Any clue who is gonna be the European distributor?
 

Have heard that it will probably not be Ubisoft.

+1

I did and will do it the same way with all ubisoft games that have this ******* DRM.

Why should anyone care who the distributor is?

It is the product you buy, not the distributor.

Ubisoft got the boxes to the shelf very quickly for every addon.

Isn't that the crux of it, getting the product.

I wouldn't care if I had to go to the nearest "Hello Kitty" store to buy it.

Why would you know where the nearest Hello Kitty store is?

Very suspicious... ;)

I think that who the distributor is started becoming relevant the moment distributors started tacking on troublesome software on their releases. In any case, i've heard somewhere (i think it was on simhq) that Ubi has dropped their DRM for new titles, opting to go with Steam instead.

When you have kids you learn about alot about strange little shops.

The most stupid statement i've heard today, really?
So you're gonna boycott the game due to the publisher, fail..

Doesn't matter to me and shouldn't matter to anyone who the publisher is, if that stops you, i do feel sorry for you and the time you've wasted w8ing for it.

That shows 1C which publisher they shouldnt choose.


Well this DRM should be meant to be against pirates.
But the only ones that have advantage are the pirates.
They don't have to struggle with that damn DRM.
And there won't be any pirate protect that isn't cracked within less a month.

So the only effect is that the fair minded customers are cheated.


AND THE WINNER IS...... THE PIRATE.

I'd be OK if it will come with Steam, but Ubi DRM is a huge no go.
I'd rather learn Russian and pick up the 1c release :lol:

I hope that wont be released with DRM by Ubi

meh .. if the DRM is too onerous on SOW I will just ignore it like I did ROF and go do something else.

To be honest with the amount of time I have spent on IL2 I could have built my own airplane by now - it might be a good thing if SOW is loaded down with horrible counter-productive DRM software to encourage me to go do something more constructive :D

1+

I must say it will be 1c,as why would they be using 1c forum,s:)

They are using these forums for IL-2 and still the publisher in europe and many other parts of the world was ubisoft...

I second the posts in this topic though. I will not buy this from Ubisoft or Steam or any other release with crazy DRM lockdown. Are there any news on this?

The point is this. I see Steam as a spyware and don't want it running on my system.
With ubisoft... we all knew the issues with it it's DRM attempts.

I just want a simple game that I can install and put the disk away again. In fact I don't even have an optical drive attached to my workstation anymore and most of my CD's and DVD's are broken.


So if things don't work out in europe to me the only options are:
1. Getting an english release through 1c or any other retailer without crazy DRM
or
2. Buying the russian version and play with a cracked english one.

I'm German and I don't mind playing an english version. But I can't speak russian so sadly that's out of the question...


I want to support the developers and honest publishers with my money, not a publisher who treats PAYING customers like pirates. It shouldn't be the people who buy the game suffering from stupid DRM. If anything it should be the people NOT paying for the game.

I'd love to pre-order this game DRM free in english directly from the developers / 1c (I don't mind a key for multiplayer or anything but no rootkits, crazy DRM locks like activations or forced on-line only play etc.). I wouldn't even mind sending the money straight to Oleg himself and getting a copy. I just definately won't buy it if it's coming from the people at ubi or any other publisher that has nothing else to do other than developing DRM schemes.

This goes especially for European releases and even more so for German ones. We pay really high prices here, much more than any other country usually, for example the USA or UK (a ton cheaper), even for english titles. And on top of that we get our asses kicked for paying more. No thanks.

A game's just bit's and bytes but still some publishers are treating the customers who payed for a game worse than... poop. I don't want to depend on remote servers and ask some 3rd party if I am allowed to play the game that I bought.
I'm sure anyone can understand this at least a little bit.

While I understand everything about DRM and I fully agree, with Steam it is a different matter. I've had nothing but pleasant experience with it. And if I am to chose between the two, I would in a blink of an eye select Steam. Besides, Steam makes it harder to mod the game which is also nice.

Wishing for a game without any copy protection nowadays is to be blunt... unreal.

If you go looking for free software and look at the number of downloads that are constantly being ripped off on popular software, music, videos and other media site... it is in the millions 24/7 at broadband speeds constantly.

Piracy is a huge problem, huge is not adequate "gargantuan" still doesn't descirbe it. Those millions of people that are constantly stealing media aren't buying media.

In America the entire music scene has changed. The most popular music is pre-teen and rap. That isn't true, but those are the people buying the music. That's why artists targeting pre-teens and rap rule the Grammys. The people that are more computer literate are stealing all they want from share sites. So, the true figures for what music is or isn't popular is not relative to the number of buyers.

I have a friend that plays guitar in a pretty well recognized group. He says, "If we didn't do live performances constantly we couldn't survive. We see hundreds of thousands of downloads for our music, but we get paid nada. We are tied to road trips and nightclub performances, just to make a living."

The Eagle Dynamics developers http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/

have their methods and they are invasive, but you definitely don't see their stuff all over the web for free sharing.

I bought the LockOn, but never purchased anything after that. At the time I hated the piracy locks, but I understand they are improved. Regardless... I didn't really care that much for the fast movers anyway.

Whatever Oleg has to do, to protect his software I will go along with. I hope he can protect his software, because he deserves to be paid fairly.

The software protection environment has changed and protection of intellectual rights requires more radical methods. All the jibe about a pop in CD or DVD only (nowadays)... We all know that won't get the job done, just like we know we need a virus scan (nowadays), if we participate on the internet.

1C have not set up a dedicated Storm Of War forum though, we are still having to use the IL2-Sturmovik forum to get WIP screenies and other small bits of info.

First of all, Steam makes it harder to mod. Ok, but what's good about that? Mods and custom content are part of what kept IL-2, no almost any decent game out there, alive. And even if you don't like mods... no game makes it necessary to be modded so that's not a point really.

Steam has disappointed me many times already. Also I don't like buying not a product but a very questionable download license that can be revoked at any time. Not happening. On top of all you basically get spy and adware installed on your system AND steam is dangerous because if it'd succeed we would have a total monoculture when it comes to distribution. If you like that, fine, I don't.



When it comes to DRM and piracy. Piracy is not a problem at all. A ton of research has been done on that topic and even games companies, mostly indie ones, admit to these facts. In fact many people wouldn't buy they game anyways, they pirate it, yes, but they wouldn't buy it if they couldn't pirate it. So usually it's NOT stealing a sale, all it does is making the game more popular so more people WILL buy it.
Secondly it was estimated that most pirates download 4-5 games per month in average. Valid players buy 2-3 games per year in average. Most pirates don't even play games seriously or at all. Many of them start a game and quit it after 3 days. Only a very few amazingly popular games are being pirated and played. And if that is the case then mostly because of DRM. Which means many people, myself included, needed to actually crack or download a "clean" version just to be able to play a game they BOUGHT. On the other hand side I haven't seen any of these games coming out with under at least 10 million profit. So there can't be much harm done here. Remember what economy is like: We can't generate absurd amounts of profit from material and physical labor and transfer it to effortless digital copies of the same bits and bytes. That will essentially draw out all money from the real industry and transfer it to a bits & bytes bubble. No one can eat games. No one can sleep on them or drive them to work. Game studios and publishers seriously need to throttle down their shareholder revenues. Look at Blizzard Activision, Ubi, EA, even SEGA! A company that everyone thought was dead - they're raking in absurd amounts of money and that with tinkered financial reports!

Yes, this game is different. It's a niche product and I tried to make suggestions on how to get it out of there (game modes). But seriously, simmers are hardcore fans and they will not pirate a game that easily. Only people who cannot pay for it anyways will. That's not really a lost sale.

Asking for a DRM free game is far from blunt. I said I will pay so what right do they have to DRM me for this? None. On the other hand side I will not pay a penny and maybe grad it after years for a few bucks if they do DRM it. It's their choice.


One sidenote on your mention of music. Music has gotten sick. Originally music was inteded to be copied. It was made to be sung and copied and performed. That is how it originated, how it integrated into the culture and how it grew. Nowadays artists usually steal. They steal the techniques, they steal music theory and research, they even steal inspiration or simply cover the hell out of "forgotten glory". But they expect everyone to pay? I don't think that will happen. Ever. People don't have to be computer smart to dislike that industry. They just have to be intelligent. The music industry doesn't do anything for the user. They even hinder him. I can't count the number of broken CD's I have. They won't give me a cheap exchange either. Copying the CD as my personal backup is illegal though and the industry hates lossless standards just so they can sell the same song over and over again.
Your friends are probably just bad at promotion or music or their music is so niche that they just can't live off of it. Big deal, get real and get a job. I do art as well but can't live off of it. So I do a normal job. What's the problem with that? I dislike the princess syndrome - not everyone can be that lucky to earn millions in their sleep!
If they need help I could lend them a hand. You can PM me and I can look over their marketing strategies and overall quality of covers, artworks, promotion, website, viral marketing etc.

Next is eaglydynamics. I don't see a game that hasn't been cracked from them. Note: Multiplayer usually doesn't work. Rarely pirated titles support multiplayer but in general I don't see where they had more success fighting piracy than anyone else out there. And please keep in mind: Hardcore flight sims are a niche product! No one... plays them. A very small minority. So the fact that even their stuff has been cracked means that it's basically pointless to be an ass to your customers just for your own profit.


We could go on about this for days but usually the defenders are not reasonable anyways. I could tell you for example what costs are added just for copy protection. Copy protection that usually does nothing! At least nothing good.
The fact for me is: if this title will get released under reasonable conditions I will pay, play and promote. If it doesn't I will not pay, not play and warn everyone to stay the hell away from it.
There are a ton of other games out there and there's also real life. I don't have to pay money for being kicked in the butt. Paying customers should be treated with respect. That's an imperative in the material world, where people would sue you to death if you deliver such low quality and intrude into their personal lives and it shouldn't be any different in the digital sphere either.


Sorry for that lenghy post and the strong language but I hope I made some understandable points. If this discussion goes on I might add another post with good research material and statistics and then just drop it, wait and eventually stay away from the game. I will only play this if it's not intruding my computer, rootkitting it, spying on me, my hardware, my software and habits as well as not employing some messed up server side authorization crap that prevents me from playing it should I not have an internet connection or something like that.
When I buy a game, I want to get a disc or download, install it and forget about it. Not worrying about what might happen if there is bad weather, if an earthquake takes out the authorization servers or if someone just doesn't like me and blocks my account for no reason.
On the other hand side I do know that I bought a number (more than 10!) of games even multiple times already. Even sims (For example Freespace etc. I bought that about 3 times, along with Freespace 2) and SoW could be one of them because I'd want to get my girlfriend to try it out and fly with me I suppose. That said it's up to them and I really hope people would rise their heads and not accept that slavery. I was hoping slavery is a thing of the past but recently it got more and more popular again with the media industry.

Best regards,
Madfish

...slavery? The media industry forces you to work for their purposes and in exchange provides your food and shelter? I realise that English isn't your first language (but I only know this because you said you're German somewhere else, I wouldn't have guessed from your writing) but that's not the right word to use to describe the media industry...

Not really.

Sins of a Solar Empire was released without any copy protection and was one of the top games of the year.

The publishers logic was DRM simply interferes with genuine sales as the people that hack take breaking copy protection as a challenge and would never buy it anyway. It worked for them.

The recent fascination with DRM is simply the result of too many accounting and lawyer types who tend to be control freaks conniving their way into executive positions in big corporations :D

Waaaah, you killed my monster post! :D

But +1 for what you said,
I own Sins of the Solar Empire with all addons as well as the combo-box release Sins of the Solar Empire Trinity. So thanks for reminding me of this one as it is another good example for a game that was kind of niche but actually very successful from there without any disturbing copy protection.

I wish more game developers and publishers would actually deliver great quality and get the sales they deserve instead of whining over piracy because they produced crap and forgot about it as soon as it was released, wondering why people get mad and refuse to buy their title full price.

I think all of you are correct. On one hand, we have situations like the humble bundle fiasco , where a bunch of indy developers released their games in a pack and told people "give us whatever amount you think it's fair". Well, there was about 20 games in there and a lot of people were minimal amounts, one dollar or even less.

Some people lack the disposable income, some are just cheapskates and some suffer from an entitlement complex. And piracy does cost sales and even the closing down of studios and jobs. On the other hand, the reason piracy is so detrimental is, guess who, the publishing industry itself!

For example, Troika games made the two vampire: the masquerade games before closing down, a transfer of a pen-and-paper RPG game to the PC. Small studio, cool games, they still didn't make it even though they were signed under a bigger company. Why? Because developers get paid minimal amounts compared to what the company gets and when they can't make what the company wants, the studio closes down. It's the same in music as well, where many artists take a few cents per CD sold while the recording company gets the big cash.

This story has happened before, will happen again and if you take a good look at it, it's usually studios that make great games which the publishers don't like. Why? Because the publisher's definition of a great game is different from the gamer's definition of the same. For the publisher a short, half-finished, DLC capable game with minimal replay value that will justify its high price on graphics and sounds alone is best, because it will give that "it was good but not enough" feeling, so that you can buy the sequel in as less time as a few months. For the gamers, a great game is one that is focused on the core elements necessary for the gameplay experience, leaving the rest to be improved along the way as more powerful PCs become available, having good support, replayability and a long life...just like IL-2.

The reasons are simple...when you sign up with a big publisher like EA or Ubi, you pretty much give them free reign to do whatever they want with how the end product will be presented and lose most of your creative license as a developer. Your job is to provide content, meet deadlines and deliver products that cater to as much people as possible instead of products that cater to parts of the gamer demographic but are actually focused enough to do a good job...in that order of importance if i may add. So for example, if the deadlines can't be met the content gets axed and then sold separately as DLC.

When the people who expect a certain game to belong in a certain genre, or the gamers simply don't find it compliant to the standards outlined above, the product is faulty in content, user-friendliness and functionality, etc, then the people with the most interest in having a focused game abandon it. These are the people who usually buy games however.

The people that the companies try to lure to their products in droves are not the ones who will buy games, or to put it more accurately, they have a higher percentage of pirates among them...the part of gamers that mostly cares about visuals and sounds to the expense of everything else, who go through games like t-shirts in summer and of course, they can't afford to buy that many games. The thing is that if they learn how to pirate once, they have learned it for life and now they know where to look and how to set things up. So, is it then the fault of the paying customer if games flop? Of course not.

Piracy is an existing problem. It's also a problem where the publishers share a big part of the responsibility by making their games unfriendly to the ones interested in buying them. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens next, does it? ;)

It's also true that the majority of the most pirated games are also triple-A titles that already rake in millions of sales.
On the other hand, indy games like the aforementioned sins of a solar empire where also pirated like crazy because of a total lack of copy protection, but they also sold like crazy and the developers turned a good profit. It's very simple how they did it...they didn't have to pay a horde of lawyers, marketing executives and advertisement consultants because they sold their game themselves. In that sense, indy companies can afford to not be greedy and maybe even turn a blind eye to the piracy problem, because they only have their own pockets to line.

In another case Amanita Design, a small studio making adventure games in Flash, launched a so-called pirate redemption sale (actually anyone could take advantage of the sale) for a week, offering Machinarium at a price of $5 and that game is already cheap to begin with, with $15-$20 for the collector's edition.

That didn't happen overnight though, it happened quite a few months after the game was released, with sales having tappered off and the launch of the sale did a few very important things for them: gave them "cool guys" points in the eyes of the gaming community, put them back in the spotlight and enticed even more people to buy the game, people that despite the already cheap price might have been put off initially, but will drop their cash when they realize they can get an award winning game for small change. A guy from EA or UBI however, even if they ever did such clever marketing which they don't, will not be glad about getting a chance to effectively re-launch one of their games. They'll be too busy crying over the fact that those 200000 extra sales were made at $5 a piece instead of at $15 a piece and come up with a statistic claiming a 75% loss of profit, totally disregarding the fact that these sales wouldn't have happened at all with a higher price.

The differences in how different groups within the industry view the situation is not only obvious, but paramount to their success and failure as well ;)

So what is the fuss all about then? The second hand market. That's the real reason the big names want to tie everything to accounts. Not one of these accounts is transferrable, at least not without a fee and some not at all. If i buy a car i can resell it, if i buy a DRM-ed game i most probably can't.

Yes, i know it's getting old with the car analogies, but let's consider the flip-side too. Suppose the companies are right and buying a game doesn't give you ownership of the items involved (physical or immaterial), but only a license of use. In that sense if i buy a game and my original DVD is damaged, my license is still valid. I didn't buy a DVD, i bought the rights to use the game and how that happens is up to the publisher, as long as my PC is within the specs. So, shouldn't the company send me a replacement DVD since my license still stands? Do you know any cases of this actually happening though? :grin:

If suddenly there was a strange atmospheric condition that corroded media discs and people starter asking for replacements because their license still stands, you can bet that all of the big publishing companies would abandon their license rhetoric overnight :-P

A good summary.

I would add just one thing. A good game from a players point of view is not necessarily a good game from the marketing/profitability perspective.

Two Classic examples of this from a non-computer gaming are the Games Workshop Warhammer Franchise and the Wizards/Hasbro D&D games.

In both these cases the original games had big strong loyal followings because the games were excellent from a players perspective. However this big strong loyal following was not be translating into profits as those players already had all the books/miniatures/random stuff they needed to play indefinitely.

In both cases the games have been changed to appeal to the quick easy cash and carry "fad" market. The central long term player base is far weaker but the continual turnover of new players buying books and miniatures, playing for 6 months getting bored and tossing the books in a cupboard ensures huge ongoing profits.

The significant point is that unlike Warhammer where doting mums and dads actually do waste silly money on miniatures with the logic that "its better than Johnny doing drugs" the fad PC game market simply will play something else if they cant get it for free.

Two thoughts:

If the copy protection is too intrusive and may mess up other games or render the new game unplayable, I won't buy it.

I totally understand companies wanting to protect their hard work, but I also know there are less intrusive ways to keep them from losing vast amounts of sales.

For example, the DVD that came in the box is usually not the end all and be all of the game. Most of the time, there are bugs. Much of the time, there are updates to improve the game (there better be).

The companies that support their games after release are the ones that I support with my money. I've been ripped off a number of times (cough...EA) with incomplete releases that were not properly patched and updated.

I do no think it is too much to ask of the customer that a game's authenticity be validated when it is first installed and then for subsequent updates. Any pirated copy would not be able to be updated and improved. This discourages piracy AND encourages companies to support the products they produce. Any pirated copy would then simply be a "beta" which probably includes all kinds of viruses.

Second thought: verify the authenticity of a game's files for multiplayer modes. I HATE CHEATERS. You want to cheat offline? I have no problem with that, turn on god mode. Don't do it when competing with other humans. I have participated in a few efforts to eliminate cheaters from competition and it's not easy...except for the developers. When game companies did not do enough to protect the online community from cheaters, the leagues had to develop their own special mods and watch like hawks.

If a game has "tighter" authentication for multiplayer, I am ok with that as long as it works. Here again, pirates would not be able to participate which protects both the customers and the developers.

I can't defend software pirates but I do not see the tie in to music piracy. Once you buy a song you should be able to copy that song to any format you wish (legal in the US, btw, under "fair use"). The music and movie industries have cried about piracy issues since magnetic tape became available but I see a lot of really rich artists out there. They must have figured out some way to still make a buck, right?

Youngsters have no idea lol. We used to buy albums for $10 (worth more back then!) that had maybe two or three hit songs and 7 songs you skipped over. We couldn't really buy single songs for a buck. Artists even cried back then that people were recording songs off the radio. But they adapted to the "new ways" and are raking in money hand over fist.

Poor products and anti-piracy attempts that are too intrusive actually lead to piracy. Adapt and overcome, software companies need to do the same.

Splitter

My thoughts. Any publisher but UBI or Activision.
Use the same copy protection as Black Shark.

I have pirated games in the past and those were games I wasnt really interested in and never really played them much and would never have even bought them in the first place so the publisher never lost anything anyway. Any game I really wanted I purchased because I knew that any online play with a pirated copy usually never worked.

As far as i have read, ubisoft had not the best sales with their DRM contaminated games.

So where is their advantage?


The fair minded purchaser of a game which has DRM is the loser.
The pirate is the winner, well he didn't give money for sure but the point is that the pirate doesnt have to struggle with DRM issues.

Publishers should invest their money "they waste on DRM coding" in persecuting the pirates on the p2p plattforms and others.

That doesn't negatively effect the sales like DRM does, because it's not against the purchasers, but lowers the pirate rate.

Okay who has not downloaded a cracked copy of Black Shark?
Mods - Just kidding :)
Seriously copy protection is not a major issue. Could not care which one is used. The always on Internet is however.
Ubisoft and EA games all burnt their fingers with always on Internet drms. Look at Command and Conquer 4. A few months after release it is for sale as a cheap classic title?
Always on Internet DRM has bombed.
But with Blizzard following the same example with Starcraft 2 one has to wonder. The game (Starcraft 2) was more expensive at release than any other game. Obviously designed to catch the young suckers that will accept the drm and then it will be sold cheaper later with drm removed for the ordinary folk. They sold a million games on day one and another two million since release
A win for the DRM I think. But also proof that sales are starting to taper-off.

Hi

i have been lurking here for a while, looking forward to any news about SOW.

This little DRM chat has persuaded me to thrown in my pennys worth to the debate.

DRM is bad, i have had bad experiences with it and most people that i know who have a knowledge of these things will avoid it like the plague.

So, if they issue a game with DRM, certain people wont buy it.. i normally wait as quite often it appears without DRM later on.

I do however have friends who cant wait, they want the game but they wont buy it with DRM.. so they download the pirate copy which has the DRM ripped out of it.

on a similar note another friend of mine downloads nocd cracks for all his games, because he hates the noise of his dvd drive.. i kid you not.

there is a lot of piracy on the pc, but the pandemic is growing on consoles now too... i for one condone piracy, i like to consider myself old enough to know better, i dont believe that it can ever be stopped, there will always be someone who works around what ever DRM is in place, there will always be someone who will download that work...

Personally i think publishers and developers need to understand that the games market has evolved. there are many new games every month, and many people cant afford to buy every game they want.

Punishing the honest with invasive DRM is not the right way to fix it, it pushes them away and the pirates will work around your DRM regardless.

personally, although flawed as it was i think the right level is the "cd key" system as used in the COD series etc..

just my 2ps worth anyway...

I was on the Starcraft 2 beta test and some of my friends have bought the game. I'll buy it too at some point, i'm just taking my time. There's quite a few things that could have been done better for SC2, but the actual activation is kind of mild compared to other games.

You don't need to be always online to play. You just need to activate the game once after you install, just like with a new installation of windows. The only reason to be online is achievement tracking in single player and while i agree it's stupid to prevent it from working unless a user is logged in, it's by no means detrimental to how the single player works. So in summary you can play offline just fine, you just won't get the annoying pop-ups and the shiny badges while doing so.

SC2 is expensive and it comes in 3 installments that are probably all going to be full price games, but it's also a case of getting around 30 missions for the single player campaign in each episode (that's 3 times the amount of maps of the first game) and a game that will be played online for years, so the price is somewhat justified. Plus, because it's a game with a big competitive online scene there's none of that DLC nonsense, since it would unbalance things a lot in multiplayer if people could pick and choose between DLC units for their armies.

What was worrisome was the way they treat stuff like publishing of user created maps and how exactly will the next episodes function. Nobody knows if they will add new units for multiplayer with them and if for example, someone who wants a unit from episode 3 will have to buy episode 2 as well as a pre-requisite for the installation of episode 3, but this is still speculation pretty much.

The only annoying thing so far is that you can't have two people playing multiplayer on one installation with their stats being kept separate. I'm not the kind of guy who frets over stats and achievements but when the match-making system (and by consequence, getting matched with players of your skill level in multiplayer matches) is based on that, it's kind of stupid to tell me that me and a brother/sister/roommate have to buy the game two times just to be able to keep our stats separate.

You can still logoff and login with another account for multiplayer, but that account needs to be tied to a purchased game as well. It's strictly one nickname per account, which sucks, and one account per cd-key. If it was one account per cd-key but each account could have more than one nicknames, it would be just fine.

Yes, Starcraft 2 was kindof a win...

BUT only because SC1 was a huge success, and i've heard that people who bought it (hardocre ones at least) said it was'nt really that good

I didn't buy it while i loved the first one, because blizzard got too greedy, and it worked that time... good for them but I hope it won't work anymore

DRM is a pain for customers, its pretty much like the FBI message at the beginning of films, DVDs and stuff... you get Warnings that insult you, treats you like a thief... when you buy a DVD ! No way a pirated film has such kind of messages !

I didn't buy ROF until they said there would be a offline possibility for it, I bought it right after that mainly because they did the effort of doing it !

Unfortunately DRM usually only hinders the genuine user though sometimes - though very rarely it will slow down the pirates enough for a developer to claw back some money from the first months sales.

Having just re-installed my OS I've found out just how irritating DRM has become with a few games I have. I'm not even going to bother trying to get GT Legends to install because to do so I'd have to go and hunt down a load of files because the DRM is not supported under Windows 7. Lock On was another nuisance, I had to go and hunt down a special update app just for the DRM for the totally legal copy I have.

Black Shark and Lock On 2 use limited install numbers so in the past where I've just wiped my HDD knowing I have the original disc's now I have to jump through hoops and remember to deactivate the programs else I lose an activation on a system format or upgrade. NetKar Pro also uses a limited activation number.

I wouldn't have a problem with this method if they used the same format as Live For Speed where you get three activations and one activation is replenished each week. I wouldn't even mind if it was 10 activations over 6 or 12 months and it was reset but 10 for the lifetime of a product? Even good old IL-2 is not without its problems with the disc checking. Again a little more searching required for that too.

Too much messing around just to install my totally legal sim collection. I respect the right for the developer to protect their work but respectfully ask that in doing so they consider carefully the impact on the end user, their customer and potential future customer.

"though very rarely it will slow down the pirates enough for a developer to claw back some money from the first months sales"

If that statement were true developers wouldn't have bothered wasting money on copy protection.

You'll find plenty of cracked copy protection's online and copies of games circulating on the day of release if not before. Copy protection is a futile effort to reduce casual piracy i.e friends lending friends their CD's not the pirates circulating the software through bittorrents and newsgroups. I'm not saying I have an answer and as I said I support the developers right to try and protect their work but the DRM's being used by some developers are becomming more and more draconian.

I agree with Revvin. The only people discouraged by DRM are the casual pirates and the legitimate customers.

Let's face it, DRM is a different piece of software running on top of your favorite gaming title. In many cases it wasn't integrated during development and even if it was (in the case of in-house developmebt by big studios), it's still not a custom made solution for a specific game.

It's either a case of a big company like Ubi or EA following a "one size fits all" approach for all their in-house developed titles, or in the worst case scenario a developer studio hooks up with a certain publisher who, a few months before release, demands that the DRM be tacked on in a hurry so that they don't miss the deadlines.

Of course it's going to cause all sorts of technical problems when it's done like that :grin:


The only prevention lies in the demographic of casual pirates and people who are somewhat "computer illiterate", they can't make an illegal copy work or they want participation in online ranking systems, so they fork over the cash for a legit copy, but these guys are the minority of the piracy problem.

So, since DRM is not any better at preventing piracy than the old copy protection systems (they get cracked pretty much immediately in any case), why do the companies waste money on researching, implementing and supporting (in some rare cases) it? Simply because it's not the hardcore pirates they're after, they know they can't force them to buy their titles. The return of investment they're betting on is not by means of forcing the pirates to buy but by stopping you, the legitimate user, from reselling or giving away your legacy purchased copy as a gift. ;)

You are assuming that because these are big corporations the DRM decisions are being made for informed rational reasons by intelligent pragmatic people.

This is almost certainly not the case.

S!

How many copy protections have remained uncracked up to date? My bet: none. Go figure how usefull these DRM's are. I do NOT endorse piracy, I buy all my games as I want to see the collection grow :)

Actually, i'm not assuming anything. I know this is not the case, i just wanted to phrase the post in a "give some benefit of doubt" fashion to be impartial ;)

My personal opinion on DRM is generally negative.

Anytime a thread progresses towards discussions of piracy and preventative measures the real pirates start jumping on. We have all read the usual verbiage = I'm not going to buy anything with software protection,etc.

There are plenty of people spewing and noising against protection from piracy methods. Yet, right now this instance on the torrent applications there are over 1 million thieves every hour of every day on every torrent application stealing software, music, videos and other media.

Anyone that thinks there isn't a problem with thieves is probably one of those million plus...

Ladies, ladies

I do not think anyone is arguing in favor of piracy. Its more a comment on the stupidity of some corporate reactions to the problem.

The real life equivalent of some recent DRM schemes would be opening a supermarket that required customers to go through the equivalent of airport style security and customs every time they entered or left the store in order to reduce pilferage in the snack aisles :D

By sheer coincidence one of the women at work only yesterday told me she decided not to buy a game for her children that we had been discussing because the shop attendant in the games store said "don't buy that one we get people bringing them back because you need to connect your kids computer to the internet before they can play".

It's not just crazy anti-DRM activists making idle threats about boycotting these titles it has a real effect on sales.

I wasn't pointing the finger at anyone.

I really don't care what Oleg does to protect SOW. I trust him to make choices that are good for all of us.(including his interests) He knows the issues, he's heard it all by now.

A thief is a thief if he only steals a penny or 10,000. Stealing media is stealing, even if it is faciliated by downloads, and poorly prosecuted as a crime.

I guess some us need Pinochio's best friend (a cricket) to remind us of doing right or wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgmfV5VLHvs

It is not really up to him. It is the distributors call.