DRM, the discussion continues...

[hat]

I've currently got a bit of an issue with DRM myself, not on PC this time, but with my PS2. I recently got a 90001 model PS2, which is great for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't load Free Mcboot, at least not without a modchip. The downside here is I can only load original discs with it... but optical media only lasts so long. There's a way to trick the PS2 into thinking it's reading a real PSX disc if you first load any original disc, and open the lid while blocking some sensor that makes the console think the lid is still closed. This means you can swap the disc with any other disc you want, but you have to do so while the disc (and the spindle) is still spinning... yikes!

 

[Vayra86]

I've currently got a bit of an issue with DRM myself, not on PC this time, but with my PS2. I recently got a 90001 model PS2, which is great for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't load Free Mcboot, at least not without a modchip. The downside here is I can only load original discs with it... but optical media only lasts so long. There's a way to trick the PS2 into thinking it's reading a real PSX disc if you first load any original disc, and open the lid while blocking some sensor that makes the console think the lid is still closed. This means you can swap the disc with any other disc you want, but you have to do so while the disc (and the spindle) is still spinning... yikes!

Like someone else said... those were the days!

 

[silentbogo]

Not really annoyed by DRM per-se, but more so by games incorporating third-party login info, or online services, even for offline games.
BTW, digital DRM is not as annoying as some physical DRM we had back in a day. Some of us from CIS region may still remember the abysmal StarForce protection. It was based on physical artifacts on the disk and was so unreliable that even brand new store-bought CD may not get validated from the first try. Some multi-CD games were a total nightmare... Oh, and occasional BSODs

 

[INSTG8R]

Not really annoyed by DRM per-se, but more so by games incorporating third-party login info, or online services, even for offline games.
BTW, digital DRM is not as annoying as some physical DRM we had back in a day. Some of us from CIS region may still remember the abysmal StarForce protection. It was based on physical artifacts on the disk and was so unreliable that even brand new store-bought CD may not get validated from the first try. Some multi-CD games were a total nightmare... Oh, and occasional BSODs

I will never forget Starforce...

 

[R-T-B]

I could see EA trying to sue them for being DRM free as Origin is the most DRM heavy platform there is.

On what foundation? They don't sell any EA products with DRM tech?

The Tor Project | Privacy & Freedom Online

Defend yourself against tracking and surveillance. Circumvent censorship.

www.torproject.org

Can't block TOR anymore because of the way it works. Have fun..

Tor exit nodes are known, so yes, you can.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I ran into problems loading a game recently; Crysis Warhead.

There was a patch released years ago that alleviated the problem, but I was lucky it still existed.

The GOG version of Crysis1 and Warhead are DRM free and have all of the latest patches.

Crysis®

Crysis, the first game of a well-received trilogy, is a first-person shooter set in the y

www.gog.com

Crysis Warhead®

Includes Crysis Warhead and Crysis Wars The sharp images and first-person shooter action

www.gog.com

Tor exit nodes are known, so yes, you can.

Like VPN servers, they have begun shifting them around on a frequent basis to avoid permanent detection.

 

[lexluthermiester]

at least not without a modchip.

So mod it, you can still get mod kits for it.
EDIT: I spoke too soon. Was going to PM you a link to the place I bought them but discovered the site was gone(it's been a few years). Sorry man.

 

[killster1]

So mod it, you can still get mod kits for it.
EDIT: I spoke too soon. Was going to PM you a link to the place I bought them but discovered the site was gone(it's been a few years). Sorry man.

I've currently got a bit of an issue with DRM myself, not on PC this time, but with my PS2. I recently got a 90001 model PS2, which is great for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't load Free Mcboot, at least not without a modchip. The downside here is I can only load original discs with it... but optical media only lasts so long. There's a way to trick the PS2 into thinking it's reading a real PSX disc if you first load any original disc, and open the lid while blocking some sensor that makes the console think the lid is still closed. This means you can swap the disc with any other disc you want, but you have to do so while the disc (and the spindle) is still spinning... yikes!

funny i prob have a few spare modchips somewhere in my electronic hord mess. i know i used to chip them out i love modding all the consoles rgh was my fav tho. i have cut the top off ps2's and installed a flip lid also / installed them in nice seethrough plexi cases.

oh wait there are ps2 chips on amazon https://www.amazon.com/MODBO5-0-V1-93-Chip-SupportHard-Disk/dp/B010Y35P7A https://www.amazon.com/PS2-Slim-Flip-GhostCase-Playstation-2/dp/B007TOHY54

 

[silentbogo]

Just stumbled upon this on Youtube:

Pretty interesting piece.

 

[somethinggeneric]

I understand why DRM is "necessary" as it "prevents" piracy, but all too often with DRM it instead rewards and encourages piracy, and punishes it's consumers.

I have two perfect personal examples of DRM that I've seen and experienced. The first is a game called "From Dust" It was an excellent terraforming game Ubisoft released in 2011. I pirated this game because Ubisoft decided a few days before the PC version released to delay it a month to boost console sales. So the month passes and I pirate the game the morning it launched, play it, and beat it. After looking online to see how other people enjoyed it I saw tons of "I cant play" folks because apparently the licensing server was experiencing issues.
I pirated the game, played it and beat it all before any of the legitimate consumers who paid money could even start the game.

Another example is physical DRM. The geniuses at Project Management decided to implement a "Physical DRM" scheme where the text in the textbook had watermarks that were shiny/distorted all over it to prevent you from scanning and copying it. I bought the book originally and couldn't read it for more than 10 minutes without getting a headache.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

My issue with DRM is why can't they remove the DRM after it gets cracked? I had Deus Ex MD installed on my PC. I was playing online FPS. Internet goes down. I call the ISP. At least 2 hour long outage. Wanna try out DE:MD I installed a few weeks ago. But nooo!!! Denuvo can't connect to server cause no internet. Okay. Fuck you! I'll paly AC Origins then. Same problem. I was so mad I took a walk outside and chatted with neighbourhood acquaintances.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Just stumbled upon this on Youtube:

Pretty interesting piece.

Well that just pisses me off. Denuvo/VM Protect/Ubisoft/WB Games need to be sued by the EPA for wasting power.

It's official: Origins/Odyssey runs like trash not because of the game, but because of the draconian DRM it is laced with. I think I will wait to buy Odyssey until I can get it from somewhere without DRM.

 

[sam_86314]

Something interesting and related to this topic...

An indie dev posted a free DRM-free version of their game on a certain website, and it ended up giving the Steam version a sales boost.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Something interesting and related to this topic...

An indie dev posted a free DRM-free version of their game on a certain website, and it ended up giving the Steam version a sales boost.

My theory? He gave it away, people were able to try it out and those try-outs converted to sales because people wanted to pay him for a good game. Very interesting.

 

[Keullo-e]

My theory? He gave it away, people were able to try it out and those try-outs converted to sales because people wanted to pay him for a good game. Very interesting.

As an ex-pirate I've bought every game what I pirated several years ago (excluding those which aren't available as digital purchase, NFS Most Wanted (2005) for example). I guess pirating a game worked like as a demo for me.

 

[lexluthermiester]

As an ex-pirate I've bought every game what I pirated several years ago (excluding those which aren't available as digital purchase, NFS Most Wanted (2005) for example). I guess pirating a game worked like as a demo for me.

I think we've all "tried" a game out in a way that is not completely legal. But as a general rule I buy a game, and if it's not DRM-free, find a "patch" or a "patched version". I usually wait for "patches" on games I know will have DRM..

 

[Rahnak]

My theory? He gave it away, people were able to try it out and those try-outs converted to sales because people wanted to pay him for a good game. Very interesting.

I'm inclined to agree. Speaking for myself, I don't really pirate games anymore, the last time I did was to try out a game I wasn't sure I'd like (video reviews weren't conclusive). Turns out I didn't. Similarly, I used my free Xbox Game Pass subscription to try out Hollow Knight (another game I was unsure I'd like based on video reviews alone) and then bought it on GOG.
I for one think it's a shame that game demos aren't a thing anymore. The 2 hour return window isn't the same and I can't be bothered with that.

 

[Frick]

Agreed.

I hate the fact that I can't rip my DVD's and blu-rays with MKV to my hard drive, to prevent wear on the original media, and I can't use Handbrake to convert them to other forms to make them easier to use in my daily life.

I totally hate that can't capture Youtube videos to my hard drive, and save them against future deletion, using various plugins.

The fact that it's illegal has totally stopped innovation in the field, ever since dvd ripping was made illegal, and Pirate Bay was closed.

It is sad times when what you can listen to/see/watch is based on your wallet.

Where I live we have a legal right to make copies of bought media, and we even pay a small fee for (or rather the distributors do) every piece of storage we buy, be it optical media, hard drives or USB drives and electronics with digital storage (3SEK/GB for phones, or roughly €150 for a phone with 512GB memory, fun for the future) and it goes to the authors or at least license owners that are connected to the organization. So, we have a legal right to rip optical media ... but not a right to bypass the inevitable copy protection these things have. It's crap, and it's one of those things absolutely zero people has any interest in.

And for the record the last statement has always been true, except for a blessed few years when the Internet still was new.

Anyway I'm definitely going full GOG. Steam absolutely sucks at not being connected to the Internet, even in offline mode.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

My theory? He gave it away, people were able to try it out and those try-outs converted to sales because people wanted to pay him for a good game. Very interesting.

Counter theory: people that pirated the game started talking about it, that talk created buzz leading others to look up the game and buy it. The sales boost likely didn't come from the pirates, it came from the marketing the pirates gave it.

 

[64K]

It's my opinion that the majority of people pirating games are people that are too poor to buy them anyway so DRM used like Denuvo where a game usually can't be cracked quickly isn't going to force those people to buy the game. Here in the West we take it for granted that we have large amounts of disposable income for entertainment but a lot of the world doesn't.

There are, of course, some that pirate games even though they can afford them because they can get it for free or they don't think the game is worth $60 or they have a grudge against the Publisher/ Developer and don't want to support them.

There are some that say they pirate games to act as demos and then decide whether they will buy the game.

When looking at Denuvo there is 1 question that no one has an answer for. Neither Publishers, Developers or Denuvo Software Solutions themselves. By making a game harder to crack and it taking longer then how many of those people that can afford to buy the game are going to go ahead and buy the game because they are too impatient to wait for the cracked version? There is no way to know so there is no way to know how much more income a Publisher is receiving by using Denuvo. It's all speculation. No proof.

There are quite a few gamers that say they would have bought the game if it did not have Denuvo but decide to pirate it instead because they despise Denuvo. So how much have Publishers lost in income by pushing Denuvo?

And finally, pirates don't get the same gaming experience that customers do by buying the games. They don't get updates and patches unless the hacker cracks the game again and the people that are too poor to buy the games aren't running $1,000 or more gaming rigs they are using old hardware that struggles to even run the game. They turn the settings all the way down and still get lousy performance.

 

[Vayra86]

Even though I am not a huge fan of DRM I totally understand why it exists. I will use GOG as an example. If you get a game from GOG you can save the game to a USB stick and use it anywhere. What does that mean. We live in a world that is getting sharper in terms of economics. I will theorize on what would have happened without DRM in a download world.

1. There would be illegitimate sites selling fake keys to Games.
2. The PC Gaming industry would be left to the whales in the industry (EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft)
3. We would not get as many console ports as it is very easy to "pirate" anything on PC.
4. Steam would be no bigger than GOG
5. Epic would never have existed.

In my opinion if CDproject Red was based in the West there would already have been lawsuits to shut GOG down. Don't get me wrong I am not supporting DRM at all just giving an objective opinion on what it actually does.

CDPR is practically based in the modern West, its country is part of the EU, and falls under its jurisdiction too.

Those statements you make... bold. And I think untrue; piracy isnt new and neither is our 'download world'. Steam even thrived in this 'download world' and specifically smaller devs even today cannot even pay for DRM. And wrt Epic?! Epic exists BECAUSE Steam sells its services to devs for a 30% cut. This includes some weak form of DRM!!! Meanwhile, Epic just provides the storefront sans DRM at a much lower cut!

Edit.. ah I responded to the EU part before lol

 

[kapone32]

CDPR is practically based in the modern West, its country is part of the EU, and falls under its jurisdiction too.

Those statements you make... bold. And I think untrue; piracy isnt new and neither is our 'download world'. Steam even thrived in this 'download world' and specifically smaller devs even today cannot even pay for DRM. And wrt Epic?! Epic exists BECAUSE Steam sells its services to devs for a 30% cut. This includes some weak form of DRM!!! Meanwhile, Epic just provides the storefront sans DRM at a much lower cut!

Edit.. ah I responded to the EU part before lol

No piracy may not be new but when I say a download world (i am going to age myself) I am talking about a time when 100% of Games came on a floppy, CD or later DVDs and that is where I was first exposed to Steam. My argument is Steam would not have existed to the degree it does today in a DRM free world. For me it was the mitigating factor in getting publishers to put their games on Steam. It is also why I mention Epic as in my opinion it exists as a direct response to Steam but I think we are saying the same thing there. I will also say that the current climate provides avenues for someone new to PC to get free and really cheap games without a need to pirate anymore. On that note Control is 33% off on the Humble Store and if you have Humble Choice it brings the cost of the game to $44.62 CAD vs &79.99 CAD for the pre-order on Steam.

 

[R-T-B]

No piracy may not be new but when I say a download world (i am going to age myself) I am talking about a time when 100% of Games came on a floppy, CD or later DVDs and that is where I was first exposed to Steam. My argument is Steam would not have existed to the degree it does today in a DRM free world. For me it was the mitigating factor in getting publishers to put their games on Steam. It is also why I mention Epic as in my opinion it exists as a direct response to Steam but I think we are saying the same thing there. I will also say that the current climate provides avenues for someone new to PC to get free and really cheap games without a need to pirate anymore. On that note Control is 33% off on the Humble Store and if you have Humble Choice it brings the cost of the game to $44.62 CAD vs &79.99 CAD for the pre-order on Steam.

Stardock Central (later impulse) predated Steam by quite a bit. Unfortunately lacking DRM (at the time Stardock was opposed) the rest is basically history.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Counter theory: people that pirated the game started talking about it, that talk created buzz leading others to look up the game and buy it. The sales boost likely didn't come from the pirates, it came from the marketing the pirates gave it.

Interesting. Perhaps both are at play?

 

[Keullo-e]

I'd say that both are more or less correct, but like I told about my case, sometimes pirating even helps sales. If I wouldn't have been pirating all those games several years ago, I wouldn't have bought em.