Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on August 27, 2010, 09:06:14 pm
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After this idiotic statement I just lost a lot of respect for them. (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=261330)
Smackdown vs. Raw 2011's one-time code for online play might upset pre-owned buyers - but THQ 'doesn't care'.
That's according to the publisher's creative director for wrestling games Cory Ledesma, who told CVG that "loyal fans" who are interested in buying the game first-hand are more important:
"I don't think we really care whether used game buyers are upset because new game buyers get everything. So if used game buyers are upset they don't get the online feature set I don't really have much sympathy for them."
"That's a little blunt but we hope it doesn't disappoint people. We hope people understand that when the game's bought used we get cheated," he continued.
I hope people boycott their games after this. Not likely, but they should to send a message about fair use.
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I smell something illegal
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To be fair they aren't the first ones doing this, you can thank EA for that. But it still isn't right.
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Who buys Smackdown vs Raw?
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5th graders.
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To be fair they aren't the first ones doing this, you can thank EA for that. But it still isn't right.
Why isn't it right? THQ doesn't make any money whatsoever off of used-game sales. From their perspective, those customers might as well not exist, as the only people profiting from them are GameStop and their ilk, so why should THQ court them? And it's not like they've made any secret of the fact that the one-time code is required; people buying this used are presumably going to be informed about it beforehand. I've heard people state that there's no restriction on selling cars or other items second-hand, and that's true...but in the case of cars, there's an obvious reduction in value you receive by going that route. In the same way, it's not mind-blowing that buying a newly-released game at a discount should incur some corresponding reduction in its value.
(The comments from Tycho (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/8/25/) on this, as well as the responses to them further down, make for interesting reading.)
Honestly, I've started making it somewhat of a personal policy to stop buying used copies of in-print games when possible. Not only is their condition often suspect at best, but there's also the fact that I'd rather be supporting the developers making them than the resellers stocking them. The only stuff I go for used at this point are older-gen titles that obviously aren't making their original developers anything anymore. And even then, I've sworn off GameStop entirely; my local Play 'n' Trade has a far broader selection (back to the 2600!) and generally better staff.
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To be fair they aren't the first ones doing this, you can thank EA for that. But it still isn't right.
Wait wait wait, why not? This kind of EA Ten Dollar-style initiative is the only sane alternative to DRM. If it's a choice between this and toxic awful DRM, I want this on all my games, everywhere, forever.
Used game sales don't send a single cent to the developer or publisher, and this feels like a fairly harm-free way to counteract that. People who buy the game used can grab a code for a small fee.
It worked wonderfully for ME2.
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ME2 is offline, though. There's always the option of just pirating the extra crap.
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...and what if you happen to like reformatting your computer instead of bogging it down with an antivirus?
I have to reinstall my games every few months, and limited number of installs is the thing I avoid like the ****ing plague.
Unless its just a "make an account" thing like SC2 where the (one time) activation goes wherever the game is installed with me (just gotta log on and all), and isn't tied to the install of the game, I can't see how this is a good idea, at all.
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A) We're talking about the 360 and PS3 here, not a PC game.
B) The code would presumably be tied to your XBL/PSN account, so you could use it whenever/wherever.
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to be honest so long as it's explained on the back of the box in clear text I don't have a serious issue with this. as has been commented on here from a business perspective pre owned games are competition to the devs and publishers by simultaneously providing an alternative to purchasing the game new and lowering the market value of the game.
[sarcasm]
the only moral aspect of this is you have to feel sorry for those who deliberately wait a week to buy the the game used at 75% of the sale value new at which time the developer and publisher don't see a single penny from the re-sale.
[/sarcasm]
To be fair there is a moral side to this in what about those who buy the game after its publishing run is finished, there are no new copies about but for some reason you want that game (e.g. those of us who don't have homeworld 2 but want it to play matts FS conversion) then code like this becomes a moral problem. But even then its more of a niggle than a big whoop.
Now if there was a law/system in place where by shops, websites and other profitable organisations selling used games have to give say 5-10% of the sale to the publisher/developer while the game is still being published then i would have an issue with this
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I think the real key here is what you mentioned about the turn-around time on the used-games business as-is. Less than a week after a game hits the shelves, you can wander into a GameStop and find used copies for, say, $40 instead of the retail $60...and what's even better, the guy who traded it back in during that week probably got only $25 for it. GameStop then goes out of their way to promote these used copies, since they turn a much larger profit on them than they would on new ones. It's an incredibly shady business model, and I don't blame publishers/developers for wanting to cut into it.
(Of course, I'm not applying this to older out-of-print titles, which are pretty much fair game as far as used copies are concerned.)
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To be fair they aren't the first ones doing this, you can thank EA for that. But it still isn't right.
Why isn't it right? THQ doesn't make any money whatsoever off of used-game sales. From their perspective, those customers might as well not exist, as the only people profiting from them are GameStop and their ilk, so why should THQ court them? And it's not like they've made any secret of the fact that the one-time code is required; people buying this used are presumably going to be informed about it beforehand. I've heard people state that there's no restriction on selling cars or other items second-hand, and that's true...but in the case of cars, there's an obvious reduction in value you receive by going that route. In the same way, it's not mind-blowing that buying a newly-released game at a discount should incur some corresponding reduction in its value.
(The comments from Tycho (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/8/25/) on this, as well as the responses to them further down, make for interesting reading.)
Honestly, I've started making it somewhat of a personal policy to stop buying used copies of in-print games when possible. Not only is their condition often suspect at best, but there's also the fact that I'd rather be supporting the developers making them than the resellers stocking them. The only stuff I go for used at this point are older-gen titles that obviously aren't making their original developers anything anymore. And even then, I've sworn off GameStop entirely; my local Play 'n' Trade has a far broader selection (back to the 2600!) and generally better staff.
It isn't right because of a legal term called "fair use", meaning once you buy it you are legally permitted to resell it. Another term for that is "user's rights". Think of it this way, what if you bought a car and after a couple years you wanted to resell it after you bought a newer one, but the car company has a "single driver" policy, because after all the people on the assembly line or the engineers who designed don't get a cent from resales so it isn't fair. How would you feel about that? If you enjoy letting greedy executives **** you in the ass with overpriced products that don't even allow you to use it fairly or worse cripple your system (or the game) with their DRM then feel free to keep buying, that's the only way to make sure that they keep this up.
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IMO, DRM are killing my playing pleasure :mad:
I have a very, very, very LARGE collection of PC & consoles games, the oldest of them don't had these ****ing protections, only a CD serial number, like HW2. I will precise that I BOUGHT these games. Videogames are my passion, and even I am not rich, I bought them.
Some games, like Ubisoft's ones, need to have an Internet connection available permanently to play, even in single player mode. This is awful. I have only a ****ty 3G connection at home, with limited capabilities, because I live in the middle of nowhere.
Why should I mess myself with another thing than the REAL price of the physical support of my game ? I know, this is the future (look at this : www.onlive.com), but I'm afraid of this future.
It's because of that I really appreciate GOG.com : no DRM, infinite DL of a game (i.e. if you lost the file), good price in regard of the fact you don't have the physical support, goodies and good support.
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I'm not surprised. I'm not concerned, either. Used games are just as bad for the developers as pirated games, so they have just as much right to take anti-secondhand gaming measures as they do anti-piracy measures.
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I have to feel quilty for buying a used game now?
Next up they want you to stop buying second hand cars :rolleyes:
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I have to feel quilty for buying a used game now?
Next up they want you to stop buying second hand cars :rolleyes:
You shouldn't jump into a thread with a point that was already addressed at some length. :p
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Who buys Smackdown vs Raw?
Nope. This game looks stupid to me.
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meaning once you buy it you are legally permitted to resell it
Yeah, and you still are.
Just not the multi.
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and you legally bought the multi as well. what should be done is the original account deactivated upon activation of a new one. what they are doing now is selling a product, then taking it away and keeping the money. how would it be if that when you want to move, you aren't allowed to sell your house? it just has to be demolished.
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and you legally bought the multi as well. what should be done is the original account deactivated upon activation of a new one. what they are doing now is selling a product, then taking it away and keeping the money. how would it be if that when you want to move, you aren't allowed to sell your house? it just has to be demolished.
no.....
what they are doing is selling a product (the game) with an additional service (online multi play) available only to new customers (people who by the game as new as opposed to people who buy the game second hand)
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8040-Experienced-Points-Bargains-Are-for-Cheaters
Mr. Young brings up a nice point, about diminishing price. Anyone else remember Player's Choice titles? I do, and I miss them every day.
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A) We're talking about the 360 and PS3 here, not a PC game.
Oh, well it doesn't concern me then. :P
Screw consoles.
I don't want to touch em with a fifty-foot stick. Can't mod it? Not buyin' it.
Still, it kinda sucks. (For second-hand buyers)
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A) We're talking about the 360 and PS3 here, not a PC game.
Oh, well it doesn't concern me then. :P
Screw consoles.
I don't want to touch em with a fifty-foot stick. Can't mod it? Not buyin' it.
Still, it kinda sucks. (For second-hand buyers)
I had that attitude.
Then I realized what I could get for the price of my video card. :(
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I have to feel quilty for buying a used game now?
Next up they want you to stop buying second hand cars :rolleyes:
You shouldn't jump into a thread with a point that was already addressed at some length. :p
Reading threads is for chumps :p
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I think the real key here is what you mentioned about the turn-around time on the used-games business as-is. Less than a week after a game hits the shelves, you can wander into a GameStop and find used copies for, say, $40 instead of the retail $60...and what's even better, the guy who traded it back in during that week probably got only $25 for it. GameStop then goes out of their way to promote these used copies, since they turn a much larger profit on them than they would on new ones. It's an incredibly shady business model, and I don't blame publishers/developers for wanting to cut into it.
(Of course, I'm not applying this to older out-of-print titles, which are pretty much fair game as far as used copies are concerned.)
this post kind of reminds me of back when i worked at a pawn shop. and two common items happened to be dvds, cds, and video games, and other copyrighted items (like computers with windows installed). it occured to me that we were selling items that the buyer had no legal right to use because of the license restrictions (more likely the previous owner violated it by selling the item to be resold). i always wondered how such businesses get away with resale of copyright material with no returns to the copywrite holders, especially after the major crackdowns in pirating over the last decade and a half.
of course historically it has been 100% acceptable to sell and buy used media (records, tapes, vhs, books, etc), with no concern from copyright holder. cds dvds and video games are no different in many ways from the media of old, so it seems to me to be rather greedy of the copyright holders to get away with crippling the used media market now, when they did not do so in the past. spending money on one shot items seems really bad for the economy (it eliminates a niche and restricts trickle down).
IMO, DRM are killing my playing pleasure :mad:
I have a very, very, very LARGE collection of PC & consoles games, the oldest of them don't had these ****ing protections, only a CD serial number, like HW2. I will precise that I BOUGHT these games. Videogames are my passion, and even I am not rich, I bought them.
Some games, like Ubisoft's ones, need to have an Internet connection available permanently to play, even in single player mode. This is awful. I have only a ****ty 3G connection at home, with limited capabilities, because I live in the middle of nowhere.
Why should I mess myself with another thing than the REAL price of the physical support of my game ? I know, this is the future (look at this : www.onlive.com), but I'm afraid of this future.
It's because of that I really appreciate GOG.com : no DRM, infinite DL of a game (i.e. if you lost the file), good price in regard of the fact you don't have the physical support, goodies and good support.
this brings up another thing drm, multiplayer passwords, dependence on activation and multiplayer master servers, and the like will eventually destroy, a games life span. i still have games going back to the early 90s, and many of the old ones still work with the right os or emulator, most of the ones that dont work are because of an api version incompatibility. when i buy a game i expect it to be functioning 10+ years down the line, after ive been through 4 computers a dozen email addresses, and thousands of different ip addresses. i expect that game to still work as good as when i got it, without any features being crippled. i havent seen drm cripple an old game yet, of course i dont buy very many modern games.
im concerned that some of the meathods theyve implemented to stop piracy have made the games such that they will be unplayable after the developer deems their service life to be over and withdraws support for them (including any servers they may require). i was disappointed when freelancer multiplayer was removed, fortunately some moders and/or hackers got together and remedyed the situation. some developers actually care and take steps to make the games function after they decide to stop supporting it, but most do not. as games age id like it to be the developers and not the hackers and pirates (and sometimes modders) that perserve the games for posterity.
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It isn't right because of a legal term called "fair use", meaning once you buy it you are legally permitted to resell it. Another term for that is "user's rights". Think of it this way, what if you bought a car and after a couple years you wanted to resell it after you bought a newer one, but the car company has a "single driver" policy, because after all the people on the assembly line or the engineers who designed don't get a cent from resales so it isn't fair. How would you feel about that? If you enjoy letting greedy executives **** you in the ass with overpriced products that don't even allow you to use it fairly or worse cripple your system (or the game) with their DRM then feel free to keep buying, that's the only way to make sure that they keep this up.
The car analogy doesn't really hold up, because you're still allowed to sell your used game, and the buyer is still able to play said game just fine after paying whatever the used price was. The only thing he doesn't get is the online multiplayer functionality, which is a service tied to the original purchaser. If you do want to compare it to cars, this initiative is more like buying a car that comes with a year's subscription to Sirius/XM satellite radio. If you choose to sell that car used, the buyer can still drive the car just fine (provided you didn't foist a lemon on him), but he'll have to pay for his own satellite subscription if he wants to utilize that feature. I don't really see how forcing someone who bought a $60 for $25 to spend an extra $10 to get online multiplayer represents an undue hardship.
(And as I said to Droid803, this doesn't have anything to do with DRM.)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8040-Experienced-Points-Bargains-Are-for-Cheaters
Mr. Young brings up a nice point, about diminishing price. Anyone else remember Player's Choice titles? I do, and I miss them every day.
That is a good point, and things like those Greatest Hits lines should make more of a comeback (though I think there are a few publishers who do something like that). I've yet to buy Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii because it's still pegged at $50, and I haven't had that much money on-hand whenever I've seen it in a store. I'll still get it eventually, but I would have made the purchase far sooner if it had been discounted in the few years after its release.
A) We're talking about the 360 and PS3 here, not a PC game.
Oh, well it doesn't concern me then. :P
Screw consoles.
I don't want to touch em with a fifty-foot stick. Can't mod it? Not buyin' it.
The fantastic success of our own community aside, there's more to gaming than just modding. Ever hear of a few uber-acclaimed series by the names of Mario, Zelda, Metroid, or Final Fantasy? Last time I checked, they don't appear on PCs, so if you want your fix, guess what you need to own? :p
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I'm really getting tired of companies blaming everything but high prices and progressively worse products as the new scapegoat for low sales. I really can't see used game sales accounting for much : someone already bought it. And if it's flying back and forth between the rental store every three days you clearly did something wrong. The solution to crippling used games stores is to stop making games with zero to no replay value. Make stuff that people want to keep playing and they'll keep it instead of selling it at gamestop.
Used game stores are thriving because most people don't have a lot of money, and the industry is turning out $60 games that are only really interesting for a few days. What's more epically stupid is that all the mentioned companies have been doing it on the high draw genre of ... sports games. If you wanted to protect a heavy hitter, maybe. MAYBE that might make fiscal sense. But a lot of people are probably going to give this a thundering 'meh' and not bother. They really deserve to lose money after trying to put out basically the same sports game with different players year after year at full price (Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 is $40 PS2, $50 Wii, $60 PS3).
Starcraft II is quite possibly the only major game i'll consider for a while (and still not getting it immediately, doing a wait and see on whether some of the issues are patch resolved), not even Civ5, since i'm still having fun with 4. Between DRM and high prices, and ultimately unsatisfying games, I've been much happier staying with old stuff and the indy genre. I used to buy a ton of different games all the time, but all the things that originally made me do that are gone. Most often the new games stink or lose their luster within a week, almost no stores have PC's setup for you to try out the games, or put out horrific DRM. I don't have the money to put up with this.
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I'm really getting tired of companies blaming everything but high prices
High prices how? Accounting for inflation, games are cheaper than they've ever been at $60, and somehow even with inflation the price has remained steady here even as game budgets have tripled.
If price parity with 1995 had been maintained we'd be paying $150 per game and it'd be fair.
The industry is bending over backwards to keep prices low. For all the problems I see with game development, I think people misunderstand how fair pricing has generally been.
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I'm really getting tired of companies blaming everything but high prices
High prices how? Accounting for inflation, games are cheaper than they've ever been at $60, and somehow even with inflation the price has remained steady here even as game budgets have tripled.
If price parity with 1995 had been maintained we'd be paying $150 per game and it'd be fair.
The industry is bending over backwards to keep prices low. For all the problems I see with game development, I think people misunderstand how fair pricing has generally been.
That would be true if everyone's purchasing power scaled with the price changes. In 1995 I could scrounge together... $40 to buy a game. Today I could scrounge together... $40 to buy a game. Maybe life's been different for other people since 95, but I still doubt that their income has scaled to that point.
Game budgets shouldn't triple. The fact that a lot of us still play older games today means that we'd possibly still buy something along the graphical quality of a ten year old game if it happened to be any good. The industry is hurting because their model sucks, really. A lot of the franchise games instead of being meaningful continuations are now just derivatives meant to try and get more money on a safe idea.
EDIT:
It's like how infomercial prices are about the same as they've been. 19.95 remains the price because that's the amount people feel safe to throw at something minor that was pitched to them as a good idea. I'm sure the company's profit margin on those items isn't as good as it used to be, but they found a way to make it work because they felt they'd make more money without raising the price.
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in other news toyota is installing DNA sensors that lock onto one customer and cannot be transfered, the car mostly opperates if this sensor fails, but the air conditioner is disabled and it can not go faster than 50MPH.
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:lol:
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today we have games which did not need to create an entire game engine, they just licensed an engine and supplied their own content, so what you get is essentially a professional grade total conversion. franchise titles usually reuse the same engine, even fs2 was built on the back of its predecessor. game tools have improved greatly, if you license a game engine, a large number of your content creation tools come with it. so i have a very hard time believing that the cost of developing a game have tripled. i may have believed doubled, but tripled, no, unless all this licensing ate up most of the budget.
i still consider $60 fair in some cases, but only for games that are fairly new, around say less that 6 months. if i see a game on the shelf a year after it came out , it better be marked down by at least 50%, more than 2 years later, it better be in the bargin bin for less than $20 bucks. my best score was getting prey for $10 the same year it came out. instead of cutting features to kill the used game market, what they should do is compete with it by selling older new games at greatly reduced prices, and most importantly keep the games in print and support it for longer. i hate seeing the phrase "the customer is always right" replaced with "the customer is stupid and should be treated like cattle". i mean were the ones paying your ****ing employees!
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all that licensing ate up most of the budget
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See, problem is this:
The claim is that the multiplayer is an additional service they provide... except that, if not for deliberate impediments they've put in your way, you wouldn't even need their service to play multiplayer. You've bought the game, it has the stuff you need in order to play multiplayer, and then it's got additional stuff added on that you don't want, don't need, and have to pay extra or be the first owner to have it work normally.
Just like how people realized they didn't need battle.net to play Blizzard games---they could play using bnetd. Until that got shut down1, thank-you-very-much DMCA anti-circumvention bull****.
1 In the United States. Outside of the U.S. it's still legal.
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See, problem is this:
The claim is that the multiplayer is an additional service they provide... except that, if not for deliberate impediments they've put in your way, you wouldn't even need their service to play multiplayer. You've bought the game, it has the stuff you need in order to play multiplayer, and then it's got additional stuff added on that you don't want, don't need, and have to pay extra or be the first owner to have it work normally.
...except you do need their service, since XBL and PSN are controlled multiplayer venues. Particularly XBL, which requires a membership fee.
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Back in my day, we had games over the internet. And they were free.
The only reason you need their service is because they're designing games nowadays so that the game won't work otherwise, not because it actually depends on the service for anything that couldn't be replicated by some other service without the bogus restrictions.
Which is exactly what bnetd was, by the way.
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And now you can either suck it up and play, or take your ball and leave. Deal with it.
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Ah, but I'm a game programmer. I'm going to make my own games, and I'm not going to be a douche about what a user can and can't do with them.
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And now you can either suck it up and play, or take your ball and leave. Deal with it.
Possibly. There are option C's on occasion. And i mean this in the sense that sometimes courts decide that Eula's are bull****. Depending on who you get to argue your case, you can say they're contracts of adhesion.
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Ah, but I'm a game programmer. I'm going to make my own games, and I'm not going to be a douche about what a user can and can't do with them.
It's not being a douche, it's being a business. Their entire existence is for the purpose of making money. If this move makes them more money, they made the right choice. The challenge is balancing customer satisfaction with decisions like this against potential gains.
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It's not being a douche, it's being a business.
I wasn't aware that those two were mutually exclusive. :p
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It's not being a douche, it's being a business.
I wasn't aware that those two were mutually exclusive. :p
It seems to be developing that way.
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we all know that it is a business decision and why they did it. they say **** you to the consumers to make money; we are perfectly entitled to say **** you back to the producer.
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we all know that it is a business decision and why they did it. they say **** you to the consumers to make money; we are perfectly entitled to say **** you back to the producer.
Hear, hear!
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Back in my day, we had games over the internet. And they were free.
The only reason you need their service is because they're designing games nowadays so that the game won't work otherwise, not because it actually depends on the service for anything that couldn't be replicated by some other service without the bogus restrictions.
Which is exactly what bnetd was, by the way.
Again, we're talking about consoles here, not the Internet as a whole. And consoles haven't traditionally had guaranteed free Internet play...mainly because consoles traditionally haven't had Internet connectivity until the previous generation. It's a completely different playing field.
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Ah, but I'm a game programmer. I'm going to make my own games, and I'm not going to be a douche about what a user can and can't do with them.
That's what Stardock said.
Go buy a copy of Elemental: War of Magic and tell me what you think. :(
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That's what Stardock said.
Yeah, but...um...I...I got nothing.
Anyone want to compare the gamer's bill of rights with the gold master of Elemental?
Go buy a copy of Elemental: War of Magic
You can't make me. Oh, god, I'm so glad I held off pre-ordering. I'm also rather grateful to the qt3 boards for alerting me to the state of the game before I pulled the trigger on a purchase. I'm even grateful to Stardock for making the choice between Elemental and Civ V a no-brainer.
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Go buy a copy of Elemental: War of Magic and tell me what you think. :(
GalCiv2
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Ah, but I'm a game programmer. I'm going to make my own games, and I'm not going to be a douche about what a user can and can't do with them.
That's what Stardock said.
Go buy a copy of Elemental: War of Magic and tell me what you think. :(
So they screwed up a game, it's been known to happen with either, douchier developers.
Again, we're talking about consoles here, not the Internet as a whole. And consoles haven't traditionally had guaranteed free Internet play...mainly because consoles traditionally haven't had Internet connectivity until the previous generation. It's a completely different playing field.
It's also worth mentioning that the console itself is, with the exception of the Wii, sold at a price that's far below the cost and that consoles are locked up from top to bottom by the company that made them. Not so with PC's.
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It's also worth mentioning that the console itself is, with the exception of the Wii, sold at a price that's far below the cost and that consoles are locked up from top to bottom by the company that made them. Not so with PC's.
Ooo, remind me about this if I ever decide to go into making game consoles! :p
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Go buy a copy of Elemental: War of Magic and tell me what you think. :(
GalCiv2
Was a classic.
Ah, but I'm a game programmer. I'm going to make my own games, and I'm not going to be a douche about what a user can and can't do with them.
That's what Stardock said.
Go buy a copy of Elemental: War of Magic and tell me what you think. :(
So they screwed up a game, it's been known to happen with either, douchier developers.
They didn't just screw it up, they twice screwed up a game in a manner that specifically defied their own splashily enounced Gamer's Bill of Rights.
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Who buys Smackdown vs Raw?
If I didn't watch WWE back when I was 11, I'd be asking you what kind of game this is. :p
I've never really respected THQ. At least, not after they acquired the two halves of Parallax Entertainment and decided to kill off one side. This disrespect goes down to anything that is Red Faction as well.
/me owns what appears to be a used copy of Descent 3: Mercenary.
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(I'm up north on vacation typing on an extremely slow connection so bear with me)
I don't think people yet fully realize the completeness of Stardock's fail on Elementa's launch.
I'm going to write more about this but not only did we think v1.05 was ready for everyone but we felt v1.0 was too. That's the level of disconnect/poor judgment on our part we're talking about.
If the game had come out in February, it would still have been a disastrous launch because lack of time wasn't the issue. It was blindness, sheer blindness. We felt the game was finished. And I speak of v1.0, not v1.05. Blindness.
There will be massive consequences for Stardock's game studio. I'll be talking more about this when I get back. But the game wasn't released early. The game was released poorly. Head in the sand syndrome imo. I've read the reviews as much as possible given my hideous internet access up here and I agree with them. We just didn't see what they were talking about. We thought any complaints would be about polish points or something.
The point is, the issue here is far far worse than many of you think it is. I wish it was an issue of the game being released too early. That's an easy thing for a company to "fix". Elemental's launch is the result of catastrophic poor judgment on my part.
EVERY competent software developer knows that the programmer must never be the one deciding whether the program is done. Yet, my love of Elemental broke my self discipline and I began coding on the game itself in vast amounts and lost any sense of objectivity on where the game's state was. I normally only program the AI on our games so I can keep a level of distance from the game itself to determine whether it's "Ready". On Elemental, I was in love with the world and the game and lost my impartiality.
We'll do better.
huh.
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They didn't just screw it up, they twice screwed up a game in a manner that specifically defied their own splashily enounced Gamer's Bill of Rights.
And so people won't buy their stuff, which is really how it should be instead of with other publishers like EA who can get away with doing anything, including crappy games.
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Then don't buy their stuff. If you think a game is crappy, don't buy it. But seriously, don't get pissed off because they made it.
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i'm more pissed off because much of the mainstream idiot market WILL buy **** games, publishers DO turn a hefty profit on crap, and it screws those of us who want quality over.
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They didn't just screw it up, they twice screwed up a game in a manner that specifically defied their own splashily enounced Gamer's Bill of Rights.
And so people won't buy their stuff, which is really how it should be instead of with other publishers like EA who can get away with doing anything, including crappy games.
But EA has actually been the industry good guy for a few years now, cutting down on DRM and championing new IPs.
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i'm more pissed off because much of the mainstream idiot market WILL buy **** games, publishers DO turn a hefty profit on crap, and it screws those of us who want quality over.
So, you're pissed off because some business, at great expense to themselves, might make a game that you don't like, that you don't have to buy, and that you don't have to play at all?
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
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They didn't just screw it up, they twice screwed up a game in a manner that specifically defied their own splashily enounced Gamer's Bill of Rights.
And so people won't buy their stuff, which is really how it should be instead of with other publishers like EA who can get away with doing anything, including crappy games.
But EA has actually been the industry good guy for a few years now, cutting down on DRM and championing new IPs.
It is nice how they keep pumping money into BioWare
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They didn't just screw it up, they twice screwed up a game in a manner that specifically defied their own splashily enounced Gamer's Bill of Rights.
And so people won't buy their stuff, which is really how it should be instead of with other publishers like EA who can get away with doing anything, including crappy games.
But EA has actually been the industry good guy for a few years now, cutting down on DRM and championing new IPs.
I'm sure that cutting down DRM had a lot more to do with the multiple class action lawsuits filed against them 2 years ago than an attempt to actually respect their customers.
They may have cleaned up their act recently, but they are going to have to be good for a long time. The reason why is because when they started off in the early 80's, their entire strategy was based on not raping gamers and respecting the designers, and they were known as the good guys. Eventually they betrayed that trust and turned into the Soviet Union of the gaming world. In the last 10 years they've had at least 4 major lawsuits because of their unethical behavior.
Oh, and as for the original topic, let's see how EA's experience with limited installs worked out:
n the September 2008 release of EA's game Spore it was revealed that the DRM scheme included a program called SecuROM and a lifetime machine-activation limit of three (3) instances. A huge public outcry over this DRM scheme broke out over the Internet and swarmed Amazon.com with one-star ratings and critical reviews of the game in order to get EA to "pay attention to their consumers".[66] This DRM scheme, which was intended to hinder the efforts of pirates to illegally use and distribute EA software, instead mainly affected paying customers, as the game itself was pirated well before release.[67] On September 13, 2008, it was announced that Spore was the most pirated game ever with over half a million illegal downloads within the first week of release.[68] In response to customer reaction, EA officially announced its release of upcoming Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 would increase the installation limit to 5 rather than 3.[69] Many customers were still unsatisfied, claiming they were still renting the game at full price.
On September 22, 2008, a global class action law suit was filed against EA regarding the DRM in Spore, complaining about EA not disclosing the existence of SecuROM from the game manual, and addresses how SecuROM runs with the nature of a rootkit, including how it remains on the hard drive even after Spore is uninstalled.[70][71][72] On October 14, 2008, a similar class action lawsuit was filed against EA for the inclusion of DRM software in the free demo version of the Creature Creator.[73]
In other words it hurt people who purchased the game legally and rewarded piracy. So, for everyone who thinks there isn't a problem, enjoy "renting" your crippled game at $60+.
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They didn't just screw it up, they twice screwed up a game in a manner that specifically defied their own splashily enounced Gamer's Bill of Rights.
And so people won't buy their stuff, which is really how it should be instead of with other publishers like EA who can get away with doing anything, including crappy games.
But EA has actually been the industry good guy for a few years now, cutting down on DRM and championing new IPs.
I'm sure that cutting down DRM had a lot more to do with the multiple class action lawsuits filed against them 2 years ago than an attempt to actually respect their customers.
No, it has to do with the fact that they got a new CEO.
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With second hand. You get what you pay for. . . .
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So, for everyone who thinks there isn't a problem, enjoy "renting" your crippled game at $60+.
It's only a problem for people who continually reformat their computer or don't have an attention span long enough to keep it installed in the first place.
Don't uninstall it and you've got no problems.
I'm still hearing "even though I don't want to play this, and even though no one is making me buy it, I'm still going to ***** about it." Seriously, if it pisses you off so much, don't buy the game, which I suspect you've already avoided.
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Yeah, seriously. If they were springing this stuff on people without giving anyone a way to find out about it, you might have a case. But as it stands, you can be an informed consumer and vote with your wallet, the same as anyone else.
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Actually mongoose EA did spring this on people, which is why they got sued for it.
I'm still hearing "even though I don't want to play this, and even though no one is making me buy it, I'm still going to ***** about it." Seriously, if it pisses you off so much, don't buy the game, which I suspect you've already avoided.
I don't buy the game. I pirate because at this point pirated games work better than bought and paid for games. If I'm going to be treated like a criminal, I might as well actually be one. The reason it pisses me off is because DRM is killing PC gaming. If I find a good game that doesn't have DRM, I put it on a list of games to buy when I have some extra cash, like Mass Effect 2.
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Actually mongoose EA did spring this on people, which is why they got sued for it.
I'm still hearing "even though I don't want to play this, and even though no one is making me buy it, I'm still going to ***** about it." Seriously, if it pisses you off so much, don't buy the game, which I suspect you've already avoided.
I don't buy the game. I pirate because at this point pirated games work better than bought and paid for games. If I'm going to be treated like a criminal, I might as well actually be one. The reason it pisses me off is because DRM is killing PC gaming. If I find a good game that doesn't have DRM, I put it on a list of games to buy when I have some extra cash, like Mass Effect 2.
So this brings us full circle to my original question: why are you in this thread ranting against the very measures that will save us from DRM?
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Because it's just adding extra layers of BS. What will save us from DRM is good corporate management. What THQ is trying to do isn't save us from DRM but to introduce another form of it.
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i'm more pissed off because much of the mainstream idiot market WILL buy **** games, publishers DO turn a hefty profit on crap, and it screws those of us who want quality over.
So, you're pissed off because some business, at great expense to themselves, might make a game that you don't like, that you don't have to buy, and that you don't have to play at all?
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
no. that's not what i said. AT ALL.
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Because it's just adding extra layers of BS. What will save us from DRM is good corporate management. What THQ is trying to do isn't save us from DRM but to introduce another form of it.
Really? While it's more drastic than stuff like ME2's Cerberus Code, it's functionally similar. Why do you object to one and not the other?
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Actually mongoose EA did spring this on people, which is why they got sued for it.
I'm still hearing "even though I don't want to play this, and even though no one is making me buy it, I'm still going to ***** about it." Seriously, if it pisses you off so much, don't buy the game, which I suspect you've already avoided.
I don't buy the game. I pirate because at this point pirated games work better than bought and paid for games. If I'm going to be treated like a criminal, I might as well actually be one. The reason it pisses me off is because DRM is killing PC gaming. If I find a good game that doesn't have DRM, I put it on a list of games to buy when I have some extra cash, like Mass Effect 2.
Egh... I wouldn't go around here telling people that you pirate. Trashman actually got banned for a week because of that.
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That was an awesome week.
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It's only a problem for people who continually reformat their computer or don't have an attention span long enough to keep it installed in the first place.
Don't uninstall it and you've got no problems.
Apparently the concept of finite hard drive space is foreign to you? Particularly after we count other media besides games?
This is why Steam was such a godsend to me, trying to keep track of where these various idiots put their verification code in their packaging and then keeping them all was an impossible task.
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Apparently the concept of finite hard drive space is supposedly as foreign to me as going out and buying a $10 USB stick for your games (or other media) is to you.
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We should just go back to codes in the manual, like Tie Fighter did.
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Because it's just adding extra layers of BS. What will save us from DRM is good corporate management. What THQ is trying to do isn't save us from DRM but to introduce another form of it.
Really? While it's more drastic than stuff like ME2's Cerberus Code, it's functionally similar. Why do you object to one and not the other?
Really? Didn't realize it was there. ME2 is off the list, thanks. Could have been a rather embarrassing mistake.
Egh... I wouldn't go around here telling people that you pirate. Trashman actually got banned for a week because of that
Normally I wouldn't, but I do it explicitly to avoid BS like Star Force, limited installs, rootkits, and other such nonsense. I'm doing my part to punish companies that try to screw with their customers.
Apparently the concept of finite hard drive space is supposedly as foreign to me as going out and buying a $10 USB stick for your games (or other media) is to you.
So in other words we should pay EVEN MORE to support absurd measures that wouldn't even effect us if we pirated? Wow. Why do you want to reward companies that punish you for buying their product?
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Because it's just adding extra layers of BS. What will save us from DRM is good corporate management. What THQ is trying to do isn't save us from DRM but to introduce another form of it.
Really? While it's more drastic than stuff like ME2's Cerberus Code, it's functionally similar. Why do you object to one and not the other?
Really? Didn't realize it was there. ME2 is off the list, thanks. Could have been a rather embarrassing mistake.
Are you actually as dumb as you sound? You do know that the Cerberus Code is a one-time-use activation that provides access to free DLC? It doesn't lock out any main features of the game.
Egh... I wouldn't go around here telling people that you pirate. Trashman actually got banned for a week because of that
Normally I wouldn't, but I do it explicitly to avoid BS like Star Force, limited installs, rootkits, and other such nonsense. I'm doing my part to punish companies that try to screw with their customers.
And ironically feeding the statistics they use to justify pushing their asinine DRM measures further. You need to be smart and support the good forms of copy protection - those that rely on giving things to people who buy the game, rather than taking them away.
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So in other words we should pay EVEN MORE to support absurd measures that wouldn't even effect us if we pirated? Wow. Why do you want to reward companies that punish you for buying their product?
Wat.
I've seen some word twisting before, but that has to be near the top for change in direction from what I actually said.
FINITE HARD DRIVE SPACE is completely unrelated to and independent of piracy, DRMs, install limits, and anything like that. If FINITE HARD DRIVE SPACE is the issue you have with limited installs, go find a $10 USB stick and never worry about it again. I was unaware that gaming companies made money off of USB STICK SALES.
And besides, if people would stop having retardedly huge entitlement issues and pirate games in the first place., we could avoid anti-piracy measures altogether.
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Apparently the concept of finite hard drive space is supposedly as foreign to me as going out and buying a $10 USB stick for your games (or other media) is to you.
How's that an improvement? Then I have to keep track of tiny USB drives. That's actually considerably smaller and easier lost then, say, the packaging from Neverwinter Nights.
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If FINITE HARD DRIVE SPACE is the issue you have with limited installs, go find a $10 USB stick and never worry about it again.
$10 extra. Yep, no twisting of words, we'd have to pay more. It might not go to gaming publishers, but the fact remains we wouldn't buy it in the first place if the DRM didn't exist.
And besides, if people would stop having retardedly huge entitlement issues and pirate games in the first place., we could avoid anti-piracy measures altogether.
I've stated before that anti-piracy measures have been in the past few years has been a big factor in driving piracy in the first place, along with proof. All of which you seemed to ignore. I'm beginning to wonder if we have a gamer version of the Stockholm Syndrome going on here. Do you like DRM raping your system?
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Kosh, would you rather have a one-use code to unlock multiplayer, or that rootkit called SecuROM?
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I've stated before that anti-piracy measures have been in the past few years has been a big factor in driving piracy in the first place
Not arguing that. However, people still pirated stuff before anti-piracy measures, which lead to anti-piracy measures. The piracy is still the root cause of it. Some people just had to be pricks and ruin it for everyone, and I'm not going to blame game companies for trying to stop it.
Incidentally, the #1 reason on this page (http://www.cracked.com/article_18571_5-reasons-its-still-not-cool-to-admit-youre-gamer.html) is a very good read.
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And besides, if people would stop having retardedly huge entitlement issues and pirate games in the first place., we could avoid anti-piracy measures altogether.
I've stated before that anti-piracy measures have been in the past few years has been a big factor in driving piracy in the first place, along with proof. All of which you seemed to ignore. I'm beginning to wonder if we have a gamer version of the Stockholm Syndrome going on here. Do you like DRM raping your system?
So why are you then against the measures that have been implemented by companies in place of DRM??
We live in a capitalist system. That means we shape behavior by providing incentives. What exactly is your problem with providing an incentive for players to buy a game new? EA's Project Ten Dollar dishes out this type of one-time-use code for free DLC and Cerberus Network access in much the same way car manufacturers give special deals to those who buy new cars.
What's your issue with that? Isn't that better than rootkits and copy protection?
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If FINITE HARD DRIVE SPACE is the issue you have with limited installs, go find a $10 USB stick and never worry about it again.
$10 extra. Yep, no twisting of words, we'd have to pay more. It might not go to gaming publishers, but the fact remains we wouldn't buy it in the first place if the DRM didn't exist.
And besides, if people would stop having retardedly huge entitlement issues and pirate games in the first place., we could avoid anti-piracy measures altogether.
I've stated before that anti-piracy measures have been in the past few years has been a big factor in driving piracy in the first place, along with proof. All of which you seemed to ignore. I'm beginning to wonder if we have a gamer version of the Stockholm Syndrome going on here. Do you like DRM raping your system?
What he's saying is :
Proper response => "This DRM sucks, I'm not going to buy it"
Entitlement Issues => "I still want it so I'm going to pirate it."
With the way the indy community has been booming of late paired with a number of classic games that still have active communities, there's really no reason to give EA or THQ your money or even your attention in cases like this.
I've mentioned this before : it's very simple. Lack of sales and little evidence of piracy shows them that really just no one wanted their crap. Lack of sales and evidence of piracy shows them some people were still potentially willing to get it.
From a business standpoint, the only thing piracy shows is that they need more safe-guards against piracy. Whether or not DRM encourages it is rather meaningless since they'll almost never be any verifiable data they can get to show that, it's not like your pirate bay downloads come with customer surveys.
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Yeah, if anyone was actually ethically committed to avoiding DRM, they'd just not buy the game. Pirating it just feeds ammunition to the DRM advocates.
If a DRM-ridden game sold very little then the designers would rethink the DRM. But if it gets pirated a lot, the designers - dumb as it may be - say 'we need better DRM'.
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Kosh, would you rather have a one-use code to unlock multiplayer, or that rootkit called SecuROM?
Neither, that's my point. Since when did we the customer become so weak willed and brainwashed that we allow ourselves to choose between two poisons? What if the best choice, is not to choose at all? Even though I dont use multiplayer, I still wouldn't buy a game that had such a rediculous lock. It's about principles and what we stand for.
So why are you then against the measures that have been implemented by companies in place of DRM??
What's your issue with that? Isn't that better than rootkits and copy protection?
Because it is DRM, just a less obnoxious form of it. It still is "managing" your user rights. Once upon a time I would have tolerated it, but with the constant stream of abuse gamers have been getting for the last 6-7 years or so I've had enough of it, all of it. In retrospect it was tolerating it in the first place is what lead to DRM getting so rediculous and crippling.
I've mentioned this before : it's very simple. Lack of sales and little evidence of piracy shows them that really just no one wanted their crap. Lack of sales and evidence of piracy shows them some people were still potentially willing to get it.
But that's just it, we do want it. What we don't want is for it to be locked down.
If a DRM-ridden game sold very little then the designers would rethink the DRM. But if it gets pirated a lot, the designers - dumb as it may be - say 'we need better DRM'.
No, if it sold very little they'd blame piracy and ratchet up DRM even more, punishing paying customers which in turn fuels piracy. If they are so stupid as to punish the people who are going to buy their product then people shouldn't be paying for it in the first place. It's bad business to hurt your customers. In most other industries when a company makes a product like that their customers run away as fast as they can, leaving the company to wallow in losses, and that's how it should be. Why people like Scotty keep coming back for more punishment is a mystery.
From a business standpoint, the only thing piracy shows is that they need more safe-guards against piracy.
Only if they don't bother to look into what is causing it in the first place. Jumping to conclusions like that more often then not leads to business debacles like sony's rootkit cd recall which costed them millions.
Yeah, if anyone was actually ethically committed to avoiding DRM, they'd just not buy the game. Pirating it just feeds ammunition to the DRM advocates.
There are some people who are just going to pirate regardless, and that isn't good. But the thing is, and this is a point that was implied, though perhaps not very clearly, pirates will never suffer from debilitating DRM, period. Pirates always find ways around DRM, resulting in no-cd cracks and such, making it 100% useless. I'm not sure why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.
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In most other industries when a company makes a product like that their customers run away as fast as they can, leaving the company to wallow in losses, and that's how it should be.
Great point, It's a good thing you haven't been arguing against the ones of us that have been saying to do that in this industry--oh wait. Just like in your example, if someone makes a product with too many defects and strings attached you boycott it, you don't grab it when someone else isn't looking.
Also I'd love to hear your rationalization for the not insignificant number of people who pirated Indy Bundle someone mentioned before : which to save you the time looking up, it was a name your own price (you could literally say you wanted to pay a penny), DRM free bundle of indy games that normally would total to $80 worth of games.
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Indeed. Indy bundle referenced got pirated by more than 25% of the people who got it. Which is ****ing ridiculous since you could buy it for one cent.
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I've stated before that anti-piracy measures have been in the past few years has been a big factor in driving piracy in the first place, along with proof. All of which you seemed to ignore. I'm beginning to wonder if we have a gamer version of the Stockholm Syndrome going on here. Do you like DRM raping your system?
Outside of a few notorious and well-publicized examples, where is all of this "raping" going on? How many of these schemes are legitimately that much of an inconvenience for players, let alone run any risk of system damage? I mean, Steam is a form of DRM, yet I use it gladly because it's a very handy program. Hell, CD checks, activation codes, and even those old Wing Commander questions are all forms of DRM, but none of them fit under the "rape" definition. So is the problem nearly as widespread as you make it seem?
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Outside of a few notorious and well-publicized examples, where is all of this "raping" going on? How many of these schemes are legitimately that much of an inconvenience for players, let alone run any risk of system damage? I mean, Steam is a form of DRM, yet I use it gladly because it's a very handy program. Hell, CD checks, activation codes, and even those old Wing Commander questions are all forms of DRM, but none of them fit under the "rape" definition. So is the problem nearly as widespread as you make it seem?
It's all about inconvenience, and sometimes about invasiveness. It's also a huge question of whether or not I actually purchased something, or just rented it, for that $60 I just spent.
Steam? I always have to be connected. I know about the ability to play "offline" but as far as I've ever been able to tell, I STILL have to connect at some point shortly before playing, then go offline. Personally though, this is my preferred flavor of DRM.
CD Checks? Really annoying, and what happens if you lose the disc?
Activation codes? Probably the most bearable form. Still, what happens if I lose the activation code. How many times has someone called up a publisher's support line and got a new one?
Limited number of installs? We all know the average Windows PC is likely wiped about twice a year. What do you do when you "run out?" The only solution I see is EA's deactivation application. I used it for Mass Effect, and it did seem to do the trick. I wonder what would happen if it couldn't phone home though.
DLC? Yes, it is DRM. They give you a barebones game now, and charge you for the actual content later. Oh, and of course, they still ask the standard up-front price of $50-$60. Wasn't it 1/3 of a game for Starcraft 2?
Other forms such as StarForce come to mind. Invasive DRM that can actually degrade hardware performance is pretty horrendous.
While I know all games have a pretty little EULA that tells me I only licensed a copy of the game, I still feel like I should OWN the game. If I paid what the publisher asked, then why the hell shouldn't that copy of the game be totally mine to do whatever I please with? This does exclude infringement of course.
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So why are you then against the measures that have been implemented by companies in place of DRM??
We live in a capitalist system. That means we shape behavior by providing incentives. What exactly is your problem with providing an incentive for players to buy a game new? EA's Project Ten Dollar dishes out this type of one-time-use code for free DLC and Cerberus Network access in much the same way car manufacturers give special deals to those who buy new cars.
What's your issue with that? Isn't that better than rootkits and copy protection?
I'm unconvinced the 'buy our games new' stuff is intended to function as a replacement for DRM. It's primarily aimed at the console market, after all.
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In most other industries when a company makes a product like that their customers run away as fast as they can, leaving the company to wallow in losses, and that's how it should be.
Great point, It's a good thing you haven't been arguing against the ones of us that have been saying to do that in this industry--oh wait. Just like in your example, if someone makes a product with too many defects and strings attached you boycott it, you don't grab it when someone else isn't looking.
Also I'd love to hear your rationalization for the not insignificant number of people who pirated Indy Bundle someone mentioned before : which to save you the time looking up, it was a name your own price (you could literally say you wanted to pay a penny), DRM free bundle of indy games that normally would total to $80 worth of games.
If you'd actually read what I said you'd know that I would not rationalize it, or defend it.
Outside of a few notorious and well-publicized examples, where is all of this "raping" going on? How many of these schemes are legitimately that much of an inconvenience for players, let alone run any risk of system damage? I mean, Steam is a form of DRM, yet I use it gladly because it's a very handy program. Hell, CD checks, activation codes, and even those old Wing Commander questions are all forms of DRM, but none of them fit under the "rape" definition. So is the problem nearly as widespread as you make it seem?
Here's a list (http://forum.daemon-tools.cc/gamedb.php?letter=all) of games that have either star force, securom, or safedisc (which wasn't too bad). In fact this shows the progression of it. Most of the old stuff like medal of honor allied assault used safedisc, which was just some annoying cd check. Notice how it has progressed into the star force and securom infested crap that we have today. Looks pretty widespread to me, especially since many of those were major titles.
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So why don't you support publishers attempting to move away from it?
Games are cheaper than they've ever been. The industry has been extraordinarily good to consumers in this respect. If you consider the DRM issue to be so critical, then don't buy games with DRM and buy games that take alternative solutions to copy protection and buy-new incentives.
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I'm still not so sure about the cheaper part : with my comment about how inflation doesn't mean everyone's purchasing power scales with the shift.
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I'm still not so sure about the cheaper part : with my comment about how inflation doesn't mean everyone's purchasing power scales with the shift.
Inflation generally means a drop in the purchasing power of a currency on a per-unit basis. However, in a steady low-inflation economy like the US', wages and overall household purchasing power generally track inflation, so the fact that game prices have held steady for so long actually means they've dropped in effective price.
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Steam? I always have to be connected. I know about the ability to play "offline" but as far as I've ever been able to tell, I STILL have to connect at some point shortly before playing, then go offline. Personally though, this is my preferred flavor of DRM.
How often are you going to be without an Internet connection, though? I mean, barring service trouble, your desktop should be always-on. Maybe if you're traveling with a laptop, but that's what offline mode is for, and even then, public wi-fi is getting pretty ubiquitous.
CD Checks? Really annoying, and what happens if you lose the disc?
If you manage to lose game disks, maybe it's a sign you need to clean your room. :p
Activation codes? Probably the most bearable form. Still, what happens if I lose the activation code. How many times has someone called up a publisher's support line and got a new one?
Never had to call one myself. And given that the code is usually stuck onto the game's case, the previous point applies.
Limited number of installs? We all know the average Windows PC is likely wiped about twice a year.
Damn...what do people do to their systems? I've been running my current XP install for probably three years now without any significant problems. (*knocks on head*) I know people who have kept an install going for far longer than that, too. I'll agree with you that placing a hard limit on the number of installs is indeed bull****, but it's not something that should normally come up on a very frequent basis.
DLC? Yes, it is DRM. They give you a barebones game now, and charge you for the actual content later. Oh, and of course, they still ask the standard up-front price of $50-$60. Wasn't it 1/3 of a game for Starcraft 2?
The Terran campaign in SC2 was longer than all three race's campaigns in the original game combined. Oh, and you can still play with all three races in multiplayer. Doesn't seem like a third of a game to me. As far as DLC goes, the vast majority of instances I've come across are far more like expansion packs than content that should have been in the game in the first place, and they're priced accordingly.
While I know all games have a pretty little EULA that tells me I only licensed a copy of the game, I still feel like I should OWN the game. If I paid what the publisher asked, then why the hell shouldn't that copy of the game be totally mine to do whatever I please with? This does exclude infringement of course.
In the ideal sort of world that GOG helps promote, yeah, that should be the case. But in the meantime, fairly-benign forms of DRM don't seem like a massive hardship.
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However, in a steady low-inflation economy like the US', wages and overall household purchasing power generally track inflation, so the fact that game prices have held steady for so long actually means they've dropped in effective price.
No (http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp195/). The only people's wages that actually have gone up (and they've gone up quite considerably) have been executive and upper management. Unfortunately it's gone up so much that it distorts the overall statistic, making it seem like the plebians are benefiting too. They haven't been.
If you consider the DRM issue to be so critical, then don't buy games with DRM and buy games that take alternative solutions to copy protection and buy-new incentives.
Which is pretty much what I said I do. Like I said, I have a list.
So why don't you support publishers attempting to move away from it?
Because they aren't moving away from DRM. They are replacing it with a less obnoxious form, but it is still DRM. It's been our willingness to just roll over and accept it that got us into this mess in the first place.
EDIT: I'm also going to point out that probably the only tolerable system is Sins of a Solar Empire. While it does have an activation key, that key also allows several copies to be run simultaneously, and even then it's to access patches. There's no cd checks, no limited nonsimultaneous installs, no virus like drm, none of that nonsense. This game is going on the list.
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I edited this whole post to make it a bit less mocking. I'm so nice.
However, in a steady low-inflation economy like the US', wages and overall household purchasing power generally track inflation, so the fact that game prices have held steady for so long actually means they've dropped in effective price.
No (http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp195/). The only people's wages that actually have gone up (and they've gone up quite considerably) have been executive and upper management. Unfortunately it's gone up so much that it distorts the overall statistic, making it seem like the plebians are benefiting too. They haven't been.
Read the link. The very first point it makes is that real wages have been stagnant = they have matched inflation but not grown past it.
I quote: "as much of the data in this brief reveal, many workers' wages have been stagnant for a number of years, after adjusting for inflation". Exactly the point I made.
I admire your attempt to get an outside source, but the source actually supports my point.
If you consider the DRM issue to be so critical, then don't buy games with DRM and buy games that take alternative solutions to copy protection and buy-new incentives.
Which is pretty much what I said I do. Like I said, I have a list.
No, what you said was that you pirate the games. Your list is poorly constructed, which makes it seem like you've just got a Chicken Little complex about DRM, but no idea how to handle the problem.
EDIT: I'm also going to point out that probably the only tolerable system is Sins of a Solar Empire. While it does have an activation key, that key also allows several copies to be run simultaneously, and even then it's to access patches. There's no cd checks, no limited nonsimultaneous installs, no virus like drm, none of that nonsense. This game is going on the list.
Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age only use disc checks. Starcraft used disc checks. Half-Life used disc checks. Mechwarrior 2 used disc checks. Why were disc checks acceptable to you in the 90s and suddenly unacceptable now?
Look, I think DRM is a terrible idea - though I think by now you've convinced yourself I am The Great Satan and have Securom in my brain or something. As far as I'm concerned, DRM does nothing to stop piracy, and all it does is punish consumers (mildly in some cases, severely in others).
But if you write off games with effectively no DRM like Mass Effect 2, FreeSpace 2, or Dragon Age, you're dangerously close to seeming like don't actually give a **** about DRM. You want an excuse to pirate games.
That's right. Retail FreeSpace 2 used a disc check (it had to, to the best of my knowledge). You would be unable to buy it by your own standards.
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No, what you said was that you pirate the games. Your list is poorly constructed, which makes it seem like you've just got a Chicken Little complex about DRM, but no idea how to handle the problem.
Pirating in this case means "not buying". Surely someone with your education level should have been able to deduce that. I stated many times I do intent to legally buy games that satisfy my stated requirements. I also gave clear parameters for what goes on the list.
Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age only use disc checks. Starcraft used disc checks. Half-Life used disc checks. Mechwarrior 2 used disc checks. Why were disc checks acceptable to you in the 90s and suddenly unacceptable now?
Because the publishers upped the ante. We had to hit back. When they did that it made it very clear that they can never be trusted again with such technology.
But if you write off games with effectively no DRM like Mass Effect 2, FreeSpace 2, or Dragon Age, you're dangerously close to seeming like don't actually give a **** about DRM. You want an excuse to pirate games.
And you'd be wrong. Even though I'd love to play Sins of a Solar Empire, I don't have the money yet. However I've never thought about pirating it, and I never will. Same with Galactic Civilizations 2. Even the games I do pirate I only play once, then delete it.
That's right. Retail FreeSpace 2 used a disc check (it had to, to the best of my knowledge). You would be unable to buy it by your own standards.
I know all about it, I never did buy it. I discovered it all the way back in 2003 through piracy, mostly because back then it was impossible to buy legally except through hugely overpriced ebay copies. A lot of people here back then pirated it, especially the then newer members. Ultimately it was piracy that kept FS2 alive and allowed the community to grow until GoG picked it up recently. However, FS2 is a special case. Why? Three letters: FSO. How many of us actually play retail anymore? Pretty much all of us use FSO now, especially with all the mods out there it's almost a different game. If it wasn't for FSO I would not consider buying FS2. But because of that and the excellent work of the SCP team and many modders here it remains the sole exception.
Look, I think DRM is a terrible idea - though I think by now you've convinced yourself I am The Great Satan and have Securom in my brain or something. As far as I'm concerned, DRM does nothing to stop piracy, and all it does is punish consumers (mildly in some cases, severely in others).
You've been the one defending them. Pick your poison is not a choice.
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He's attacking bad DRM that will screw over your system and possibly interfere with the game's proper functioning, such as SecuROM and Starforce, and defending good forms of DRM, which are incentives for people to legally purchase the game by offering benefits, like in the case of Sins of a Solar Empire (yes, updates only through Impulse is a form of DRM), and with EA offering free DLC to purchasers.
Pirating games that have a relative lack of DRM will only convince the boardroom suits that people will keep trying to pirate no matter how good the incentives to buy are, so they will think they have to put more and more DRM on to protect the bottom line.
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He's attacking bad DRM that will screw over your system and possibly interfere with the game's proper functioning, such as SecuROM and Starforce, and defending good forms of DRM, which are incentives for people to legally purchase the game by offering benefits, like in the case of Sins of a Solar Empire (yes, updates only through Impulse is a form of DRM), and with EA offering free DLC to purchasers.
Pirating games that have a relative lack of DRM will only convince the boardroom suits that people will keep trying to pirate no matter how good the incentives to buy are, so they will think they have to put more and more DRM on to protect the bottom line.
So trying to restrict resale is "good"?
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Compared to SecuROM and Starforce, it is a dream come true.
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Pirating in this case means "not buying". Surely someone with your education level should have been able to deduce that. I stated many times I do intent to legally buy games that satisfy my stated requirements. I also gave clear parameters for what goes on the list.
Pirating at best is the immature version of boycotting, i.e. being willing to stick it to the company but wanting to cheat the system instead of taking any losses on your part. It's kinda hard to believe people feel so strongly about these arguments against DRM if they're not willing to sacrifice anything in protest, almost like it's a flimsy rationalization or something...
It's like I said : pirating will never change anything positively because even if there's rating bombing on amazon or people leaving graffiti on EA's walls, there's no actual reports corporate execs can look at and say "ok if we removed DRM, these people would definitely start buying from us... maybe." As much as you might have a few people's remarks reaching their ears, you have cases like the Indy Bundle piracy to show people some idiots are just going to always pirate stuff anyways.
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Well there's that thing radiohead did with that one album, instead of selling it they just took donations and it was awesomeprofitz
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Pirating in this case means "not buying". Surely someone with your education level should have been able to deduce that. I stated many times I do intent to legally buy games that satisfy my stated requirements. I also gave clear parameters for what goes on the list.
No, pirating in this case is 'not buying, but not having the spine or moral fiber to actually forego the product, and therefore resorting to illegal means and justifying it.'
In the end it just seems like you want to be able to pirate things. You're just rationalizing cheating, and you don't give a crap about DRM - your list excludes most titles from the days before DRM ever became an issue.
You've been the one defending them. Pick your poison is not a choice.
If you think that, you have the sensitivity to nuance of Glenn Beck and the intellectual capacity of his footwear.
Well there's that thing radiohead did with that one album, instead of selling it they just took donations and it was awesomeprofitz
That was tried with the Indie Bundle and World of Goo (I believe). It failed colossally.
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That was tried with the Indie Bundle and World of Goo (I believe). It failed colossally.
Yea, the only time the donation scheme has really works that I know of is with Dwarf Fortress. And that's because we're a fanatical fan base (I think someone donated 5k at one point), and he's made it clear that our monthly donates are paying for his groceries and such :D
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No, pirating in this case is 'not buying, but not having the spine or moral fiber to actually forego the product, and therefore resorting to illegal means and justifying it.'
In the end it just seems like you want to be able to pirate things. You're just rationalizing cheating, and you don't give a crap about DRM - your list excludes most titles from the days before DRM ever became an issue.
If you gave someone a gun, and then they tried to shoot you with it, wouldn't you try to take it back? The superior morals arguement, not surprising. Of course if you actually knew me better you wouldn't make such bull**** accusations.
If you think that, you have the sensitivity to nuance of Glenn Beck and the intellectual capacity of his footwear.
And you have the reasoning capability of a frog.
You know instead of making personal attacks and alledging your moral superiority, why don't you actually do something to resolve this? All I've seen you do is try to promote just another form of DRM instead of actually push for its abolition all together. If you can put together the kind of boycott I am talking about below, I'll give up piracy permenantly. Here's your chance, surprise me.
Pirating at best is the immature version of boycotting, i.e. being willing to stick it to the company but wanting to cheat the system instead of taking any losses on your part. It's kinda hard to believe people feel so strongly about these arguments against DRM if they're not willing to sacrifice anything in protest, almost like it's a flimsy rationalization or something...
You want to know what will make me stop? If there was a large scale boycott of all games with DRM, I'm talking about millions of gamers coming together to stand up and say no to it all. If that happened I would join in and stop. But that isn't happening. I'm not going to sacrifice unless I know it is actually going to do any good. Right now it's just me against them and their shills. Pointless sacrifice has never won any conflict.
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If there was a large scale boycott of all games with DRM, I'm talking about millions of gamers coming together to stand up and say no to it all.
What would happen is the small companies that have EVERYTHING invested in selling their one game that is better than anything else and completely worth buying would go out of business because they would likely have a publishing deal with EA or THQ or someone.
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I've gotta ask: what the **** are you talking about when you say 'gamer's rights?' What rights? You pay for a privilege. And now you're *****ing because somebody changed the privileges a bit. The only bit I'm hearing at all out of your position is "DRM sucks, hurr durr, but I don't want to actually do anything about it, so I'll just ***** until someone else does something."
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No, pirating in this case is 'not buying, but not having the spine or moral fiber to actually forego the product, and therefore resorting to illegal means and justifying it.'
In the end it just seems like you want to be able to pirate things. You're just rationalizing cheating, and you don't give a crap about DRM - your list excludes most titles from the days before DRM ever became an issue.
If you gave someone a gun, and then they tried to shoot you with it, wouldn't you try to take it back? The superior morals arguement, not surprising. Of course if you actually knew me better you wouldn't make such bull**** accusations.
Not analogous at all.
What this situation is analogous to is - to continue the car theme - a company selling some really bad cars. This does not give you the legal right to vandalize or steal the cars.
If you think that, you have the sensitivity to nuance of Glenn Beck and the intellectual capacity of his footwear.
And you have the reasoning capability of a frog.
You know instead of making personal attacks and alledging your moral superiority, why don't you actually do something to resolve this? All I've seen you do is try to promote just another form of DRM instead of actually push for its abolition all together. If you can put together the kind of boycott I am talking about below, I'll give up piracy permenantly. Here's your chance, surprise me.
I agree that I'm a little too free with the snide ad homs. Consider it a personal weakness.
But sometimes I feel like you're a man of faith, Kosh. You have a religion and you stick to it. And like a certain recent president, if people aren't with you, you blindly assume they're against you.
What I do is, I don't buy games with DRM. I buy games that do not use DRM. In that way I support publishers - and specific products - that choose to forego this idiotic practice. I just consider it insane to call a disc check DRM.
I actually care about stopping DRM, and I have the spine to avoid giving the companies more justification for using DRM.
There are two scenarios here:
The Battuta scenario, where everyone stops buying DRM games, and they sit on shelves, and companies realize something is wrong and (like EA) start doing something about it.
Or a world full of Koshes, where everyone stops buying DRM games and starts pirating them, and companies say 'Man, ****, we need better DRM.' And the next thing you know there's not a game out there that doesn't have something even more crippling and more ineffective.
Childish entitlement issues inevitably compromise action against this kind of problem.
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And in other news, anti-DRM crusaders Stardock are hurting badly. The botched launch of Elemental has apparently forced them to lay off staff and cancel a future project.
It'll be an uncomfortable day if Impulse goes under.
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The Battuta scenario, where everyone stops buying DRM games, and they sit on shelves, and companies realize something is wrong and (like EA) start doing something about it.
Or a world full of Koshes, where everyone stops buying DRM games and starts pirating them, and companies say 'Man, ****, we need better DRM.' And the next thing you know there's not a game out there that doesn't have something even more crippling and more ineffective.
Childish entitlement issues inevitably compromise action against this kind of problem.
I agree with most of what you said, BUT wasn't spore one of the most pirated games ever, and I think that's the one that made EA shape up. sometimes that works (well, maybe once) but there's ubisoft's thing, and I think because they haven't had a big PC game since...I'm not even sure, any 'major' games they've released have been multiplat, consoles likely well outselling PC.
also, ****, stardock is hurting?
need to fire up impulse and buy some stuff. buy GalCiv2 and sins Diplomacy.
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The Battuta scenario, where everyone stops buying DRM games, and they sit on shelves, and companies realize something is wrong and (like EA) start doing something about it.
Or a world full of Koshes, where everyone stops buying DRM games and starts pirating them, and companies say 'Man, ****, we need better DRM.' And the next thing you know there's not a game out there that doesn't have something even more crippling and more ineffective.
Childish entitlement issues inevitably compromise action against this kind of problem.
I agree with most of what you said, BUT wasn't spore one of the most pirated games ever
Spore was a turning point for EA. They finally smartened up and realized that DRM wasn't stopping piracy, but was causing a massive consumer outcry.
The problem is that most companies will either never reach this realization or will continue to push for harsher DRM even afterwards (see Ubisoft.)
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Not analogous at all.
What this situation is analogous to is - to continue the car theme - a company selling some really bad cars. This does not give you the legal right to vandalize or steal the cars.
True, a physical object is not at all analogous to digital data.
It may be worth keeping in mind that the accuracy of statistics on piracy paraded out (and presumably used internally) by publishers tend to be on the order of just making them up.
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Not analogous at all.
What this situation is analogous to is - to continue the car theme - a company selling some really bad cars. This does not give you the legal right to vandalize or steal the cars.
True, a physical object is not at all analogous to digital data.
It may be worth keeping in mind that the accuracy of statistics on piracy paraded out (and presumably used internally) by publishers tend to be on the order of just making them up.
But that's tangential. I don't think DRM does anything to stop or deter piracy; in fact I think it incentivizes it.
I just don't think publishers and developers realize that.
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Or a world full of Koshes, where everyone stops buying DRM games and starts pirating them, and companies say 'Man, ****, we need better DRM.' And the next thing you know there's not a game out there that doesn't have something even more crippling and more ineffective.
But isn't that what DIDN'T happen with Spore? According to wikipedia Spore held the record when it was released as THE most pirated game ever up to that point.
On September 13, 2008, it was announced that Spore was the most pirated game ever with over half a million illegal downloads within the first week of release.[68]
You did say it was also a turning point for EA which got them to tone it down, though not quite to a level I'd accept at this time, it still got their attention. So doesn't this show that it not only doesn't stop piracy but it actually made it worse?
But sometimes I feel like you're a man of faith, Kosh. You have a religion and you stick to it. And like a certain recent president, if people aren't with you, you blindly assume they're against you.
I admit I do have strong feelings about some things, much like yourself (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70128.0). I do actually try to be logical and reasonable, and I like to think most of the time I succeed. The problem with this particular issue is they managed to piss me off. In business there is a relationship between customer and company. In this case we trusted the publishers not to push DRM too far, but they did anyway. They broke that trust, and showed that they can never be trusted again. The point of my gun example, is that if allow someone to use something like that, you're trusting them not to do certain things, in the case of DRM that would be trashing your windows security, wrecking game performance, etc. This is a case of betrayal, which is something I never take lightly, no matter if it was directly against me personally or against a group I belong to as a whole. Consider it a personal weakness.
The problem is that most companies will either never reach this realization or will continue to push for harsher DRM even afterwards (see Ubisoft.)
Then we keep hammering them until they shape up, or quit making PC games. They started this war, so let them reap its consequences.
BTW, what was the last major ubisoft pc game?
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far cry 2 afaik. which was a dismal failure for reasons other than DRM.
anywho, it was certainly NOT the publishers who started the war, it was pirating. pirating came before the DRM to stop it. i won't argue that DRM was an effective response, but it was really the natural one. it's like body armor with the advent of guns. doesn't always work as guns get more powerful and sophisticated, but not protecting at all is just stupid.
alright that analogy didn't come out as clear as i'd hoped.
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far cry 2 afaik. which was a dismal failure for reasons other than DRM.
anywho, it was certainly NOT the publishers who started the war, it was pirating. pirating came before the DRM to stop it. i won't argue that DRM was an effective response, but it was really the natural one. it's like body armor with the advent of guns. doesn't always work as guns get more powerful and sophisticated, but not protecting at all is just stupid.
alright that analogy didn't come out as clear as i'd hoped.
So Sony wants to shoot us? :confused:
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far cry 2 afaik. which was a dismal failure for reasons other than DRM.
anywho, it was certainly NOT the publishers who started the war, it was pirating. pirating came before the DRM to stop it. i won't argue that DRM was an effective response, but it was really the natural one. it's like body armor with the advent of guns. doesn't always work as guns get more powerful and sophisticated, but not protecting at all is just stupid.
alright that analogy didn't come out as clear as i'd hoped.
Actually body armor for hundreds of years until recently was completely abandoned BECAUSE of guns.
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im usually on the ban drm side of this argument, but some drm is tolerable. my main concern is when they introduce an artificial dependency. the game requires something to run, such as:
a cd in the drive -tolerable but annoying
an active internet connection -sometimes tolerable
resident software on the computer that always runs, reducing general performance -****ing evil
limited installations -****ing evil
hardware locked activation -****ing evil
starcraft 2 is a good example of something i had reservations about. i didnt like having an active internet connection. of course once i saw how it worked i kinda felt that it was an improvement. i could shelf the cd and still play, and i didnt have to move my player profile if i wanted to play it on a different computer. since i have an always on internet connection (albeit glitchy) i tolerated it. i play lots of games with my brother in law, who lives out in the bush, he has no internet, plays games more than i do, and doesnt pirate. we play starcraft on my lan here or over a crossover cable at his place. he hasnt been buying new computer games because he is concerned that an artificial dependency on an internet connection would prevent him from playing some games. i told him flat out not to buy starcraft 2 because it required an active internet connection. we also had trouble playing lan multiplayer games of sc2 with one of the provided guest keys, because it was dependent on our shoddy internet connection. it worked but not as well as on the lan. we had lag across the room. sc2's drm is a scheme that works for me and 90% of the population, but whats being done for the 10% of people who live off the grid but still play video games. i want to see drm that avoids or attempts to reduce the dependencies at all costs.
i dont like to pirate games. i respect the skill of the game designers. if a developer comes up with a good game i want to support that developer and i know my money will go to making their next game. sometimes the drm is so bad i dont even want to pirate the game. of course an alternative to piracy is to just buy the game and crack it so that you can eliminate the drm. i keep lots of games like that backed up. some i have copied over the install folder from another computer, and applied the bare minimum of registry settings to make it work. older games i usually use drive emulation on, so i can mount an image and install/play the game and the drm is none the wiser. sometimes i can edit the disc image so i can apply cracks to the install files dircectly. it breaks the eula most of the time, but i paid for the game so i feel im entitled to do something like that, at least more so than if i had pirated it.
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And in other news, anti-DRM crusaders Stardock are hurting badly. The botched launch of Elemental has apparently forced them to lay off staff and cancel a future project.
It's unclear to me how anti-DRM crusaders, whatever those are, relate to the botched launch of Elemental and Stardock's resulting financial woes. Would you mind clarifying?
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Jumping into this without reading everything before (it's 6 pages and I have limited time!) it strikes me that THQ have missed the middle ground here.
Why not say that second-hand games will work online after a certain amount of time. So if you buy a second-hand copy of a THQ game a week after release you'd have to wait 6 months for it to work online. That means that you can buy a game and sell it on later and still have the game work fully but it also means that buying a game second-hand a week after release isn't as good a prospect as buying it new (which is what THQ want).
The point THQ need to get is that there are people out there who buy games because they can sell them off once they get bored of them. At $60 a game, you are asking for a large sum of money for a game. There are lots of people who aren't willing to pay that much but who are willing to pay it knowing that in the end they'll only pay $35 because they'll sell it off later. In these cases THQ might not actually be losing money from the second hand market. In fact they might actually making money. If you make $60 from both people when neither of them would have bought the game at full price then you've effectively made the same money as you would have if they'd bought it 6 months later on sale for half price.
Without any sales figures it's hard to say if THQ are making money, losing money or breaking even on second hand sales. So do they have any to back up their points? Or are they simply making the same mistake that we've always lambasted RIAA and MPAA for in assuming that every pirated movie or CD would have been bought for the full price?
Anyway, if anyone has raised these points before just point me to an answering post. :D
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The vast majority of this thread was not necessarily about THQ's decision itself but rather DRM and piracy in general.
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And in other news, anti-DRM crusaders Stardock are hurting badly. The botched launch of Elemental has apparently forced them to lay off staff and cancel a future project.
It's unclear to me how anti-DRM crusaders, whatever those are, relate to the botched launch of Elemental and Stardock's resulting financial woes. Would you mind clarifying?
Re-read. Anti-DRM crusaders Stardock - ie, the crusaders are Stardock.
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The vast majority of this thread was not necessarily about THQ's decision itself but rather DRM and piracy in general.
forgive him for hijacking the hijack.
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Re-read. Anti-DRM crusaders Stardock - ie, the crusaders are Stardock.
Hah. Right. Thanks.
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(http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/791728635_VJ8Qa-L.jpg)
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(http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/791728635_VJ8Qa-L.jpg)
hence why a serious DRM debate is meaningles
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And in other news, anti-DRM crusaders Stardock are hurting badly. The botched launch of Elemental has apparently forced them to lay off staff and cancel a future project.
It'll be an uncomfortable day if Impulse goes under.
heh, Stardocks main income isn't from games but from professional software which is why they're still an independent publisher. They'll be smarting from the release, true enough, but I wager they've got the strategic depth (i.e. money and time) to fix it properly.
Without Impulse going under.
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It's vaguely topical and amusing (because it's true), so I'm going to quote an interview PCG conducted with Gabe Newell
your point earlier was that we surprise our customers, and there’s a certain amount of entertainment value in that.
But then there’s also a certain amount of fear value in that, because the traditional surprise in the gaming industry is not “Oh, I’m surprised: something good happened!” The traditional surprise is “Oh, I’m surprised: X-Fire just got bought again and went away.” “Oh, I’m surprised because something horrible has happened to a franchise that I’ve been following since I was a little kid.”
PC Gamer: “Oh, I’m surprised: Assassin’s Creed II needs to be online all the time.”