Removing DRM?

[DoPo]

some games(like Crysis and Game Dev Tycoon) have creative ways of dealing with piracy.

I don't know about Crysis, however, Game Dev Tycoon didn't really have an issue with cracking - it was the developer that uploaded a "faulty" version on the torrent sites. Since it was an small indie game it would have taken longer for a cracked version to appear simply by virtue of nobody bothering to do it immediately after release. Heck, many people wouldn't have heard of the game if it wasn't for the fiasco that followed, that includes potential crackers. The dev took the opportunity to distribute the one and only version pirated version that would be floating around thus the one and only version was the faulty one.

 

[lacktheknack]

some games(like Crysis and Game Dev Tycoon) have creative ways of dealing with piracy.

I don't know about Crysis, however, Game Dev Tycoon didn't really have an issue with cracking - it was the developer that uploaded a "faulty" version on the torrent sites. Since it was an small indie game it would have taken longer for a cracked version to appear simply by virtue of nobody bothering to do it immediately after release. Heck, many people wouldn't have heard of the game if it wasn't for the fiasco that followed, that includes potential crackers. The dev took the opportunity to distribute the one and only version pirated version that would be floating around thus the one and only version was the faulty one.

Crysis Warhead did this:

<youtube=YIXgi9qWzu8>

The chickens do no damage, so it breaks the game. And of course, if any of them complained on the forums, well...

 

[Skeleon]

"Services such as Steam don't have any plans for DRM."

You realise, Steam IS the DRM?

Exactly this. Steam is a DRM tied to an advertisement, shopping (oh, sorry, "subscribing") and chatting platform. The additional features don't change the fact that at its core it's DRM.

As for patches? As Alfador_VII said, doing that would take money and time very few devs want to spend on an old project.

 

[CollinxChu]

I've never really trusted this part - who would actually pay for them to remove the DRM?/quote]

Consumers, possibly. Say Valve itself has massive hits to budget but Steam still runs fairly strong. They could add a one-time cost to remove all of THEIR DRM from your side, however ethical it may be. It's just an example, mind you.

snip

You missed my point -- I was asking if INDIVIDUAL companies SHOULD do it, and why not? The why not having been addressed rather nicely, admittedly. In other words, Steamworks patching out THEIR drm, not the individual games'.


As a side note, for those I don't respond to, it's merely because I've nothing to say to you. It's nothing personal, just that I've nothing to return against you, or I've already done something similar.

 

[doomed89]

What with the recent backlash at always-on connectivity being a requirement as of late, it's gotten me thinking about some things.

Services such as Steam, that require an internet connection to get started up or earn achievements or things to that effect (even though the DRM is optional, as shown by games like Terraria), at least to my knowledge, don't have any plans for DRM.

My question is, should there be?

I have a partial knowledge of how coding and programming works, though I'm no expert, but I've come to the conclusion that programming in a 'final patch' that would reverse the DRM (and set your games freeeeeeee) wouldn't be all that hard. Give the customers a small-scale emulator for your own servers and the services it brings with it, and allow them to continue using the games. This could apply to virtually any game or service.

So, again, I ask, should there be? And why isn't there?

It shouldn't be in the source code because a hacker will find it, I don't they should have one around somewhere though just in-case of a server shut down. I mean MS pretty much admitting to not even thinking about it.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Why would they divert resources from a current project into the non-trivial task of writing a server emulator for an obsolete game, when there is no possible return on it?

PR? Every company out there want to be as loved as Valve and still make a shit ton of money.

I'm not so sure that Valve would have the authority to do that. Let's say we've got a game called Space Buddies, and Space Buddies requires a connection to server to run. This server wouldn't have anything to do with Steam, because apart from when you download the game, running a game on Steam by itself doesn't require a connection (except for online multiplayer games, of course, but their connection requirement is because of the game itself, not because of DRM). This server would be run by the dev/publisher of Space Buddies. Since it isn't Valve's IP, it isn't Valve's server. And if it isn't Valve's server, then I don't see how they could develop or distribute an emulator to run it after the dev/publisher of Space Buddies decides to take their server down. This would be like Valve making an emulator for all those games EA has made that you can't play anymore because their servers shut down (like the old FIFA games and such).

And every game engine is different, so it's not like Valve can just make some "master emulator" and sell it to devs and publishers whose games require constant connection. It would have to be custom-made for every single game.

Actually I don't think they would have that much of a choice here at least or every person who bought from them would become a creditor because the Australian Consumer Law states that if a product is not fit for purpose it must be refunded. If you have bought games from steam which you can't play because the servers are shut down then everyone of those games must be refunded AT THE ORIGINAL PRICE (ie if they are new releases that's quite a significant cost)

 

[Lilani]

Actually I don't think they would have that much of a choice here at least or every person who bought from them would become a creditor because the Australian Consumer Law states that if a product is not fit for purpose it must be refunded. If you have bought games from steam which you can't play because the servers are shut down then everyone of those games must be refunded AT THE ORIGINAL PRICE (ie if they are new releases that's quite a significant cost)

The only thing Valve MIGHT be required to do is offer the refund, since they are the "retailer" that sold the product. However, since they are not the "manufacturer," I doubt they can be held fully responsible for what happens to the product. At the end of the day, the publisher is the one who sold the product. Steam is simply the "store" in which it was bought. If something like this did happen and a law like that would require a refund, I doubt Valve would take it sitting down. They would go after the publisher to fork out the refunds rather than taking the losses themselves, since they weren't the one to make the decision to stop supporting the game.

But again, since they don't own the IP, they do not have the authority to offer any sort of patch or additional services to the game, such as an emulator to play offline. It's not their game, so they can't screw with the code. End of story.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Actually I don't think they would have that much of a choice here at least or every person who bought from them would become a creditor because the Australian Consumer Law states that if a product is not fit for purpose it must be refunded. If you have bought games from steam which you can't play because the servers are shut down then everyone of those games must be refunded AT THE ORIGINAL PRICE (ie if they are new releases that's quite a significant cost)

The only thing Valve MIGHT be required to do is offer the refund, since they are the "retailer" that sold the product. However, since they are not the "manufacturer," I doubt they can be held fully responsible for what happens to the product. At the end of the day, the publisher is the one who sold the product. Steam is simply the "store" in which it was bought. If something like this did happen and a law like that would require a refund, I doubt Valve would take it sitting down. They would go after the publisher to fork out the refunds rather than taking the losses themselves, since they weren't the one to make the decision to stop supporting the game.

But again, since they don't own the IP, they do not have the authority to offer any sort of patch or additional services to the game, such as an emulator to play offline. It's not their game, so they can't screw with the code. End of story.

Exactly my point, they would have to offer refunds for every single game sold which couldn't be used and therefore yes they would go back to those who sold it to them and demand that money, do you think the publishes would risk going bankrupt over this? Not to mention the bad publicity

Further more the patch wouldn't be editing the software at all, it would be editing VALVES software so that instead of looking for an external server it redirects internally for the "server" so I don't know how much ability the publishers would have to complain about software which isn't even theirs being modified

 

[Lilani]

Exactly my point, they would have to offer refunds for every single game sold which couldn't be used and therefore yes they would go back to those who sold it to them and demand that money, do you think the publishes would risk going bankrupt over this? Not to mention the bad publicity

Since the publishers got a share of the money just as Valve got a share of the money for being the retailer, I think the publisher would have no choice but to divvy up some money if Valve pressured them. If a product WalMart sells turns out to be defective and is recalled, then it would be the manufacturer that would have to pay out because it was not WalMart's product and nor was it their fault the product was defective.

Further more the patch wouldn't be editing the software at all, it would be editing VALVES software so that instead of looking for an external server it redirects internally for the "server" so I don't know how much ability the publishers would have to complain about software which isn't even theirs being modified

The servers the game previously ran on would have belonged to the original publisher. I highly doubt it would be legal for Valve as a third party to step in and just make their own fake "servers" for them to link up with. This would be like a third party making fake servers to authenticate new copies of old operating systems like Windows XP after Microsoft drops support for it. Possible, but highly illegal.

 

[DoPo]

Further more the patch wouldn't be editing the software at all, it would be editing VALVES software so that instead of looking for an external server it redirects internally for the "server" so I don't know how much ability the publishers would have to complain about software which isn't even theirs being modified

I don't think that's how it works. I highly doubt Valve have much authority over the game the are distributing, therefore, they won't have any code of theirs on there. As far as I know, it's up to the developers to plug into the Steamworks API but aside from a few calls to that, which aren't and couldn't be considered Valve's property, they should just be distributing the game as normal.

 

[JMC17]

There are always DRM removal cracks. No multiplayer, but then you wouldn't have been able to do that when they turn the servers off anyway.

Not exactly legal, but where do they get off saying what you can or cannot do with your own property?

Perfectly legal actually, if you own the game you can do with it what you want. This includes a no-dvd / no drm crack. (This is also the reason why the statistics of pirated games are always bullshit)

Removing DRM in general is pretty easy. Look at SimCity. You had to delete TWO lines of code to prevent the online check in.

With the Xbone they were also able to just remove the DRM after all that backlash.

From what i understand from OP's question you are asking if there should be an option / patch to remove DRM from games? Yes it should. Especially when they are gonna stop supporting the game (look at darkspore)

While it is legal to do what you want with your own property, the source codes aren't yours. It is illegal to open, look or modify the source code, which is what hacking does.
It doesn't matter if you're viewing compiled code (ASM,binary) or not (c# c++ java) it's all considered the source codes.
The difference is when you hack your own computer's memory, at that point, it becomes legal.
That is why RAM hacking is legal but ASM hacking is not.

Digital Law: Copyright of Computer Programs [http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise19.html]

The link above contains historic cases as examples.
Although do not be confused by the next page about RAM copies, it's about copying a program from the RAMs, which is not the same as modifying values produced by that program in your RAM.

My guess with steam is, that SHOULD they shut down (which will probably never happen, the last few years they doubled their revenue) You can still use the offline mode to play your games. Multiplayer wouldn't be available, but that's something that can happen to any game when there are just no more servers.

While I am as optimistic as you are about steam lasting a long time, the offline mode is very misleading.
You are required to be logged on to be in offline mode, in other words, it's only useful if for some reason you lost your connection while being online.
To try it for yourself, simply log off steam, disable your internet and try to play any steam games.
It doesn't work because to play your games offline, you first have to login, then click "Offline Mode".


On the other hand, Valve did claimed that if they were to shut down, for any reason, they would remove the steam's DRM from every games, allowing you to play them without steam.
So in any case, you can only lose your games from breaching the STEAM® SUBSCRIBER AGREEMENT [http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/] as this guy [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/03/steam-user-violates-subscriber-agreement-loses-1800-in-games/] found out!

 

[DoPo]

While I am as optimistic as you are about steam lasting a long time, the offline mode is very misleading.
You are required to be logged on to be in offline mode, in other words, it's only useful if for some reason you lost your connection while being online.

No, that is old. It certainly used to be that way, however, now offline mode actually works as described and...well, not as you described. In otherwords

To try it for yourself, simply log off steam, disable your internet and try to play any steam games.

This would work. Steam jusst starts in Offline mode. My housemate used to have the issue - he had Steam starting with his Windows, however, his wireless adapter usually took some time to start, so there was about 50/50 chance of Steam starting before the wireless, so he'd get stuck in Offline. Not a huge issue until he started up Dota 2 - then he'd find out he can't connect to anything and he'd have to spend about a whole minute of turning off the game and starting Steam in online.

So in any case, you can only lose your games from breaching the STEAM® SUBSCRIBER AGREEMENT [http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/] as this guy [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/03/steam-user-violates-subscriber-agreement-loses-1800-in-games/] found out!

That is also old news - it's from more than 2 years ago. Account disabling now still allows you to play your games but you can't buy new ones on Steam.

At any rate this post is a blast from the past on even more accounts.