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I'm going to wait to see if it's patched to fix some of those problems they've been having.

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If by problems you mean Ubisoft's ridiculous, uncurable DRM then you'll be waiting a while.

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Lets talk DRM for a moment.

 

What is it that honest, paying customers dislike about DRM? I don't get the fuss.

 

Must always be online to play? Don't think I've been on a computer that wasn't online for about 10 years.

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What if your internet went down for a week or something? It'd piss me off that I wasnt able to play a game that id purchased.

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What if it was an MMO, or Team Fortress 2? :p I'd just find something else to play for a week. I know, it's the principle, but it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. PC piracy has totally killed it as a gaming market, there aren't many viable options.

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I dont think its even the principle. If its a game that has a single player then you should be able to play it offline. MMOs and TF2 need the internet to play.

 

I do get what you are saying about PC piracy being so bad but I personally think things like only being able to play while you are online is too far.

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In principle, I don't think that "always on" DRM is a bad thing. It sucks having to be online for a singleplayer game, yes. But it also sucks that publishers and devs are so afraid of their game being pirated, that they prefer platforms where the self service mentality isn't as widespread. "Just make good enough games so people will want to pay for it" simply doesn't work. The better the game, the more people will want it without paying for it. Who wants to pirate a bad game?

 

What counts though, is the implementation. When losing the connection for some seconds (which is completely out of the player's control, e.g. general congestion at the ISP for whatever reason) renders the game unplayable while you're already playing, something is wrong. When the publisher is unable to provide sufficiently reliable servers for these types of DRM, than everything falls apart. The DRM has to be fair. And fairness might also include loosening or removing the "always on"-DRM once the game is a couple of years old.

 

Ideally, while they're already demanding constant connections, they could also provide services that exploit this connection and offer value to the player like cloud saving, friendlists to chat with people currently in other games (e.g. SC2 & WoW or Steam's friendlist), their own achievement systems etc..

 

Penny arcade had a nice strip about the always on DRM in Diablo 3 ;)

 

i-bMtwfTg-L.jpg

 

Don't know if directly linking their strips is advisable, but I wanted the strip on the page without uploading it to imageshack myself. :heh:

Edited by Burny

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The problem with DRM is that....it doesn't even work and ends up being a nuisance.

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What is it that honest, paying customers dislike about DRM? I don't get the fuss.

The major issue is that pirates have a better quality of experience due to not having to put up with the pitfalls of DRM whilst paying customers are automatically treated with mistrust. It's all stick, no carrot.

 

Rather than discourage people from pirating it's more worthwhile encouraging them to buy.

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Lets talk DRM for a moment.

 

What is it that honest, paying customers dislike about DRM? I don't get the fuss.

 

Must always be online to play? Don't think I've been on a computer that wasn't online for about 10 years.

 

Spore for example, had a maximum of three installs, so if your computer fucked up, or you wanted to install it on a laptop as well as a desktop, you had to be super careful. If you ran out of installs, you had to go through the indignity of calling their customer support service at the costly sum of £1/min just to get one more measly install. I just don't like the idea of a game that automatically assumes that I'm a criminal.

 

Then there is Ubisoft's starforce (a sort of DRM middleware), which actually installed malware on your rig.

 

Digital Rights Management is a difficult thing, but there's a surefire alternative; release your game on Steam. Honesty is incentivised on there just by the fact that if you're caught cheating or pirating, you run the risk of being banned from the service and losing access to your entire library of games.

Edited by The Bard

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The only problem I've had with DRM has really been when I've wanted to hook my computer up to a TV or something like that where I don't have access to an Ethernet cable. And that was with Steam's DRM, which is generally fine. As much as I don't like being punished for actually being one of the people who pays for games, I'm not sure there really is a solution.

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I wasn't talking about the DRM...

 

I was talking about the locked frame-rate, no AA and weird bugs.

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Rather than discourage people from pirating it's more worthwhile encouraging them to buy.

That's a mightily fine idea. And what would possibly encourage people who've preferred to "find" their games up until now to suddenly fork out and buy them, when there is still nothing that discourages them from just continuing to "find" their games? :heh:

 

Digital Rights Management is a difficult thing, but there's a surefire alternative; release your game on Steam.

I like Steam, it works great and is incredibly convenient. It's one example of how DRM can work without being intrusive and how value can be added through the required connection (friendlist, achievements, cloud saving). Unfortunately that "surefire alternative" means that big publishers like EA or Activision are dependent on Valve. I don't know if they have to pay anything if they integrate Steamworks into their game and make a Steam account and connection mandatory, but even if not, not having control over something like that is understandably not in their interest.

 

You just can't ask big publishers to make themselves completely dependent on Valve, as great as Steam might be. I expect that EA, Ubisoft and Activision will try to establish their own alternatives in the next years.

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That's a mightily fine idea. And what would possibly encourage people who've preferred to "find" their games up until now to suddenly fork out and buy them, when there is still nothing that discourages them from just continuing to "find" their games? :heh:

Dedicated pirates will always pirate, there's no point worrying about them as they were never going to buy your game anyway.

 

How do you encourage people to buy your game? Release it at a good price, give discounts on pre-orders, have post-launch DLC available for free to anyone that registers their copy... there's all sorts of things you can do. People are generally pretty honest given the chance, it's just about enticing them to your product and then putting as few barriers in the way as possible. Digital distribution also allows for an enormous amount of flexibility, putting less focus on day-one sales: games are now viable sources of income years after they've launched, not weeks.

 

As it happens I'm not suggesting companies forgo DRM entirely; a CD key is the most basic form and no one gives a second thought to them. I do think companies should stop short of anything that punishes paying customers for their honesty, though.

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Burny: Steamworks and all the tools that come with it are completely free for any third party to use.

 

I really like Gabe Newell's position on piracy; eliminate the incentive for people to do so by offering a service rather than a one time product. Look at TF2 when it came out, they added content at frequent intervals at no cost to whoever had already bought it, witht he stipulation that it had to be a legitimate copy of the game otherwise the extra content just wouldn't work. What reason does a person who is inclined to pirate have to not rip off a game that's a dead end release?

Edited by The Bard

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Burny: EA have already released their alternative to steam and both EA and Valve are having hissy fits over it.

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@Aimless Ok, I understood that as being directed against DRM altogether. :heh:

 

Digital distribution also allows for an enormous amount of flexibility, putting less focus on day-one sales: games are now viable sources of income years after they've launched, not weeks.

 

The flexibility is out of question. I do wonder about what the income at later points is though. Sure, income is made at later points as older games never have to leave digital "shelves" and that's already a big improvement over pure retail releases. How much is it though? I guess what pays the bills for the development and raises the funds for a new project, is the money of early adopter's who paid the full price instead of the spare change of those who waited until they got the GOTY edition for 5€ during Steam sales?

 

@The Bard:

 

Steamworks being free is great. Makes being dependent on Steam no better for big publishers though.

 

But these "service instead of one-time product"-philosophy has its limits. Namely: singleplayer games. Unless you chop the games into pieces and sell content as "free post release DLC" for those who register. :heh:

 

@Cube:

 

That's where my prediction that EA, Ubisoft and Activision will try to establish own alternatives to Steam comes from in the first place. EA has apparently already started, because they want more control. It's hard to imagine Activision and Ubisoft wouldn't want the same.

 

Also: According to EA, the removal of Crysis 2 from Steam was done by Valve due to Steam's business terms, which don't go well with the way Crytek (EA?) would like to distribute the game via other services.

Edited by Burny
Automerged Doublepost

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The flexibility is out of question. I do wonder about what the income at later points is though. Sure, income is made at later points as older games never have to leave digital "shelves" and that's already a big improvement over pure retail releases. How much is it though? I guess what pays the bills for the development and raises the funds for a new project, is the money of early adopter's who paid the full price instead of the spare change of those who waited until they got the GOTY edition for 5€ during Steam sales?

There's a lot of middle ground between full price and pocket money Steam sale purchase. If you're continuing to support your game it gives you numerous opportunities to entice people back in, to relaunch it to a certain extent. "Hey, look at all these changes made in patch 2.0, and to celebrate we're knocking 20% off the price this weekend!" Suddenly the blogs, and their regurgitated news cycle, have thrust your product back to the forefront, with social media trending not far behind.

 

Also, Valve's noted several times that after Steam sales discounted products maintain momentum, a sudden influx of full price purchases coming in the wake of the sale as fresh word of mouth spreads. Similarly you'll often see sale items that are being sold for a handful of pounds or Euros topping Steam's sales charts; the list is based on revenue, not units shifted.

 

Think of it in terms of cinema: day-one game purchases are box office sales, price promotions for digital releases being the equivalent of a home release. Some films die on the big screen but turn a profit with a DVD/Blu-ray release thanks to word of mouth, and that's ultimately what I'm getting at: digital distribution grants opportunities for risk-free second chances.

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Oh boy.. discussion again in the PC Gaming discussion thread :heart: stay a while folks.

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The big problem with DRM is that it's an utterly pointless exercise. It's always cracked within a week. Can anyone name a single PC game that hasn't been pirated?

 

Publishers are going the wrong way about stopping piracy. At present, if you put all morals and legal issues aside, I could get any game I want for free with no inconvenient DRM to pay for, and I can download it straight to my computer at the maximum speed that my Internet connection can handle. How on earth is clumsy DRM going to attract people away from doing this? The flaw in the whole concept of DRM is that it actually makes the retail package less attractive. It is only through moral issues and legal concerns that I don't have a HDD full of pirated software, games, movies and music.

 

How about attracting people to pay for the product, rather than dissuading them with failed attempts to stop piracy that only serve to annoy paying customers?

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my problem with DRM is that current methods only seem to penalise the paying customer rather than the pirate

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DRM has never really been an issue with me, I own a laptop and PC and fortunately, even with games like Spore have never hit the limit of installs.

 

But I don't see the point of DRM - well, yes I do, but other the other hand, people will crack games regardless, if anything this almost seems to encourage it and forces paying customers to look for alternative games just to be able to play them.

 

As for the lack of internet, I moved recently to a flat that had no internet access for a month (these things always take time.) half of my steam library I wouldn't be able to get on, sure World of warcraft, team fortress etc are expected, they are online games and you know that when you get them, but it's slightly annoying to not be able to touch games whilst steam is offline.

 

As it is though, I don't particularly have a solution I just put up with the way it is.

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A quick note by the way: I recently discovered the MMORPG Age of Conan is now free-to-play. The way it works is there’s a free subscription and a premium subscription, but as far as I could tell, most of the content is available in the free version. I think you miss a few classes and PvP, and some other extras. Perhaps a nice option for some. I’m still waiting for the upcoming MMORPG from the same studio.

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