Along with a number of recent titles, the PC version of GTA4 will also use the SecureROM DRM technology to counter piracy, which will make the installation of the game harder for legitimate users.
With tougher DRM schemes becoming increasingly more common in PC games, is the use of DRM in popular PC games turning people away from purchasing titles such as Bioshock, Mass Effect, Spore, and now GTA4 on the PC? Will PC gamers move to other platforms such as the Xbox 360, especially since you can now install games onto the harddrive, removing one of the main advantages of the PC. And lastly, do you believe DRM is a necessary “evil” and if so to what extent?
At the end of the day producers of proprietary software have to protect their product, and I can respect that, sure.
But there is nothing more annoying than some piece of shit DRM software tell you, that you cannot play the game you have paid for because there is no internet connection. (Laptop users, for example, are not always in areas with WiFi or other internet access).
Overall it’s about finding a balance, I’m not necessarily sure DRM that actually interferes with acceptable legal product use is the right way to go about preventing piracy.
And even then, Pirates often find ways around such methods…
I’ve been playing console games more than PC games for years.
I don’t know, from everything I’ve heard DRM is annoying. Especially since I personally like to think of game purchases as being long term and the fact that in time I will be unable to play the game is annoying.
However, all the PC gamers I knew at college and the like were also bigtime into pirating. So I don’t know.
I don’t think anything is killing PC gaming, it is only changing. It’s certainly sort of dying for the likes of Ubisoft, but then again, it keeps thriving for the likes of Blizzard, Valve, Stardock and countless others (seen gog.com ?), some of them not using any sort of DRM, as well as a surge of independent developers who finally have the means to promote their products. It’s changing to the better as far as I’m concerned. I certainly won’t miss a company who spews forth blatant lies of the “zomg piracy is killing us, we move to consoel” type, even if I’d prefer to play some of their games on PC if they chose to be wiser.
Console piracy is just as rampant after all, just not as measurable since it relies on local dealers and/or burned discs more than the number of downloads. If they could measure those then it would mean they know their location, thus stop their business. Of course, not finding them doesn’t mean they’re not there, even every soccer mom has been able to find a DS cart to load with games, and even back in the PS1 days ALL the people I knew had them modded @ the local store and purchased copies for $5. Not the type of persons you’d think of when reading “pirate” huh? But hey, DRM and anti-piracy movements have become a profitable business in their own right, so you won’t see this sort of “zomg @ pc warez” thinking slow down.
Also, I’m ok with DRM as long as it’s not intrusive… SecuRom is not all bad, only when the full features are enabled, like limited installations. Other than that, it may be used simply as a CD check or so. I’m also fine with the likes of Steam since the whole thing also has features that benefit the user rather than just the publisher. And then there’s DRM you don’t even notice or know of so, that’s fine too.
Personally, I’ve always preferred consoles over PC gaming. I admit that I was annoyed with the fact that some games for my PS3 wouldn’t work without downloading an update from the internet. Although these updates are free, I still find it silly that your system that you pay hundreds of dollars for doesn’t come with the capability to play the titles available out of the box. However, I tend to shy away from companies who want to charge you a monthly fee on top of purchasing their game. One could argue that the daily amount isn’t all that much compared to other types of recreation, but I’d rather pay for the game and play it on my own time. If I’m paying a monthly fee for a game, then I feel any time not playing it is money wasted, and I don’t want that sort of thinking going on in my brain. Life is too full of other neat stuff to be tied to a PC eight hours a day.
Anyone with a clue already sees where this is all heading. Publishers know that they cannot outright stop piracy, so for now they will minimize it while slowly gaining the monopoly on online downloads.
What concerns me is how far a policement of the net may go. If you are forced to register every single game online with the publisher in order to play it, I’m not sure how far that will make people feel intruded upon. It’ll become the norm sooner or later.
[quote=“Chizzles”]Overall it’s about finding a balance, I’m not necessarily sure DRM that actually interferes with acceptable legal product use is the right way to go about preventing piracy.
And even then, Pirates often find ways around such methods…[/quote]
Indeed. DRM may stop piracy in the short term, but it is usually only a matter of days (or hours) before a cracked version is released on BitTorrent. Unless it’s an online game or something, most pirates will find a way of pirating the game regardless of DRM, while legitimate customers have to put up with sometimes unreliable copy protection.
Change is definitely a better word for it than kill. Sites like gog.com give me hope for a reasonable approach from publishers, but they are in the minority.
My concern is that it is going to become harder and harder to play big, offline games without having to put up with the hurdles of DRM. When I first installed my legitimate copy of BioShock, the game would not activate straight away due to a server side issue. The same issue occurred when Half-Life 2 first came out (although in HL2’s case it was due to some compulsory updates that took several hours to download, rather than a specific flaw in the activation system).
Steam could be a lot worse. I like the fact that you can download your purchased games onto any computer in the world. It’s a shame the software is sometimes quite laggy, but for the most part works better than other DRM systems.
However… what’s your opinion on the one-user-per-purchase approach of Steam and similar systems? If you buy a typical physical boxed game, there is no problem lending the game to a friend, or letting him/her play the game on your PC. Or selling the game at a later date. I don’t have a huge problem with the fact that you can’t resell your digital purchases, but the fact that your game is attached to your Steam ID has some serious limitations. For example, if you’re showing a copy of your new game to a friend, they can’t play the game (either on their own PC, or on yours) without using your Steam ID, and therefore affecting your Achievements, etc. Microsoft has created the same problem with Xbox Live, where you must have a separate account per user, rather than per console. If your family owns a console, you all have pay for Xbox Live accounts, sharing everything including Achievements.
I wonder if one day games will no longer be treated as shared purchases, rather something each and everything gamer must have a “license” to play. Somewhere along the line, somebody thought that sharing wasn’t important anymore, but if this is the direction that games are going, I will miss the days when I could swap my latest game purchase with a friend for one of his.
So it’s happening with console games as well? That’s unfortunate.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]Anyone with a clue already sees where this is all heading. Publishers know that they cannot outright stop piracy, so for now they will minimize it while slowly gaining the monopoly on online downloads.
What concerns me is how far a policement of the net may go. If you are forced to register every single game online with the publisher in order to play it, I’m not sure how far that will make people feel intruded upon. It’ll become the norm sooner or later.
But there are better things worthy of anger.[/quote]
The convenience of being able re-download the game onto any computer (not to mention, how much better for the environment it is not having a physical copy) is a definite attraction to digital purchases. I suppose you could fake your details when purchasing if you were worried about about your game purchased being used for advertising or whatever, but that’s not an ideal approach.
I don’t think there’s a way to let you lend games to friends with a system that isn’t possible to abuse. I’m okay with it. What I’m not okay with is having the price of a digital download the same as on retail, and thus, often much more expensive since various retail chains make offers selling games for a lot less than the recommended retail price.
I think it’s done because retail channels are still where the majority of sales are done, so an online publisher like Valve/Steam can’t afford pissing them off enough to not carry their games anymore. Of course it also suits them this way. Still, one of the benefits of digital distribution was meant to be the lower price due to not having all the packaging costs and what not, but that’s something we’ve never really seen, aside from independent developer games who would sell for a lower price even on retail anyway. It’s sad, but it seems digital distribution only works for people who find it convenient (like myself), rather than actually see any of the distinct advantages it was meant to have.
They could implement a “loans” system into Steam. For example, you could right click on a game that you owned, choose Loan, choose a person from your friends list, and the game could be transferred to their Steam account. You wouldn’t be able to play the game until they returned it to you (or perhaps you could set it to automatically be returned after a certain number of days).
A permanent gift system could work too, for selling/giving your used games to others. I can’t imagine Value would go ahead with something like this, but it would be nice if you could have additional control over your digital purchases.
[quote=“Al3xand3r”]What I’m not okay with is having the price of a digital download the same as on retail, and thus, often much more expensive since various retail chains make offers selling games for a lot less than the recommended retail price.
I think it’s done because retail channels are still where the majority of sales are done, so an online publisher like Valve/Steam can’t afford pissing them off enough to not carry their games anymore. Of course it also suits them this way. Still, one of the benefits of digital distribution was meant to be the lower price due to not having all the packaging costs and what not, but that’s something we’ve never really seen, aside from independent developer games who would sell for a lower price even on retail anyway. It’s sad, but it seems digital distribution only works for people who find it convenient (like myself), rather than actually see any of the distinct advantages it was meant to have.[/quote]
I agree. The only advantage when it comes to price is when the games are sold in US dollars. It’s sometimes cheaper to buy off Steam because of the exchange rate, rather than buying the physical copy.
One major problem with SecuROM is it regularly becomes confused when the user has more than one optical drive.
There are also several SecuROM titles that cannot be installed at the same time without cracks, OutRun 2006 and STALKER do not work together unless you install a crack for one of them.
FEAR for example, will still ask you for the “original disc” even if it is in your drive…
SecuROM is buggy on a technical level no matter how you look at it
Many of the “cracks” and “fixes” out there were actually developed by people experiencing problems with SecuROM infected titles, rather than with the purpose of piracy.
It also goes to show that, as an anti-piracy tool, it is absolutely worthless.
I don’t know about other regional versions of Guilty Gear XX PC but I know sure as hell that the Chinese version has some seriously messed up DRM that actually causes the game to crash between levels and throw up random error messages (I have tried it on every PC I’ve ever owned… same problems). It looks suspiciously like StarForce, it smells like StarForce, tastes like it. But it has a different name.
On an interesting note, the PC (retail) version of the latest Prince of Persia will be DRM free. Hopefully this isn’t just an exception and it means Ubisoft is moving away from DRM.
Edit: It turns out that only the retail version will be DRM free. Looking on the Steam website, the game is currently available in America only.
I wonder how many people will download the game from BitTorrent instead of from Steam because they can’t download the game legitimately in their region.
That’s how most recent Ubisoft titles. including Far Cry 2, have been. I just forgot to mention it in my last Steam drawbacks comment. Along with the price issue, regional availability is another idiotic step back. Of course, it’s not like they offer every game from every publisher out there anyway, so, for Europeans, it’s just another title that didn’t make it on Steam.
Lol, what did I tell you? It was only a matter of time. The Steam store is already running a European beta (click on top right to enable it) which converts prices to Euros. By converts, I mean it just changes the $ symbol to Euros, and the number remains the same, as expected by any rip off.
Though certain games have deals Americans don’t get, like Bioshock going for much less money currently, but who knows if that will last. Anyway, overall, Europe gets the shaft again.
[quote=“Al3xand3r”]Lol, what did I tell you? It was only a matter of time. The Steam store is already running a European beta (click on top right to enable it) which converts prices to Euros. By converts, I mean it just changes the $ symbol to Euros, and the number remains the same, as expected by any rip off.
Though certain games have deals Americans don’t get, like Bioshock going for much less money currently, but who knows if that will last. Anyway, overall, Europe gets the shaft again.[/quote]
As my boyfriend said, “When the prices on my European motorcycle parts go down, I’ll feel sorry for you.”
Nothing from any other country is going to cost the same as when you’re in it. Someone always gets shafted. At least the Euro is worth more than the dollar. When “Ehndow” sent me 25 Euros as compensation for the Myst books I mailed him, they were worth $18. Now, they’re worth $34. I never converted them, though, because I think your currency is prettier than ours.
Sorry that doesn’t really solve anything with Valve. =P
The way it intrudes on your PC, almost forcing you have an internet connection, and stopping you from using programs such as Alcohol 120% (It won’t work if it detects that that or daemon tools is installed)
I was looking forward to purchasing Spore, and Far Cry 2. But because it have SecureRom, i will not be getting them.
Whereas if they used “normal” methods, the developers would have my money for them by now.
They’re worth more but we pay more also so it’s not really a difference. And of course wages aren’t the same either. Though I guess a lot of America has bigger problems in that aspect. Also, I guess you first caught the Euro at an all time low. It used to regularly be worth over 1.4 maybe more than 1.5 USD. Then it went really low with like 1.2X, now it’s going back up (check on xe.com) thankfully.
Anyway, as far sa Steam is concerned, all the more reason to use Impulse instead of Steam when possible, at least for the games that don’t have better deals like Bioshock does. I do believe they intend to keep charging the same price regardless of region, so that everyone pays the same.
