litre of my stinking piss on their spotty LCD-tanned face

Quote of the year.

As for DRM, I have mixed feelings.
Non-refundable install limit is total bollocks, as someone could legitimately use them all up and then not be able to play the game again, which considering they PAID for it is total shit!

However, a lot of companies now offer the "refundable" install limit where can you deactivate an install of the game. As long as the tool to do this is easy to use and doesn't piss around then its fine.

Then you have Steam, which is the best way of doing it, as it doesn't affect the end user at all, and you can download and play all your games on any pc with an internet connection. 

What good is DRM? 

Most of the complaints are pretty ridiculous and just something for tweens to get rant lulls or whatever the fuck about.

I'm a happy steam user <checks> with 38 games and despite it's occasional spaz outs it's pretty good.

The one that did stop me was DOW2 which has two DRM's - Steam and Windows Live. What for?

Probably will buy it someday, but just that 5% of added inconvenience (only for my benefit as a valued customer!) meant I spent the money on a night on the piss instead. 

A fair rant given the level of discourse generally surrounding copy protection/DRM.

However, with DRM specifically I take issue on moral grounds rather than logistical ones (I've never found DRM restrictive in practise, but in my eyes that's actually irrelevant) 

generally people have issues with being told how they can use things after they have paid money for it, especially when in cases it means that they cannot use the product they legitimately own any more just because they upgraded their pc / re-installed windows / etc.

Which is a fair point imo. The new Riddick game in particular comes to mind as it has a non-refundable 3 install limit and then thats it, your screwed. A lot of people have started gathering their pitchforks and torches over this.

But saying that, the developers of Riddick have already said that if it turns out that a large percentage of gamers are hitting that 3 install limit then they would raise it, and eventually, a patch will be released that removes the DRM entirely. I think this approach of removing DRM after the product has passed its shelf life is a good idea and I believe a lot of developers/publishers agree.

So does the "angry mob" of anti-drm gamers over-react? I would say yes in many cases, as it makes no sense that a developer would leave that kind of preventative DRM in any game after it has passed its shelf life. I do however agree with the moral argument (as nonentity mentions) that DRM of this kind brings up.

I guess the real question here is that when you buy a game, are you buying that game as a full product that you own, or are you buying the *right* to play that game legally, and therefore, does the developer/publisher have any say on those rights? 

the problem with it for me is that it never seems to do any good. it just serves to punish honest users more than anything else.

a pirate who wants to steal a game will do so and have an easier time playing it than the poor dude who used hard earned money to get it. the DRM is broken, if not a day or two after a game comes out, then within a week or two.

the overly strict DRM seems to be aimed at hardcore pirates yet only prevents casual theft (lending the CD to a friend and other stuff of that level).
if the DRM is intended to stop casual theft, it is out of proportion. 

But is the developer going to spend money making the patch unless it looks like their sales are going to go down unless they do?

Also,

SHAMBLER IS BACK 

<negke> cba to read all the posts, but don't you agree that semi-effective copy protection << user-friendliness?

<Shambl3r> i believe 99% of people whining are doing it on some deluded principle and an excuse to be a whiney bitch

That's what it boils down to. As nonentity admits - it's not about something that actually affects you or affects anything real or anything you might actually give a shit about. It's a hollow principle and an excuse to whine - which in principle there's nothing wrong with except that the people doing so are a bunch of fucking spastics and they're whining where I can actually see it. It offends my eyes.

P.S. I enjoyed the old Riddick game. I installed it once and played it once. Who knows if I'd had to upgrade my system maybe I'd have installed it twice. OMFG. WotEVER. 

Pretty much like you're whining about these people because of the Amazon review incidents? 

yeah, you're wrong on most points there.

There actually are drawbacks. I don't want some shitty sony rootkit that makes my machine vulnerable. I don't want valve to monitor how much time i spend gaming. I don't even want them to know how often i start the fucking thing. I don't want to write down a 64-digit number on the phone listening to some shitty recorded voice that's hard to understand, and then type it in again. Or twice if i mistyped the first time.

The pirates have it much easier. No surveillance, and good keygens even auto fill in the numbers for you. Patches are often bundled, sometimes even cheats/walkthroughs.

And yeah, i'm one of the guys who regularly reinstalls games that actually need the install. 

I don't buy any PC games anymore unless they're on Steam, and have no further bullshit beyond Steam.

Install limits are useless and retarded, and while I may never be affected, it's nothing I want to support. CD Keys used to be acceptible, but now I don't want to care about a fucking number that I have to save "just in case" when instead I can just have a single account with Steam and bam, install whereever and whenever and however many times I want. I don't give a fuck if Steam knows how much or how often I play a game. Any other DRM that basically tries to tell me what I can and what I cannot have on my computer is retarded and intrusive and I don't buy games that use any of these technologies.

So yeah. I don't bitch about DRM really, I just want ease of use/install and nothing that will affect my computer or whatever else I may run. I support Steam and Valve's direction with it mainly from the standpoint that they're doing what they need to do to protect themsealves from piracy while also trying to provide a good platform of service that I believe is beneficial to the PC platform and will help the PC market grow and become more unified. 

While I admire your passion and style, I can't agree with you.

Obviously being a fair and reasonable person, I have no objection to publishers and developers actually wanting to, you know, get paid. Non-invasive and sensible DRM (aka STEAM) is all fine and good.

Howver...

it's not about something that actually affects you

Actually, it does, to a greater or lesser degree, in almost every PC game that I buy (disregarding Steam).

Examples:

UT (either the original or some other version, can't remember) - I couldn't play the game with the retail CD I bought, because of the SecuROM protection or whatever it was disagreeing with my drive. I had to download a no-cd crack to play the game at all.

Bioshock - I couldn't install the game on the evening that I bought it, because the DRM autorisation servers were down. I had to wait till the next day to even install it, let alone play it.

Every game you ever lost the packaging for: need to reinstall it? Can't find the CD key? Well you're fucked, despite the fact that you paid for the game and you have a legit retail CD.

Almost every other game? Having to put the damn cd/dvd in the drive every time you want to play it, even though all of the fucking data required to play is on your hard drive. 

You're a twat. 

but, as an excuse to bitch, I couldn't disagree more with the idea of a PC with internet becoming like a TV - where the control is more in the hands of companies, content/service providers. Fuck that, most of what is good on the PC is because it has historically been the opposite of that - USER control. 

UT (either the original or some other version, can't remember) - I couldn't play the game with the retail CD I bought, because of the SecuROM protection or whatever it was disagreeing with my drive. I had to download a no-cd crack to play the game at all.

My

Bioshock - I couldn't install the game on the evening that I bought it, because the DRM autorisation servers were down. I had to wait till the next day to even install it, let alone play it.

heart

Every game you ever lost the packaging for: need to reinstall it? Can't find the CD key? Well you're fucked, despite the fact that you paid for the game and you have a legit retail CD.

bleeds

Almost every other game? Having to put the damn cd/dvd in the drive every time you want to play it, even though all of the fucking data required to play is on your hard drive.

for you

So you might have to keep your CD cases safe (I put mine in a row on a shelf OMG), put a CD in a drive to play a game, or very occasionally you might have to wait a day to install or sometimes even a game is b0rked and you might have to work around it.

Being a gamer is so tough these days, I don't know how you guys manage it.


Meagreman: If I gave a flying shit about companies knowing about installs or having to write down numbers, I suppose I'd be able to contrive those as """actual drawbacks""". Somehow I just can't see how it's possible.


Scumpie: So there you go, QED, it doesn't affect you but you'll whine about anyway - AND shoot yourself in the ass by not buying games on principle. Well done. Deny yourself fun and entertainment. I like that puritanical streak, it shows that fanaticism is overtaking common sense.

Nogke: No I'm whining about people on here too, now :D 

let's see where it goes... 

I can't wait for the day when something locks Shambler out of his game or breaks his operating system or his gmail account is magically deleted or his drm-ed music decides it belongs to someone else or he has 5 different "service tools" like Steam installed and they spasm wildly in an update orgy.

If you don't care, then why are you so angry?
For some people DRM and copy-protection is a major pain in the ass, that's a fact. I would not like to have sex if there was mandatory simultaneous penetration of my read end involved. If you can live with that, then do but spare us the details. 

It's a sane, sensible, well-balanced argument - from my side at least.

Spurt: I'm "angry" (i.e. cheerfully contemptuous) because:

1. People are cocks.

2. Those people are being cocks where I accidentally stumble across it.

3. The issues aren't a major pain in the ass, people are trying to make them being to justify their petty bleating.


P.S. Yes OMG things sometimes go spazzo with computers, yes that sucks if/when it ACTUALLY HAPPENS and funnily enough if/when it does then it's obviously absolutely fine to have a grumble about it. IF the vast majority of retarded bandwagon-jumping anti-DRM whiners had actually have regular serious problems being able to play games, then I wouldn't be writing all this. But so far, in everything I read, the vast majority don't. They just whine without genuine reason. 

yeah, it's abandoned forevever 

Unreasonable whining is annoying, but on the other hand not addressing issues because they don't affect you directly (in the case of DRM, they do, albeit mostly visibly) can be dangerous, too. For sooner or later, there might be a situation in which some measures take the existing ones a step further and nothing can be done because of their initial acceptance (or ignorance).
This applies to many other fields, as well. 

*not visibly 

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I dont mind having to jump through a couple of hoops to play games on my PC. My freind keeps saying to me "you know Rick, you can use your XBox 360 controller with your PC" but I am proud to be a PC gamer. I prefer using a keyboard and a mouse to play my shooters. I like the fact that there are things like command line options and console commands, and a mouse to aim with (hell its got to be easier than those pesky mini-stick things on the control pads).

I have to get in my car and drive 20 miles north to get to the nearest store which stocks all of the latest PC games, and do whenever there is something worth buying. And TBH pretty much all of them require you activate them with a serial no from the inside of the box. I dont mind this, its no biggy. So what?

Sometimes the installer get fucked and I have to enter the code several times.

Windows systematically destroys itself over a period of time. My freind had to come round to my house to activate his copy of DoW2 because he doesnt have internet at the moment. I remember taking my first copy of HL2 round to someones house (I mean carry the entire PC box) so I could use there internet.

I dont mind. As long as they keep making PC shooters I will do these things. I mean it says on the back of the box what the requirements are to play!

I play all of the shooters. I like to have a hard copy of my games, mostly just to look at the box sat on my shelf and think "yeah, I have a lot of shooters"

Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead:

Far Cry 2 is the winnar! But both games ARE PC shooters, and will get my support for being decent games, and I dont mind having to key in a code or log into somthing to play it, as long as they keep making the damn things to play.

My ultimate argument to this debate is this, as a singer out of one of the local "wedding bands" which play in the FUCKING nightclubs too said to me when I asked him if he got tired of playing cheese all of the time:

"I couldnt give a shit" "I - DONT - GIVE - A - FUCK" 

Let chitter chatter whinnyness and more shootin' pls. 

get a women play Quake and leave the other games alone... 

What negke said.

Personally I agree that the majority of whining is completely impotent (especially whining on the internets), but refusing to buy DRM'd products (which is also what I do) is hardly shooting yourself in the appendage of choice.

It's exercising one of the few effective powers we have in modern society (that of consumer choice). By avoiding support for products using technology I ethically disagree with (and conversly supporting those without DRM) I am attempting to influence the companies involved.

If everyone did this there would be no need for whining (altho I'm sure another reason could be found ;)