Always-on-DRM - why buy games with it?

[Aeshi]

Here's an honest question to all the "In 10 years time the Always-On-DRM games won't work anymore!" people:

How many of your games from 10 years back actually work today? Because out of all the games I own that are older than 6 years, only 3 still work[footnote]and 2 of those may not even count since they only work due to their developers releasing Installers that work on newer Operating Systems[/footnote] as opposed to just going "Yeah,sorry but nobody supports software that old anymore"

You might as well ask why anyone bought games that came on Floppy Disks since they're basically unusable today.

 

[veloper]

Here's an honest question to all the "In 10 years time the Always-On-DRM games won't work anymore!" people:

How many of your games from 10 years back actually work today? Because out of all the games I own that are older than 6 years, only 3 still work[footnote]and 2 of those may not even count since they only work due to their developers releasing Installers that work on newer Operating Systems[/footnote] as opposed to just going "Yeah,sorry but nobody supports software that old anymore"

You might as well ask why anyone bought games that came on Floppy Disks since they're basically unusable today.

TOO easy: DOSBOX. All the really old stuff works conveniently.

The trickiest titles are the early windows games, especially direct3d games from before directx 6. Here an old rig with a voodoo2 and windows 98 is the solution. Value of such a setup: almost nil.

 

[Easton Dark]

Here's an honest question to all the "In 10 years time the Always-On-DRM games won't work anymore!" people:

How many of your games from 10 years back actually work today? Because out of all the games I own that are older than 6 years, only 3 still work[footnote]and 2 of those may not even count since they only work due to their developers releasing Installers that work on newer Operating Systems[/footnote] as opposed to just going "Yeah,sorry but nobody supports software that old anymore"

You might as well ask why anyone bought games that came on Floppy Disks since they're basically unusable today.

Are we talking just PC games? Because if it was for consoles back then, it'd be "all of them".

For PC we have Blizzards titles like Starcraft and Warcraft 1, 2, 3, Sim *everything* (copter, driver, s, city, etc), Crusader: No Remorse, Myst, Riven, Heroes of Might and Magic 1, 2, 3... I think that's all the games that my brothers owned. (I own HoMMIII, but that's it, because I was 8 with no disposable income).

That's every game I can remember being in my cd tray thing at home right now. Add another year on, to 9 years ago? Sid Meier's Pirates and Farcry 1 still work. Sim City 4 still works. Star Wars Battlefront 1 still works (and is fun).



I know arguments can get low, but please do not start saying that designing a game to be unplayable at someone's whim is ok.

 

[Easton Dark]

I am looking at the list there and as far as I know a lot of those have had work done to be released as part of anniversary sold packets (Heroes here in http://games.gamepressure.com/game_info.asp?ID=10590). Original Starcraft and Warcraft got work in as they were sold on Battlenet.

Either way doesn't matter, because you are moving the goalpost when you make it about someones whim. It is not about someones whim. It is about after a certain time. Tell me a single scenario where a gaming service have been shut down on a whim and Ill reconsider my position of the risk of this happening.

I own the original disks to all of them, so no "anniversary" stuff.

Plenty of MMOs have been shut down though, their DRM scheme (and basic requirement to play) of always being online is now being applied to single-player games.

Single-player games I can't think of any yet, but hey, I believe in trends . What once was firing support workers (I think there was a post earlier in the thread about not receiving a support email to get Deus Ex 2 working after a year) and ceasing production of game discs will probably become shutting down game servers instead when the game's not making enough money.

DRM's just a hassle, and I really don't like the concept of a game I purchased being unavailable whenever a company decides to kick it.

 

[klaynexas3]

God dammit, I feel like I need to bring this up again and basically shout it.

*clears throat*YOUR WALLET IS NOT THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CHANGE THE INDUSTRY. GAMES ARE AN ART FORM, AND THUS YOU CAN MAKE THEM TOO. MAKE YOUR STAND, BUT DON'T DEMONIZE THE OTHERS AS OPPRESSORS OF FREEDOM. IF YOU WANT A CHANGE, DO ALL YOU CAN DO, NOT JUST NOT BUY SOMETHING. YOU'RE NOT A HERO FOR NOT SPENDING MONEY. GET IN THE INDUSTRY AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND STOP ACTING LIKE AAA COMPANIES CONTROL IT ALL. IT DOESN'T. MAKE A DIFFERENCE, AND STOP BEING A DICK TO THOSE THAT ARE SIMPLY WANTING TO PLAY GAMES.

Seriously, come down off your high horse and realize that you really aren't saving the gaming world because you didn't buy something. I'll treat you like a hero the moment you make a company greater than Valve. Until then, you're just another consumer making a decision. The big companies don't control everything, this is more so true in the PC gaming market, but will soon be true also with the Ouya, Gamestick, and all these different "Steambox" type gadgets.

I can understand the dislike for always-on DRM, and I understand your boycotts, and I myself have yet to buy a game with always-on DRM, but I am damn sick of you people acting so...upity...just because you made this decision and treating anyone that doesn't totally agree with you with the utmost contempt.

This doesn't make any sense what so ever.

Are you telling people who are not artists to also spend their life making games? Do have any idea how ridiculous that is? Voicing your opinion is the easiest and fastest way to be heard. Going to the effort of challenging these giants is a very difficult task to accomplish, most people I meet dream of it. Of course there are other ways, like the people who make videos expressing themselves and what not, but it's just never enough it seems.

Also, these people who throw money at these games with DRM, they support it. Whether you believe it or not, they are part of the source. In fact, you could even say they fuel the entire thing. Holding down the caps while expressing your beliefs isn't going to change that, neither others beliefs as well.

And one more thing. Every one has a difficult time expressing themselves on these controversial issues, of course it's going to get fucking ugly.

I'm not saying that everyone should join the industry, I'm saying that it's another option. I doubt that every person who is apart of the boycott has no interest in having a job with games involved, so that statement is more so directed at them, not just you. Also, you don't always have to go on head to head with these marketing giants to get your ideas out there, the "making a company greater than Valve" wasn't really meant to be taken literally, so you don't have to make a corporation just to get your ideas out there.

Also, while the all caps isn't about to change anyones minds, neither is insulting them, which I have yet to see any of the major boycotters manage to avoid as of far. Since the beginning of this thread there has been nothing but contempt for those that may have bought a game with always on DRM(which if we actually look at it, there is currently only one that is running with an always on DRM method), and there hasn't been a single attempt to actually persuade them without insulting them or replying in such a way that just brims with frothing hatred for the very existance of these people. There has been no civility what so ever, and you expect people to change their minds? Try looking at the whole picture instead of just your side of the argument. That goes for both sides, not just boycotters. Listen to what someone else has to say instead of just jumping down his/her throat the moment that they show any varient of your opinion.

PS I mean always on DRM as with single-player games. Bringing multiplayer games into this seems ridiculous, as of course it will have to be always on, as it is a multiplayer game, DRM or not.

PPS(or is it PSS?) I will be done with this thread after this post. If there is still some unclearity about what I said, I will answer it, but I'm staying out of the debates as I don't want to be apart of the shitstorm. I wanted to try and help remedy it, at least a little, but I know myself, and I'll slowly devolve to throwing passive aggressive insults around, and I'd rather stay away from that.

 

[EvilMaggot]

Because i want the game.. and dont care about the DRM... yes its anoying, but hell.. i rather wanna cope with the DRM and play a awesome game than never get to play it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Even BloatedGuppy lost his cool.

That's not news. I lose my cool with clockwork regularity. =P

 

[karamazovnew]

I'm guessing that this thread has been sparked by a Sim City fan. I had been praying for a Sim City 5 for many years. For me this was the most wanted game of the year. I'm a sailor and I need long boring games to fill up 6 month voyages with no internet. So the DRM made me angry at first. But then I realized that the game itself was crap...

Always online DRM games are the future so you'd best get used to them. With Sim City, Ea keeps half the game on its servers. It might be a single player game at heart but it's also basically an internet game. It's impossible to pirate (I think) and the failure to do so will tempt other publishers to go on this road. The next gen consoles will have always online requirements. Of course it's bad in some ways, but 10 years from now you'll hear the old stories of disk games in boxes and smile. Online DRM isn't the problem.

The real problem is that new games are crap. There was a time when games promised virtual reality, endless possibilities, complex worlds to explore, a chance to become anything you wanted to be. We're just a few years from having virtual helmets, but all we'll be able to play on them are crap micro-transactioning, dlc ridden, advertising filled games. We'll have our virtual world all right... but we'll pay for every step we'll take in that "free", glitsy, unimaginative, quick-time event world.

 

[Easton Dark]

Again that isn't taking into account that over the 10 years my games have been stolen/lost/scratched/exploded in my CD drive (1 copy of Warcraft 3 frozen throne). If non of your games suffered during the test of time then you beat the odds.

Now I get that this is yet another hoop to jump through, but the concept that the risk of losing the use of your games when you have them in your house is a lie. There is risk involved in both.

There is a risk in both. Like when CD keys were the only protection, if you lost your CD key, there was no legal way to install your game, and was legally worthless as in you can't use it. Of course how could companies enforce that? The internet was really still new to a lot of gamers and to a lot of kids that just started gaming.

Now companies found a way to eliminate games being lost, scratched, exploded, arguably stolen (though your account can still be hijacked), and to enforce the "one game per purchase" thing. It's by connecting the game for online authentication. I'm of the persuasion where I don't feel like the trade-off is equal or beneficial to the consumer, you are, as far as I can tell.

If steam had no offline mode and no (Valve-backed) promise that if they shut down the DRM will go away, I would take my business elsewhere.

 

[Vegosiux]

Always online DRM games are the future so you'd best get used to them.

I'm sorry, but that sounded just like "Lie back and think of England." I have an inherent aversion to that attitude. But, since it seems most people don't, I suppose I'm still screwed.

As I said before. Can I be online 24/7? Yeah, no problem there. But do I want to be online 24/7? Well. Fuck no. But that's okay, I've still got my old collection.

I think it's time for another journey through the Sword Coast.

 

[Signa]

Here's an honest question to all the "In 10 years time the Always-On-DRM games won't work anymore!" people:

How many of your games from 10 years back actually work today? Because out of all the games I own that are older than 6 years, only 3 still work[footnote]and 2 of those may not even count since they only work due to their developers releasing Installers that work on newer Operating Systems[/footnote] as opposed to just going "Yeah,sorry but nobody supports software that old anymore"

You might as well ask why anyone bought games that came on Floppy Disks since they're basically unusable today.

I don't think there is a game I own that I can't play, and I've quite the collection. I'm always putting in old games like Thief or Max Payne. I find those old classics are a breath of fresh air to what the common offering is today. Hell, I plugged in my SNES a few months back, and I've been going through some old classics. Super Metroid is going to be 19 this year.

That's why this DRM stuff worries me: Either today's games are going to feel like a breath of fresh air in 10-15 years, or the longevity that I'm used to won't be possible for completely arbitrary or greed-driven reasons. There's a damn good chance that I won't be able to revisit Bioshock in a decade due to the securom server the installer communicates with being gone. The Steam copy I own might circumvent that requirement now, but it was a legitimate concern with the boxed copy I have. I know there will be hacks and other mods to allow it to load, but the reason to download them will be completely different than the reasons that forced me to mod Thief for its inability to handle multithreaded CPUs.

 

[Reaper195]

This is why I like console games more, among many other reasons..

TO be honest, putting the disc in and playing the game right away is really the only advantage consoles have over PC. No installing, waiting for it to download (If you got it on steam), setting up an EA account, Bioware account and Origin account just to play ME3 (Happened to my flatmate. I was four hours in before he started the game. Although there were a few other problems too).

But aside from hacking your wntire console, which is rather harder than getting a No CD crack or whatever you use when pirating games on PC, console has the best kind of DRM. No disc in the drive? Lol, no game you play.

 

[Nieroshai]

I'm tired of this topic constantly reviving just when I'm sure it'll sink into obscurity.
I'm not buying games with DRM. I'm buying games. Period. They have DRM on them? What, do you expect me to boycott a force I can't combat? Well too bad, I just want to play a game. I don't give a rat's ass about your personal opinion of what is and isn't okay, because I have a very simple revelation: everything about every single one of us is already on the grid. Your personal information is already out there. Your accounts are sitting there,, just waiting to be stolen. The government is already watching you, your every move is out there on the internet, for companies and the government alike to peruse as they will. You have rights that are inherent, but in reality you don't get to exercise any of them without considerable price. You are on the grid, you will always be on the grid, and nothing you do or say will ever change that. Welcome to the Matrix. Yor life may not be a computer sim, but it sure is constantly monitored and influenced. So I'm going to have fun and play games, thank you very much, because I'm not going to pretentiously try to keep from the Corporations and the Government what in reality they already have. I welcome DRM, because it's an open and honest version of what's already in place.

Welcome the Cloud.

 

[JagermanXcell]

I'm just going to assume there are such things as smart consumers that aren't necessarily smart, and leave it at that.

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

Simple, I don't buy games with this always-on-DRM bullshit. I think I have bought one, but the version for the PS3 where this issue didn't exist. And I'm seriously reconsidering buying steam games on disc - I hate it when they seem to have put like <10% of the game on the disc (I'm looking at you 'War of the Roses') and I have to waste my goddamn shaped internet quota on downloading the rest. That's seriously insulting and hitting my wallet twice effectively. Neither am I going to get the new PS4 and xbox720 game systems if they have always-on, nor ever buy a game where microtransactions get too intrusive or they employ retarded skinner box tactics to try to addict me.

I'm a human being, not a white mouse surgically attached to a wallet..

 

[EtherealBeaver]

snip

I only ever bought 1 game with always-on-drm and I regretted it pretty fast because nothing on it worked, and the DRM prevented me from playing my game entirely - despite the fact that I have a very stable 40/40mbit connection. The problem was simply that their game couldnt read their site where the product was activated and I had to go through 3 weeks of customer support to play it where they ended up just explaining me how to crack their game to make it work. After that long I really didnt feel like playing it at all. And before anyone comes saying it was probably a small game, it was Dragon Age 1 Ultimate Edition (which by the way already used Steam as DRM but apparantly that wasnt enough for the hellspawn people which created the game)

That is my problem with always-on-drm. The fact that many people have wireless internet and like in concrete houses (which can block off the internet through walls etc) just makes it even worse but the thing that I find worst is that the company effectively have a kill switch for a product you bought and paid for and that they are trying to explain it by saying it is a licence rather than a product (which is illegal, at least where I am from, because we have a consumers law and companies can never put you off worse than the law states as the minimum)

Also, last time I played SimCity was the original SimCity (the one before SimCity2000), back when I was 5-6 years old. Probably good I wasnt a real mayor back then lol.

No the question popped up after watching some gaming news about BulletRun and I realised how I honestly never understood why companies are allowed to do like that. I may be a rare sort of gamer who likes my games, even after I played them the first time - just like I like watching my movies more than once or reading my books more than once or wearing my clothes more than once. If I bought games with the always-on-drm I cant be sure I can ever do that - granted, I wear clothes more than once pear year, but there can easily go 1-2 or more years between watching the same movie or reading the same book or playing the same game again. Hell, I still return to Master of Magic from 1995 once per year and if I ever find a game that I really enjoy which happen to have always-on-drm on it, I wont have that joy of returning to a game again.

That is why I refuse to buy them and why I honestly cant understand the sentiment from others to buy them either - but it appears that the "use and dispose" culture is very much alive in gaming so that may be one of the reasons here.

Edit, had to include this one!

Here's an honest question to all the "In 10 years time the Always-On-DRM games won't work anymore!" people:

How many of your games from 10 years back actually work today?

Any DOS game you can get your hands on. Dosbox is a lovely tool and even if I didnt have dosbox, nothing prevented me from saving my old Pentium II and using that to play all those games. I didnt, because I chose not to - but that should be my deicision and not the financial decision of a coorporate business man deciding what gives the best cost benefit.
And on top of that, any NES, SNES, Saturn or any other of the old game console games btw.

Edit II: Ever saw the Angry Video Game Nerd? His basement full of old games from as far back as the 70´s still work based on this principle. There is no reason, other than mis-managed coorporate attempts to prevent piracy, that this should ever even be an issue - and the worst part is that the pirates dont care. In fact many people pirate just to get away from the always-on-drm