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Forums - PC Discussion - Quite possibly the worst DRM and most ridiculous idea ever

ssj12 on 18 February 2010
NJ5 said:

The only way the game industry can eliminate piracy is to promote Onlive and eventually have somehing like that be the only option. No way to pirate the game when it's running on a remote server (as long as they can prevent insiders from leaking games out).

Anything else is just a counter-productive waste of time and money, which annoys customers and creates animosity.

 

Onlive isnt the answer. It will destroy the PC hardware industry.



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ssj12 on 18 February 2010
Katilian said:
WilliamWatts said:

Without Steam its becoming increasingly difficult to own PC game software. I have seen the share of the local retail store shrink from dominating the place to being a shadow in a corner in some forgotten place with just classic titles and a smattering of new releases. The used market is cheap because there simply is very little value in an old title on a platform that can easily host piracy. I do not see nearly the same industry in hawking used PC titles as there is for console titles. A single consoles used market dwarfs the PC second hand market.

Ubisoft has a duty as a publicly traded company to only invest in things which it believes will give their shareholders a greater return. So they have an obligation to run the numbers to the point where they believe that if they did X action then Y profit ought to result from it. Furthermore the game industry unlike the music and movie industries has embraced digital distribution wherever applicable. Whats good for the industry is good for the gamer. If piracy cannot be controlled then the big publishers will continue to retreat from releasing content day and date with console releases for fear that if they release at the same time people will simply pirate the games on the consoles.

Currently on a console I can go around to your house, log into my account and download content already bought. Or on the PS3 I can share content with you for free. I doubt they would want to kill the rental market. Digital digistribution makes rental much more feasable as well as episodic gaming where you can download a part if you're unsure of the quality of the whole.

This will be my last post for the same reasons as Khuutra. But before I go I want to comment on the bit I've highlighted; Either you're an industry shill, or one of the most ignorant people on the planet.

 

Agreed, arguing with William is just as useless as punching a wall. He is obviously against the general consumer.

I'm out.



PC gaming is better than console gaming. Always.     We are Anonymous, We are Legion    Kick-ass interview   Great Flash Series Here    Anime Ratings     Make and Play Please
Amazing discussion about being wrong
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WilliamWatts on 18 February 2010
Katilian said:

This will be my last post for the same reasons as Khuutra. But before I go I want to comment on the bit I've highlighted; Either you're an industry shill, or one of the most ignorant people on the planet.

 

If the publishers aren't making money then the variety and especially quantity of content will suffer its not rocket science. Theres a pretty good reason why games are focusing on the multiplayer side to the expense of the single player side. Im not saying 'oh I want them to make massive profits' im saying 'I want them to stop making lossses' which is a completely different proposition.

http://jonpeddie.com/press-releases/details/pc-gaming-hardware-forecast-to-reach-27-billion-in-2010/

TIBURON, CA- November 19, 2009 -Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, today announced the market forecast for PC gaming hardware, and the results are better than previously expected.

The worldwide PC gaming hardware market (systems, accessories, and upgrades) is forecasted to gain $1.2 billion for 2009, which is a 5.9% increase versus 2008 (from $20.07 to $21.26 billion). The increase is due to higher than anticipated consumer demand for Enthusiast, Performance, and Mainstream hardware influenced by the ability to play video games ranging from casual to hardcore simulations.

Due to significant growth across all major markets the worldwide PC gaming hardware market is expected to skyrocket 30% in 2010. Senior Video Game Industry Analyst at JPR, Ted Pollak, credits this growth to a number of factors. “The largest influence on the high forecasted growth rate is due to purchasing delays for systems and upgrades in 2008/2009 as consumers circled the wagons and took a conservative position on discretionary spending. A recovering economy, processing advancements, and higher quality gaming offerings will all contribute to a healthy year for PC gaming hardware in 2010.”

Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Total PC Gaming Hardware Market $20,076 $21,260 $27,617 $32,749 $34,760

$27 Billion dollars of PC gaming hardware and yet the sales of software which is requiring this hardware to run are pitiful in comparison. Overall game software sales may be good but definately NOT the kind of games that are sold on consoles, the kind which requires this hardware.



izaaz101 on 18 February 2010
WilliamWatts said:
 

1. When was the last time you were without a connection to the internet on a PC capable of playing Assassins Creed? Laptops have suspend/hibernate functions so you can still play games without a connection to the internet, you just cannot save them until you do.

2. The major component of Warcraft and Starcraft was the online. Blizzard are moving towards this kind of copy protection as well as even LAN games require a connection to the Battlenet servers out of the box. Just because a game is single player doesn't stop a requirement for internet access being plausible. Have you seen Flash games? Single player games requiring an internet connection.

3. Not impossible, just more difficult. If it was easy then they wouldn't have considered it. Its funny how companies fall into the supposed trap of being total douche bag idiots who would not have considered the above. The PS3 is unhacked, the Xbox 360 as produced at the moment is unhacked though the DRM is circumvented so it is possible.

 

I'm having trouble locating where you got the information for your point number 1. From the article, unless I'm having trouble comprehending it, it appears quite clear that if you lose your internet connection, you get kicked out of the game to a menu, losing all progress since your last save. 

"No matter what you’re doing, no matter what the reason, the game will refuse to let you continue playing if it decides you’re not online. You’re dumped right back to a menu, losing any progress made since the last checkpoint. If you don’t have a constant, uninterrupted internet connection, you can’t play. Let’s list some of the reasons you might drop your net connection, shall we? Router crash, ISP problems, cat playing with the cable, microwave muddling your wi-fi connection, train going into a tunnel when you’re on 3G, Windows having a networking befuddlement, someone else in the house torrenting the bandwidth dry…"

 

If I still played PC games, this would be very disturbing.



Kasz216 on 18 February 2010
WilliamWatts said:
zexen_lowe said:
WilliamWatts said:

I have seen cracks take out copy protection but I have never seen a crack put features back in. Its far easier to rip something down, like for instance an HD -> Wii conversion than it is to build it back up. The best I can think of is spoofing the pirate save server but if it requires a unique key then its the same situation as any online authenticated game.

It's nor putting a feature back in, it's just removing the part where it connects to a server. I don't know how cracks work, so of course I don't know how it could be done, but there have been games that connected to servers for authentication (GTA4, for example), and they've all been cracked, so it's logical to expect this one will too

The Ubisoft protection means you can crack it as many times as you want but you cannot save your game unless you authenticate on Ubisofts server.

Famousringo

That's the crucial thing. This doesn't affect piracy at all.

This method of DRM raises the cost for the publishers and legitimate customers, while the cost to pirates remains the same. And when you raise the cost to the customer, your revenues drop as fewer customers are willing to buy. Everybody loses.

Oh, except the pirate. He gets to enjoy the game just fine because some clever supergeek saw Ubisoft's brilliant plan as an interesting challenge.

Ubisofts anti-piracy protection may do just that. It may finally be an effective anti-piracy deterrant and if it increases the time between release and piracy from T minus 14 to T plus 7 days before/after release to say a month then its done its job. See above, you can't save your game and its difficult to add that functionality back in.

All you need to do to fix that is make the game think you are connected to Ubisoft servers.... when your not.

That doesn't really seem like that hard of a challenge.  I mean look at stuff like Gameranger that trick your PC into thinking it's connected to a LAN connection when it's not.



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NJ5 on 18 February 2010
ssj12 said:
NJ5 said:

The only way the game industry can eliminate piracy is to promote Onlive and eventually have somehing like that be the only option. No way to pirate the game when it's running on a remote server (as long as they can prevent insiders from leaking games out).

Anything else is just a counter-productive waste of time and money, which annoys customers and creates animosity.

 

Onlive isnt the answer. It will destroy the PC hardware industry.

You probably misread my post...

 



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vlad321 on 18 February 2010
Kasz216 said:
WilliamWatts said:
zexen_lowe said:
WilliamWatts said:

I have seen cracks take out copy protection but I have never seen a crack put features back in. Its far easier to rip something down, like for instance an HD -> Wii conversion than it is to build it back up. The best I can think of is spoofing the pirate save server but if it requires a unique key then its the same situation as any online authenticated game.

It's nor putting a feature back in, it's just removing the part where it connects to a server. I don't know how cracks work, so of course I don't know how it could be done, but there have been games that connected to servers for authentication (GTA4, for example), and they've all been cracked, so it's logical to expect this one will too

The Ubisoft protection means you can crack it as many times as you want but you cannot save your game unless you authenticate on Ubisofts server.

Famousringo

That's the crucial thing. This doesn't affect piracy at all.

This method of DRM raises the cost for the publishers and legitimate customers, while the cost to pirates remains the same. And when you raise the cost to the customer, your revenues drop as fewer customers are willing to buy. Everybody loses.

Oh, except the pirate. He gets to enjoy the game just fine because some clever supergeek saw Ubisoft's brilliant plan as an interesting challenge.

Ubisofts anti-piracy protection may do just that. It may finally be an effective anti-piracy deterrant and if it increases the time between release and piracy from T minus 14 to T plus 7 days before/after release to say a month then its done its job. See above, you can't save your game and its difficult to add that functionality back in.

All you need to do to fix that is make the game think you are connected to Ubisoft servers.... when your not.

That doesn't really seem like that hard of a challenge.  I mean look at stuff like Gameranger that trick your PC into thinking it's connected to a LAN connection when it's not.

BioShock 1 took almost a week to pirate because of this server authentication and code and crap. This has been done many many times before in games, I don't know why anyone would think you can't go around a program that's sitting right on your computer.



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HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

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Kasz216 on 18 February 2010

also... about people with spotty internet connection being in the minority.

I actually believe a majority of computers are not hooked up to the interent.

Something like over a billion.



Pyramid Head on 18 February 2010

yet another reason why i generally dont bother with pc gaming



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IllegalPaladin on 18 February 2010

What kills me is that they say how great this is for the gamers.... really? Being be locked out of your game/content is insane.

I also can't say I'm in love with EA's use of making used copies of games require spending additional money just to be able to download DLC. I mean, it's not like all DLC will be free.

What if Activision took note and makes future Call of Duty games require spending $15 if you buy used? Though knowing Activision they'd probably lock you out of playing multiplayer till you paid them. Then lets throw in some $10 map packs that you'd still need to pony up for regardless of if you bought the game used or new on top of that.

While they're targeting the used market with this, I can't help but think of this as being similar to restrictive DRM we've seen plauging the PC. While people might not care much about PC gaming, this crap isn't limited to this platform.