The Curse of Outdated DRM Claims Another Vicim, 'Tron: Evolution' (vice.com) 162
As of this week, players who owned a legitimate copy of Tron: Evolution they paid for but never played it, no longer can. From a report: Tron: Evolution, a tie-in game for the 2010 Tron: Legacy film, used SecurRom, a form of digital rights management (DRM), and publisher Disney hasn't paid its bill. This means Disney can no longer authenticate purchases and "unlock" copies of the game that people bought but haven't used yet. Players first noticed they couldn't play the game after purchasing it in October, but a thread on Reddit today brought more attention to the issue. "I often buy games on sales, but don't play them immediately," user Renusek said on Reddit. "Yesterday I decided to play Tron: Evolution, maybe even practice speedrunning it, so I install the game, try to activate it (game still uses SecuROM DRM) and... the serial key has expired (?!)." SecurROM is DRM software that companies attach to video games to make sure they aren't downloaded illegally. It was popular among big game publishers some years back, often causing havoc and annoyance to players.
You didn't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:4, Informative)
It's worth pointing out these events because a *lot* of people ignore this. Hence most PC games now have DRM through Steam in practice. Meanwhile GOG doesn't get enough sales for standing up and going the non-DRM path.
Stadia is even worse, you have to 'buy' the game and when Google gives up on it, there isn't even in theory a way to keep playing your 'purchase'.
Right now you pay the amount you would have paid to 'buy', but you have the 'cloud' experience of your purchase evaporating.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, you have to "buy" games on Stadia? I thought it was a subscription service?
Considering google randomly kills of beta programs, why would anyone buy into a service that you have to pay extra to play the games; and run the risk of having them yanked out from under you when the google's corporate ADD sets in.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Funny)
Stadia has private Stadia-only lobbies (with nobody in them).
Finally, the peace and quiet that I've always craved!
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That's why I play games online, to play them alone.
Re: You didn't buy it (Score:2)
Re: You didn't buy it (Score:3)
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You'd BETTER be able to buy the games. A subscription service would absolutely suck. Let's not have the gaming environment become the clusterfuck disaster that is the online video streaming space.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Informative)
because they are TOLD they are making a PURCHASE. No where on any documentation does it say 'limited time use' or spell out how long you will be able to use the item you purchased. Until it does, it is not rental, it is a product designed to fail intentionally be engineers for because they are greedy.
The difference is clear , transparent communication of what you are selling to the person buying it. If you want to provide a rental, call it a rental.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Products are licensed under the terms, "it works until it doesn't", with additional clauses for unlimited data collection, no warranties, and binding arbitration.
Pretty much the whole software industry is fraud, and we're all happy with it... until we're not.
Re: You didn't buy it (Score:5, Funny)
That reminds me the book Good omens.
Crowley, the demon that seduced Eve back in the day, resides ever since on Earth.
At a certain moment he sends the warranty of an HP computer to the department in hell that is responcible for drafting the contracts for humans who want to sell their souls. He stuck a note to it saying "Read and learn!"
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Actually, the legaleze makes it quite clear. The real problem is that people click "I agree" without caring what they are agreeing to. If citizens had refused to click those "I agree" buttons then global commerce would have taken a historically different turn. Google / doubleclick, Facebook, Alexa, Ring, GPDR, Megaupload -- all would have unfolded differently.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
Take this example.
You buy the game. You never load it.
There's no conceivable way you could have clicked "I agree".
How is that unclicked "i agree" supposed to retroactively turn your purchase into a not purchase?
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:4)
It didn't change the purchase into a not purchase. You purchased a disk. But loading it into memory (which is STUPIDLY considered to be creating a copy of it) may not be authorized until you click "I agree."
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The problem is that copyright is called copyright, not distributionright. Back in the day those two actions were one and the same, what possible reason would you have to copy a book for private use if you already own a copy? You can't read it twice as fast just because you have two copies.
Somehow the lawmakers and judges got stuck on the "copy" part of the word. If copyright was replaced by distributionright, publishers and creators would still make practically the same amount of money, but everyone else wo
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even better, GPL everwhere and problem is solved at the root
Notice that the binary can be GPL and the content copyright/distributionright, but the good part was that we could fix those "DRM" (and other bugs) and also create alternative content and game extensions/mods
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Time travel. Every one of these anti-DRM arguments completely blows off how common time travel is.
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well, did you click "i agree" the last time the purchasing platform (Steam, GOG, whatever) showed you its EULA, which includes provisions for licensing of "purchases" made on their platform, including third-party licensing and DRM? yeah, you probably did, and that means you're bound to those terms for anything you purchase on that platform. and yes, even GOG has games with effective third-party DRM now.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
No.
I even got a refund for Civ 5 from Valve before they had a refund policy because I didn't agree to let the program send messages to people in my contact lists, which the EULA said it could. The EULA (presented in the Steam UI) also said to return to the place of purchase. So Valve was fully obligated to give me a refund.
The number of people who did that (Score:2)
You could try invalidating License agreements, but the courts have been stacked with pro-corporate justices for 20 years now (the GOP lead Senate blocked 184 of them from being appointed by Obama and then immediately appointed them when Trump was in office).
I know partisan politics are taboo (that's not an accident BTW) but elections have consequences. Anyone reading this who voted GOP (or for
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I know partisan politics are taboo (that's not an accident BTW) but elections have consequences. Anyone reading this who voted GOP (or for a "Third Way" Democrat, google it if you don't know what that is), well, you got what you asked for, now you need to start asking if it was worth it.
Remind me again who signed the DMCA in 1998?
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Informative)
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Copyrights do not need to be presented before execution, yet they are binding. That's a good thing: we don't want someone to not agree to the GPL and thus not be bound by it. So they make their copyright say that you can't load the application into memory until you agree to a license. There's your loophole. And the courts have upheld this.
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All fine and good if it is easy enough to get my money back if I don't agree , but most of the time it isn't.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a good thing: we don't want someone to not agree to the GPL and thus not be bound by it.
The GPL does NOT bind you if you do not distribute! You can take any GPL software that you have legally acquired and do absolutely anything you want with it. Including loading it into memory. You can even distribute it internally in an organization as much as you want without triggering the GPL.
You can even acquire a copy of a GPL program and give it to someone else without triggering the GPL, as long as you do not keep any copies yourself, under first sale doctrine. Then you can download another copy under the GPL and hand it off and so on and so forth...
The GPL is very careful about not complicating things for the ordinary user. You do not need to read it at all unless you go beyond what an ordinary user does. Some software, particularly on Windows, presents the GPL as a click-through license that you have to agree with before letting you use the software. This is an additional restriction and violates the GPL.
Of course, if you feel this is a loophole in the GPL and you want to do something that the author(s) of the work are likely to not want to happen, you better talk to an actual lawyer.
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he GPL does NOT bind you if you do not distribute! You can take any GPL software that you have legally acquired and do absolutely anything you want with it. Including loading it into memory.
That is how it *should* be, but that is not what the courts ruled! [wikipedia.org] It's awful, I know! Check out my other comment below [slashdot.org] for more horrible precedent-setting court cases. After ruling that loading the code into memory is a copy, that is why various hacking tools, emulation tools, and utilities suddenly violate copyright. It makes no sense. After reading those, imagine the world that Oracle wants us to live in, where APIs are copyrightable too. You won't even be able to *call* a function without violating
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The GPL is not affected by this court ruling, since the GPL explicitly gives you permission to do anything you want unless you distribute.
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he GPL is not affected by this court ruling...unless you distribute.
Don't miss the point by focusing only on the GPL because this isn't just about the GPL. It is about the powers the courts gave to copyrights. The aforementioned ruling says that loading into memory is distribution. Thus *all* copyrights are affected. Fortunately, this does nothing to the GPL since it allows you to make that copy. The issue this thread started talking about is that there are other copyrights that don't allow you to load it into memory unless you abide by certain other requirements. That
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You specifically used the GPL to defend the current ridiculous doctrine of execution being covered by copyright:
"Copyrights do not need to be presented before execution, yet they are binding. That's a good thing: we don't want someone to not agree to the GPL and thus not be bound by it."
The "we don't want someone to not agree to the GPL and thus not be bound by it" implies people ARE bound by the GPL when they do not agree to it. They are not.
You could have picked most other licenses as an example and you w
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They are not.
Yes, they are.
Contrary to what you said, we DO want people to not agree to the GPL and thus not be bound by it.
If people are not bound to it, then they can legally violate it. The way copyright works, everyone is bound by all copyrights ever written, even if they never read them. You don't even need the court cases or articles I linked to do understand that. But since you are still confused, read the Perens article.
DMCA overrides MAI v. Peak (Score:2)
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 included a rider specifically to override the ruling in MAI v. Peak, adding 17 USC 117(c) [cornell.edu] to the United States Code.
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Yeah, and 10 years later, the courts still held that loading code into memory was a copyright infringement. [wikipedia.org] The rider only covers the very narrow case of MAI v. Peak.
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Some software, particularly on Windows, presents the GPL as a click-through license that you have to agree with before letting you use the software. This is an additional restriction and violates the GPL.,
I've actually filed a bug report about this (FileZilla), and was basically told to go pound sand.
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This is nonsensical. Copyright is something specifically defined in law and allows the creator of a work to control who may copy said work. The creator does not get to "make their copyright say" anything, A contract (which a license is a form of) is an agreement between two or more parties and prima facie invalid without consideration (typically money, but it could be something else) and a meeting of the minds (i.e. all parties must agree on all terms).
You are conflating the two.
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The creator does not get to "make their copyright say" anything,
They most certainly do. If the copyright says you can only copy the file if you stand on your head and sing lullabies, that's totally legit. If it were not so, the GPL would be unenforceable. The copyright says the specific things you must do.
A contract is... You are conflating the two.
Bruce Perens explains it well [perens.com] and links to some of the relevant court cases. The courts say a copyright is a contract. Check out some of my other posts in this mega-thread for links to more court cases on this. At this point, copyright can really say almost anyt
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"The courts say a copyright is a contract."
Courts also say that not all contracts are valid as well. Far as loading into memory and contracts, what do you think happens when I read Slashdot?
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The courts found the contracts valid.
The courts are finding these contracts valid. Read about Glider -vs- Blizzard [wikipedia.org]. In this case, the courts ruled that the developers committed copyright infringement by loading the software into memory with a preloader. It was covered here on Slashdot back in the day.
Far as loading into memory and contracts, what do you think happens when I read Slashdot?
I'm sure you made this statement in an attempt to show that it would be absurd. It is absurd. But it is what the court ruled. They didn't find the contract invalid!
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The AC is totally wrong. The GPL is a copyright and a contract. [perens.com] That article links to the relevant court cases and has a nice explanation.
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Readers may notice that the article MobyDisk links to does not say that the GPL is copyright.
I'm going to assume that you just mistyped that and are missing a word. Did you mean to say "that the GPL is copyrighted" or "that the GPL is a copyright license" or did you mean to say "that the GPL is a contract." ?
I agree that Perens is not confused. He's a programmer and a famous lawyer. We agree that Perens explanation is correct.
Wikipedia says it's not so cut and dry (Score:3)
The courts have been getting more and more pro-business/pro-corporate and less and less pro-consumer. This is a function of who's been appointing judges, which have mostly been very corrupt politicians like Mitch McConnell, and is due to the fact that high court judges are appointed by the Senate and the Senate has been in GOP hands for most of the time and in the hands of pro-corporate "Third Way" Democrats otherwise (think Joe Biden & Nancy Pelosi).
I mentioned this els
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Actually, the legaleze makes it quite clear. The real problem is that people click "I agree" without caring what they are agreeing to.
Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) has been around since 1952 to define a regular sale of goods. Those click through agreements aren't going to override aspects of a regular sale, they can dictate additional things not covered by UCC such as liability and copyright terms of use.
If you want a contract, then BOTH parties must understand the contract. If one party clicks on it without reading it, then it's not a binding contract. It's really that simple. It's passive resistance that we collectively ignore those agr
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Unfortunately, the courts have repeatedly ruled otherwise. Here's how the loophole works (IANAL): loading the software into memory is making a copy of it [wikipedia.org]. Making a copy is subject to copyright. The person making the copy does not have to agree to a copyright: when they make a copy, they must do so in legal accordance with the copyright. The copyright says the software is licensed under an agreement. [wikipedia.org] The license agreement says you must abide by their subscriber agreement. The subscriber agreement says
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Informative)
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Read the cases I linked to. The courts say that loading it into memory is a distribution. So if you hack up the software, you can't run it, because that is distribution. That's exactly what the author of Glider did. He made a program that modified World of Warcraft, and loaded it into memory. He was found guilty of copyright violation because he modified it, then distributed it by loading it into memory. There's another group who emulated the old Warcraft servers, and they were found guilty of copyrig
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
the first case example is somewhat weakened by newer legislation
Yes, and it is good that they did. Unfortunately they didn't go far enough to address the situation you are talking about.
After that I quit reading.
So I see. I recommend finishing the reading, so you can understand why that one change in the DMCA didn't protect us. Quick hint: The "newer legislation" you refer to predates the Glider case. So even with those DMCA provisions in place, they were still found to be infringing when they loaded the software into memory.
Personal note: This isn't a race to post a reply nor a contest to prove who is smarter. Some places, like StackOverflow, reward the first answer - even if it isn't the best answer. It makes people post partial answers to get quick upvotes, then revise it to be an actual answer. Don't do that here. Slashdot doesn't have an edit feature. Don't read one paragraph of what someone wrote, or a part of one link -- just enough to find something that seems contradictory -- and go "Aha! Gotcha!" Don't assume they don't know what they are talking about until you grok in fullness. You might find (like in this example) that there's still more to the story further down. I'm not sure how old you are, but I used to do the same thing. Someone would say "there are 10 reasons to do it this way" then when I found a flaw in reason 3, I assumed that I knew more than them. I didn't take the time to listen to the other 7 reasons and realize that maybe things were more complex than I thought. It's funny, because I had a young coworker a year or two ago who was just like that, and it was frieking humble pie to realize I was the same way. I am not a lawyer. I might be wrong here. I *want* to be wrong here. But I'm posting this to raise the alarm so that people don't assume that the system works they way it ought to work, the way they want it to work. Don't try to shut me down, I'm not the enemy, I'm the bearer of bad news.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
hard not to click 'I agree' after you have already paid $30 to $500 and opened the shrinkwrap so you can't return the product to the store.
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people don't know that about DRM. "Lots" within our nerd community do, but the vast majority of potential customers do not. It should be required that everyone producing DRM'd media post in big bold letters "PURCHASE OF THIS PRODUCT DOES NOT GRANT PERMANENT RIGHTS TO USE THIS PRODUCT. PERMISSIONS/ACCESS MAY BE REMOVED AT ANY TIME."
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Such a warning would not stop anything. 9 out of 10 geeks know about this, but still buy the games anyway. I bet a $1 that both you and I have agreed to such licenses before too. Maybe we can say "Oh, I refused to play game X because of DRM" but bought 50 other games with slightly weaker DRM instead.
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Why not just break the DRM?
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Because that's illegal.
Yes, DRM is fucking stupid, but some people follow the laws (regardless of how bad they are.)
Re:You didn't buy it (Score:4, Insightful)
Generally it is not illegal to break DRM for personal use. However, it is in many places illegal to help someone else break the DRM and even to tell about how someone might accomplish that. This obviously makes it a rather theoretical exercise for most of the population. One does not just come up with 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 on a whim.
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That's the combination on my luggage!
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sure enough, which is exactly a good reason to require it be printed in big bold letters for everyone to see. Then no one has a right to complain or pretend they didn't know what they were paying money for.
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"Such a warning would not stop anything. 9 out of 10 geeks know about this, but still buy the games anyway."
idk, do you mean to say that the information would stop 1 out of 10 purchases? 10% of sales is pretty significant, and this is just one direct effect. if Valve's warning ended up shunting even half of that 10% of purchases over to GOG or direct-sale or another platform, it would be a serious market shake-up. (obviously the effect would be less than that, but still not negligible.)
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I was implying that the remaining 1 geek just doesn't know. No matter, the number was for illustration purposes.
My point is that, even when people know they are signing their rights away in exchange for a video game, an overwhelming majority continue to do so. Game publishers realized that even if DRM loses them some sales and increases their tech support costs slightly, those losses are made-up for by delaying the pirates juuust long enough that the pirates can't interfere with their initial sales. That
Because you did buy it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because people don't really care, and are happy to throw their money away on the latest CoD, Madden or whatnot. Even though at most, the game will be playable for a few years before the servers go dark.
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EA and others have been making money off of treating their games as services that must be repurchased every single year.
It is because they don't make games, they make *Jim Sterling squeaky voice* live services.
This is why people are surprised. (Score:2)
Every single day 360,000 new people are born who know absolutely nothing about DRM. There is a steady stream of people who are surprised by these revelations, because they are young gamers who haven't had the experience that you have.
I refuse to buy games that use these DRM schemes. There are *so many* awesome games to play, that don't have DRM, that I can't even keep up with them. So when I see DRM, that's an instant non-negotiable deal-breaker.
But, I also buy games through Steam. Which qualifies as a
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5) a huge library with tons of user reviews, tags, and great categorization that enables me to find new games quickly; plus the forums of hints and tricks.
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Re:You didn't buy it (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called a "purchase" and if you are saying it isn't, you should sue the "sellers" for fraud. I don't have the money or time to fight for a $30 game (or whatever he bought it for on sale).
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People on Slashdot my understand this. The general buying public does not, never has, and likely never will.
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They think that because they're paying a buying price. In fact, every single aspect of the transaction is identical to a purchase, and unlike a rental. And there isn't even a rental agreement. It's indistinguishable from what you do when you buy a loaf of bread.
Seriously, go to a store that has both kinds of items (Walmart, maybe?) and pick up a video game and a loaf of bread and take t
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Yes, technically, if you can't play a game you just bought because a technical problem created by the game developer - including failure to renew a DRM license - they are committing fraud. Whether this is fraud in the legal sense is a different question.
However, if you also crack a DRM scheme to play a game for which you didn't pay, and aren't legally entitled to play, you are also committing fraud, or "theft". Whether this is fraud or theft in the legal sense is a different question.
Thus, it doesn't
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I disagree. They are marketed as a product for sale, therefore... if it stops working suddenly by design, then it was Falsely marketed.
IMO the FTC should get on this and File suit on behalf of consumers against the game vendor should they fail to fix the situation.
You didn't buy it-time machine. (Score:2)
"DRM's been around for a long time and people know the issues with it. Why do people still think they are buying something when in reality, they are only renting it for a limited period of time?"
So back in 1990 I was RENTING The Secret of Monkey Island?
As well as Pool of Radiance in 1988?
This happens for a lot of games (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have no idea about Fable, but maybe your problem was WLFG (Windows Live for Games) becoming Games for Windows, like it was for F3. Some (most?) pre-Steam versions of F3 worked fine, because they didn't try to call WLFG
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Tip: to replay Fallout 3, use Fallout New Vegas and the mod "Tale of Two Wastelands", which loads F3's assets as a mod to NV, which fixes a ton of core bugs in the software.
GOG is the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I always try to make a point to buy games on GOG if the GOG release has feature-parity with the Steam release (examples I can remember where this didn't happen: KotOR 2 got a widescreen+Win10 compatibility update for Steam only, Disco Elysium released to Steam/GOG but the GOG version lacked achievement support). It signals to the publisher that DRM free does matter to me. If you want publishers to stop using shitty DRM, the best thing to do is vote with your wallet.
Side note: GOG's optional desktop client (Galaxy) recently got a 2.0 update that adds a lot of neat features too, which is big for me since I actually really like the feature set of the Steam client.
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One of my Linux native steam games stopped working because of a change of whatever system library. Even if Windows has a more stable ABI, your GoG games will en up being unplayable some day. And old enough OSes do not work on modern hardware.
There are sometimes solutions. I play the win version of that Linux game through steamplay. I have a reimplementation of Diablo that works fine on modern OSes. Sometimes there is old school emulation. But not always.
Software that stop being supported often stops working
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Ah I think I remember getting into a Reddit argument about games and VM, but I'm surprised it isn't being used more often. Running a VM isn't that hard, especially if the OS comes with it built in. Now the latest games may not because gaming is all about performance and VM takes a portion.
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+1, informative.
I use GOG.com too. A lot. Even for games I already own on disk.
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I wouldn't say that. I have Deus Ex (original) on both Steam and GoG and it will not run on either.
This is how the cracking scene remains legit (Score:5, Interesting)
For this reason, it is superior to locate cracks for the old games you own. Safedisc doesn't work either. It's not a rental. DCMA anti-circumvention clause permits circumvention for legit owners or archivists when the hardware no longer supports the DRM.
This is a commonly repeated story. Much of the C64 catalog would be unavailable to reproduce and document without the cracking scene. Especially EA's bizarro copy protection scheme with games like M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold. The "head knocking" sector error protection scheme, which was very common, actually put your drive head slightly out of alignment over time, and then EA's DRM scheme would not load.
I made some good money repairing 1541 drive alignment, and the diagnostic program after service was an uncracked EA game.
BTW, you load legit EA DRM and the game doesn't launch for 15 minutes. You crack it and use Epyx Fastload and it comes up in seconds. Talk about punishing your paying customers. I used EA cracks on my purchased games just to have reasonable load times.
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"Talk about punishing your paying customers."
Every time I buy a lock for the house I think about how all those lock companies are punishing me. Just leave those nice burglars alone, they'll eventually return everything, they promise.
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Talk about punishing your paying customers."
Every time I buy a lock for the house I think about how all those lock companies are punishing me. Just leave those nice burglars alone, they'll eventually return everything, they promise.
*facepalm* Are you really unable to see the flaws with your analogy? For one, DRM doesn't affect ONLY pirates, the fact that it affects even paying customers being the reason for feeling punished.
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Repair bill $100.50
Turning the screw: 50 cents
Knowing which screw to turn: $100
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Fleecing the rubes: Priceless
Licensed... (Score:2)
Don't buy from them any more (Score:2)
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The IRS doesn't deserve any "customers" then.
Too much long term infrastrucutre. (Score:3)
Here is the thing. Private Companies suck at infrastructure (it is expensive, requires constant work to keep up, and needs to cover less than profitable areas as well) . Software companies hate maintaining old products 10 years seems to be the limit for big old boring productivity software companies. Most software companies they stop maintaining a product version after 2 years.
DRM based on connecting to a network server to make sure you are how you say you are. Means the software company will need to maintain a Compatible DRM infrastructure for a long period of time.
There is actually a cost to having your old property not being able to run after a time. Nostolgia is very important to a brand name.
So If after the Pac-Man fad ran out, we couldn't run pac-man again. The Pac-Man Brand would probably have died out.
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>There is actually a cost to having your old property not being able to run after a time.
Yes, you get to rerelease it for a new console or OS
blah (Score:2)
I am significantly more likely to accidentally lose or damage a game to the point that it is unplayable than I am to lose a game because something went wrong with the DRM. I mean, how often does this happen? Tron Evolution? Seriously? Did someone buy this nine-year-old game and never activate it?
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Right, but what if this is his second computer (HD died, new MB, new OS)? Securom games require a per computer authorization. Once you hit 3 or 5 auths (publisher dependent), you have to buy the game again, unless you've de-authed some other copies. However, de-auths off of dead disks/motherboards are tricky to work around. Some protections will be reasonable and tick that counter back up after 3 months or so, but as I recall, Securom doesn't work that way.
Only company that I heard of that will help you
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There are MANY examples of this problem. Either your nerd card is missing a stamp, or you're new around here.
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I am significantly more likely to accidentally lose or damage a game to the point that it is unplayable than I am to lose a game because something went wrong with the DRM.
Well, you could keep your original on the shelf and use your backup copy, then make a new backup copy if you lose or damage your first one. ...oh wait, you can't do that BECAUSE of the DRM.
Mine still works (Score:2)
Score one for piracy. It's a decent game, better than the movie.
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The movie wasn't THAT bad.
Yet You Can Still Buy It Online (Score:3)
Amazon, Microsoft ... do a search for "Tron: Evolution".
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I wound up getting around that when writing games for the Apple 2 by making a few checks on the hidden track I had some code stuck in (I used a track on the end which was accessible but never used, as well as a half track). This way, a RAM snapshot really didn't do much good, and the hidden track stored some vital assembly code, so it couldn't be bypassed with a few NOPs. Not like it was impossible to bypass, but for most people, was beyond them.
I sort of miss those days where you could pop a NMI based sn
Re: (Score:3)
Half tracks (Score:2)
Not even "errors".
The Disk II interface was capable of stepping the disk drive's read/write head to any of 80 tracks. But because most drives' heads could only read and write half that many non-overlapping tracks, Apple DOS and ProDOS only used every second track. A "half track" involved stepping between the tracks and reading and writing sectors at a low level. Even a raw bit copier wouldn't be able to get a stable signal out of that.
The "Spiradisc" format [fadden.com] could get down to quarter tracks by sending two st