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[Bongo Bill]

Pretty sure the whole point of the DRM is to prevent casual sharing. Make it impossible to let your neighbor, or your wife or whatever, install your copy of the game, so they have to buy their own.

[A²]

Pretty sure the whole point of the DRM is to prevent casual sharing. Make it impossible to let your neighbor, or your wife or whatever, install your copy of the game, so they have to buy their own.

Those same casual players are the ones who are going to be using amazon reviews to judge weicantspellthegoddamnedwordapparently or not to buy a game.

[Royal☭]

Pretty sure the whole point of the DRM is to prevent casual sharing. Make it impossible to let your neighbor, or your wife or you one year from now, install your copy of the game, so they have to buy their own.

[Detonator]

Pretty sure the whole point of the DRM is to prevent casual sharing. Make it impossible to let your neighbor, or your wife or whatever, install your copy of the game, so they have to buy their own.

If that were the case, why do they need all this fancy new technology?  If people are savvy enough to get past the "need CD in the tray to play" method, they can probably hunt down the whole torrent if they want.

I think it's a combination of both reasons, online and casual sharing.  Part of me thinks that they know DRM will not stop pirates, but do it anyway so shareholders who don't know shit about the market will believe that their company is protecting their profits in the best way possible.

Or maybe they're just  

[Bongo Bill]

I'm imagining a scenario like this. With all the piracy in the news lately, they can't do nothing. The guys who pick which DRM to license don't know exactly what their objective is in using it on any given title. They just know that they need one that's fancy enough to support a "limit the number of installs" scheme, and which non-tech-savvy shareholders will recognize as being "strong" protection if they're ever asked to justify their decision.

A bunch of people protecting their jobs from the anticipated ignorance - not even necessarily real ignorance - of their superiors, making individual decisions that lead to people like me* contracting Computer Herpes.

* Well, not me personally. I neither bought nor pirated it.

[A²]

Whoever did the thread split, 

I was actually interested in Spore after hearing a few friends rant and rave about it....but not with SecuROM.

I desperately want to play Bioshock, but only on the 360.

And Red Alert 3? Nope. Despite vague childhood memories of enjoying one of the Red Alerts, I'll stick with them unless SecuROM is dumped.

[Thad]

Wait.  Didn't we already do this thread?

[Detonator]

Split topic because I think this could be a good discussion on its own.

With all the piracy in the news lately, they can't do nothing.

This may be true for major video game distributors, but I'd like to note Amazon's mp3 download service for being a major distributor that shuns copy-protection.  A different market, I know, but it's a major company recognizing that DRM hurts the paying consumer.  Spore is a very big release, and this immediate backlash may be newsworthy beyond just gaming sites.  It could turn the public's eye against DRM in video games, but that might take a lot more.  After all, most of us put up with Steam, and that does all but install untraceable malware.  Maybe that's all we ask.

Wait.  Didn't we already do this thread?

Yeah, but I'm not digging that shit up.  Now that this is actually out, we can discuss the effects of SecuROM instead of just speculating.

[TA]

I was actually interested in Spore after hearing a few friends rant and rave about it....but not with SecuROM.

I desperately want to play Bioshock, but only on the 360.

And Red Alert 3? Nope. Despite vague childhood memories of enjoying one of the Red Alerts, I'll stick with them unless SecuROM is dumped.

This.  Exactly this.

I was going to buy Spore.  It doesn't sound very fun, from actual hands-on reviews, but even so, I appreciate that Will Wright is trying to do what he's trying to do, and would want to support that.  But as soon as SecuROM gets involved?  As soon as the producers announce that they'll treat their customer base like criminals, in an ineffectual attempt to "combat piracy" while making certain that pirates are able to offer a by-the-merits superior product?  Fucking pass.  If I feel like picking up Spore to play it, I'm pirating it and feeling not the slightest shred of guilt.

I'd like to play Team Fortress 2.  It sounds fun.  So long as Valve's distribution method decides to flaunt a hundred years of copyright law and claim they're not actually selling me a copy of the goddamn game, I'm not giving them a fucking penny.  I regret having paid for Portal before finding out that Steam games are nontransferable.

[Thad]

Yeah, but I'm not digging that shit up.  Now that this is actually out, we can discuss the effects of SecuROM instead of just speculating.

And yet, somehow we seem to be having exactly the same conversation!

All right, we don't have to merge them.  But I think it's still worthwhile to at least link the old thread so we stop retreading the same ground.

[Detonator]

Well, since you found the thread (I honestly couldn't remember if it was its own thread or not), we might as well merge them.

Is there anything new to add?

[Brentai]

Just that it's months later, the complaints have been registered, and  , Corporate America has taken a big shit all over the whole pile.

[Thad]

The Amazon reviews are getting spammed like a bridge-naming contest.  As of now, there are 1166 one-star reviews.

The difference is, this isn't an obscure self-help book.  EA knows how to play this game, and it knows that this flood of one-stars isn't much more likely to hurt its bottom line than the one that hit Amazon's Wii page when they had people staying up all night waiting for it to be available and then it sold out in seconds.  Amazon's going to take all these reviews down; EA won't even have to make a phone call about them.

Guys who care about DRM are a minority.  A flood of negative reviews on Amazon is not likely to educate many casual gamers on the problem.  The mainstream media aren't going to pick this story up.

There are only two things likely to hurt Spore's sales.  One is that the game's been so hyped for so long that its moment may have passed.  The other is the possibility that SecuROM really DOES start causing widespread problems for end users.

Even when (not "if") Spore shows up on Pirate Bay in a few weeks, DRM-free, that's not going to convince EA that it's a bad idea, just that they need to make it stronger.

[Dooly]

Even when (not "if") Spore shows up on Pirate Bay in a few weeks, DRM-free, that's not going to convince EA that it's a bad idea, just that they need to make it stronger.

The earliest Spore torrent on Pirate Bay was uploaded back on the 2nd.  It's got over 7200 seeders.

Come to think of it, I think I wound up uninstalling and reinstalling the game three or more times in order to get it to not crash on startup.  Update your graphics drivers, kids.

[A²]

Stuff Lyrai mentioned on the bottom of page 5

Spore was uploaded before it's release date. I have seen or talked to people, internet and in real life, who are excited about spore, and the people who have torrented it/refused to buy it due to DRM far, far outnumber those who actually bought it.

This is going to cause some waves, I think. Bioshock's DRM was even worse, only half as many people complained about it, and yet in the end the company relented and removed all SecuROM from it entirely.

[sei]

The nerdy company you keep is not EA's target audience.  The friends/relatives they're likely trying to get to boycott Spore, on the other hand... ???

[Saturn]

What strikes me as incredibly stupid is that EA is giving out free downloads of the original Red Alert for people that preordered Red Alert 3, but the RA download is a .iso

WHICH REQUIRES YOU TO USE SOMETHING LIKE DAEMON TOOLS THAT SECUREROM WOULD FUCK UP.
 

[Rico]

Or, y'know, burn it to CD with a terrible free version of Nero that most people get with their Gateway software bundle.

[Saturn]

Or, y'know, burn it to CD with a terrible free version of Nero that most people get with their Gateway software bundle.

THAT'S BESIDE THE FUCKING POINT.


also securerom is noted for BREAKING CD/DVD drives.

[TA]

Stuff Lyrai mentioned on the bottom of page 5

This is going to cause some waves, I think. Bioshock's DRM was even worse, only half as many people complained about it, and yet in the end the company relented and removed all SecuROM from it entirely.

No, they didn't.  They removed the limit on online activations.  You still have to activate it online, and it still installs SecuROM.