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

[Flutterguy]

"Wally Bear and the No Gang" for NES still has the hotline open from the game. Thats like 20 years old now too.

 

[Sangnz]

Always on DRM and how it impacts me.

Cons
Unable play if I loose internet access (isp goes down or router craps out)
Unable to play if the online servers go down
Unable to play if in a location with no easy net access (laptop)

Pros
Sweet fuck all

It's a bad system when it's better to have a cracked version of the game. Always on DRM gives no added benefit to me and you can ram the piracy argument up your hole, DRM (online or otherwise) has NEVER been proven to even impact piracy, in fact it is easy to draw the conclusion it has driven more people to piracy in order to bypass draconian DRM practices

 

[J Tyran]

You're absolutely wrong on that regard. If Blizzard decided tomorrow that it was no longer profitable to run their Diablo 3 servers then you will never be able to play it again. A game you paid full price for, probably bought the collector's edition too but it doesn't matter. Once those servers are gone so is your game. You have an expensive paperweight if you bought the physical edition, that's all.

And if my PC breaks and I couldn't afford a new one I wouldn't be able to play it.

And if I caught a horrible disease and went blind I wouldn't be able to play it.

And if the world ends and the government collapses there probably wouldn't be anything to play it on.

(I don't actually play Diablo III just pointing out you could go "what if" all damn day)

 

[veloper]

Even BloatedGuppy lost his cool.

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

From your posts I don't usually get that impression.
If you really are raging inside, don't tell anyone, because you're the closest thing this community has to a kung-fu master. Be proud.

 

[EtherealBeaver]

Could you tell me what game it was and what you did to pursue this?

Because as far as I know Dragon Age only used the DRM to control the DLC.

It was Dragon Age I and the DLC didnt work. If the DLC doesnt work, the game I bought didnt work. Period. And the support didnt help me in any way a pirate forum could not have - except that getting the answer illigally would take me 2 minutes while getting it from support took me 3 weeks.

You know what was an even bigger collection than what he has in his basement?
His collection before he started sorting out the games that didn't work.
Do you have an idea of the amount of resources and time involved in maintaining a collection like his? Do you think it just happens?
Think about this, what if he has to move? How many of the games do you think will get dmged in the process of moving an entire room full of this stuff? What happens with the copper on the cartridge connectors if the right combination of heat, air moisture and time kicks in?

That does nothing to answer the point that companies have a kill switch for stuff which belongs to me. If I cant take care of my own stuff, then its my problem obviously but that does not give the company a right to have a kill switch. You might as well say that deliberately making clothes so that they disintegrate within 5 years is ok because most people probably throw it out by then anyway.

 

[Snotnarok]

Because people are easily manipulated chumps who'll always put the love of the game & their 'favorite company' before logic, common sense and such. Another thing I don't get, favorite company. It's why people buy the Wii-U, hardly makes sense when the thing has such ridiculous game license issues (as in your purchases are linked to your hardware), but because there's a new Zelda on the way it's a must have. It doesn't make sense to me.

The only game I have with always-on is Diablo 3, which a friend purchased for me and I don't play anymore and only played with him. The experience was frustrating, irritating, poor in general and inconvenient, after experiencing always-on first hand I really think you have to have something wrong with you to support such disrespect for customers and general garbage. We're done with the game not too long in, his account was hacked and Blizzard set him 20 levels back, so when Torchlight 2 came out, it was a no-brainer, 4 TL2s for the price of 1 D3.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Fifth
The whole point you seem to be avoiding is that there is risk involved with having your Games yourself just as well as there is risk involved with having them as a service. That you refuse to acknowledge the risk of the games yourself exists doesn't make it so.

And what you don't seem to understand is that this is not a valid argument. You are responsible for things you purchase. If you break something you bought it's your fault. And you can always take better care of your stuff so they don't break. Having games as service is dumb and it's of no benefit to you. Games are not services. Games are products like everything else you buy. You demonstrated yet again how easy it is for these companies to manipulate you into believing in their ridiculous rhetoric. Now they're trying to convince people that games are services in order to justify their ambition to take full control of things you buy. Control that should belong to you. And no one in their right mind would want that. You'll swallow any bullshit they serve you. But you don't mind. You like services.

Another thing. Just because someone provides an online service it doesn't mean that they should be able to force you to use it. That's another problem with always-on DRM. Single player games don't need a constant online service. What kind of service are they providing when you're just playing a single player game?

And I know you're already thinking of Steam. Don't even bother. You can start your Steam games offline by going to their installation folder. You don't even have to log in. There are a few games that don't allow that. But even that's irrelevant because there is yet another way! You can create a steam.cfg file with two lines to make it always starts offline.

 

[Atomic German]

WHile were all at it, how come Steam hasn't popped up as a valid and true example of when Digital Download Service is done right, its technically DRM in it's own way, isn't it? But with the allowance of an offline mode I'd reason that it's the prefect way to do it, no? With Valve Corp. Being the fourth largest user of global bandwith, 55 million return customers globally and prospectively the most successful DDL service in existence at the moment, wouldn't that imply that it's inevitably going to set the industry standard anyway?

I feel we've had plenty of argument over DRM as a bad thing, and dare i request we find how DRMs much more appealing cousin has fared by comparison, I forget what its termed, but Steam uses it in one capacity or another, where the game is authenticated usually once and thats it?

I mean, its been visited time and again. And as inhibitory to service as DRM is it's really not going anywhere for a good long while i'd wager. And it seems people want to believe, in a rather paranoid fashion that it's here forever. Historically speaking when it comes to technology, there will be a better way to do it, now will that 'better' way be good for us? that's up in the air.

DRMs lifetime will only be as long as we remain connected to the internet. And i'm afraid on a technological advancement scale that's actually a pretty short time to be around. If anything the only security measure I'm ever in favor of is the one time registration.

To be perfectly honest, and to contradict my first post entirely. All the trumpeting and soap boxing really doesnt do a whole lot, and maybe thats because its to the wrong people. I know its a tough nugget to trust our government, but there are those who will listen.

 

[solemnwar]

Isn't getting a game (specifically a PC game) that DOESN'T have some form of always-on DRM almost impossible now?
If I were to not buy a game that has always-on DRM... I really wouldn't be getting any games at all that are coming out nowadays, I'd be limited to older games.

Which I don't really like because they look so bad. Yes I'm shallow, I like things that aesthetically please my eyes, so sue me.

 

[Signa]

Isn't getting a game (specifically a PC game) that DOESN'T have some form of always-on DRM almost impossible now?
If I were to not buy a game that has always-on DRM... I really wouldn't be getting any games at all that are coming out nowadays, I'd be limited to older games.

Which I don't really like because they look so bad. Yes I'm shallow, I like things that aesthetically please my eyes, so sue me.

There's been DRM in everything, yes, but there's a HUGE difference between being forced to keep your own CD in your own drive vs being granted limited life-time installs of the product, or having to always be connected to a server you have no control over that isn't always going to be there. I don't mind DRM in my products, I mind not having control over them after I paid them a premium price for that product.

The best example of where this can go before always online DRM was a thing was in Freelancer. Microsoft was running a global server for anyone running a game server to communicate with. Anyone running the game would connect to the global server and be shown a list of all the game servers in the world. After a while, Microsoft shut down their global server, rendering online multiplayer impossible for the community. That was no problem though, because they still coded the game to allow an .ini file to be edited so that a new, community-driven global server could be connected to. That option will not exist with current DRM schemes, because it will completely defeat the purpose of the DRM.

 

[Sangnz]

Snip

What about the pro of being able to play your particular game on any computer with the client software applied (Diablo 3). Removal of risk involved with destruction of physical media.

I know that there is an internet issue here, but are we going to are that wasn't a con the second I wanted to play multiplayer anyway? essentially any game focused on multiplayer might as well ignore those cons.

That Pro isn't a pro because on non online DRM games if the software is already applied you can just play without a login, unless you are talking about D3 trying to be an MMO with a persistent toon, which is fine but that can just be a multiplayer feature and still have an offline mode like oh I dunno D2 did. Hell if you were that worried about leveling you just carried a backup of your save file on a disk (no usb drives back then).

For the most part multiplayer is online DRM which we accept mostly because you need internet to play online so the hatred towards online DRM is mostly focused on the impact it has on single player.
Good example of this would be almost anything by Ubisoft on pc needs net access to play, anno 2070, farcry 3, asscreed 3 etc, no internet no play.
This is online DRM causing its paying customers to jump through hoops where someone who has a cracked copy suffers none of the issues that plague online drm.

It is a bad practice and all I see it doing is driving potential customers away by forcing us to jump through hoops to access the product we bought and preventing us from using that product should we loose our internet which is a non guaranteed service provided by a 3rd party.

 

[Jodah]

The company potentially shutting down the server ten years down the road is a non-issue. When, and if, it happens private servers or cracked versions of the game will exist. Hell, those things usually exist three weeks after a release (not that I support using said cracked versions while the game is still supported).

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

They are called servers because they do services. Anything that involves a server involves a service. That isn't corporate rhetoric. That is IT facts.

You miss the point again. Single player games don't need a server. And games themselves aren't services, servers are.