As for tech support not having been contacted:
My previous example regarding sims2 holds true to this, we contacted EA and were basically told to go fuck ourselves and that it works for them.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Sorry I haven't read the entire thread, but I have yet to successfully connect to Uplay from withing AC2 for the Xbox 360. So I find this particularly hilarious. I keep getting server errors. I assume this is not the same thing as Uplay, but it does not bode well if I cannot connect to one of their services already.
Also: Uplay is stupid. Free DLC? Nice. Free DLC that requires a second and completely useless layer of obtaining DLC? Terrible.
This whole thing is ridiculous.
edit: I really hate to sound - uhm - culturally bigoted, but I'm not at all surprised that this particular DRM is coming from a French company. I used to work for a French company. This is the kind of silly shit they do.
Both the DMCA and EUCD criminalizes the circumvention of DRM.
What is their ground legally?
I don't understand your question.
I'll take tautologies for $700, Alex.
Meaning, while copyright law is well and dandy; how do they stand up when a court case is thrown at them for circumventing DRM? In this case, I'm wondering how they legally stand up for someone circumventing a game that they legally paid for but are unable to play because of DRM.
Interesting fact:
The laws pertaining to Anticircumvention, specifically 17 USC 1201, also make it a crime for game manufacturers to offer circumvention technology as a solution to technical problems such as when a game gets broken for legitimate users due to patch.
The laws pertaining to Anticircumvention, specifically 17 USC 1201, also make it a crime for game manufacturers to offer circumvention technology as a solution to technical problems such as when a game gets broken for legitimate users due to patch.
That makes even less sense than the reasons for DRM to begin with.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
edit: I really hate to sound - uhm - culturally bigoted, but I'm not at all surprised that this particular DRM is coming from a French company. I used to work for a French company. This is the kind of silly shit they do.
They finally found a war they could win.
oh snap
PeregrineFalcon on
Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
The laws pertaining to Anticircumvention, specifically 17 USC 1201, also make it a crime for game manufacturers to offer circumvention technology as a solution to technical problems such as when a game gets broken for legitimate users due to patch.
That makes even less sense than the reasons for DRM to begin with.
Many, many, many laws make no appreciable sense, unfortunately.
edit: I really hate to sound - uhm - culturally bigoted, but I'm not at all surprised that this particular DRM is coming from a French company. I used to work for a French company. This is the kind of silly shit they do.
And Quebec, no less! Just wait until Ubisoft starts putting everything in French with smaller English translations beneath it.
edit: I really hate to sound - uhm - culturally bigoted, but I'm not at all surprised that this particular DRM is coming from a French company. I used to work for a French company. This is the kind of silly shit they do.
They finally found a war they could win.
oh snap
French companies are all about public relations. Nothing else matters. "Look! See how effective our DRM is on paper!" And they will willfully ignore the fact that it (a) hurts legitimate customers and (b) doesn't actually work or prevent piracy. I'm willing to bet this is just pandering to major shareholders that don't know a gigabyte from a corkscrew.
Meaning, while copyright law is well and dandy; how do they stand up when a court case is thrown at them for circumventing DRM? In this case, I'm wondering how they legally stand up for someone circumventing a game that they legally paid for but are unable to play because of DRM.
The only case I know of is this Finnish guy, Mikko Rauhala, who filed a complaint against himself to test how the Finnish implementation of the EUCD would hold up in court. He was acquitted in the District Court, but the prosecution appealed the decision. He was then convicted in the Appeal Court, and tried to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, which rejected the appeal.
What had he done? He had circumvented CSS in order to watch his legally bought DVDs in linux.
The laws pertaining to Anticircumvention, specifically 17 USC 1201, also make it a crime for game manufacturers to offer circumvention technology as a solution to technical problems such as when a game gets broken for legitimate users due to patch.
That makes even less sense than the reasons for DRM to begin with.
Many, many, many laws make no appreciable sense, unfortunately.
Yep. Basically when Congress drafted 17 USC 1201 they were thinking in broad "circumvention = bad" terms. As the law is written right now, 1201 is indifferent to all uses, legitimate or otherwise.
This is a serious issue in the AMV world because even if AMVs might be fair use under 17 USC 107, you can still get fined under 17 USC 1201 for ripping from dvds.
Meaning, while copyright law is well and dandy; how do they stand up when a court case is thrown at them for circumventing DRM? In this case, I'm wondering how they legally stand up for someone circumventing a game that they legally paid for but are unable to play because of DRM.
The only case I know of is this Finnish guy, Mikko Rauhala, who filed a complaint against himself to test how the Finnish implementation of the EUCD would hold up in court. He was acquitted in the District Court, but the prosecution appealed the decision. He was then convicted in the Appeal Court, and tried to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, which rejected the appeal.
What had he done? He had circumvented CSS in order to watch his legally bought DVDs in linux.
As a young man, I pirated games all the time. For me it was simple: I could otherwise not afford to play them.
As an adult, I mostly buy the games that I play but will still occasionally resort to piracy. For example:
-If a friend hands me a CD and says "You should try this game, I made a copy for you" I will install the game and play it. If I like the game I will, in almost all cases, NOT go purchase it later.
-If a friend asks to make a copy of a game, I will usually allow it.
-The most common type of piracy that I have engaged in would be multiplayer piracy. We have one copy of a game and wish to install it on another machine for some head to head. Or maybe only one of us has the expansion pack and we're trying to make it work on both machines. That kind of thing.
I do not typically visit crack sites to look for No CD Cracks, or download games from P2P and the like. My first thought when I see a game I want is that I should go buy it, not that I should find a way to steal it. The piracy that I engage in is usually the result of peer pressure, laziness, or simply that the opportunity to quickly and painlessly obtain a pirated copy was made available to me.
I recognize that there is an immorality to what I've described, but I honestly don't care that much. On rare occasions I have become so loyal to a developer that I refuse to pirate their software (Blizzard, Stardock), but in general I like free things as much as anyone else.
In my experience, most gamers share my approach to the matter or are if anything more inclined to pirate than I am. We live in an era of the mantra "Sharing is Caring" after all - piracy is socially acceptable in most circles. Indeed, refusing to allow someone to pirate can cause them to be offended. The prevailing social expectations in the gamer community are inverted from what people describe as the moral choice in forums such as this one. Peer pressure can be a real factor, even for responsible adults.
With all of that said, here is my take on DRM:
- I totally understand why companies want and need to protect their profits.
- Online piracy means that game copying is no longer restricted to your circle of real life contacts to whom you could give a physical media or a photocopy of the code wheel - a cracked game now means that anyone anywhere can get a free copy. This really ups the stakes for the developers.
- Draconian DRM angers me, and in general causes me to not buy a title unless I wanted that title really badly.
In short, I'm generally willing to purchase a title but will also sometimes pirate one. Here are some of the things that I think work to keep a person like me honest:
1) Online features that are CD-Key linked so that sharing your CD-Key causes you to lose functionality because only one CD-Key can be online at a time. An example of this would be Blizzard's Battle.Net
2) MMO's - pretty hard to pirate a subscription.
3) Systems like Steam which provide the user with a lot of flexibility and freedom but still do a good job of stopping piracy.
4) CD check systems that cannot be circumvented by taking the CD out after the check is made (we've run whole LAN parties on one CD). Also, playing the expansion version should require the expansion CD, or we'll just put the original CD in one computer and the expansion CD in the other.
5) One time activations that require an online registration or over the phone registration along with the CD-Key. We're smart enough to realize that something will look fishy if I register the same CD-Key too many times in too short a period.
These kinds of things limit piracy without being overly onerous. I will also generally not copy a game if a developer offers it on an honor system of some kind - Stardock for example, but I wouldn't assume that to be true of gamers generally.
Things that will stop me from buying a game include:
1) root-kit like malware as part of DRM
2) disabling functionality on my computer - making the CD Rom not work right for example.
3) software that is difficult to uninstall
4) software that violates my sense of privacy
5) systems that are overly difficult to use or that result in me not truly owning my purchase. (I should be able to reinstall the game on my new PC with minimal fuss.)
A reasonable DRM system isn't going to stop all piracy. I think that's a reality that publishers of all kinds will have to live with. A perfect solution just doesn't exist. Trying to make perfect DRM results in making awful DRM. Just make it good enough and stop there.
If I want a game badly enough, like Starcraft 2 for example, then I will sign over the rights to my hard drive to Blizzard Inc. if that's what I have to do to play the game. Most games don't have such an honored place in our hearts, however, and companies like Blizzard develop the customer loyalty that they have by not requiring such nonsense. I have definitely not purchased games that I wanted because of DRM concerns. I didn't pirate them, I just didn't play them.
I feel for the developers, I really do. They're dealing with a gaming community that publicly claims to be above piracy but is very obviously pirating their games. When they take measures in response, we become angry, and no business thrives by making it's customers angry. There is no panacea. Piracy cannot be completely stopped, and DRM of some kind will be necessary to minimize that loss.
To the developers:
If you make your game too easy to steal, I will steal it. If you make your DRM too oppressive, I will boycott it. If you produce a game I want to play and protect it with reasonable DRM, I will buy it. My gratitude and sympathy to all of the developers who continue to make great games for us and have to deal with this technological and public relations nightmare at every release. I know I'm not a perfect customer, but I'm still your customer, and if we can manage to work this thing out I will give you my money time and time again.
So, PC Gamer actually took the steps of asking for a follow-up interview, which surprisingly, Ubisoft agreed to. Unfortunately however they seem to be stuck in permanent PR mode and don't seem to try to answer questions in any realistic fashion.
I only just realised that this DRM is also going to be applying to Silent Hunter 5, which I was previously looking forward to.
Now let's actually LOOK at Silent Hunter 5, because I feel it's a relatively unique case amongst the games Ubi's going to be publishing. It's an established but extremely niche franchise of games. It does not now, nor has it ever been a big seller. The market it's selling to is very small but also very dedicated to the franchise, it's practically the embodiment of niche PC gaming.
This is the one move they could have taken to completely destroy the fanbase for the franchise short of screwing up the game itself. A game like SH5 doesn't depend on huge marketing budgets, it doesn't depend on production values and endorsements by .50 Cent. It'll never have those, and it'll never be trendy.
It depends on its following amongst a fairly hardcore fanbase, and having a good relationship with that fanbase. It's how the series has survived to date despite being a game, when you get down to it, about using calculus and stop watches to plot intercept courses.
People tend to laugh at "angry men venting on the internet", but a game like SH5 literally cannot afford to tick off that small group of players that discuss these things on forums. Because that hardcore group of enthusiasts makes up the majority of their playerbase and sales. The SH5 forums are pretty much abuzz already with a lot of venting, and plenty of people saying they've cancelled their orders. For other major games this can typically be safely ignored because the majority of buyers either don't know or don't care. Here, the same people complaining are largely the same people who were your key audience.
So I guess what I'm saying is, the Silent Hunter series has existed for 15 years because of its dedicated following, and surprisingly it's this move that may actually put the franchise (and I apologise for the unintended pun) at risk of sinking.
3. People that pirate to avoid copy protection annoyances like having the CD in the drive or Starforce mucking up their machine. Since they have a real copy, are they still a pirate, though?
Piracy is piracy. It is not the same as making a backup of your own copy. By downloading it illicitly you are helping other pirates, whether by briefly seeding that torrent, or simply adding +1 to the number of people who obtained it illegally. You're part of that data set that shows more people pirated it than bought it.
No, I'm afraid 'appearance of a crime when viewed without sufficient detail' is not the same as 'an actual crime'.
I never claimed it was merely the appearance of a crime. I said it was an actual crime (as Lars stated). But regardless, whether you have officially committed a crime or not, the act of downloading a game the same way a pirate would continues to justify their actions - after all, why would anyone go to the effort of cracking a game and making it available if nobody else wanted it? Your intentions do not matter.
Obtaining a pirated copy of a game that you have already purchased is probably illegal (and therefore a crime) but I would argue that it's a perfectly moral thing to do. You bought the game, you're playing the game. That is the essence of our transaction, fine print be damned.
Just one thing I would like to point out (and I dont want to sound like a hippy) but there are MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger things that tax dollers can be going to than having our governments going after pirates regardless of any DRM issue. I would be seriously pissed off if courts started getting rammed full of this stuff.
Obtaining a pirated copy of a game that you have already purchased is probably illegal (and therefore a crime) but I would argue that it's a perfectly moral thing to do. You bought the game, you're playing the game. That is the essence of our transaction, fine print be damned.
The moral thing is to make your one legal copy yourself the moment you put the disc in.
How do you even know what you have purchased, exactly? I own World of Warcraft. Is it your opinion that it is perfectly moral for me to run a private server for myself, since I own all the content on that disc and should be allowed to run around in Stormwind whenever I want, internet or no?
But the "essence of our transaction" was that I bought an online multiplayer game, right? So now it's moral for me to let others connect to my private server so that I can play with them. That's what I paid for, isn't it?
Like it or not, the extent of your purchase is defined by laws, not by your moral compass. You can't damn the fine print because the fine print is what grants you the right to play it in the first place.
I think that digital piracy can be likened to alcohol consumption - the solution to the problem (DRM/prohibition) is ineffective at best and likely to be worse than the problem.
You just have to trust people to be honest and responsible by buying the game themselves, just like we have to trust people not to drink too much. Of course you can't trust everyone, thats a given (and a founding principle of the United States).
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'm almost waiting for some /b/tards to DDOS Ubisofts DRM servers on launch day...
Heh, I was thinking the same thing. The idea that your game won't be accessible or will kick you out because some silly goose who you don't know decides to DDOS the DRM server at that moment is so mind-boggling. I can understand the one-time internet connection, but constant connections to the DRM server? Man, Ubisoft are silly geese.
I'm almost waiting for some /b/tards to DDOS Ubisofts DRM servers on launch day...
Heh, I was thinking the same thing. The idea that your game won't be accessible or will kick you out because some silly goose who you don't know decides to DDOS the DRM server at that moment is so mind-boggling. I can understand the one-time internet connection, but constant connections to the DRM server? Man, Ubisoft are silly geese.
I don't think they could make it more obvious to people if they tried.
This day, next year: Ubisoft was named in a class action lawsuit today filed on behalf of all their legitimate customers, who have been unable to play their games for the better part of a year. A representative of Ubisoft accused pirates of ruining their poorly though out system. One engineer from competitor company Mann Co. remarked... "I warned em not to touch that darn thing."
I absolutely love how all these software development and music companies think that the piracy is such a Huge problem that cuts into their profits. Now, mind you, this is coming from a guy who has never pirated a game and has payed for all of them, and I buy a lot of games.
See, this idea that everyone who pirates the game would otherwise buy the game if they didn't pirate is based PURELY on guess work, wishful thinking, and blaming others for the lack of success of said titles. Now, I agree that there are those who w/o piracy would buy the game otherwise, BUT THOSE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT IF THERE WASN'T THIS KIND OF DRM ON IT!
Those people who would pirate no matter what, guess what, I have friends who do that, and I am sure almost everyone in this topic does to; they wouldn't have bought the damn game no matter what, cause they don't want to spend their money on it! Those are the types of people who will go out and buy tribes 2 and play it for 8 ****ing years and then finally buy a new game. This idea that if it wasn't for piracy all these pirates would be going out and buying the game is absolutely ludicrous.
It's only a problem in terms of annoyance, the fact that pirates can play the game w/o buying it. However, if you look just recently and one of the e-reader program's, or game companies decision to stop using terrible DRM practices(Bioware/Atari with NWN2 DLC) and ect. When they got rid of the stupid drm sales went up.
The people who pirate just to pirate are not the people you should be worrying about from a economic point of view, maybe from a moral one but that is a different subject. You should be focusing on those people who pirate because the current offering of drm is pushing them away from a title they would normally buy but wont, yet are willing to pirate it.
Kevin Rose, you know the really successful tech guy from Screen Savers/Digg/Revision 3/investor, ya, he says the exact same damn thing, that piracy is not NEAR as big of a problem as software companies like to claim. Fact is piracy is not only a way to try before you buy, but is also used because of stupid decisions businesses make, that some people just are not willing to pay for, and put up with.
Kevin Rose, you know the really successful tech guy from Screen Savers/Digg/Revision 3/investor, ya, he says the exact same damn thing, that piracy is not NEAR as big of a problem as software companies like to claim. Fact is piracy is not only a way to try before you buy, but is also used because of stupid decisions businesses make, that some people just are not willing to pay for, and put up with.
God, stop saying this as if it somehow justifies it. There are far better ways to justify it if you really need to, just don't use this.
Wow, reading over their statements in the new interview just comes off as... o_O
Some choice quotes
Do Ubi believe this DRM is unhackable?
They accept that it's all DRM's fate to be eventually hacked, explaining that internally, they've already talked of a timescale for how long their games will be protected by it. But, they believe that it's secure enough for them. "We wouldn't do it if we didn't believe in it. The guys who designed it believe in it. Do we think that it's the one system that God has sent onto earth that will never be cracked by anybody ever? We can't guarantee that, but we believe in it. "
So if you were wondering why they'd go with such a measure, now you know. They actually, genuinely believe that this is going to be uncrackable. Which is also why they don't like going with Steam, because Steam is cracked so easily in comparison to their new system.
Will Ubi make a firm commitment to removing the DRM if the servers are to be taken offline?
We'll paste the straight transcript here:
PCG: What I think a lot of us would really like is a firm commitment that you understand our worries that the servers are going to go down and suddenly we've just got some trash data on our hard drives that we've paid for.
Ubisoft: The system is made by guys who love PC games. They play PC games, they are your friends.
PCG: So you can commit to saying that those systems will be patched out?
Ubisoft: That's the plan.
PCG: It's the plan, or it's definitely going to happen?
Ubisoft: That's written into the goal of the overall plan of the thing. But we don't plan on shutting down the servers, we really don't."
So that's a "no" then. And please don't expect me to believe that they're going to be maintaining servers for these games years down the line. Heck, EA recently shut down their multiplayer servers for games less than two years old. Businesses aren't in the habit of maintaining services that lose them money.
God, stop saying this as if it somehow justifies it. There are far better ways to justify it if you really need to, just don't use this.
What makes you think im trying to justify it? The statement is true, and it was part of what Kevin Rose has said in the past, which is why I included it. Those use this practice dont really care if it's "justified" or not. It IS practical to do even if it is viewed as morally wrong.
Who cares if Ubi releases a patch when they end support? Seriously, this comes up in discussions about Steam all the time and I've never understood it. The pirate groups will release a patch that strips the DRM within days of the retail release, you can just use that one.
Kevin Rose, you know the really successful tech guy from Screen Savers/Digg/Revision 3/investor, ya, he says the exact same damn thing, that piracy is not NEAR as big of a problem as software companies like to claim. Fact is piracy is not only a way to try before you buy, but is also used because of stupid decisions businesses make, that some people just are not willing to pay for, and put up with.
God, stop saying this as if it somehow justifies it. There are far better ways to justify it if you really need to, just don't use this.
I live in a country where it's quicker and (almost) cheaper to pick up a gray market copy of a game than download the demo. Just throwing that out there.
God, stop saying this as if it somehow justifies it. There are far better ways to justify it if you really need to, just don't use this.
What makes you think im trying to justify it? The statement is true, and it was part of what Kevin Rose has said in the past, which is why I included it. Those use this practice dont really care if it's "justified" or not. It IS practical to do even if it is viewed as morally wrong.
It's about as useful as saying I can open a pack of Oreos at Martins to try before I buy. How convenient!
I don't understand the whole "people who pirate probably wouldn't buy it anyway". If I'm interested in a game enough, I'm going to buy it. If I'm not interested in a game, I'm not going to clog the tubes by pirating it.
Seems to me that people who are opposed to DRM should not add fuel to the fire by downloading said game, and instead should go support the indie developers that are willing to put games out their without copy protection.
It's about as useful as saying I can open a pack of Oreos at Martins to try before I buy. How convenient!
You are comparing apples to cars and you expect me to take your comparison seriously?
I did no such thing. Comparing two objects is not the same thing as comparing statements. Your unuseful statement is as unuseful as another unuseful statement, which is why you need to stop saying it.
I don't understand the whole "people who pirate probably wouldn't buy it anyway". If I'm interested in a game enough, I'm going to buy it. If I'm not interested in a game, I'm not going to clog the tubes by pirating it.
Seems to me that people who are opposed to DRM should not add fuel to the fire by downloading said game, and instead should go support the indie developers that are willing to put games out their without copy protection.
I think you are missing why people are saying it. The people who are pirating don't give, in the words of Cartman They, "don't give 2 ****s about some stupid ass whales!(the industry)". These publishers/developers are focusing so hard on the pirates, that they are not backing up and seeing the whole picture, to the point that they would almost burn the entire village to catch the thief.
Yay Piracy debates, always entertaining and rarely gets anyone to see things from a different view point. I really disagree with anyone that says Piracy ain't no big thang on the PC. I won't argue the point however because we will just be chasing eachother in circles. I'm just glad the big game companies are still publishing games on the PC, for awhile there it almost seemed like they were done with the medium all together.
I don't understand the whole "people who pirate probably wouldn't buy it anyway". If I'm interested in a game enough, I'm going to buy it. If I'm not interested in a game, I'm not going to clog the tubes by pirating it.
Seems to me that people who are opposed to DRM should not add fuel to the fire by downloading said game, and instead should go support the indie developers that are willing to put games out their without copy protection.
You can buy the game and then download just the DRM-removing crack, which is what I do far more often than should be necessary.
God, stop saying this as if it somehow justifies it. There are far better ways to justify it if you really need to, just don't use this.
What makes you think im trying to justify it? The statement is true, and it was part of what Kevin Rose has said in the past, which is why I included it. Those use this practice dont really care if it's "justified" or not. It IS practical to do even if it is viewed as morally wrong.
It's about as useful as saying I can open a pack of Oreos at Martins to try before I buy. How convenient!
Extremely poor analogy. When you open that pack of oreos, you eliminate stock from the store. No such thing occurs with digital piracy.
I'm against digital piracy in it's actual, pure definition, but disagreeing with something doesn't mean I approve of misleading arguments against.
As far as the subject goes with people "pirating" games that they legitimately own, the stance of the law on this in the United States is not clear, and I would defy any game publisher to successfully take someone to court for cracking a game that they own, or downloading a game that, for example, received accidental damage to the physical disc.
Seems to me that people who are opposed to DRM should not add fuel to the fire by downloading said game, and instead should go support the indie developers that are willing to put games out their without copy protection.
i think most pirates would agree with part 2, but would recoil at part 1, because how then could you "stick it to the man" ?
Who cares if Ubi releases a patch when they end support? Seriously, this comes up in discussions about Steam all the time and I've never understood it. The pirate groups will release a patch that strips the DRM within days of the retail release, you can just use that one.
For me it's an issue of accountability. If they're going to be providing the product then they need to be held accountable for it.
Leaving that aside, it's not always possible to strip the DRM from the product anyway. When I tried to run Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones it wouldn't run because Starforce was being identified by Vista as malware and automatically being shut down before it could do anything.
Good thing as far as I'm concerned, I didn't want it on my system, but it left me unable to play the game. I could download a torrent of TTT, but the Starforce DRM still existed in that copy, it just didn't check to see if the disc was in the drive. However it was still there and IIRC still had ring 0 access to drivers, which was what was setting off Vista.
I pretty much waited until just a couple of months ago to play it. By asking someone to buy me ANOTHER copy off of Steam, which had had the DRM removed altogether.
Comparing two objects is not the same thing as comparing statements. Your unuseful statement is as unuseful as another unuseful statement, which is why you need to stop saying it.
No, you are trying to do, is obfuscate what I was saying by trying to correlate and compare, walking into a grocery store, opening a box of oreo's and eating one and thne buying the oreo's if you liked them to torrenting a game, trying it out, and then buying it if you like it.
A better analogy would be going into a grocery store, walking up to the open candy section(you know, the white chocolate covered pretzels and what have you), and taking a piece and seeing if they are any good before getting one of those little plastic baggies and putting 2 scoopfuls of pretzels in the bag(you know, the thing a large majority of the people do?).
Posts
As for tech support not having been contacted:
My previous example regarding sims2 holds true to this, we contacted EA and were basically told to go fuck ourselves and that it works for them.
Also: Uplay is stupid. Free DLC? Nice. Free DLC that requires a second and completely useless layer of obtaining DLC? Terrible.
This whole thing is ridiculous.
edit: I really hate to sound - uhm - culturally bigoted, but I'm not at all surprised that this particular DRM is coming from a French company. I used to work for a French company. This is the kind of silly shit they do.
Interesting fact:
The laws pertaining to Anticircumvention, specifically 17 USC 1201, also make it a crime for game manufacturers to offer circumvention technology as a solution to technical problems such as when a game gets broken for legitimate users due to patch.
That makes even less sense than the reasons for DRM to begin with.
They finally found a war they could win.
oh snap
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Many, many, many laws make no appreciable sense, unfortunately.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
And Quebec, no less! Just wait until Ubisoft starts putting everything in French with smaller English translations beneath it.
French companies are all about public relations. Nothing else matters. "Look! See how effective our DRM is on paper!" And they will willfully ignore the fact that it (a) hurts legitimate customers and (b) doesn't actually work or prevent piracy. I'm willing to bet this is just pandering to major shareholders that don't know a gigabyte from a corkscrew.
The only case I know of is this Finnish guy, Mikko Rauhala, who filed a complaint against himself to test how the Finnish implementation of the EUCD would hold up in court. He was acquitted in the District Court, but the prosecution appealed the decision. He was then convicted in the Appeal Court, and tried to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, which rejected the appeal.
What had he done? He had circumvented CSS in order to watch his legally bought DVDs in linux.
Yep. Basically when Congress drafted 17 USC 1201 they were thinking in broad "circumvention = bad" terms. As the law is written right now, 1201 is indifferent to all uses, legitimate or otherwise.
This is a serious issue in the AMV world because even if AMVs might be fair use under 17 USC 107, you can still get fined under 17 USC 1201 for ripping from dvds.
Did he have to pay himself damages?
As a young man, I pirated games all the time. For me it was simple: I could otherwise not afford to play them.
As an adult, I mostly buy the games that I play but will still occasionally resort to piracy. For example:
-If a friend hands me a CD and says "You should try this game, I made a copy for you" I will install the game and play it. If I like the game I will, in almost all cases, NOT go purchase it later.
-If a friend asks to make a copy of a game, I will usually allow it.
-The most common type of piracy that I have engaged in would be multiplayer piracy. We have one copy of a game and wish to install it on another machine for some head to head. Or maybe only one of us has the expansion pack and we're trying to make it work on both machines. That kind of thing.
I do not typically visit crack sites to look for No CD Cracks, or download games from P2P and the like. My first thought when I see a game I want is that I should go buy it, not that I should find a way to steal it. The piracy that I engage in is usually the result of peer pressure, laziness, or simply that the opportunity to quickly and painlessly obtain a pirated copy was made available to me.
I recognize that there is an immorality to what I've described, but I honestly don't care that much. On rare occasions I have become so loyal to a developer that I refuse to pirate their software (Blizzard, Stardock), but in general I like free things as much as anyone else.
In my experience, most gamers share my approach to the matter or are if anything more inclined to pirate than I am. We live in an era of the mantra "Sharing is Caring" after all - piracy is socially acceptable in most circles. Indeed, refusing to allow someone to pirate can cause them to be offended. The prevailing social expectations in the gamer community are inverted from what people describe as the moral choice in forums such as this one. Peer pressure can be a real factor, even for responsible adults.
With all of that said, here is my take on DRM:
- I totally understand why companies want and need to protect their profits.
- Online piracy means that game copying is no longer restricted to your circle of real life contacts to whom you could give a physical media or a photocopy of the code wheel - a cracked game now means that anyone anywhere can get a free copy. This really ups the stakes for the developers.
- Draconian DRM angers me, and in general causes me to not buy a title unless I wanted that title really badly.
In short, I'm generally willing to purchase a title but will also sometimes pirate one. Here are some of the things that I think work to keep a person like me honest:
1) Online features that are CD-Key linked so that sharing your CD-Key causes you to lose functionality because only one CD-Key can be online at a time. An example of this would be Blizzard's Battle.Net
2) MMO's - pretty hard to pirate a subscription.
3) Systems like Steam which provide the user with a lot of flexibility and freedom but still do a good job of stopping piracy.
4) CD check systems that cannot be circumvented by taking the CD out after the check is made (we've run whole LAN parties on one CD). Also, playing the expansion version should require the expansion CD, or we'll just put the original CD in one computer and the expansion CD in the other.
5) One time activations that require an online registration or over the phone registration along with the CD-Key. We're smart enough to realize that something will look fishy if I register the same CD-Key too many times in too short a period.
These kinds of things limit piracy without being overly onerous. I will also generally not copy a game if a developer offers it on an honor system of some kind - Stardock for example, but I wouldn't assume that to be true of gamers generally.
Things that will stop me from buying a game include:
1) root-kit like malware as part of DRM
2) disabling functionality on my computer - making the CD Rom not work right for example.
3) software that is difficult to uninstall
4) software that violates my sense of privacy
5) systems that are overly difficult to use or that result in me not truly owning my purchase. (I should be able to reinstall the game on my new PC with minimal fuss.)
A reasonable DRM system isn't going to stop all piracy. I think that's a reality that publishers of all kinds will have to live with. A perfect solution just doesn't exist. Trying to make perfect DRM results in making awful DRM. Just make it good enough and stop there.
If I want a game badly enough, like Starcraft 2 for example, then I will sign over the rights to my hard drive to Blizzard Inc. if that's what I have to do to play the game. Most games don't have such an honored place in our hearts, however, and companies like Blizzard develop the customer loyalty that they have by not requiring such nonsense. I have definitely not purchased games that I wanted because of DRM concerns. I didn't pirate them, I just didn't play them.
I feel for the developers, I really do. They're dealing with a gaming community that publicly claims to be above piracy but is very obviously pirating their games. When they take measures in response, we become angry, and no business thrives by making it's customers angry. There is no panacea. Piracy cannot be completely stopped, and DRM of some kind will be necessary to minimize that loss.
To the developers:
If you make your game too easy to steal, I will steal it. If you make your DRM too oppressive, I will boycott it. If you produce a game I want to play and protect it with reasonable DRM, I will buy it. My gratitude and sympathy to all of the developers who continue to make great games for us and have to deal with this technological and public relations nightmare at every release. I know I'm not a perfect customer, but I'm still your customer, and if we can manage to work this thing out I will give you my money time and time again.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=235596&site=pcg
And RPS's take on this
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/19/drmogeddon-part-2
A little Aside on Silent Hunter 5:
I only just realised that this DRM is also going to be applying to Silent Hunter 5, which I was previously looking forward to.
Now let's actually LOOK at Silent Hunter 5, because I feel it's a relatively unique case amongst the games Ubi's going to be publishing. It's an established but extremely niche franchise of games. It does not now, nor has it ever been a big seller. The market it's selling to is very small but also very dedicated to the franchise, it's practically the embodiment of niche PC gaming.
This is the one move they could have taken to completely destroy the fanbase for the franchise short of screwing up the game itself. A game like SH5 doesn't depend on huge marketing budgets, it doesn't depend on production values and endorsements by .50 Cent. It'll never have those, and it'll never be trendy.
It depends on its following amongst a fairly hardcore fanbase, and having a good relationship with that fanbase. It's how the series has survived to date despite being a game, when you get down to it, about using calculus and stop watches to plot intercept courses.
People tend to laugh at "angry men venting on the internet", but a game like SH5 literally cannot afford to tick off that small group of players that discuss these things on forums. Because that hardcore group of enthusiasts makes up the majority of their playerbase and sales. The SH5 forums are pretty much abuzz already with a lot of venting, and plenty of people saying they've cancelled their orders. For other major games this can typically be safely ignored because the majority of buyers either don't know or don't care. Here, the same people complaining are largely the same people who were your key audience.
So I guess what I'm saying is, the Silent Hunter series has existed for 15 years because of its dedicated following, and surprisingly it's this move that may actually put the franchise (and I apologise for the unintended pun) at risk of sinking.
I never claimed it was merely the appearance of a crime. I said it was an actual crime (as Lars stated). But regardless, whether you have officially committed a crime or not, the act of downloading a game the same way a pirate would continues to justify their actions - after all, why would anyone go to the effort of cracking a game and making it available if nobody else wanted it? Your intentions do not matter.
You know, it amuses me to think that someday, thirty years from now, some politician will appear on television...
"Did I download stuff? You bet I did and I enjoyed it. That's what we did back then."
The moral thing is to make your one legal copy yourself the moment you put the disc in.
How do you even know what you have purchased, exactly? I own World of Warcraft. Is it your opinion that it is perfectly moral for me to run a private server for myself, since I own all the content on that disc and should be allowed to run around in Stormwind whenever I want, internet or no?
But the "essence of our transaction" was that I bought an online multiplayer game, right? So now it's moral for me to let others connect to my private server so that I can play with them. That's what I paid for, isn't it?
Like it or not, the extent of your purchase is defined by laws, not by your moral compass. You can't damn the fine print because the fine print is what grants you the right to play it in the first place.
You just have to trust people to be honest and responsible by buying the game themselves, just like we have to trust people not to drink too much. Of course you can't trust everyone, thats a given (and a founding principle of the United States).
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Heh, I was thinking the same thing. The idea that your game won't be accessible or will kick you out because some silly goose who you don't know decides to DDOS the DRM server at that moment is so mind-boggling. I can understand the one-time internet connection, but constant connections to the DRM server? Man, Ubisoft are silly geese.
3DS FC: 0817-3759-2788
I don't think they could make it more obvious to people if they tried.
This day, next year: Ubisoft was named in a class action lawsuit today filed on behalf of all their legitimate customers, who have been unable to play their games for the better part of a year. A representative of Ubisoft accused pirates of ruining their poorly though out system. One engineer from competitor company Mann Co. remarked... "I warned em not to touch that darn thing."
See, this idea that everyone who pirates the game would otherwise buy the game if they didn't pirate is based PURELY on guess work, wishful thinking, and blaming others for the lack of success of said titles. Now, I agree that there are those who w/o piracy would buy the game otherwise, BUT THOSE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT IF THERE WASN'T THIS KIND OF DRM ON IT!
Those people who would pirate no matter what, guess what, I have friends who do that, and I am sure almost everyone in this topic does to; they wouldn't have bought the damn game no matter what, cause they don't want to spend their money on it! Those are the types of people who will go out and buy tribes 2 and play it for 8 ****ing years and then finally buy a new game. This idea that if it wasn't for piracy all these pirates would be going out and buying the game is absolutely ludicrous.
It's only a problem in terms of annoyance, the fact that pirates can play the game w/o buying it. However, if you look just recently and one of the e-reader program's, or game companies decision to stop using terrible DRM practices(Bioware/Atari with NWN2 DLC) and ect. When they got rid of the stupid drm sales went up.
The people who pirate just to pirate are not the people you should be worrying about from a economic point of view, maybe from a moral one but that is a different subject. You should be focusing on those people who pirate because the current offering of drm is pushing them away from a title they would normally buy but wont, yet are willing to pirate it.
Kevin Rose, you know the really successful tech guy from Screen Savers/Digg/Revision 3/investor, ya, he says the exact same damn thing, that piracy is not NEAR as big of a problem as software companies like to claim. Fact is piracy is not only a way to try before you buy, but is also used because of stupid decisions businesses make, that some people just are not willing to pay for, and put up with.
God, stop saying this as if it somehow justifies it. There are far better ways to justify it if you really need to, just don't use this.
Some choice quotes
So if you were wondering why they'd go with such a measure, now you know. They actually, genuinely believe that this is going to be uncrackable. Which is also why they don't like going with Steam, because Steam is cracked so easily in comparison to their new system.
So that's a "no" then. And please don't expect me to believe that they're going to be maintaining servers for these games years down the line. Heck, EA recently shut down their multiplayer servers for games less than two years old. Businesses aren't in the habit of maintaining services that lose them money.
What makes you think im trying to justify it? The statement is true, and it was part of what Kevin Rose has said in the past, which is why I included it. Those use this practice dont really care if it's "justified" or not. It IS practical to do even if it is viewed as morally wrong.
I live in a country where it's quicker and (almost) cheaper to pick up a gray market copy of a game than download the demo. Just throwing that out there.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
It's about as useful as saying I can open a pack of Oreos at Martins to try before I buy. How convenient!
You are comparing apples to cars and you expect me to take your comparison seriously?
Seems to me that people who are opposed to DRM should not add fuel to the fire by downloading said game, and instead should go support the indie developers that are willing to put games out their without copy protection.
I did no such thing. Comparing two objects is not the same thing as comparing statements. Your unuseful statement is as unuseful as another unuseful statement, which is why you need to stop saying it.
I think you are missing why people are saying it. The people who are pirating don't give, in the words of Cartman They, "don't give 2 ****s about some stupid ass whales!(the industry)". These publishers/developers are focusing so hard on the pirates, that they are not backing up and seeing the whole picture, to the point that they would almost burn the entire village to catch the thief.
You can buy the game and then download just the DRM-removing crack, which is what I do far more often than should be necessary.
Extremely poor analogy. When you open that pack of oreos, you eliminate stock from the store. No such thing occurs with digital piracy.
I'm against digital piracy in it's actual, pure definition, but disagreeing with something doesn't mean I approve of misleading arguments against.
As far as the subject goes with people "pirating" games that they legitimately own, the stance of the law on this in the United States is not clear, and I would defy any game publisher to successfully take someone to court for cracking a game that they own, or downloading a game that, for example, received accidental damage to the physical disc.
i think most pirates would agree with part 2, but would recoil at part 1, because how then could you "stick it to the man" ?
For me it's an issue of accountability. If they're going to be providing the product then they need to be held accountable for it.
Leaving that aside, it's not always possible to strip the DRM from the product anyway. When I tried to run Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones it wouldn't run because Starforce was being identified by Vista as malware and automatically being shut down before it could do anything.
Good thing as far as I'm concerned, I didn't want it on my system, but it left me unable to play the game. I could download a torrent of TTT, but the Starforce DRM still existed in that copy, it just didn't check to see if the disc was in the drive. However it was still there and IIRC still had ring 0 access to drivers, which was what was setting off Vista.
I pretty much waited until just a couple of months ago to play it. By asking someone to buy me ANOTHER copy off of Steam, which had had the DRM removed altogether.
No, you are trying to do, is obfuscate what I was saying by trying to correlate and compare, walking into a grocery store, opening a box of oreo's and eating one and thne buying the oreo's if you liked them to torrenting a game, trying it out, and then buying it if you like it.
A better analogy would be going into a grocery store, walking up to the open candy section(you know, the white chocolate covered pretzels and what have you), and taking a piece and seeing if they are any good before getting one of those little plastic baggies and putting 2 scoopfuls of pretzels in the bag(you know, the thing a large majority of the people do?).