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Has modern PC DRM ever stopped a pirate?
Lord Jezo
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I am trying to figure this out because I keep thinking about it when not buying EA games (Crysis Warhead at $20 is great but with Securom / limited activations I wont be bothering).. in this day and age with internet and broadband pretty much everywhere and every single game that has hardcore DRM embedded into it (Securom) cracked before it is even released retail, has DRM ever stopped anyone from pirating a game or is it only now annoying people who actually want to go out and spend money on something?
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I on the other hand, with my launch day copy, was fucked out of being able to run the game for about a week and a half because the DRM wouldn't let the game run on a combo drive, at least not the one that Dell put in their boxes by default.
What modern DRM really does is negative, two-fold.
First, it incentivizes some people to pirate, because it helps them feel justified that they're getting a copy of something that is free of draconian DRM schemes put in place; regardless of whether or not they would have actually bought the game.
Second, it punishes honest, legit purchasers. They bought the game, they're treated like infringers, are given restrictive DRM schemes, etc. etc. It's a pain, and as it occurred to the OP at least in one instance, it's enough to make some people throw up their hands and say "Fuck it! I'm just not going to bother!"
You might argue that if you're legit user, is it that big of a deal? And to that I say - does it matter if it's a "big deal" or a "small deal"? It's not serving its purpose, and would actually be more beneficial for the companies and the consumers to do away with it. Sure, I don't pirate games, but I don't like restrictive "install tokens," even when I know I can get them back. In general I don't like things installing into the core of my operating system because I could potentially decide to pirate. I'm not! I don't want that stuff on there! You're bugging me, and you're not stopping the most significant infringers out there. So, sure, it may not be a "big deal" to some people, but I ask, why even let it be a deal at all, if nothing but negative consequences come from it?
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
There are literally hundreds of threads where we talk about DRM and games. Ii believe these posts have achieved critical mass and are now condensing into a neutron star. We do not need another thread about this.
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That's the kind of copy-protection I can get behind.
It's the limiting installs bullshit that gets me. How does that help piracy at all? It doesn't - they're only trying to limit people from giving the game away or selling it secondhand. What the fuck do they care if I install it 6 times or 8 or 20?
Haha I forgot about that, that was totally sweet.
Actually that might be why a lot of people are getting stuck on the monkey puzzle in Ep2. Only thing is, it's happening with legit copies :S
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
The negative side of this is that a lot of these moronic pirates go onto websites, forums, and blogs and start posting about how the game is a "buggy, broken piece of shit" and warn people not to buy it because it's broken and you "can't even get past part X" and that you shouldn't buy games that the developer didn't even "do proper bugtesting on." Etc etc. They start spreading misinformation.
Fortunately, these idiots, despite their outspoken-ness, doesn't tend to affect a whole lot of people. Especially when they get responses like, "Huh, my game never had that issue. It works fine for me."
I think Assassin's Creed had a nice antipiracy thing were you couldn't enter Jerusalem or something. And I'm pretty sure it stopped a lot of pirates. At least, it stopped a lot of pirates from getting the benefit of the full game.
And so you have warez cracking groups that make these cracks, and once applied, the game code figures out the inconsistency, and doesn't allow pirated copies to do certain things - like entering Jerusalem in A's Creed, or gettnig past a certain part in Rainslick, or causing nukes to go off in C&C or whatever. What happens is the crack or the cracked game becomes the popular one and the warez crackers are off cracking newer stuff, and it either doesn't get "fixed" or the "fixed cracked version" gets washed under the flood of people snagging up the originally, poorly cracked one. And so as a result of the "warez system," a lot of pirates end up with truncated versions of the games they sought to steal! Hahah, suckers.
So it's pretty effective. And damn funny, too!
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
but its stopped me from buying games [and no I've not pirated the games I've stopped buying].
I dont want to deal with the bullshit, and the fact that I have to prove that I'm an actual legitimate customer. I get enough of that when I reinstall windows, I dont need it on my games.
QFT.
This was my turning point as well. I purchased HL2 CE in a retail store when it came out because I believed I'd be able to play it without using steam. While Steams DRM is preferable to these limited activations we're seeing, it still makes owning a game almost useless. (in my opinion) I was comfortable buying new PC games knowing I had no way to test them or play them ahead of time because I was able to resell them.
(I know you can play demo's and get a sense of the game but this was rarely a reliable source for making a good decision, might have been released after the game, might not have shown enough of the game to know one way or the other, might cherry pick the best a game has to offer, etc.)
Making PC software less accessible is a terrible move for these companies to make. That is not going to make people spend more money on the product. You need to increase the value of the product from the inside. Provide more content, better support, better products from the beginning.
DRM is an attempt to "game" the system. They are trying to force people to keep paying top dollar for software that is rarely worth the price. It's aimed at paying customers. They don't care about the effects on piracy as long as they can drape piracy over the DRM as a scape goat.
It's basic supply and demand. Supply is EXTREMELY high on PC games, anyone can, and does, make PC software so the price should be falling. The only way to address this issue is to try and cheat and keep the supply fixed. If you make software that has been used useless, you effectively "control" the supply, and demand will stay artificially high.
The flaw in this is that gamers know much these games are really worth within a week or 2 of release. Look on ebay and that is the real value a product, it's all about what someone is willing to pay.
If they're going to go this route, they should include some sort of message that says "stop right there, you filthy fucking pirate." That way the pirate will know what's going on and feel bad.
For an eighth of a second, given the mindset of your average pirate.
Well at press conferences major game companies have all but admitted it is for second hand sales and not piracy.
On a fun sidenote, college book makers actually outright blame students for the prices of their books. It's been stated multiple times now that high prices of books are the faults of students reselling them.
Gotta love bullshit
Try not to overgeneralize. Few studies have ever come back with "People pirate because they hate you." It's a matter of judging the whole for an action of few.
I personally have pirated every game I now legally own...for the exception of TWO games.
SPORE and Masters of Orion 3.
You want to know the only two games I wish I had pirated first so I had known they were pieces of shit? You guessed it, SPORE and Masters of Orion 3.
I'm quite certain if you could return PC games under the pretext of them being shitty as all hell you'd have less actual piracy. I've always used it as a way of peacing through the bullshit, since a game can't lie to me when I'm actually playing it.
That's why Game companies are offering major bonuses for pre-ordering now. It's so that you'll buy the game before the reviews hit and everyone knows its shit and doesn't buy it.
http://islesofscion.net - Updated every day!
This. A "Fuck you, Long John Silver" error message would work, and quickly spread across the media blogs/sites/etc to say "Hey guys, developer X is generating lulz by trolling pirates."
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I dunno, why don't you find one and ask them if it was too hard for them to get around?
Until they figure out how to disable that as well, and they will, while they might otherwise have just discarded the game and moved on. Taunting the piracy community seems like a good way to insure that they will crack your stuff.
Edited for truth.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
In the eyes of the developer, buying a used game is just as bad as doing this or pirating the game since they don't get any cash off a used purchase.
Obviously cheap bastards are a part of the problem, but developers are extremely boneheaded about it too. It's genuinely shocking to me how most developers have little to no empathy or understanding with their consumer base.
Because Crysis and GoW for PC sold lower than expected numbers, both Crytek and Epic immediately fingered pirating as the reason. Well maybe the sales for Crysis sucked because you need a self-aware quantum time-folding engine powered by the gravity wells of a thousand galaxy-sucking supermassive blackholes in order to run the damn game. And maybe the sales for GoW on PC sucked because not only was it shitty port with awkward console controls adapted verbatim to a keyboard, but everyone's already played the game on console by then minus all the bugs of the port release. And then CliffyB declared there will probably never be a PC version of GoW 2, because in his own words, "a guy who's smart enough to have a PC capable of running GoW2 is a guy who's smart enough to get it off BitTorrent." Sweet, so now PC gamers are being punished for liking the platform enough to purchase and maintain a nice rig.
So I would say no.
Also I thought Gears1 was a pretty good PC port. It ran extremely well on low-end hard ware, looked good, had little to no bugs, and the controls were pretty straightforward PC style from what I could tell. The only thing console-like was its front-end, and I'd say that takes a backseat to gameplay.
But anyway that's neither here nor there. It just blew my mind that CliffyB blabbed the way he did, especially coming from Epic, who used to be a major player in PC development and gaming.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
You will find a large corrolation with the lessening of Demo's and the rise of piracy.
Piracy IS demoing for tons of people. I'm sitting on a few hundred dollars in PC games that would not be in my house had I not pirated them first to see if they were good. Because god knows that even Gameinformer is no longer a good source for knowing if a game is worth it anymore (I still like them but anyone who rates SPORE as a game with high replay value likely has never played the 5 games it poorly copies..well ok Cell stage was awesome...otherwise poorly copies).
http://islesofscion.net - Updated every day!
This right here? I've found that 99% of the people I know who say this are full of shit. Nobody I know pirates games to "demo" them. Or they say they do but they never actually buy anything, despite really liking the game, they just keep pirateing to "demo" games. I'm not trying to call you out or anything, for all I know you buy every fucking game you've ever pirated, I'm just saying that the majority of the time this is a bullshit excuse people use to try and justify piracy.
That's just a tad over the top. Even for a DRM thread.
My bank card is up to me to implement if I wish.
I didn't buy Mass Effect on PC. I didn't buy Spore. I'd really enjoy owning both of them. It's a shame EA didn't get my money on these two - it looks like they could have used it.
Similar to Titan Quest as well, they had a bunch of random checks all across the game that looked like bugs, but they only happened when you pirated the game. I remember seeing posts of "bugs" all over the place when that game came out, and i remember having bought it and thinking "weird this game runs superbly for me" and then reading later on that it gets bugged when its cracked. Really cool i dont know how they do it but it seems like the best way. The pirates can still play it, just not past a certain point, and then they need to re-crack it over and over.
How most pirated copies work:
1. Install
2. Copy A to B
3. Better than retail!
Whereas in many cases, retail buyers have to deal with bad performance or complete inability to play due to DRM (ex: Bioshock, Oblivion).
Even though I see no moral issue with pirating a game for the purposes of seeing if it will run on your machine in helping determine if you have the ability to play the game, should you buy it, I nevertheless personally just don't want to have to go so far as to download an illegitimate copy of something just for that purpose. I don't believe I should have to. And even if I'm not personally causing a "lost sale" by using a pirated copy for spec-testing purposes, I'd still rather not encourage that sort of thing indirectly by doing so.
Also it is not a requirement of mine to actually play a game before buying it. I have been thoroughly successful throughout the years in finding great games to buy via reading a variety of reviews, good and bad, as well as keeping an open ear to hands-on previews, and also of course listening to fellow forumers and their takes on the pros/cons of different games. I also watch online gameplay vids, and sometimes get a chance to play a game at a friends' place before buying. In rare cases I'll rent a game first to make sure, but usualy I don't have to go that far.
That is of course personal and I can understand that a person wouldn't want to take a risk on a game if they are not able to discern what appeals to them through reading reviews, hands on, forum opinions, and watching gameplay videos. It's still not a sure bet. Renting is good, but you still have the issue of cost.
Anyway... demos I think are a good thing.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
You wont be saying that 10 years from now when EA goes out of business and you try to fire up an "old favourite" like Mass Effect on PC and the DRM no longer can check with the server so the game goes "No play for you!"
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)