On Logging In to Play Games (this is a rant)

**edit** - Disclaimer - since this is a rant, and you were given plenty of warning ahead of time, you are free to ignore this. Please do so immediately if you ever start to feel the urge to respond with a snide or demeaning comment. Believe me, whatever it is you think you have to say to me, it isn't clever, it doesn't make you look smart, and it won't make me feel bad. I'm not in high school any more.

I finished downloading Mass Defect 2 today (following the suggestions of some of the more gifted and brilliant NBR forumers), and booted it up. I then spent a frustrating 20 minutes or so trying to create an EA Games account, then figuring out that I already had one, and trying to find the account email I used, and then the account password, and then finding and entering in my serial key (which I had already told the game before I installed). The game then asked me for a passcode for getting some of the free DLC scheisse, and by that time, I was so exhausted by the process of setting up the game that I skipped the lot of it.

What I want to know is, what happened to the days where registration was optional?

I've bought and paid for a small handful of games in the last few months, among which were Dawn of War 2, Bioshock 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and Mass Effect 2. Three of these use GFWL, and ME2 requires its own login.

Except for W40kDoW2, these are all primarily single-player games. When I play these games, I don't want anything to do with the internet! The rest of the world can go to hell, I'm playin' my game, dammit! (or trying to, anyway)

Back in the day, you never *had* to register a game, or sign up for an account, or anything like that for a single-player game. You'd sometimes have an option to register (but why would you want to?), and the worst was the old Black Isle games that would pop up a menu every 5th time you started the game, asking if you wanted to register (and you could just click "NO!" and be on your merry way, cheerfully nuking goblins with Magic Missiles and Fire Arrows).

Where did that NO button go?

Here's why it gets to me. I remember always having a feeling of tingly excitement when installing a game, knowing that the experience I was about to have would take me on an exciting adventure, visiting mysterious worlds, blasting ugly aliens, and having half-naked dark elves falling over each other to give me lap dances.

Now I don't get that sensation. Now, as soon as the company logos finish flashing on the screen, I get the buzzkill of a conspicuously out-of-place window asking me to enter information totally unrelated to the game at hand. If I'm not prepared, and don't remember my login information (why would I memorize that?), then it's a scavenger hunt. If I remember to prepare for such an experience, then I feel like I'm packing for an airplane trip, trying to remember all the toiletries to bring, and frantically scribbling down all the registration info and passwords and activation codes I can find.

And GFWL is the worst of it all. To me, GFWL is a big, spaceship-white, glowing turd lurking in the darkness of my games, waiting to pop up an ugly window to spoil the mood every time a tense or suspenseful moment pops up in a game, because I made some "Achievement" or whatever bollocks. I understand that you (sometimes?) can use GFWL in "offline" mode, but either it isn't obvious how to do so, or I'm always frantically trying to get past the login window as fast as possible and I miss that option. Regardless, GFWL can suck my .

Why do we have to put up with this crud now? It isn't anti-piracy. Piracy is evil and bad and you shouldn't do it. It just might be killing the PC gaming industry. But logging in does nothing to prevent piracy. I used to belong to a private Torrent site (still do, but don't do the illegal stuff no more). It's a small site, with private trackers. On that site, there are about 10 different links to a Bioshock 2 download. There are about 2000 leechers, and at least 800 seeders for these files. Mass Effect 2 has about the same number of downloads, but twice as many seeders/leechers. These folks report working cracks and operational games, without having to log in. Clearly, if this was meant as anti-piracy, it is a failure.

So there's the rant. Why? Because as I was playing ME2 today, I started in a bad mood. I just got home from a late night at work, and I just wanted to sit down and play my game. And I couldn't. I was so angry, I wanted to make a character to reflect my mood. I wanted to make a mean-looking dude (which the very limited character creator wouldn't let me - there are about three different hairstyles, with slight variations on each, and none of them looked "mean"). I wanted to be a jackass to everyone, make snide comments, and generally not be cooperative. That should've been easy, given that you start the game (*spoiler*) under the control of a corporation/group that you are at odds with (to put it mildly) in the first game. But noooo - there were no snide comments to say to the smoking jerk who acts all high-n-mighty while giving you missions. It's clearly a game meant to be played as a Nice (and Naive) Guy, but EA Account BS didn't let me want to be a nice guy!

So screw you, online activation! Please go away!

 

Not much. If you do things the old way (i.e. buy a hard copy), you can play the game without even connecting to the internet (not true of ME1, but I think they changed it in the sequel). The need to register is the price you pay for being able to download the game -- they need some way to know who you are so that only authorized people may download it.

 

pretty sure you only have to register for cerberus network, the dlcs.
you can play the vanilla game without registering no?

 

You don't have to log in for ME2. I played my first time through without any of the DLC.

 

Huh, interesting. Maybe it is just because I got the D2D version? Or because it popped up a registration/login window and I thought it wouldn't let me play if I didn't register?

 

I also find this irritating... especially in steam... I just hope they get dedicated servers in MW2...without IWnet...

 

most D2D games ask you to register or login to make sure you're the true owner of the game.

what i hate is why games like Global Agenda go though steam and then ask you to log into steam, and then log into Global Agenda.

but, nothing could be worse to me than games powered by GAMESPY!

 

It's idiotic for a game company to even ask for a person to register with them.
If you bought the game legitimately, that should be the end of it.

All of these 'anti-piracy' measures are just a lame attempt so they can be seen as doing 'something' when in fact they aren't achieving any desirable effect.
Instead, they effectively created a system which makes playing a game seem like spending all of your time going through security checks in UK or US before boarding an aeroplane.

This kind of method will actually drive people to download games illegally and play them because the entire process of registration (and possibly having a constant on-line connection with some future games) is so tedious and idiotic it just turns out to be a waste of time.

Quality of the games notwithstanding really, because ME2 is one of the best games in contemporary times to be made, but these kind of security measures are ... moronic at best.

 

Deks, you're a man (woman?) after my own heart.

Although this isn't a DRM thread, I have to say it...

Why cant all PC game companies be more like Stardock?

 

I'm with you Histidine. I just want to play my games. I hate even having to not be able to bypass the eighteen intro screens, or even having to hit ESC to get past them. Give me the option to turn them OFF! I either don't care or already know who published, developed, gave birth to, this game. I don't need to be reminded EVERY SINGLE TIME I start the game.

Maybe PC gaming is finally falling victim to the big business mentality that is now the cause of all this economic downturn. They're just last in line. Run it like a business, use it as a way to farm marketing info, and treat the consumers like they are complete idiots.

Not only that, it can take a good 20-30 minutes to install a game to begin with. So once you finally have it loaded you have another 20-30 minutes of BS to wade through just to get in the game.

 

I really don't want to see the damn Nvidia bullcrap anymore either!