Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kashan]

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.

I'm not actually sure what you're talking about. You can transfer the games all you want, you can just only have one person on your steam account at a time. I'm not really sure I see the issue with that. Especially with a game like TF2.

[Saturn]

He's probably talking about how you cant sell your shit off to other people short of selling the ENTIRE ACCOUNT.

[TA]

Valve claims they don't sell games.  They sell non-transferable licenses to use their games.

Say I bought a game, and enjoyed it, and one of my friends wanted to try it out.  Can I loan them my copy, like with a book, or a movie, or a console?  No.  My copy of the game is irrevocably tied to my account.  To do this, I have to give them my username and password and let them log in as me, in violation of Steam's EULA.

Say I bought a game, and have finished with it, and want to resell it on the secondary market.  Can I list the game on eBay, and send it to the buyer?  No.  My copy of the game is irrevocably tied to my account.  To do this, I have to try to sell my entire account, with everything on it, also in violation of Steam's EULA.

The doctrine of first sale ensures the right to resell a copy of a work.  It mandates tolerance of the secondary market.  That's why Valve claims that if you go to a store and buy a copy of the Orange Box, you're not actually buying any games, you're simply purchasing a license to use their software.  You're purchasing access to Portal, not a copy of Portal.  It's bullshit, and it's illegal, but short of a class-action it's never going to get before a court, and the Steam EULA even tries to get you to waive the ability to sue.  Add to that the mandatory online activation of single-player offline games, so you have to hope Valve's servers decide to let you play the game you just bought?  And that whole German Orange Box debacle?  Fuck.  That.

Essentially, this is Valve's business model:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=31JNEVHZxO8

[Thad]

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

How does it run?  IIRC there was a Mass Effect crack within a week of release but it was incomplete (they'd gotten the initial SecuROM hooks taken care of, but missed the one that locked up the game the first time you tried to use the Galaxy Map); it was a month or so before a complete one came out.

If this is really a complete, pre-zero-day crack of the game, then that says all anyone needs to know about the efficacy of SecuROM.  But that just brings us back to my earlier point:

that's not going to convince EA that it's a bad idea, just that they need to make it stronger.

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.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".  Let's see some sales charts.

Here's one for you: Amazon is up to 1651 one-star reviews, but Spore is still their top-selling game right now.  Guess which one of those two numbers actually matters.

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.

Not sure if you or TA is right on this one; I'll hit up Wikipedia a little later.  But let's assume you're right and SecuROM IS totally gone from current copies of BioShock.  That doesn't mean they removed it because people were complaining about the DRM, it means they removed it because its peak sales period had elapsed.  The main intent with DRM is to prevent zero-day leaks.  SecuROM appears to have succeeded in that for Mass Effect, but if what you guys are telling me is correct, failed for Spore.

[A²]

...I'm..not seeing why you're so bent out of shape about this, TA. I can't remember a time when I was able to resell a PC game. Even back when PC games had those huge boxes that dwarfed PSX cases, there was some tweak or CD key or bullshit that prevented you from reselling it.

Yes, I can see why you're mad. But this isn't something Valve started.

EDIT:

For Thad:

Link to the 2k boards where a community manager is announcing the removal of all activation restrictions

[Thad]

...I'm..not seeing why you're so bent out of shape about this, TA. I can't remember a time when I was able to resell a PC game. Even back when PC games had those huge boxes that dwarfed PSX cases, there was some tweak or CD key or bullshit that prevented you from reselling it.

Yes, I can see why you're mad. But this isn't something Valve started.

Lyrai,

If I were to, say, give my copy of Arcanum away to somebody, complete in box, that would include the CD, the key, and everything that person would need to play it.

Even the old, onerous "pull up page x of the manual and type the third word" copy protection was still transferable so long as the manual was transferred along with the disks.

Link to the 2k boards where a community manager is announcing the removal of all the arbitrary limit bullshit

Um, you might consider reading past the first post.

Our other methods of copy protection remain. You will still have to activate your copy, and you will still need to keep the disc in the drive. SecuROM has not been removed -- just the activation limits on number of installs and number of computers you can install BioShock on simultaneously.

Emphasis mine.

[A²]

...well shit, I got my wires crossed about the Bioshock DRM. 

But I am absolutely certain that the whole "keep them damned consumers from resellin our PC games!" started long before Valve. I recall having a hell of a time a good few years back before I ever even HEARD of Steam. 

[TA]

Whether or not Valve was the first company to start flaunting the first sale doctrin, Valve doing it is still inexcusable.

[patito]

Yeah, this whole valve thing is pretty obvious with their gift giving system.  You can't gift away games you own, but rather you have to buy them and specify them as gifts first.

[Thad]

But I am absolutely certain that the whole "keep them damned consumers from resellin our PC games!" started long before Valve. I recall having a hell of a time a good few years back before I ever even HEARD of Steam. 

Whether or not Valve was the first company to start flouting the first sale doctrin, Valve doing it is still inexcusable.

This may be more of a discussion for the copyrights/etc. thread, but I'm with TA.  The legal merits of the "you're not buying a product, you're buying the rights to use it" argument are questionable -- if the RIAA's claim that you're not allowed to rip CD's you've legally purchased hasn't been thrown out yet, it's bound to be.  As I noted in the other thread, courts have already upheld first sale doctrine in similar cases.

Trying to prevent resale of a product is anti-consumer.  If I buy a game, or any other product, it's mine, and I have the right to do with it as I please -- including transferring it to somebody else.  That doesn't mean I have the right to distribute copies of it to everybody on BitTorrent, or that the developers should be denied their pay for making the product, or any of the other crap that the content publishers use to muddy the debate.  It just means that if I buy something, it becomes mine, and the publisher has no right to dictate how I use it.  (I'll acknowledge a gray area for online games where you're interacting with other players and certain behavior can have a deleterious effect on their experience.  But at that point, we ARE clearly talking about a service and not a product.)

[Guild]

How are games companies supposed to make money if the product (notice I avoided ownership) is instantly torrented by half the consumer base?

Before you correct my sentence with your red pen, I'll play devil's advocate's advocate and do this:

How are games companies supposed to make (enough) money (to feed the bloated industry) if the product (notice I avoided ownership) is instantly torrented by half the consumer base (you fags)?

[TA]

Ask Bethesda.  Oblivion had a CD key, which wasn't transmitted online, and nothing else.

Or ask Stardock.

[Royal☭]

And yet the game sold several millions in its first month.

[Fredward]

I think that was kind of the point.

And Guild, you seem to make the assumption that DRM of any kind prevents that from happening. Which recent events seem to contradict.

[Guild]

The last time I bought a PC game the CD key was on the inside and you could dl (I think you kids call it "torrenting" nowadays) the data and find a generator to make you a hacked CD key. Did those games you mentioned do something different?

[Fredward]

No. Stardock games don't even have CD keys, in the usual sense (if I'm not mistaken?). You get a unique key to register it online, but that's it.

[TA]

As I understand it, the keys for Stardock games only come into play for downloadable content.  You don't need to involve them for play of the game.

[Thad]

And Guild, you seem to make the assumption that DRM of any kind prevents that from happening. Which recent events seem to contradict.

This.

Guild, your argument only works if you assume DRM works.  Spore was available for illegal download literally before it was released commercially.  And yet, its sales look to be doing just fine.

Produce an example of a copy protection scheme that actually works -- short, again, of MMO's which require an account to play -- and you have a point.  Don't, and you don't.

And that's without even getting into installing potentially dangerous software on a user's computer without permission.  I realize you don't think consumers have any rights, but come on, that's a stretch even for you.

[Guild]

I never said consumers don't have rights. You have a right not to purchase something you see as harmful to something else you purchased. That's your right as a consumer.

I think you call that a strawman. 

[Thad]

I never said consumers don't have rights.

No, you just imply it constantly.

You have a right not to purchase something you see as harmful to something else you purchased. That's your right as a consumer.

You also have the right not to have malware deliberately installed on your computer without your consent, whether it comes with a product you chose to purchase or not.

SecuROM is not mentioned in the EULA, and even if it were, EULA's are unconscionable contracts that would likely not hold up to a legal challenge.

The Sony rootkit controversy is the best past example of this behavior.  It was settled out of court, but do you think Sony would have won if it had proceeded?

I think you call that a strawman. 

More of a deliberate exaggeration (albeit rather a minor one if the only consumer right you're willing to cede is the right not to buy a product).  You'll note I didn't devote my post to arguing with it.