Why DRM Stinks

So I bought a bunch of games last year on STEAM, F1 2010 was one of them. I created and made my purchases from my laptop but installed the game on my Desktop. I'm greated with the STEAM message that the Desktop needed to be authorized by STEAM, no biggie. I check my email and enter the code to activate it.

I go to restore my STEAM copy of F1 2010, activate it, and now I get Securom crashes. DRM is grand, great idea for punishing the legit customers.

This is the kind of stuff that's driving me towards consoles.

 

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"Because of these inconveniences, some consumers choose to pirate." =)
I never and I never will buy a game with DRM.
And I do buy a lot of games...

 

Guess your favourite digital store would be GoG.com.
I love that place.

 

That's a pretty amazing commitment if you're buying a lot of games, considering how many of them have some form of DRM. I can't think of very many at all without any DRM.

 

Yeah, it's too bad that publishers can't just let Steam be the sole DRM. It does get frustrating.

Oh you mean the machines that require a disc in the drive as their DRM?

 

they don't have hard drives... well, at least the xbox doesn't.

 

It has removable hard drives my friend. hugely overpriced but also user replaceable expensive bricks of Microsoft goodness. :I

 

EA and Ubisoft are the worst offenders of DRM. At least Ubi's games offer some quality.

 

to each his own. i can (and do) happily pass most ubisoft titles. their IP is among the least interesting to me of all major publishers.

 

The problem doesn't lie in ability or inability to play games but what surprises me is the sheer logic behind some DRMs. I don't have a clue why a single player has to connect his PC to internet to be able to play certain games like Assassin's Creed II. When I pay for a game I don't expect the publisher to impose a install limit for it, e.g Episodes for Liberty City.

 

Y'know, I'm not actually that concerned about install limits for games, as long as they relax the install limit after, say... a year or two.

I'm also not really that perturbed by always-online DRM, as that hasn't proven to be a significant problem to me just yet. Maybe I've just been lucky, though, as I've heard that some people have had trouble with games like AC2.

If only some publishers would start giving out code wheels again...

 

What I failed to mention is the DRM is unobtrusive. Yes the consoles were designed with DRM but only if you put in an illegal disc or circumvent the DRM. If you use the machines as intended there aren't any DRM problems unless Microsoft wrongly thinks you have done something wrong, which happened to me btw.

I was modding (replacing the thermal paste and adding cooling fans) my 360 and for some reason something changed in the 360 to the point that MS downloaded a software update. I was ready for them if they wrongly bricked my machine for the lousy hardware design they used.

 

Microsoft can detect if you changed the fans by checking the power draw on them. D;
Changing thermal paste, or upgrading the stock heatsink to something better wont trigger it.

 

Yeah I figured the power draw is what clued them in. I was prepared to do battle if they shut me down.

 

As someone who doesn't have 24/7 internet for a large part of the year the always online DRM sucks, otherwise as long as it's not invasive I honestly don't really care that much, would prefer it not to be there but will live with it either way.

 

DRM hasn't deterred pirating by any means. It's just an added inconvenience.. for some higher up person who knows more about pirating to deal with and circumvent before it gets down to my level.

Remember before DRM? When Stardock was stinking up the scene by installing hidden .exe's as "NoCDCopyProtection" which were impossible to move?

Piracy and anti-piracy technologies are always going to be going up, down, battling back and forth. They're contradictory and complementary.. 2 sides of the same coin. All you have to do is wait it out, and pick up the prizes!

Always on DRM annoys me the most.. how are you going to make an active internet connection a system requirement. It's a bit too much of an intrusion.. I don't expect the makers of other goods I buy to tell me how or what circumstances I can use them under unless its with regards to safety. And correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not paying for a SERVICE, I'm paying for a product. If I use your service, IE mutliplayer, then yeah I have to abide by it's rules. But if I'm playing a campaign on my desktop wherever.. the transaction is OVER. Unless I come back for an exchange I shouldn't hear from whoever I bought that game from, either about how to play it, when I can play it, where I can play it, etc. It's a finite software product.. not an operating system.

And on a side note I hate the transition of games from a tangible thing you own.. to this.. online experience you're renting from someone.. . I'm not going along with it. I grew up on SC2, but I have yet to touch a paid version of SC3 because I refuse to support always connected crap.

"Because of these inconveniences, some choose to pirate"

I used to pay for games during most of the 90's. DRM is largely responsible for leading me to learn how to use torrents, get into seedboxes/vpns for more secure "backup copy downloads" and be more concerned about anonymity online. If you just sold me a game and banned me from MP for having a pirated copy.. then I would probably acquiesce and pay for your game. A GOOD single player campaign is worth the money, and many games are gravitating towards crappy campaigns and MP-centric play anyways. It's when you tell me how to use my own computer after I paid you to give me your product and get lost that I get annoyed..

 

^^^ I agree; considering STEAM is a form of DRM anyways. Steam versions of games don't need additional DRM

 

While always online DRM wouldn't be very intrusive to me, I still think it's a stupid idea. I think of it along the same lines as if someone could see all my healthcare information, it wouldn't really affect me in any way but I'd still want to take pliers to the fingernails of whoever did it.

 

Can I have more detail on what "Securom crash" means?

 

This is precisely why I prefer PC games over console games. I own the hardware and can do whatever I want with it.

You wouldn't stand for <car manufacturer of choice> remotely disabling your car if you turbocharged it, or even tracking how much gas it used/how much hp it has, so why would you let M$ do the same to your XBox?

 

You're preaching to the choir, brother.

 

I own a few games that I bought to support the studios that made them but end up cracking my own copy to make life easier. Ie I also have legal licenses for win 7 but only use (leading wat removal tool) instead of actually activating. Windows is allot happier being cracked with no random deactivations.

 

Ah, so you have those random deactivations too, eh? People thought I was crazy when I said most of my machines out of the blue decided to say my codes weren't legit.

 

I got it too and my fix is the above also. Pretty dumb if you ask me. Seemed everytime I did a bios update, or a driver update, the Windows license would fail.

 

Ubisoft has the worst...it's so bad I rarely buy any of their games anymore. Over all though, I haven't run in to many DRM problems.

 

I don't buy any Ubisoft games either. So stupid to require internet connection.

 

Hasn't Ubisoft backed down significantly, on their internet connection DRM?

 

Diablo3 will also require always on internet to work. I'm not too happy about this but this is a game that i've been waiting on for 10 years so i'll cringe and bare it

 

I think the trend has been that they release the game with their DRM, then back down eventually after a public backlash. Doesn't prevent them from adding the DRM in to every new release though...

 

Another reason why DRM stinks is game performance few mention or realize. Another game I purchased from STEAM was DiRT 2. It stuttered and juddered while running it under STEAM and GFWL control.

I ran the game without the CP just to see and it was a night and day difference. I can run the game in ULTRA graphics mode in 60FPS and it's liquid smooth, unbelievable.

 

what is CP?

The steam overlay has a marginal performance impact. It shouldn't have a noticeable effect, and you can also turn it off. It's not DRM, it's an optional overlay to access steam features in game. A major defining aspect of DRM is that it's mandatory.

I'm not sure about GFWL.

 

If Steam had a negative effect on game performance I guarantee you it would not have made it past the first year.

 

Just got another Xbox 360 system check from MS last night via an XBL system update.