GTA IV (PC) Will Employ SecuROM Copy Protection; Video Game Enthusiasts Collectively Sigh

I'm 15, I'm not made of money.

 

I can't afford it, therefore I should steal it!

It's entertainment, man. People worked hard on it, they deserve to be paid. Support the artists.

 

no that's not what I meant at all, for my situation I would need a crack and that guy was telling me to buy two copies of the game, when I'm just gunna scrape through with one, I had no intention of stealing it!

 

I've already ordered the box version through Amazon.


Usually 100% of my purchases go through Steam, but 16gb is a lot to download.


I'm definately going to look into some kind of No-DVD image because I hate having to carry my DVD's around with me. That is one of the main reasons I always buy through Steam.



I am very annoyed about the SecurROM but I don't know what I can do about it.

 

didnt crysis warhead also have this type of copy protection but was pritty much cracked on the day of release?

 

Well, the Steam version will also have Securom.

Umm... because you're not supposed to? Buying the game for yourself is the normal. Sharing it with family members at home is getting shaky. Sharing it with a guy (notwithstanding the fact he's your brother) nowhere close to you and the devs might as well give it away free. Think how many people anyone could share a game with if the developers made a way to share games across continents.

 

I've seen so many of these threads de-volve into a SecureRom bash. I'm posing this question purely out of interest.

Has SecureRom directly affected you negatively in some way? By directly, I mean, have you purchased a game and not been able to play it the way it's intended because of SecureRom?

OR

Is it simply a stigma and an affront to your perceived liberties and freedoms?


I've purchased two games with SecureRom (Mass Effect and RA3) and have had no problems.

What am I missing?

 

And the discussions that have gone on over the last 24 hours only go to prove the point:

Due to people still purchasing the game with SecuROM (in any form) or any other type of intrusive DRM scheme, the industry will continue to use it. The consumer just wants to whine, but in the end they are still going to give up their money for a "defective" product...

Consumers are not willing to tell the industry to stop, and it is only consumers who have to power to force change. "Modded/hacked" .exe files only band-aid the problem, not fix it.

And as I said in a previous post...and the cycle continues...

 

Yes, and so do some other games on Steam as well. I praise Steam, however, for clearly stating this. This is something that most do not do.

I have had issues with cd/dvd drives after my wife installed Sims 2 expansions. While this could in theory be related to something else, it has happened on two different computers (I was ignorant the first time and only found after researching the second PC's drive issues).

[ADDED] I understand and accept the game industries right and need to protect their IP's. With that said, it is the industries RESPONSIBILITY to do so in a non-intrusive, non-destructive manner.

 

for me the main reason is im at uni and i dont think they would be happy downloading 18GBs of a game, much quicker just to go out and buy the game. i only get at most 1.2MB download speed but it can drop to below 100kb so im thinking it would take days to download

 

Does the only thing this will affect is having to insert the disc if you want to play???

 

well, if you dont mind intrusive software and being treated like a criminal, then that's pretty much it yeah.

 

cool then.

 

I tell you something that's even more annoying than SecuROM...

...The fact that there is no demo available.

I'm not going to shell out £20+ for a game that is so big (in the case of downloading it) or infected with SecuROM just to find out my system won't run it.

I did that with VCS on the PSP and quite frankly VCS was a pos imo...

And I'll be darned if I'm paying £40+ for an Xbox 360 version...

I won't be able to get it second hand either, because, if there is an install limit (and quite frankly I don't believe the games companies when pre-release they say there isn't any limit on installations...), I can't be guaranteed that the person selling the second hand copy hasn't reached his installation limit...

 

You're far too sensative. Next thing you know, Rockstar Games is going to be stealing your bank account information. And why should they not treat you like a criminal when you're buying a game where you PLAY as a criminal. Kinda ironic isn't it? Good grief!!

 

if you think in game experience is like real life, I would be asking some questions...

 

LOL. I love the phrase "infected with SecuROM".


That's exactly how I feel, when I find out a game that I installed a few weeks ago just happened to come with some hidden software that installed itself without notifying me.

 

Bottom line: GTA IV will be pirated and released with or without SecureROM, just like every other game that I see come out day after day. SecureROM stops nobody. All it does is turn the legitimate buyers into criminals.

The dumb rebuttal to this is "But if people didn't pirate they wouldn't need to use SecureROM." This is dumb because like I said earlier, the release groups all know how to crack SecureROM so the game will be pirated anyway. So then who's the loser -- the retail buyer who is stuck with awful DRM when the pirates enjoy a pristine copy.

 

Thankyou for taking the words right out of my mouth.
"infected" is about the right word for it, I must say!

 

I guess its because it doesn't take a single bit of space on 360 and only a few gigs or mbs for the PS3 (Not sure about Wii though). Of course except for the save files.

That's why IMO its ridiculous for me to have the disc to stay in the drive when everything is being installed on the hardrive. I travel a lot and having the little extra disc bag carry around with me is annoying when I actually can leave it behind.

 

Yea actually. securom used to cause issues that people couldn't fix without reinstalling windows. Such as the second they turn on thier computer you'll get up to 10 pop up errors because of securom and disk drive incompatabilities, or just plain problems with securom, and since there's no uninstaller, and no one even knows where securom installs it's self, people couldn't fix it. Even the latest versions of securom have issues, and you CANNOT fully uninstall it.

My main reason for HATING securom is that I can't play my steam version of Crysis warhead AT ALL. When I click it I get a message saying that I need to repurchase a key for the game, reinstall and try again. So now I basically have a non functioning game on my steam games list, and everytime I send a support ticket to steam about that one game they never respond.

Would you buy a painting knowing that you can only view it 5 times before you have to buy another copy?

 

Unknown, I can understand your frustration with securom and install limits with other games, but there will not be a install limit for Grand theft auto IV. So lets stay on track with the securom version being implemented in this specific game, since that's what this thread is about.

 

Just to specify, it's not the install limits that are the problem, it's SECUROM itself.

using Securom basically guarantees 2 things:

1: no cross-platform installations (definitely not linux)
2: installs rootkits that are a pain in the to get rid of (and don't go away when you uninstall).

These have already been mentioned for GTA 4.

 

Why was my experience with SecuROM deleted?

 

Well I've decided not to purchase the game after all, securom doesn't bother me, but having to run steam, some new rockstar program and also need a xbox live account all to play online is to much. So I'll just get l4d.

 

My problem with SecuROM? Ring 0 access.

Sony owns SecuROM, and we all remember the big mess when Sony music CDs installed something surreptitiously *cough* rootkit *cough*. Sorry, but my trust with Sony is zero. Windows has enough security holes as is, no need to add to them.

 

If only more people knew what that meant.