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 ;) 

But all the companies will do is stop making PC games and make console ones instead, and then I'll be stuck with no keyboard and mouse :(

ID Software - anyone realise that if you install the patch (1.3 or 1.3.1) you can install the game and you dont need to put the disc in the drive to play it! 

A-grade shitstirring as usual, whether intentionally trolling or not.

Seriously though, you're a bit late on this one... the battle has been fought and lost. It has been widely recognised that DRM for PC games (at least the more modern, cunttacularly invasive DRM practices) has a negative impact on legitimate consumers, while the warez monkeys happily continue pirating their games without any trouble at all (except perhaps an extra day or 2 delay while someone works out how to circumvent the copy protection).

This is an opinion shared not just by internet whiners, but also by many game developers who understand that pissing off your paying customers is probably a bad move.

Having the usual CD check at startup is fine and good and will stop most casual piracy. Anything beyond that and as you've so astutely observed, people will start complaining about it. Whether or not they're whining cockbags is neither here nor there - they probably are - I am! It is fairly irrelevant though - they're you're paying customers. Look after them or they'll stop paying. 

What has got you so riled about this? Is it something specific, or what? I've never seen you rage up this much over something this trivial.

Everyone has an opinion, but nobody really cares that much either way. Certainly I can see why there is some heated debate at times, and both "sides" have a vested interest in putting forward their cause, but you in this case are not batting for either team, but are seemingly whining about the whiners.

I'm just a bit puzzled about the strength of your convictions given your stance on the matter. Care to shed some light, or at least spew forth a stream of highly creative and passionate abuse? 

Money GOOOOOOOOOOOD 

I don't really give a shit about DRM.

I play Quake 1. 

"has a negative impact on legitimate consumers,"

Let's be honest. It has a negative impact on SOME legitimate consumers. A very small number of them, in fact.

Most people install the game and, assuming the DRM works correctly, never notice it. They play the game and when they are done or want to move on, they uninstall it and never look back.

The average consumer isn't reinstalling old games 5 years after the fact and trying to get that game to run and cursing their loss of the CD case and all the other stuff that gets thrown up in these threads.

For the vast majority of people, DRM is a non-issue. They don't even know it's there. 

Heh - for once ;)

I must admit though that I had a copy of HL2 which I installed (with a serial no) about 2 or 3 years ago. I then had to format my HDD and had since lost the serial no. So I thought that was it - no HL2. I must admit that at this stage I was only blaming myself (if you lose something then its your own fault, right?)

I was very happy when I realised that because it had been registered on steam I could just re-install it! And the AI in the installer knew that because I had steam up and running with HL2 as one of my registered games it could then install the game from the disk (rather than downloading it all)!

Hats off to steam/Valve!

GTA4 is crazy, you get Rockstar Social club and GFWLIVE accounts up and running to play the game and use all of its features. But to be fair its a seriously resource hungry game anyway (7800GTX minimum!) and I wasnt that bothered.

Far Cry 2 - I dont think it required online registration (it came with a good ole' serial in the box) but if you are online it has an "autopatch" feature which I thought was quite nice.

Games usually say on the back of the box "requires online registration", so if you havent got the internet then you cant play the game. You wouldnt complain if your computer wasnt powerful enough to play a game, you would just upgrade or not buy the game, right? You wouldnt complain if your Wii games wont run in your XBox/PS3?

Or maybe you would........ 

I posted on here because I deluded myself that it would be a good place to sound off with some ranting because you guys are smarter and maturer than the average Blues News / Shack (I assume, I no longer visit) / Amazon smegging whinebags.

Obviously I was terribly, horribly mistaken.

ANYWAY...

Nonentity: well you just go ahead and do that and make your big badass point to the game companies. In the meantime, I'll actually be playing the games and enjoying them. Which is the whole point of gaming IIRC.


Frib: yes the battle has been fought and lost. The whiners have lost because DRM is still on games these days. Oh and this just one of my sporadic moments of contemptuous gaming community misanthropy. The point being, I don't really care about DRM nor being for nor against it. And obviously that being my opinion, it is FACTUALLY CORRECT, so other people shouldn't care about it. Or, if for some deranged reason, they really have to care about something that ensures you only install a game 3 or 5 times that 99% of people including their dimwitted selves will only install once, could they at least do so in private. Cheers. Sham xxx. 

love is all you need... all you need is love 

A little dose of love makes the hate taste so much sweeter in comparison... 

I say no, You ask why? I say I dont knooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww!

Oh nooo nooo ! 

Trachea crushing, eyeball gouging rage and shoulder massaging, breakfast bringing tenderness in there and you've got a cornucopia of emotion. 

In the meantime, I'll actually be playing the games and enjoying them.

I have a console, which I find to be a more immediate, better supplied platform and more social platform. All things that add to my enjoyment...

Which is the whole point of gaming IIRC.


(nb: I no way mean to distract you from your vitriol, just defending myself from random flames... speaking of which; http://www.ripten.com/2009/01/29/gears-of-war-pc-digital-certificate-expires-kills-the-game/ ) 

...platform games... 

Although I believe they have since patched it.

Thing is though if you tried to play an unpatched version and you didnt know about this problem you would be pretty confused/pissed off.

TBH I get more pissed off with games like STALKER which are good games that weren't finished! So many bad bugs and CTDs and BSODs that you cant play the game even if you get it running. Which is a crime really because its a beautiful game and a lot of art, work and scripting just got wasted!

I do think its a bit sad to say "I will only buy games from steam" though. A lot of games arent on steam and are good, and a lot of games are on steam and are shite.

But I can see the benefits too, I just think that its a bit narrow minded to only buy games from steam. 

If there was a game I wanted not on Steam then I'd get hold of it some other way.

For example, they removed Bioshock for some reason, so instead I'm going to borrow it from a friend. Yes, old fashioned piracy.

What's the Valve concept about Russia - a major European pirate center - "once we distributed games there they stopped pirating so much". Refreshing opinion and completely inverse to the rest of the industry.

Being nice to your customers seems an alien concept to the execs who dream up this crap. Typically they're overpaid and bored when they do. 

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.

The only things that really bugged me and affected me was anything that lowered my conveinence of using my 'fun entertainment'. Install limits are included in that... I game at home and work (that's to working in the hyper cool games industry), and have reinstalled Comapany of Heroes and Team Fortress 2 several times... Games that don't have an install limit... if they had, it would have pissed me off that I'd blown my limit, thus my opinion that they're worthless bullshit.

I seem to recall a time when you were fanatical that installing Half-Life or one of it's patches also included Team Fortress Classic and thus you wouldn't get it due to the 'worthless shite' included... How is it any different that some people don't want 'worthless shite' on their system? So get fucked you hypocritical faglord.
http://teamshambler.telefragged.com/tfc.txt 

 

"Hypocritical_Faglord" would be an awesome XBox Live account name. I wonder how I could get that through... 

I got that really upset was, when that Gremlin took my gun. 

I agree with Scampbell.




:O 

So get fucked you hypocritical faglord.

You may have a point there....although back in those days (probably on a 56k there still!!) downloading a much larger file would be a definitely, and pricier, inconvenience. Also, at least I wasn't spamming Amazon with my nonsense... 

...was that you're annoyed by idiots on Amazon? That's like being annoyed with retarded comments on Youtube. 

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/33959/Pirate-Bay-team-lose-court-case

Best quote - "Really, it's a bit LOL. It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release."

fucking legend, just given a year in prison and he responds with this!