Who is to blame for absurd DRM and the 'death' of PC gaming?

[casualcolors]

i do frequent some other sites and some not so legal 1s and nocturnal has a point.
in many of the treads i read the excuse isnt cost but who's publishing it and how, with what drm...
the games i see most copied are not the AAA titles but the lesser 1s like angry birds.
yes skyrim and assasins creeds did have a fair amount of downloads between em... but angry birds is over 12 times as many as both together across all available platforms...

publishers like steam are getting there with there buy 1 play on multiformat idea... where you buy say portal 2 on pc and you can then download it for any other platform for free. you just need access to the account that you bought the original with... this wont stop piracy but it does give the customer less reason to pirate a game they have already bought and as a result steam have cut piracy across all there supported platforms...

not many of the other companies are taking note though. steam has a great idea that ensures every 1 who buys the game is happy but companies like e.a and ubi refuse to adopt it... because to them we arnt customers we are all potential pirates... funny thing is most pirates are clueless as to what they are downloading and most people wouldn't know the first thing about how to copy an actual drm encrypted game... so in reality its a very small group who are distributing the games and they should be the targets not the guys actually downloading em...

if piracy was such a huge problem then e.a can go though the courts and persuade the individuals who crack the games and then distribute them to change there ways... its pointless going after the people who copied the game unless you just intend using them as a cash cow...(this doesnt work as the fines are often in the 10's of dollars rather than the 250,000 the games companies try to tell you, that your liable for)...

as i said most of the time its a personal thing with pirates as to who they choose to pirate... i found personally that e.a and activation are the 2 biggest loosers but they also happen to be 2 of the biggest companies so it cant be hurting them that much...

I'm interested to see how the ISP-side crack down on pirating goes. I expect many tears if it is even moderately effective.
currently the only way they want to stop piracey is to stop people using the net. limit access to sites rather than go after the individuals responsible... in other words make every 1 pay for the actions of the few... last time heard of that hitler was running germany.... so am i comparing e.a to the nazi party? no. e.a havent killed people over there games...

1 thing i do find funny is that companies like e.a are amending there eulas with phrases like. if you buy this software you cannot take on a class action in court against e.a if your unhappy with the end product or the rules we put in place to stop you legally using this software... thats right they think because they have written it into there eula its a law... they are completely ignoring the constitution of the u.s.a and the human rights act in the e.u... e.a and other companies think they are so far above the common man they make the rules... pirates on the other hand break the rules and in some cases are sanctioned to do so...
so no if you want to blame sum1 for pirating a game just remember the companies are just as guilty of theft. but they would steal more than a few bux from your pockets they intend to steal your rights...

They can only steal your rights when the environment exists for it. Unfortunately for EA and Activision-Blizzard and Ubisoft and down the line, those oft-amended EULA's don't really amount to much after the date of purchase, with or without your digital signature. They do have you over the barrel where the legalese is concerned, in the games where play time is purchased.

On any site where any claim is made that invasive DRM is noted as the prime reason for piracy, all you have to do is ask yourself why were those same people pirating games back in 1995? For the same reason people were phishing aol accounts to play engage games at 2 bucks an hour. People hate paying for things that they know they can get for free.

There really isn't any caveat you can make in the case of computer piracy. It's just stealing. The people who do it are thieves. Personally, I think it's tacky as all hell.

No doubt given the opportunity and no threat of legal recourse though, every major game publisher in the industry would fleece your pockets, your social security number, your dna and anything else they could snag up that had potential monetary value. It's a cutthroat business and they're the sharks that have survived the longest.

What I am really interested to see is the ISP-side crackdown on piracy that is supposed to be coming in the next several months. If that is even moderately effective I would expect a lot of tears and bellyaching.

 

[HEXiT]

not making a case for it. just repeating what i read on other forums.. i was 1 of them in 1995 and 1985. if you dont mind im gonna give you a little backround, it may help you see what im sayin...
when i was 9 i was introduced to computers, this was when they were nothing but a tech trend (1979), by 80 i had my own sinclair Z80, by 16 i could program basic, understood hex coding basics and i rewote the odd game with hex edits and passed em on to BBs groups and so on.
right up until 2001 when i got a knock on the door, by the boys in blue. as you can guess i was reduced to playing on console for a while. but the day after my suspension was up i got an amd 6000x2 6600gt 1 gig of ram setup... but i havent copied a game since. thats why i say cut em off at the source.

i always said there aint many on here like me and im on a pretty exclusive data base... today all i do is play games i legitimately buy not because im scared they will come again coz im pretty sure they wont and im reasonably sure i wouldn't be dumb enough to get caught red handed again. but because im much more selective about the games i choose to play and what value they offer online...
currently i have over 1000 hours on cod4 (got that the day of release and still play today) and bfbc2 with 400 hours. as well as a fair steam collection with around 1000 hours between em... back in the day there was no net, well for average joe. i was both lucky and unlucky in 1988 as i belonged to a group who had what we now call net access, via BBS bulletin boards and is how i started.

it wasnt till we could communicate that things took off.
back in 1984 a spectrum game cost 1.99 i had over 500 of em by 1986 i had a similar amount for my atari. i moved over to amiga and copied well over 1000 games they day i got caught, i had 2 copied games in my then flat and thats what they charged me for. the fine i got wasnt huge by any standard... a few hundred pounds, but if they had of found everything, i think it would have been a 6 month jail term... lucky for me i had just sold everything the previous week as i was then considering buying a pc.

so as you can see i do have a personal angle on piracy... there was no games industry back then or at least not much of 1. activision and electronic arts were around back then 2. the difference is today them companies are worth billions. back then, they were worth a hundred million, if that...

i know the isp crack down wont work because the companies are capitalists and will not stand for loosing customers... 1s they start having to up prices because less and less people join em, they will change there tune.

but people have to be willing to stand up to em. and by the looks of it theres already a sizable group forming. accusing the isp's of doing the mpaa and so ons work for em by, bypassing laws that are already in place to combat piracy. there are enough copyright laws already and is the reason why i think the isp thing is gonna fail.
the police have to get a warrant that proves that a crime is in progress b4 they can issue a wire tap for a criminal investigation... yet the isp's think they can spy on your communications and do this without a warrant via your internet. it cant legally be done without a court order for the law, so how will a private company do it without due legal process? they cant... as far as i know...

 

[casualcolors]

not making a case for it. just repeating what i read on other forums.. i was 1 of them in 1995 and 1985. if you dont mind im gonna give you a little backround, it may help you see what im sayin...
when i was 9 i was introduced to computers, this was when they were nothing but a tech trend (1979), by 80 i had my own sinclair Z80, by 16 i could program basic, understood hex coding basics and i rewote the odd game with hex edits and passed em on to BBs groups and so on.
right up until 2001 when i got a knock on the door, by the boys in blue. as you can guess i was reduced to playing on console for a while. but the day after my suspension was up i got an amd 6000x2 6600gt 1 gig of ram setup... but i havent copied a game since. thats why i say cut em off at the source.

i always said there aint many on here like me and im on a pretty exclusive data base... today all i do is play games i legitimately buy not because im scared they will come again coz im pretty sure they wont and im reasonably sure i wouldn't be dumb enough to get caught red handed again. but because im much more selective about the games i choose to play and what value they offer online...
currently i have over 1000 hours on cod4 (got that the day of release and still play today) and bfbc2 with 400 hours. as well as a fair steam collection with around 1000 hours between em... back in the day there was no net, well for average joe. i was both lucky and unlucky in 1988 as i belonged to a group who had what we now call net access, via BBS bulletin boards and is how i started.

it wasnt till we could communicate that things took off.
back in 1984 a spectrum game cost 1.99 i had over 500 of em by 1986 i had a similar amount for my atari. i moved over to amiga and copied well over 1000 games they day i got caught, i had 2 copied games in my then flat and thats what they charged me for. the fine i got wasnt huge by any standard... a few hundred pounds, but if they had of found everything, i think it would have been a 6 month jail term... lucky for me i had just sold everything the previous week as i was then considering buying a pc.

so as you can see i do have a personal angle on piracy... there was no games industry back then or at least not much of 1. activision and electronic arts were around back then 2. the difference is today them companies are worth billions. back then, they were worth a hundred million, if that...

i know the isp crack down wont work because the companies are capitalists and will not stand for loosing customers... 1s they start having to up prices because less and less people join em, they will change there tune.

but people have to be willing to stand up to em. and by the looks of it theres already a sizable group forming. accusing the isp's of doing the mpaa and so ons work for em by, bypassing laws that are already in place to combat piracy. there are enough copyright laws already and is the reason why i think the isp thing is gonna fail.
the police have to get a warrant that proves that a crime is in progress b4 they can issue a wire tap for a criminal investigation... yet the isp's think they can spy on your communications and do this without a warrant via your internet. it cant legally be done without a court order for the law, so how will a private company do it without due legal process? they cant... as far as i know...

I think a lot of the success of the ISP-side approach is going to depend on if, say, 50% of the ISP providers adopt similar policies vice 95%. You're right though if there is reasonable alternative in any area, then all the crackdown will serve to do is drive customers away from company X to company Y and I don't see that being ferociously enforced.

Cool post btw. I think you have an interesting point about ISP's wanting to spy on user activity to some broad extent, although this push in general toward ISP's monitoring their own customers comes from the music and movie industries primarily. I think it will be an interesting situation to watch as it pans out.