If UBI's DRM scheme is unacceptable...

[Wolf_Rider]

Hmm... dunno... despite all these comments on weak or no connection, they seem to be posting ok and I'm sure they have no hassle when it comes to updating their windows operating systems and downloading a sim patch/ upgrade, or device update.

it just strikes me as a curious situation

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

Hmm... dunno... despite all these comments on weak or no connection, they seem to be posting ok and I'm sure they have no hassle when it comes to updating their windows operating systems and downloading a sim patch/ upgrade, or device update.

it just strikes me as a curious situation

meh ... its not a big issue. people like myself that are offline at home will just keep IL2 alive and well for a bit longer Its not as if the odd older player like myself staying with IL2 is going to effect the viability of SoW that much.

It happened in the D&D community with 4th edition. Many of the older long term players elected to retain the old system and play campaigns by Piazo (Pathfinder) leaving 4th edition for the newcomers. 4th edition made a fortune out of the newcomers though.

[Blackdog_kt]

There's nothing curious about it. You guys tend to take for granted a service that's inherently bound with layers upon layers of complexity and dependencies. It leaves a sour taste to bind the use of a paid for product to something that has so much potential for unreliability and instability. Not to mention that nowadays we do have sufficient examples of such schemes going belly up or having to get changed under the combination of customer outcry, reduced sales and no dent in piracy whatsoever.

If publishers actually funded the developers with as much money as they spend on advertising and coming up with new DRM implementations maybe the developers could actually turn a decent profit to stay in the business. Make no mistake, these two are different from one another. What usually happens however is that devs do the work and get some return of investment while publishers push the crates to the shelves, get the big money and if something goes wrong they just have to abandon the developer team to fend for itself.
As a result of this, i seriously wish 1c would self-distribute in Europe too. It's no wonder more and more small, independent game developers pursue this route. Take stardock games for example. They published 2-3 titles with no DRM and made a killing despite the piracy hit since they didn't have to shoulder the overhead of a third party acting as publisher. They have grown so much that nowadays they are carrying all the AAA titles along with most of the small, independent ones and can afford to make weekly promotional offers on all of them.

This is no revolt or anything similar like it has jokingly been pointed out, just observations from recent events in the field of gaming combined with what is expected of a vendor when you buy something...you want it to WORK in a manner that doesn't inconvenience you.
If my net goes down right now the worst that can happen is losing a few lines of text on a forum i don't pay to post on, but i can still use everything on my PC that i spent money on. It's not about the actual amount of money, it's just a matter of principle and being a business with principles is what guarantees a loyal following.

As for what changes and what doesn't, if i was the only one with such an opinion then you would be right Gunslinger. Turns out i'm not however, or Ubi would still be running their always online scheme which they abandoned. I'm not glad SH5 more or less flopped, but i'm overjoyed that Ubi was forced to change their ridiculous copy protection scheme that inconvenienced only legitimate buyers, while pirates played the game just fine. Small tip: making sure your game runs worse than the equivalent pirate copy is definitely not the way to reduce piracy

Anyway, i'm not trying to step on anyone's toes or force my opinion. I'm just arguing the case that it would be a friggin' shame to lose so many potential customers when SoW has been in development for so long.

We're all just killing time and speculating here, but one thing we can agree on is that all of us want SoW to be a success. What prompted me to post is a genuine question in regards to this and nothing else. Why would any fan of team Maddox and their work want their new title to be saddled with something that could potentially cause it to have a slow launch like RoF or a fate similar to SH5?

If this, i guess purely rhetorical, question annoys people so much then they shouldn't worry about having to hear me much longer in case a problematic DRM implementations is used, as things will turn out the way they did with RoF.
I eagerly expected that title too, argued against their chosen implementation of DRM, people accused me of single-handedly sabotaging the hobby (apparently my opinion mattered not one iota but millions, all of a sudden ) and eventually my interest in the title was sapped. I left the RoF forums in simHQ, the guys flying RoF were happy doing so and i was happy not having to deal with it's initial issues (not to mention the belief blindly held by a handful of guys there that DRM was the magic wand that would ensure their favorite company stays in business)

In fact, i didn't even check out the free demo until a year and a half later when i decided to give it another chance. A year and a half.
You could argue that i'm an isolated basket case, an anti-DRM zealot, whatever. Problem for the guys selling RoF was that i wasn't the only one and it showed big time, which would indicate that maybe their strategy was wrong.
The original publisher (ND games wasn't it?) selling the title rights to the N.American one (777 studios), who in turn changed the DRM and tried to relaunch the game (the iron cross edition) proved this as plain as day, not to mention the fact that when SH5 came along many among the people who praised RoF's DRM were suddenly angry at Ubi for using a similar method

It certainly didn't flop as a game and it's much better than it originally was, but nobody can say it had the successful launch that IL2 enjoyed, with servers sprouting all around the place and massive community work in the form of skins, missions and campaigns providing added value to it.
It does have it's community doing the same things, but much later from the date of launch and to a lesser extent than IL2 did, a big reason for that being that they managed to cripple their impulse buying potential.
I remember some of their initial sales figures during their first year and it was under 500000 copies (their words, not mine), when the previous incarnation of Silent Hunter (an even more niche genre) managed to score more than a million copies.

Now why would i ever honestly want a similar fate to befall SoW?
WWI i can wait for a bit more, for u-boats i can still use modded SH3, but WWII is my main field of interest and as such, i would hate to see a game about it that's built by a company i like and respect suffer that kind of drawbacks, especially when the precedent is clearly there and the examples for avoidance still fresh.

That being said, i'm actually optimistic about SoW. Mr. Maddox more or less said he doesn't like the method Ubi used in SH5 and even if the publisher is Ubi they have changed their system after SH5's failure.

Just for the record, i do have a single title that requires online activation. It works more or less the way i described in my previous post and that's why i bought it. Oh, and it really has no problems with piracy since bug fixes, gameplay tweaks and interface improvements (much like team maddox has done with IL2) are too frequent for pirates to keep up with the updates.

[Wolf_Rider]

There's only one sector to be getting upset at, and that isn't the developers or publishers... its the thieves (the pirates), the small percentage of people that bugger it up for everyone else

[Richie]

The online guys won't give a hoot about this but it is a real pain I can see that. Like a guy said on youtube..It's like you're renting a game you don't have total ownership of it. Ubisoft is always watching you..

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

There's only one sector to be getting upset at, and that isn't the developers or publishers... its the thieves (the pirates), the small percentage of people that bugger it up for everyone else

The pirate scare is a little bit like the mythical terrorist scare, its exaggerated out of all proportion.

Its well documented that:

a) commercial pirates will crack any DRM if the title is worth selling out of Shanghai
b) casual pirates tend to be collectors who would never buy the product anyway.

The REAL purpose of these online DRM is to prevent resale of the products second hand on ebay once the user is bored with them. It also makes the move to "pay per year/month" software eventually much easier.

By the way I am amazed how many people on these forums seem to get outraged at NG for insisting on royalties and then turn around and endorse onerous DRM schemes. Seems a bit hypocritical really.

[Wolf_Rider]

@ Richie

the end user doesn't "own" the game though ... the end user purchases a license to install and run the software.

Originally Posted by WTE_Galway

The pirate scare is a little bit like the mythical terrorist scare, its exaggerated out of all proportion.

Its well documented that:

a) commercial pirates will crack any DRM if the title is worth selling out of Shanghai
b) casual pirates tend to be collectors who would never buy the product anyway.

The REAL purpose of these online DRM is to prevent resale of the products second hand on ebay once the user is bored with them. It also makes the move to "pay per year/month" software eventually much easier.

By the way I am amazed how many people on these forums seem to get outraged at NG for insisting on royalties and then turn around and endorse onerous DRM schemes. Seems a bit hypocritical really.

well, there ya go, you made the point for us... piracy = loss of profit.
Limited activations goes some way to prevent the resale factor, but is far from a perfect solution... so back to online verifcation/ activation


as far as (the name unmentionable) NG goes... they are claiming copyright for Government works, which isn't copyrightable. The use of the brand name is though, which is why many have suggested to run with the naval designations under that Government Works/ artistic depiction clause. but then its also strange that an AI only version is selectable ingame.

I have to agree with an intrusive DRM system (Sony comes to mind here) not being the way to go, but I have no concern about the need for an online verification check and neither should anyone else who is genuine.... like I said "blame the pirates". I also don't agree with "renting the software" (pay to play) either

[OrangeYoshi]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

well, there ya go, you made the point for us... piracy = loss of profit

I'd argue that piracy actually increases profits, and that DRM of any kind decreases profits.

Why? Free marketing and ease of use.

First of all, you will never stop the pirates. No matter what kind of DRM you put on something, the pirates will crack it. Just look at Silent Hunter V.

Second of all, because you can't stop the pirates, any kind of DRM will actually cost the company money. Legitimate customers will turn to cracked versions than give them less of a hassle while installing or playing.

Third of all, many pirates download a game illegally to try it out or to hold them over until they are in a financial situation where they can pay for it. Not all people who pirate a game will never pay for it.

Lastly, the more people that can get access to your game, the more money you will make off of it. If someone buys the game and shows it to a friend, the friend might buy the game. If someone pirates the game and shows it to a friend, that friend might buy the game as well. Not all pirates who never pay for games hang out with strictly like-minded people.

[Wolf_Rider]

it'd be a casuist argument though

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

@ Richie

the end user doesn't "own" the game though ... the end user purchases a license to install and run the software.

So, if i loose my IL2 DVD, i can contant Ubi and they absolutely have to send me a new one, right? After all, i still have the license i paid for, don't i?
I guess you see how this is just a "whatever suits us in each separate case" attitude by certain companies

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

well, there ya go, you made the point for us... piracy = loss of profit.
Limited activations goes some way to prevent the resale factor, but is far from a perfect solution... so back to online verifcation/ activation


as far as (the name unmentionable) NG goes... they are claiming copyright for Government works, which isn't copyrightable. The use of the brand name is though, which is why many have suggested to run with the naval designations under that Government Works/ artistic depiction clause. but then its also strange that an AI only version is selectable ingame.

I have to agree with an intrusive DRM system (Sony comes to mind here) not being the way to go, but I have no concern about the need for an online verification check and neither should anyone else who is genuine.... like I said "blame the pirates". I also don't agree with "renting the software" (pay to play) either

I don't necessarily disagree with this. Like i said before, i support some form of copy protection to delay the inevitable. What i don't support is poorly thought out DRM, which is usually a fancy way to say "people who don't pay actually play a leaner and better working version of the same game as the legitimate customer".

The main criteria about copy protection are the following:
1) Does it work for long enough to help the devs turn a profit?
2) Does it work in a way that doesn't make the pirated version even more attractive (ie, by inconveniencing the legitimate buyer)?
3) If it is a hassle to the legitimate customer, does it at least come with some added value features to offset that and will it be tuned down a notch as sales decrease over time?

That's all there is to it really. Any method of DRM/copy protection/whatever we like to call it that doesn't answer yes on 2 out of 3 is a failed method.