DRM or disk checks or install limits.

I would not mind activation codes if they worked 100% of the time. But they don’t, Either it is not made clear what format you should type in the code i.e full caps or lower case or with or without - in between the code.

Then even if you do type in the code correctly you get error messages. So you go online and search tech forums for help on how to fix the problem if your lucky there is a solution. While pissing about I’m thinking I could have been playing this over an hour ago if this crappy feature wasn’t on it… Oh and the pirates don’t have to put up with this crap as well which makes it even more annoying.

The point is DRM hurts normal legal customs while doing **** all to prevent piracy. Get the message IS DOES NOT WORK, DON’T USE IT. focus on the helping the paying customer not hindering us.

[tokamak]

Would be nice to optionally subscribe to steam so at least I got my game in the steam cloud for whenever I lose my cd’s. I’m not sure how that works legally wise though.

[kamikazee]

[QUOTE=jazevec;211514]DRM, and physical medium as well, as flawed. So far, the only reasonably reliable way of storing your data forever is to keep multiple perfect copies (thanks to digital system). You should also periodically move your copies onto newer hard disks or whatever.

DRM is bad. So are plastic discs. Neither allows you to keep data for very long. In the future, I expect developers to release games for free, but take money for developing them. Developing games and other software is a lot like research, not like producing physical items. With physical items, it costs you money each time you make a copy. With software, it only costs to develop the initial copy, everything else is almost completely costless. In most markets, there’s direct relation between the cost of producing something and the price. That’s why people are so bothered with paying for software. Software creation process is not transparent, and - very clearly - there’s no connection between the price of a game and the cost of making another copy.[/QUOTE]Where to sign up for the SD development fund?

[brbrbr]

Where to sign up for the SD development fund?

under Brink pre-order, i guess.

[SockDog]

Where to sign up for the SD development fund?

Exactly I’d happily advance SD $30-40 for an R&D fund if in return I got a copy of the game. I’d expect that would net them a lot more money than they actually earn on a normal game sale.

Biggest problem though is that I just don’t see enough people doing it (despite those same people being more than happy to pre-order months in advance). $4mil would be 100,000 $40 sales.

Still, if you like the idea (and zombies) there is a similar thing going on right now with 25% of the money going to the Fox Foundation. Good writeup on it is here: http://www.zombiecommand.com/news/zombie-experiment-social-game-development/

[DoubleDigit]

Just a funny reminder.

Picture

[Jamieson]

[QUOTE=DoubleDigit;214251]Just a funny reminder.

Picture[/QUOTE]

This sums it up perfectly. I don’t pirate but sometimes DRM makes me think twice. Therefore I don’t buy games with crappy DRM, Do Ubisoft even exist anymore? not in my book.

Petitions don’t work look at MW2 so I’m voting with my vallet as the saying goes.

I have not and will never buy MW2 or any future COD gams untill they reintroduce Dedicated servers and PC functions.

I will not buy any Ubisoft Games untill they remove there rediclious DRM system which just wont work and will piss of legit customers.

I dont play Command and Conquer (i used to play the old ones back in the 90’s), apprantly the new one wont have Dedicated servers or LAN. Looks like IW has ****ed the industry over and everyone else is following there direction. Thanks to all the idiots that bought the peice of crap that was MW2 (PC version)

[SockDog]

I’m going to be interested to see if Ubisoft’s latest DRM actually increases sales, as I’m led to believe that is the purpose of DRM (?). Not that we actually get to see sales figures unless they are being rolled out to emphasize some agenda.

You can prevent a million pirate copies being used but if those million people wouldn’t have ever bought your game in the first place you’ve gained nothing. In fact, worse, you’ve lost a million people talking about your game. Then again, maybe stopping a million non paying people spreading how poor your game is makes a lot more sense than actually releasing a quality product.

[Jamieson]

As DoubelDigits post (picture he posted) points out the industry is targetting the wrong people. Why should I get a Piracy warning if I bought the damn DvD in the first place? I’m a legit customer im not pirating so why should I be treated like a criminal? The same applies to Games and DRM, the pirates currently get the better deal.

The industry needs to compete with the Pirates, Get rid of DRM, now invest that wasted money into the game, It is wasted money because Pirates will always crack DRM. There is the argument that many of the people who pirated the game would never have bought it anyway so why waste money on these people. Let them play (its good word of mouth anyway)

Now Reduce the price of games so more people can afford them. This will increase sales and bring in more money. May also convince casual pirates to buy the game as well.

Now go after the big people like Nintendo did and stop the problem at its cause.