DRM Shuts Down PC Version of Gears of War 598
carlmenezes writes "It seems that the DRM on the PC version of Gears of War came with a built-in shut-off date; the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now, the game fails to work unless you adjust your system's clock. What is Epic's response? 'We're working on it.'"
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This Frist Post is only available through Jan 29, at which point the certificate expires and the Frist Prost will no longer appear first in the comments.
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Yeah, this is an epic fail...
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How the hell is a first post proof of that?
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a german joke is no laughing matter!
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Who wants to take bets on who fixes the Gears of War problem first, Electronic Arts or REL0ADED?
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Who said software should be free? You are lumping unrelated issues together for some reason.
Rather, this piracy issue is not the customers problem, so the customer should not ever have to deal with it or be inconvenienced by it. It is the problem of the content owners. Piracy is the cost of doing business, so accept it and quit screwing with paying customers or pick another industry. In no situation is it acceptable for the content owners to screw with something I paid for after the fact.
If DRM measures ever inconvenience paying customers at all, it is an absolute fail. It doesn't matter if the number of problem cases is small, they have a responsibility to ensure that the people who PAID them aren't affected by their irrational and ridiculous restrictions, and if i AM affected in any way, you owe me a refund.
And to make it even more insulting, the DRM doesn't actually stop piracy of any kind, so it is all for nothing. The end result is that these companies are saying their interests are more important than the customers.
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In no situation is it acceptable for the content owners to screw with something I paid for after the fact.
Ah, but you didn't pay for it. You paid for the right to very limited use of it. Seriously though, I agree with what you say.
The good thing is, customers hate piracy with a passion. One or two headlines like this will mostly go unnoticed, but it won't take much more for people to really start avoiding DRM encumbered games. It just takes one quality games producer to stop using DRM for the other producers to see a dip in their profits; and trust me, one will. They will see it as an in; a way to make their
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Piracy grows when left unchecked. The only thing standing between us and pirating everything until everyone packs up and goes home is:
a) the law (or more precisely, the enforcement thereof)
b) guilt
c) for the seemingly select few, knowledge of what will happen in the long term
Without a), and with b) and c) dwindling as people increasingly choose free stuff over morals and reasoning, piracy will
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I call BS on this. Piracy gets people interested in both games and media, as recent news articles about studies of the subject seem to indicate.
The real effect of DRM on me is that each time I buy movies or games I am discouraged from doing so again and pushed a little further towards so-called piracy. I'll explain why...
As a teenager, I was prolific pirate.
Encouraged at first by how easy it was, and the fact I really did not have the means to purchase the games.
On rare occasions, I was a customer, but only when funded by birthdays etc.
I was never a potential customer for the games I pirated.
Now, I'm an adult with cash I am happy to spend on games. However, it was my teenage years which got me hooked on gaming.
What makes me sad is that I still find often find myself resorting to piracy.
The driving factors:
1) I do not like waiting to play games other regions have, I often download US or Japanese games before they reach Europe.
The difference is that now I will happily buy it when it (finally) reaches our European shores.
2) Copy protection - I don't like physical media, it gets scratched, I lose it and do not like switching DVDs all the time. I've been buying tons of Steam games lately for this very reason.
This annoys me, as I have much less rights with a Steam copy of a game - e.g. no chance of reselling it. I had hoped Steam and other digital distribution would stop the region-delays game too... but it has not.
The activation limit policies on newer PC games are also starting to cause this.
3) Same crap we get with DVDs loaded with no-skip trailers and anti piracy warnings. The DVD rips are conveniently pre-cleaned of the BS they force in my face on a legal copy. Again, the region delays suck too.
Having pirated this stuff, I am often willing to buy a copy when it finally reaches Europe.
It worries me that by going about it this way I am risking finding myself in court for copyright infringement, but honestly, I am happy to pay for the content. I would just really prefer it is delivered sensibly without the stupid limitations listed above.
The result of this is that when I finally buy a copy, each time I am disappointed to find it significantly less convenient than the pirated copy, a little bit of my willingness to continue buying is forever sucked into the void.
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Instead of pirating Sins of a Solar Empire, you could have just downloaded the demo version to check it out. Thank you for being part of the problem.
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I doubt he was doing anything but trolling, but I do have a counterpoint... have you SEEN what passes as a "demo" these days? I can't speak for SoSE's demo since I never tried it (not into RTSs) but I've seen a hell of a lot of demos lately be 75% trailer/cutscene, and maybe 5 minutes worth of game time. There more like "tech demos" than demos of the game.
Things often left out...
The saving system: Often disabled in demos or omitted entirely. Is it save anywhere like the PC games of yore, or FF-type "save points" right after the hard ass boss?
Cutscenes: Can you skip em?
Difficulty(legitimate): How tough is the game compared to your threshold of frustration?
Difficulty(stupid):(q.v. "Nintendo Hard") Does a platform game throw flying-meandering knockback enemies at you on tiny platforms, while denying you any sort of way to attack in the air? (this basic mechanic can probably be tested in the demo, but there are plenty other stupid design flaws like it. This one just happens to be one of my "favorites")
You get the idea... not defending the illegal downloaders (nor condemning them), just offering another POV on "demos".
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Best demo ever? Shareware Doom. First episode, all the through. How many copies did it sell? 1.1mil. 8th highest sales through '93 to '00. That was when mainstream PC gaming was STARTING.
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The best way to defeat DRM, the way which has worked in the past, is to break it. Over, and over, and over again. As each scheme is broken, the DRM publishers come up with a new one. Each new one is nastier and more intrusive to the paying customers, causing compatibility problems and total failures. After enough of this, paying customers refuse to buy DRM encumbered products, not for ideological reasons but for practical ones. And then DRM largely goes away. It happened before.
What brought it back? The DMCA, of course. Making the DRM breakers hide from the law made DRM look viable again.
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No, after paying customers refuse to buy DRM encumbered products game developers give up on the PC and just make console games.
This is already happening.
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Do you have any statistics which back up your implicit assertion that piracy is significant enough that it threatens the business of game companies?
I'm absolutely serious here: every game gets cracked by pirates anyway, so DRM is not effective at stopping piracy. It's not even effective at delaying piracy appreciably, from all reports I've seen. Yet game companies seem to by and large stay in business (and when they do go under, piracy is by and large not cited as the reason). It seems fairly evident, then, that
- DRM does not prevent piracy, its stated purpose;
- Piracy is not significant enough to threaten the livelihood of game publishers;
- DRM does massively inconvenience legal game buyers.
This would suggest to me that the idea that we need to "come up with something better" than DRM in order to "fight" it is fallacious. If DRM is not effective at doing what it's intended to do, but is effective at alienating your product's legitimate customers, there's no good argument for continuing to use it.
A shopkeeper who keeps hitting his customers in the face with a frying pan on the assumption that a non-zero number of them are trying to shoplift is not doing himself any good. "I'll keep doing it until you give me a better way to discourage thieves" is not a rational stance.
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Yes, that's right, lets blame PIRATES for GoW not working. The poor production companies are just protecting themselves by purposefully selling a broken product (if you claim that GoW isn't broken, you forgot to read the title, summary or article) in order to... to what? To make sure that people who don't know how to find a crack (or cracked version) aren't copying the game? A simple CD check could do that. You say it's to keep the honest, honest, but it does not keeping them honest at all, it either teaches them that only cracked games work properly, or you just straight up lose a customer. I personally think the lesson being taught is that honesty is punished, and not worth the effort.
I'm not entirely sure how you can fight against piracy by making sure only pirated copies work as they are supposed to (in the consumer eye). Blaming pirates for game company failures isn't going to win over any supporters. "Your game would work, but we had to cripple it because of pirates" is so weak of an excuse as to be transparently stupid to all but the least mentally capable gamers (and I'm talking REALLY unable to comprehend causality).
Automakers would not put an anti-theft device in a vehicle if said device caused your engine to stop at random times (like when driving) and be unable to be restarted until the auto company did something secret inside the engine compartment. They would not sell it if there were certain driver/automobile combinations that simply did not work (i.e. if the car just plain won't start if the an "incompatible" owner tries to drive it). Furthermore, if they DID install such a foolish device you would hear very few people blaming carjackers for the utter foolishness of the automakers. No one would believe it, and nor should they. It is the very same here.
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While you make good points, the immediate response I could see in this situation is that "you can't just copy a car to all your friends for free."
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But then your car would wear out faster, and so you'd have to buy a new one sooner...
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And that's why analogies fail on Slashdot--everyone tears them apart not for the reasons that they are similar, but for the reasons they are different.
The point is that for some reason, we let software companies get away with remotely disabling the products that they sell to us. We'd never put up with that from other industries. It doesn't matter that software can be perfectly copied--that's not a justification for the behavior.
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I'm sorry, I (as a consumer) am not responsible for how some publisher wants to guard their IP. You say that no DRM isn't an option, but it is, as all free software users know. Just because you've precluded no DRM as an option doesn't mean I have some responsibility to help you protect yourself from me at my expense, to suggest so is silly.
About the "a lot of complaining" I "do", I personally think that people who buy a broken product and don't complain are foolish, and making life harder for all of us by letting scam artists ply their trade in the open.
Now, where's YOUR solution to making DRM locked down games actually WORK as advertised? That seems like a far more reasonable request than what you ask of me, no?
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No one really likes DRM however there is little effort on the Anti-DRM Camp to come up with a solution that fixes the companies problem, of illegal piracy, or sharing a copy with your friends.
Game companies already had a solution for the "problem" of people sharing a copy they own. Blizzard's "Spwaned Copies" were freaking amazing. Honestly though, how is sharing a copy of a game you own a problem? You lend people books don't you? Or movies? What about movie/video game rental stores like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video? In short, explain how its a problem or there isn't one.
Also, why do the people that are against DRM get saddled with finding a "solution" to piracy? Every [wikipedia.org] single [gamasutra.com] DRM [wired.com] scheme [overclock3d.net] has been an failure [wikipedia.org] and damaging to the consumer to the point that some people feel morally obliged not to buy the games anymore from those companies. Better still, these DRM schemes do nothing but encourage you to pirate the game since the pirated version doesn't have the DRM!
DRM is not working. This is very fucking obvious. Until they figure out something else to try, they should go back to only having the CD-KEY (which doesn't stop people from pirating in any way whatsoever, but makes it easier in multiplayer games to ban disruptive players. EA already is under a Class Action lawsuit due to the DRM in Spore before it moved to Steam. How many more game companies are going to have to be attacked legally by their own fans to get them to stop ripping us off?
Oh and before you bitch I have a link to Steam in with the failures, remember that the Steam DRM does get cracked on occasion. They just patch and ban accounts. Will not stop players from doing it for single player or LAN games (and it takes no real effort) but as a DRM system it still fails at its task. On the plus side at least its largely bearable.
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You lend people books and you can no longer use the book until they give it back. You don't make a copy of the book and give it to them. That's why it's a problem - it's copyright infringement.
I dislike DRM which makes the game difficult to play or messes with my system. As far as I'm concerned anything else is fair game. If I don't notice the DRM is there, it doesn't bother me.
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Why is it the customer's responsibility to enforce the law? If I own a convenience store and I have a problem with shoplifting, it isn't the law-abiding customer's responsibility to become volunteer crime fighters when they're in my store.
And, if my attempt to prevent shoplifting involves giving every customer a full cavity search, making false accusations, and occasionally not giving the customer what they paid for, then I have failed to come up with a realistic and workable business model. I would have no one to blame for that fiasco than myself.
So, yes, Epic should be held responsible for the business decisions they make and for the consequences those decisions have on legitimate customers.
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No one really likes DRM however there is little effort on the Anti-DRM Camp to come up with a solution that fixes the companies problem, of illegal piracy, or sharing a copy with your friends.
I have a solution: don't worry about things you cannot control.
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Unfortunately more and more games are requiring you to "activate" online before you can even start to play them, even if there is no online content whatsoever.
This REALLY sucks when you don't have internet at home. I was finally able to save up some good money while living out in the boondocks on a farm, and went to walmart to buy a game to cure my no-internet boredom. When I got there, the only decent looking games I wanted to get had a little note at the bottom of the package stating "* This game requires online activation before use."
I thought how strange, being as how a couple of them didn't even have a multiplayer mode. I thought, well maybe that's just for some kind of updating scheme or something, but I sure wasn't going to risk $50 to find out. So I ended up buying a USB drive, taking it to a place with high speed public internet, and just torrenting a few cracked games instead.
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I thought how strange, being as how a couple of them didn't even have a multiplayer mode. I thought, well maybe that's just for some kind of updating scheme or something, but I sure wasn't going to risk $50 to find out. So I ended up buying a USB drive, taking it to a place with high speed public internet, and just torrenting a few cracked games instead.
I can't play my restored Steam backups because I cannot update Steam on my modem connection (it is not smart enough to resume downloads. Steam is shit) and so I have learned that Steam is not my friend. They told me I could make backups and play them without having to get them blessed. They lied. Fuck Valve, fuck Steam, and fuck Half-Life n. Anyone want to buy my fat-jewelcase HL2 disc and code?
Any user who plans to play these games into the future does their self a great disservice if they buy anything which requires a connection at any time, whether it's just for the install or every time.
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See, the catch22 with DRM is, it's fine until it interferes with your gaming - and then it's gone too far.
Most DRM seems "fine" until the day you realize it has crossed the line. :P
And lately it seems just about all DRM is like that.
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll get flamebaited for this but I had the exact same experience with Steam. It seemed like a great idea, but then I lost internet for a week, and Steam started up, told me it couldn't find an internet connection and click this button to start in Offline mode, at which point it told me that it couldn't start Offline mode because it couldn't connect to the server.
I've since started purchasing disc copies of the games I've already had the misfortune of getting from Steam when I can find them cheap and I don't bother with seeing anything else that is available.
It always amazes me that Steam is heralded as the future of PC gaming at the same time as everyone bitching about DRM, which Steam is just the same as the rest, it's just that Steam is blatant about it's constant need to authenticate, except of course when you put it in Offline mode and you get a period of unobtrusive gaming. Until next time it decides you're a pirate and needs to authenticate everything.
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
I've since started purchasing disc copies of the games I've already had the misfortune of getting from Steam when I can find them cheap and I don't bother with seeing anything else that is available.
So, you've rewarded companies for including DRM. If they didn't put DRM in, they would have only sold one copy to you. Why didn't you just contact Steam technical support?
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
Why wouldn't he just pirate the games?
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Funny)
Because he didn't have a internet connection!
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps because not all of us think copyright infringement is ethical. I don't Pirate games (or anything else for that matter) for this reason.
So... if you paid good money for a game and DRM cut off your access to said game, YOU would be the unethical one for having a pirated version available to play?
There are many cases where piracy is way more ethical than DRM.
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"Wrong," however, is frequently relative to circumstances. When circumstances change from "I can play offline" to "this game has broken due to my lack of an internet connection," there is certainly a legitimate argument for disabling the thing that breaks the game. For people without the skills to remove the DRM themselves, downloading a cracked copy (while not necessarily safe) fulfills the original spirit of the sale: to play the game.
Then again, this would technically not be piracy since you own the game. It would, however, break the EULA. There is an argument to be made for breaking a contract when the game maker does not fulfill their end of the bargain, especially since a remedy for not agreeing to the EULA is to return the game. Returning the game is an option that is flatly denied pretty much universally, so the manufacturer has included a legal provision that they know cannot be exercised by the consumer. There is no meeting of the minds in an EULA, and they are crafted in such a manner that your only option in not agreeing to the contract after you have purchased the media is to take the loss and sit on it. If they want to base their contract on fraud, there is no ethical dilemma in ignoring the contract to get fulfillment from the manufacturer.
Again, "wrong" is defined by the circumstances surrounding an action. A wrong can quite certainly be transformed into a right, given the appropriate situation. This is true for many legal issues as much as for ethical issues.
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Informative)
My favourite game, rFactor, I play with my pirated version.
And I have bought the legal, paid version just because I wanted to support the company. And I show it proudly to my friends.
But having the disc in the tray constantly just damages the disc and inconveniences me.
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:4, Informative)
Why didn't you just contact Steam technical support?
Yeah, I'm basically paying twice for my mistake, and because of DRM, but hey, this is why DRM sucks. It's not that much different from Far Cry 2 hitting 5 unique installs and telling you that you can't install it anymore, except there is no workaround when I have no internet connection.
What are Steam tech support going to do for me over the phone when I don't have an internet connection? Provide me with a way to force Steam into Offline mode when it doesn't want to, i.e. a way of avoiding the DRM? Unlikely.
To be honest, the entire experience was a wake up call, and as I said, I'm in the process of reverting my mistaken Steam purchases into disc copies, at which point I'll probably remove Steam altogether and be done with it. If it ever becomes so big that a game can only be purchased on Steam, then I suppose I'll have to give in. But when that happens, the DRM has won, and it will be too late anyway.
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At the risk of being modified flamebait, the DRM has already won.
You've bought the product once on Steam, found it doesn't work and rather than contacting the publisher to say "Either it works or I don't buy any more", you've gone out to buy it on DVD instead.
The free market theory doesn't work very well when the customer's reaction to being screwed over is to go back and ask for more.
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just FUD.
"Free market theory" is that buying and selling takes places voluntarily between two rational parties, both of whom agree to the terms of the deal. If he thinks he's getting shafted, but keeps buying the games anyway, then it's nobody's fault but his own. If he doesn't think the game is worth buying a second time, then he simply shouldn't buy it. The fact that he does buy it is not the fault of the video game companies, and it's not a problem with the free market.
How can the theory hold if the axioms are invalid? (Score:5, Insightful)
> "Free market theory" is that buying and selling takes places voluntarily between two rational parties, both of whom agree to the terms of the deal. If he thinks he's getting shafted, but keeps buying the games anyway, then it's nobody's fault but his own.
I've highlighted the part of free market theory which has failed to help you out. Knowingly allowing people to screw you out of more money is decidedly NOT "rational" from an economic standpoint. In fact, it is very directly in conflict with the behavior economists expect from a rational person, so much so that it cannot be reconciled with it.
Yes, the situation is all his fault. But it proves that these transactions violate the presumptions (and therefore, will not follow the predictions) of free market theory. Given that it violates the axioms you've put forth, it would be quite unreasonable to expect free market theory to hold.
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If he thinks he is getting shafted, but buys the game anyway, then he is factoring in the "shaftage" as part of the price he's paying.
This doesn't contravene rational thought, nor does it contravene a free market.
He values being able to play the game high enough that he is willing to pay for it twice. That does not mean it is an irrational action.
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"Free market theory" is that buying and selling takes places voluntarily between two rational parties, both of whom agree to the terms of the deal.
The problem is that when you introduce DRM, "the terms of the deal" aren't always obvious or disclosed.
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"Free market theory" is that buying and selling takes places voluntarily between two rational parties, both of whom agree to the terms of the deal. If he thinks he's getting shafted, but keeps buying the games anyway, then it's nobody's fault but his own. If he doesn't think the game is worth buying a second time, then he simply shouldn't buy it. The fact that he does buy it is not the fault of the video game companies, and it's not a problem with the free market.
Ooooo - interesting angle. Since both partie
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Since a few years, Valve games always require a Steam account and "authenticate" online even if you buy them on DVD. So it can still happen to you that your game suddenly refuses to work.
My consequence is to be very reluctant buying their stuff:
I got Day Of Defeat:Source because my friends also play it, but so far this is my only St
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you know that they won't be able to do anything about it -- each and every phonecall by a paying customer complaining that their program screwed up, is one more chance that they suits notice that things aren't working smoothly. Over time, this can lead to changes such as extending the grace periods if nothing else.
If you don't TELL that things didn't work and that you're annoyed, then things will never change.
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A friend of mine gave me his HL2 disks 'cause he didn't like the game (crazy guy...). Only then I realized that it is not possible to transfer a key code from one account to another. I contacted steam support and the guy just said I can't be done.
Steam is the best example of how DRM can hurt you. I got off the hook early (I have only a couple of games from there), but people can spend a lot o money before realizing that some DRM cripples your freedom to do whatever you want with your copy of the game.
I,
Re:HAHAHAHAHA (Score:5, Informative)
You can make a backup of ClientRegistry.blob [ttlg.com] in the Steam folder to restore Offline use of Steam:
Sort of a pain, but once it's working it's not so bad. I agree that nobody should have to do this to play the games that they bought.
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It always amazes me that Steam is heralded as the future of PC gaming
Most are probably astroturfing marketing lowlifes. They lie through their teeth saying how "wonderful" it is.
There's many vested interests trying to get consumers to accept DRM rather than realizing what a scam it is.
---
Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.
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For anything which doesn't require the Internet to function, Internet connectivity is an unreasonable expectation.
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Indeed. One classic example is that about 6 months ago my normally slightly flakey internet connection decided it was going to die for 2-3 days. I normally play WoW quite a bit, but during that downtime I ended up playing a lot of single player games to pass the time until the ISP got their stuff fixed. I'd have been HIGHLY pissed if any of my single player games decided that they needed net access just to phone home at that time.
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I think most users could care less about online leader boards compared to just being able to play the damn game.
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The last place I lived was at the cutoff line for the city limits. The property literally began where the city limits ended. The house was approximately 25 feet from that line. There was not one provider who would run a cable or try to set up a wifi connection for us there, while our nearest neighbors all had cable/dsl.
In fact the man who owned the house had to pony up somewhere around a half thousand dollars to get Qwest to run a friggen phone line, which they wouldn't let us use DSL with.
The US really is shitty for 'rural' internet access.
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Well not everybody has the same obviously. I any case in Germany the market is saturated so there are so many different providers that I can imagine such contracts exist that do not have required capacities. That is not that relevant I think until the companies get to learn that if they charge too much for each single bit transferred trough their networks the usage will stay low.
I made 'experiment' with my provider - Vodafone appeared friendly on the surface but the price for single MMS was so hefty that I
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If you don't have a data plan on your phone, then this either won't work at all, or you will be charged a hefty fee per kilobyte for your trouble...
A better option is piracy, pirate the games and you don't have DRM problems. Buy them as well if it makes you feel better, then you can play the pirate copies when the legit ones screw you over.
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Yet, the same people furiously defend Steam as the saviour.
What Steam does different is that it not only restricts your rights, but it also provides a very useful service. Patching PC games was and still is a huge annoyance, installing and patching Armed Assault took me a solid hour and with Stalker its the same thing, finding and installing half a dozen patches is just not fun. Steam doesn't have those problems, since it all runs automatically and thats what people love it for. That it is also a DRM platform is bad, but its something that people hardly notice in n
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I often work away on business, i take my laptop along for entertainment, and often cant justify using the overpriced internet access in the hotel... I could be away from home for up to a month in some cases.
And not long ago, a storm took down the telephone cables near our house... Because so many were damaged, it took them quite some time to get everything working again.
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"This is stated explicitly in the customer agreement, under the heading "Fraud"."
Yours or theirs? :-(
Idiotic Design (Score:3, Insightful)
A proper DRM system would obtain date and time information from a known valid source.
Re:Idiotic Design (Score:5, Insightful)
A proper DRM system...
I stopped reading at this point, my oxymoron detector kicked in pretty quickly.
Re:Idiotic Design (Score:5, Funny)
A proper DRM system would obtain date and time information from a known valid source.
And fail when the known valid source is unreachable?
Or maybe by "known valid source" you meant "the Sun and the stars"; in which case I'd buy the game just to see the implementation.
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Or maybe by "known valid source" you meant "the Sun and the stars";
Try Masters of Orion II :)
Re:Idiotic Design (Score:4, Insightful)
Finally, a decent reason for region encoding!
Re:Idiotic Design (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're confusing a code signing certificate with an SSL certificate.
What needs to happen... (Score:5, Interesting)
What needs to happen is for everyone with a copy of this to take the disk back as faulty. Most consumer laws support this action.
My son's version of Oblivion (I think it was Oblivion) failed to install after he upgraded his PC five times and they refused to give him another code...
So we took it back to EB and demanded a refund (faulty product) which we were entitled to do. If you can't play a game, it's not of merchantable quality.
Looks like we'll be visiting them once more with a copy of GOW for a full refund :(
Perhaps if everyone did this, we'd see DRM take on a more practical appearance like a USB dongle - or even the entire game on a USB dongle - and without time limits or requiring web authentication.
GrpA
Re:What needs to happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
We could call it a "cartridge", and we could call the device it plugs into a "game console".
What a novel idea.
Re:What needs to happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps if everyone did this, we'd see DRM take on a more practical appearance like a USB dongle - or even the entire game on a USB dongle - and without time limits or requiring web authentication.
This approach is too customer-friendly for them to consider. The mission of DRM is more than destroying piracy, it means to destroying second-hand game market and cross-boundary water-goods trade as well.
The era of customer-oriented marketing strategy has long gone. Nowaday, all customers are treated as criminals and pirates. Face it man. ARRRR!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How the hell is a USB dongle for a game "customer-friendly"? Actually, how is a USB dongle for any piece of software customer-friendly?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When it comes with the game/software install files on it :)
GrpA
Re:What needs to happen... (Score:4, Insightful)
How the hell is a USB dongle for a game "customer-friendly"? Actually, how is a USB dongle for any piece of software customer-friendly?
With a plug-n-play dongle: you don't need to install; you don't need to web-register prior to playing; you can ebay it when you get bored with it...(the list could go on but I think I shouldn't do all the thinking myself. :)
If you don't find those anti-piracy measures in recent games annoying, you probably haven't been using a paid copy of game for the past few years. ^^
Please don't sully the good name of Oblivion (Score:5, Informative)
Oblivion has no such retarded online authentication. By all means we should dump on the games that treat paying customers as pirates but be careful to make sure you criticize the correctly guilty parties.
I don't know that you want that (Score:5, Informative)
Such a thing does exist in the pro audio world. The most popular is called the iLok from PACE Antipiracy. It is a little USB dongle that you hook to your computer. It then stores licenses for your audio software, over 100, from multiple vendors. When you buy software it either comes with a code, or a SIM chip that is the license, and you transfer that over to their key.
Ok great right? Well not really. The first thing is that it isn't cheap, to either the people implementing it or to you. It has a fairly high per unit cost, which of course the vendors pass on to you. However for you there's a direct cost too. You have to buy the dongle. They are $50 each. It works in the pro world, since $50 isn't a big deal if you are already spending $1000 on a virtual instrument, but you'd find it rather a turn off for gamers. Yes you only need one to hold many licenses, but $50 is still a lot when you are talking games.
Then there's just the implementation problems. You go and do some searches online, you'll find lots of people have lots of problems with the iLok. It is trying to do tricky shit, and that causes problems. For some it works great, however for many it is a ton of headaches.
The question also becomes what happens if you lose the iLok? Some companies are good about it, and will authorize PACE to send new licenses to your new iLok. However many are paranoid since you could always "lose" your iLok to a friend and get a new one and then get more licenses for free. So some companies refuse to give you new licenses, you have to buy them all over. Well, that means a single dongle can have a whole lot of money worth of licenses stored on it. You get in a situation in games where someone nicks your dongle at a LAN party and you are out $1000 in games.
Used sales are also a problem. Companies don't like for you to sell their games used. They'd much rather everyone has to buy a copy. With a dongle, they can enforce this easier. While they certainly could make a mechanism for you to transfer licenses, they wouldn't have to. If they didn't, well you are SOL. You'd either have to sell ALL you games at the same time, along with the dongle, or buy a dongle per game, which would be expensive and inconvenient.
Now after all that, the question is ok, but is it useful? Answer? Not really. iLok protected apps are cracked all the time. So you can go through all this trouble and people can STILL crack your shit and release it on the Internet. The fact that you use physical hardware doesn't help. The dongle only really can do two things:
1) Provides authorization. Here the program checks with the dongle to see if it is allowed to run. It's a handshake sort of thing, and often uses good crypto... But what happens if you simply remove the jump to the code that checks? The program never goes and looks for a license and just runs, thus the dongle is bypassed.
2) Has a decryption key for the program. The program itself is encrypted, and a loader goes, checks the dongle, gets the key, and decrypts it to run. Ok great, except then all you do is go and dump the decrypted program from memory and use that, or intercept the key and use it on an emulated dongle.
Regardless, the dongle can't do anything that can stop this kind of thing. The crackers simply strip out all the calls to it and then they've got an app that runs without it. Or they make a virtual dongle that sends all the proper responses. Or they hack the dongle's drivers. Whatever is easier.
The real answer, I think, is for companies to realize people will copy their software, but it just isn't a big deal. It happens, get over it. Don't hurt your legit customers because of it. There are some pro audio companies who have dumped iLok and they report they've seen no decrease in sales. Personally, I'm not surprised. The people who download their apps aren't likely to pay for them in the first place.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I suppose you could do that but again, it is just a matter of nabbing the good code when it gets loaded in to memory. The ultimate problem you have with any of this shit is that at some point the code has to be in system memory, in an unencrypted format for the CPU to execute. If it is there, someone can get it. You can try all the tricky shit you like, they can debug at the kernel level (or inside a VM) and get at your code.
Reason they stopped the corruption thing you are talking about is because it pissed
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Very true, but many companies are starting to take a rather different approach.
The store manager is someone relatively young who's probably either fresh out of college or worked there for a couple of years since leaving school. Their power is very limited - they have it drilled into their head that THIS is company policy, and deviation from it is a sackable offence.
Needless to say, "company policy" conveniently forgets to mention anything about consumer retail law. Unless the consumer is prepared for an a
Re:What needs to happen... (Score:5, Interesting)
Laws vary from place to place in the world, but...
Here in Australia, there's quite a few consumer laws that cover it... "Merchantable Quality" is the main one and a game that has a time-bomb like this in it isn't of merchantable quality...
So yeah, this will be the third time I've done this.
To the local EB store's credit, they have always met their obligation to refund when I've demanded it. Saves me making a full complaint to the consumer watchdog.
GrpA
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They have provided a revoke tool, as most of these idiots that use this sort of online authentication are forced to do as it's obviously a highly flawed setup. It's pathetic that we are forced to this and I honestly wish I hadn't supported the game with my money when they pull this sort of bullshit. Next time I think I'll simply wait until games like this drop in price or become budget releases so I don't contribute to undeserved high initial sales when they pull shit like this. Unsurprisingly the developer
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't be bullied into thinking an open box cannot be returned. If the product doesn't work, you're entitled to a refund (well, depending on where you live, what I said is true in most slashdotter's countries). Store policy doesn't trump the law, period. If you're sold a defective product, return it for your refund, be insistent, they WILL give in.
Now, they might want you to jump through some hoops first, like taking their offer of free tech support, just jump through the (reasonable) hoops and you'll eit
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They can disclaim all they like, doesn't do anything. For one, there are things you can't just disclaim away. I can't go and sell a product that blows up and kills people randomly and say "Hey, I had a disclaimer saying that it might randomly kill you, it's their own fault." No, the fact that I was selling something clearly unsafe makes it my fault.
Also EULAs are ex post facto and have no exchange, which isn't allowed in contracts. What that means is after you've already bought it they are saying "Here's ad
DRM really only hurts the honest consumer (again) (Score:5, Insightful)
This is more evidence that DRM hurts the honest consumer.
As we all know, the pirates wait for the DRM-free... "collectors edition" release on The Pirate Bay.
Why do people continue doing it? Did they start when the economy was in a healthy growth period and then think "more DRM, more economic growth for us, it must obviously be causal".
(now there's a good application of "correlation is not causation" for you)
Re:DRM really only hurts the honest consumer (agai (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a time I would never have even considered running a pirated version - my main experience with pirated software has been cleaning off Trojans installed by NoCD cracks or the like.
Now... I can see the claims that DRM is (sometimes, at least) truly more of a hassle for honest consumers than for software pirates. That is a truly sad thing.
The fix is what?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now not only is the game broken due to a broken DRM implementation, but even the logic behind the DRM is broken since it at least this part can be circumvented by adjusting the system clock (!!). What was the point of even bothering with this then?
Although, actually, wouldn't this now make changing your system time an offence under the DCMA?
I never thought I'd post those two words together in one sentence, but yeah.... epic fail.
Epic's in a bit of hot-water (Score:5, Interesting)
Not DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Why install the legal copy then? (Score:5, Insightful)
The hilarious part is that it only froze up on the people that paid to have DRM installed on their machines. The stolen copies are just fine I'm sure.
I think the secret is, if you really really want to give them your money: buy a copy, never open it, and install a stolen version.
I have two copies of Titan's Quest (never opened), a copy of Flatout 2 (never opened), two copies of NWN2 (no), a copy of Jedi Outcast (no), Jedi Academy (no)...
Mostly it isn't even the DRM, simply having to even put the CD in is an unnecessary hardship. Why should I be inconvenienced because I bought it and the people who stole it get the good copy?
I think it's time the stop treating customers like shit and I say so on my registration cards. Fat lot of good it's done.
My Reponse (Score:5, Informative)
My response is http://gamecopyworld.com/ [gamecopyworld.com]
Another act (Score:3, Insightful)
I said it before [slashdot.org] and at times, I will have to say it again.
A good way to identify pirates on your server (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My first stop would be back to the store I purchased it from. Software, is a license. Therefore, when that license is revoked for whatever reason, the software no longer works..either by legal system or it actually stops working as in this case. Everyone that wants their money back should get it back.
Mistakes happen. Even retarded and far-reaching mistakes.
Lets see if Epic can put its money where its mouth is when it preaches about DRM. I know if I got an instant no-questions-asked refund after this, t
Re:How Many More "Oops"... (Score:5, Informative)
Then I ran across the first Starforce game, in the form of some crap called Trackmania. I uninstalled it about ten minutes later and haven't seen the disk since. Then I bought GT Legends, because I'm a big fan of classic racers, and that came with Starforce too. I put up with it for a week, then bailed.
After the tenth time manually uninstalling and reinstalling my CDRom from the hardware control panel due to it suddenly insisting on running in PIO mode, it was adios to Starforce and no more games buying.
I've only bought two games in the past few years: Oblivion (plus the addons, which happily run in Virtual CD), and GTA IV. I knew GTA IV was DRM'd up the wazoo, but it was a must-have game for me.
And that's what my games-buying has been reduced to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. I completely stopped buying anything from them after they never released the Unreal 3 client for Linux like they said they would. Since they have always supported Linux in the past I didn't worry. Ended up wasting my money on that game and now they lost me as a customer. I used to love the various Unreal titles because they all worked on Linux. Same with the Quake series.
Gaming has been going down the crapper for years now. Consoles suck even for casual gaming.