Spore DRM

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the only thing that seems to be coming out of this debate is the overriding impression that:
Steam>Every other form of DRM ever concieved for singleplayer games
 

If they could guarantee they would get away with it, and a copy of the money would magically regenrate in the bank, and they hurt no one they would not have hurt by being hobos, then actually, I think 80% of people would
sry for double post
 

Let me just fix that statement for you:

"If they could guarantee they would get away with it, [strike]and a copy of the money would magically regenrate in the bank, and they hurt no one they would not have hurt by being hobos[/strike], then actually, I think 80% of people would"
 
For everyone that says this is about piracy and crying boo hoo over EA rights.... go f**k your self. It is not and never has been about piracy. This is about the roundabout of the doctrine of first sale. The Supreme Court has stated that anything you buy can be resold. This has infuriated the software industry (and RIAA and MPAA for that matter). Because of the DCMA, you cannot crack the DRM for your own copies. Well put the two together, and they have successfully taken out the secondary market. Well, normally this would not prevent a resale. However when you start to limit the number of installs, it forces someone to buy it new, not used.

Rob Wright,

I have a lot of respect for you, however you are way too quick to come down on the pirates, when you really need to apply a little professional journalism. Do your research. There was a independent game creator that posted the question on why people pirate his games.... He asked for a blunt response and go it. He did it right, he listened and did away with DRM. The response was immediate.

I can afford to buy most of my games, but with bioshock, mass effect and spore, I have not and will not be buying them.
And why the f*cK is there securerom on a demo??????

I leave you guys to your debate.
 


Huh? I'm not sure what you're writing about here. What indepedent game creator are you referring to? I'm confused, please help me clear this one up.
 
google is your friend... how could you have missed this? it was all over the tech sites a few weeks ago.

http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=76

My hat is off to this guy for doing the right thing... i may even buy one of his games for the support. (not really interested in them myself, but he is doing the right thing)
 
ah damn, youve just wrecked my day, im really looking forward to Red alert 3 but if its got securom then i wont be buying it.... and yes i have had really bad experiances with securom (it locked both my dvd drives i couldnt remove dvds or read them)

if you pirate the game because of the DRM then you are SUPPORTING the case FOR DRM...instead support the case AGAINST DRM by not buying it or pirating it.
 


You're asking how could I have missed an obscure blog post from a little known indie developer? And for that, you're claiming I lack professional journalism? Am I missing something here?

As for the author, I applaud him too: he supports copyright law and intellectual property, even though he dropped DRM on his games. And I guess that's my point -- I hate piracy -- HATE IT -- but I also hate stupid, obstrusive DRM, too. The two positions are NOT mutually exclusive.
 
Pirating has been an issue for ages, and DRM's have been annoying for just as long. This new wave of DRM coming out is just completely intrusive to a point that many will rather just not buy the products. With the state of the PC industry, I really think it's a mistake to continue to push intrusive DRM down our throats.

The problem is that average joe consumer is unaware of the issue. He just finds it out way down the line if at all. Let's face it most regular computer users rarely reinstall Windows, and I know a lot of people that keep their computers for at least 3 years. In three years time, most people have moved on to a different game. It really just impacts the people that are the most vocal: hardcore gamers that upgrade their own computers, or mess around with Windows enough to have to reinstall every so often.

I must admit that people are doing a good job of spamming the users reviews of sites such as Newegg. Hopefully this will scare off the average joe, and maybe it will affect EA's bottom line enough that they will reconsider their tactic. Until then they will continue to create more intrusive and severe DRM's until they finally slow down pirates.

To me though it is only a matter of time until developers stop developing for the PC altogether. If they can't recuperate their investment, well then it's not worth it. People that say "I will teach them, I will pirate it" are really just doing a diservice to the rest of us. If you want to protest don't buy. Consoles are cheaper and harder to pirate, it amazes me that there is still a PC market at all sometimes.
 
It is not and never has been about piracy. This is about the roundabout of the doctrine of first sale.
Click to expand...
Hmm and I wonder why "first sale" might be an issue for digital IP? Could it be because of the threat of somebody buying something, making 12000 copies and then reselling/redistributing them that brings the right of first sale into question? Could it be?
 
RobWright I seriously am hoping you're joking about Red Alert 3 having DRM. That's not funny, you know, considering I'm most likely going to buy the game when it comes out.
 


Sorry, it's true. In fact, all EA games will carry SecuROM from now on: http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=430797&start=0&tstart=0

It's too bad because I'm loving the Red Alert 3 beta and I think EA's dev team has done an excellent job on this one (like, Westwood Studios, back in the day excellent). But I suspect RA3 is going to get the same kind of boycott/backlash as Spore, if not worse.
 
extreme epic epicness
http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Pc/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=/ref=cm_cd_t_pb_i#productPromotions

1750 1 star reviews and climbing

pirates wont pay for the game anyway but when you use bad drm, you loose customers who would have otherwise paid so you hurt your self with lost legit customers who may turn to piracy to get a DRM free version

game company owners don't understand English, the only language they understand is money

and in that language +$= Yes and $<=0= No



ea doesn't have a large scale call center so you can face extremely long hold times and will often have to deal with workers who wont listen you and wont give you another activation, causing you to call again and wasting another hour on hold in hopes of getting a competent worker on the phone

it is extra hassles that the legit customers have to go through that the pirates never notice due to their copies not having the horrid DRM


while i understand developers needs for protecting their software, there has to be a limit

would you shop at a store that required you to strip naked at the front door in order to prevent people from stealing, then when leaving, you have to get x-rayed and probed in order to make sure you didn't steal, or would you go to the store thats right next to it that only has a rfid security scanner near the front door

activation of any kind is bad
if the company decided it doesn't want to pay for those activation servers anymore then you wont be able to activate your games, your game can stop working at any time


it is annoying enough to have to call microsoft in order to activate windows

we want to keep the number of places needing to be called down to a minimum

also if your not in the US, it is very expensive to call EA support especially when you get stuck on hold

+ the process of proving to them that you are not a thief which they assume you are and treat you as such and provide compassion one would give to a thief

DRM sucks and ea is too smug to see that

the trend of having bad reviews and poor game sales and developers crying out piracy for the reason why their sales were so lonw, is very common now

it happened with many games in the past.

thousands vowed to not buy a game unless the DRM was removed.

the developers didn't listen,

then when the game sells poorly they cry piracy for the reason


thats like having someone tell you the city is being evacuated, if you don't come with me, I will leave and wont come back for you, then a news crew finds you 3 days later on the roof of your house trying to escape a flood and you blame you being stuck there on rescue workers only interested in saving them self any nor the people here

in every game that has ever sold poorly, the gaming community has told the company why their game will sell poorly and what to do to fix it but the game companies never listen to the community and when no one buys their crap, they blame it on piracy (well if the gaming company had listened and removed tones down the DRM then their game sales wouldn't have been so poor)


 
It doesn't look to be as bad as other DRM games have been, but that is still a little irritating...I may just do the whole "buy it then pirate it" thing.
 
Securom also slows your pc down

if you use the autoruns program to look at your startup you will see that securom will add up to 5 system level drivers in your startup

after installing a drmed game, the amount of memory windows uses at start up goes from 73MB to 105MB and after manually removing the securom crap, it goes back down to 73MB
but then the game wont launch with out using a fixed .exe file
(at startup I only have 10 running processes (11 with task manager opened ))

DRM reduces performance

gamers hate having any needless loss of performance no matter how large or small

DRM is a needless slowdown thats of no benefit to the user, it only serves to degrade their gaming experience
 



Digital IP is no different than a physical object. According to the Supreme Court, there is no difference. Especially if it tied to a physical object, cd, dvd, flash stick, etc. Digital IP is the same thing. The only thing is, if you sell it, you give up any ecopies you have. Then it is classified as a copyright violation.



good grief.... Yes you are. I gave you a link to the actual blog instead of the links from the several tech sites I saw this posted on. That was the polite thing to do.



I hate piracy too.... but piracy as you have defined it is black and white... while the truth is not that clear. You have several reasons why people pirate software. 1) they cannot afford it... so they pirate it. (not saying that is right... just a fact) 2) they crack it and pirate it because someone said they couldnt. (there are a surprising number of people like this) 3) People got burned on the sony rootkit and really do not want to get burned again. (majority of people). 4) You cannot get a refund once you open the box. Regardless if your computer can run it or not. (this one really burns my ass.) Companies are less ethical than the pirates. They use the excuse of piracy when a game sells poorly when it was actually stupid business decision to use DRM that screw people's computers. The only way that is worse, is sue your customers for buying your game. Only a small percentage actually pirate to get something for free. I never said that you could not hate piracy and DRM too. However the impression I get from you on Second Take is not any better than the companies that wants to make a dollar at all costs and the pirate that wants to get something for free. I feel if you like the game, then buy it. But without the DRM. EA has been doing this for more than 25 years. Back in the commodore 64 days, if you loaded a EA game, it could damage your very expensive floppy drive. That was the main reason people pirated back then. They HAD to remove it so protect their hardware. Well, I feel they are back to their old tricks.

I personally love the cd key way of combating piracy like how Unreal Tournament was packaged. You did not need the cd in the drive any more with a patch they released (yea... blizzard did that with starcraft and diablo2 also). In order to play online, you had to have an unique key. I am fine with that. I feel it was effective... and unobtrusive.

To summarize... I dont condone piracy. However I dont condone companies that think they can do whatever they want for the all mighty dollar, soul be damned. I just wish we could have a real conversation on why there is piracy, instead of treating everyone like a pirate. IMO, if I am going to be treated like one, hell I might as well earn the title. But that is just me.
 
@doctorx

I agree whole heartly. I have both legally purchased copies of games and pirated or backup copies of them. Simple reasons:

1) Some require internet activation. Where I live our internet can be very dodgy if its even running at all.
2) Originals require constant swapping of disks when switching games, this causes damage to those disks as do my family members (some not all).
3) The anti-pirate protection on my legal copies has proven an issue. Yet to happen with my "non orginal" copies of the same games.

Now its legal since by our law (in my country) I may have a back up copy and / or modify my instance of the software for offline use. Modifications for online use is also legal but servers generally block that and for good reason.

So basically I'm a proponent of having the original since developers deserve money for a good game but also having a non-original of the same game for my convience / safety. This way EA has no reason to complain as they received their money and I'm legally in the clear.

Edit: Distributing a modified copy however is not legal depending on how its done. Give a modified copy to a friend who has a legal copy is fine. Since they already have a license its legal. Give it to somebody who hasn't got a license or make money from it without written permission to do so and your in trouble.
 
My take on things? I pay for my software I dont pirate (although I did extensively back in the 8bit days of yore).

I HATE DRM that is in anyway intrusive or negative for the legal customer, doubly so if its completely ineffective due to being cracked. As far as I can see a company prepared to hassle their paying customers for an absolutely minimal reduction in piracy is not deserving of any kind of "goodwill".

All these topics on DRM are a "GOOD THING" in my opinion, more fuel for the fire. The more heat the more attention people pay to the issue. Eventually popular opinion will resolve the issue.

I believe that negative publicity leading to either companies seeing the error of their ways or losing earnings and backing down voluntarily as the most likely scenario. A second also likely option of legal changes which bring down the worst of the obtrusive DRM coming about due to continued mass outrage.

I believe the galvanisation of public reaction is likely to occur sooner than a technically perfect DRM system.

There is NO power in the world as strong as mass public perception. No government or corporation can stand against a large act of dissent. Anyone ever seen the build up to the fall of the Berlin wall?

A big enough company can shake off a few firebrands effortlessly they can put up with thousands boycotting, BUT they cant stand up to a groundswell of negative public opinion. The more the issues talked about the higher the awareness, the higher the emotions involved until either the company sees the writing on the wall or stares defeat in the face. Its started happening already these companies can feel the heat, Look at the way rootkit was dropped or the way EA themselves cut out the continual reactivation thing. They KNOW they can only push so far.
 
What I find strange is that they don't seem to care that they are alienating a notable percentage of the people who are most likely to buy games. The hard core crowd are the ones most vocal about this and are also the ones who buy games most often.

I am at a loss however for how to get the message across to them. They seem to be completely delusional about the situation.
 


The thing is here you are dealing with humans and EGO's Its very easy for a corporate high flyer to look at sales figures for a year or so of drm activism and say well plenty are still buying, its not hurting us its all hot air. Its just a vocal minority 😀

Of course SOE thought it was a vocal minority protesting when they rode rough shod over their customers with SWG and made huge sweeping and unpopular changes because they felt it was a good idea, in the process they lost the vast majority of their customers, NOW they talk to their customers, pay attention to what the customers say and frankly cater to their wishes! They called it wrong! and paid the price, it does happen. They have since said as much directly and changed their actions accordingly. They will never get back what they lost. They paid their price for ignoring forum venting 😀

Some of these guys have very thick skins, whilst they see some supporting DRM in the forums they hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. If someone else agrees with your position youve got to be right. right? The wiser heads in the gaming industry can see that bad DRM is not going to pay off long term. But some people will only learn the hard way. Some of the current stuff may well be "posturing" as well, and experimentation, how far can we push them before they say "no".
 
DRM is not a value-add proposition, it’s a value-less proposition a punishment for those of us who buy our software.

Those who illicitly obtain their software can happily use it to their hearts content, while those of us who are customers are treated as criminals for requesting in some twisted dickensian manner from sir 'can I please have more.' Not only that but I have to pay for the privilege of doing so at $2.48 per minute no less.

I have not played bioshock, Mass effect, or spore in either their final or demo release versions, nor shall I purchase any of those titles for my PS3 simply because I will not be party to a system that squeezes customers as though they were criminals and lets the pirates have their way. Even though I own every single C&C game made, I will not be purchasing or playing Red Alert 3 and believe me these decisions are not hard ones to make.

The simplest form of protest is to vote with your wallet, but if you pirate the game you merely lend credence to their arguement and thats a worse position to be in for all of us.
 
Digital IP is no different than a physical object. According to the Supreme Court, there is no difference. Especially if it tied to a physical object, cd, dvd, flash stick, etc. Digital IP is the same thing. The only thing is, if you sell it, you give up any ecopies you have. Then it is classified as a copyright violation.
Click to expand...
I'm not arguing about the law and I personally agree that consumers should be able to resell products they legitimately purchased. But if you can't see where right of first purchase and piracy intersect in the world of digital IP, well I'm not going to waste any more keystrokes pointing out something so obvious.
If a game has overly intrusive DRM I just won't buy it. But I don't expect game companies to make games with resale value for me in mind. While I fret to go along with your "Digital IP is no different than a physical object" statement I will humor it enough to say that many physical products are intended for one time or single owner use. How does the "doctrine of first sale" apply to toilet paper or a tooth brush? Both become almost completely worthless for resale once removed from their packaging. If you could find somebody to buy either item used it's perfectly within your rights to sell them. But there's a clear difference between having the right to sell something and being guaranteed that it will have any value.
 
It's not that hard to get rid of DRM. Don't buy the game. It's that simple. Tell your friends what DRM is and why it's bad. Support studios/companies that use much more progressive models, like Valve. Don't even pirate the game. Even that shows demand for a title to the marketing people at EA.
 


If you are going to pirate it, at least buy the game first. You don't have to install it and deal with the DRM. Once you buy it, I think you are morally right to use a pirated copy to play with if the DRM sucks. The law might be different so I would use care in admitting to it.

My store bought copy of COD4 would not run on my system and tech support could not get it running so after 5 weeks I had to get a crack to play a game that I owned. Insane.

Rob: I don't think the question should be how much is piracy costing developers but how much is DRM costing developers. I'm not buying Spore only because of it's DRM. I did not buy BioShock until they removed it. Although I bought BioShock, they still lost some $ as I paid $30 for it instead of the $50 I would have on release.

IF DRM was transparent to the user and never failed, I would not mind. Companies have a right to a return on their IP, but not at the expense of paying customers.

Vote with your money, guys. If you have to chose between two games, please buy the one with the least DRM. Stardock and Steam come to mind.
 
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