Quote:
Originally Posted by Neal Stevens
When they all become online auth, I guess you won't be playing games?  . |
Yes. I will be playing my old games and I will vote with my wallet by not buying DRM-crippled games.
I have been buying games for years. Half of the time, I had to crack legit copies of the games I bought and be annoyed because most servers I wanted to play online required Punkbuster (which of course did not validate my genuine but cracked game).
And the crackers ? I checked on Bit torrent and Pirate bay. They are not only distributing copies of the game, but those copies have protection removed, so the pirates are happily playing the game without any hassle. They dont buy the games, they play them and they are not buying the game, getting home to find out that there's a problem between the game protection and my PC.
All I see is : they don't pay the games, I do.
They suffer NONE of the problems the copy protection has done to me.
So why do I bother ? Seriously ?
Since the last few years, I had to apply cracks to over half of the games I bought (and I bought them full price, not for 10 euro several years after they got published).
Vegas 1 : had to crack it.
Splinter cell : all except the very first one, I had to crack it to play
(and I am not telling about the 4 XP reinstalls I had to do because Starforce broke the system)
VC : got a new PC and had to crack it to install.. worked fine before.
The list goes on.
On my shelf where I store all the PC games I own, 2/3 require a crack to either install or play. And I bought all those games.
I have two CD-Rom readers on my PC : the previous one from my previous PC because the first Splinter Cell only validates using this one, I had to buy an external DVD reader/writer because I got 2 games that only validate protection with it... And the rest of the games don't validate with my previous CD-Rom reader, the current DVD one and the external DVD one.
The pirates are right now distributing every game I own with protection removed. They don't care, and they don't have the problems I had/have.
I have checked : for every game I have been in trouble with, I found cracked versions, downloaded them and discovered they had no protection at all. They just removed it.
So why do the editors keep crippling us ? The serial number to play online is a good idea. You can play your game on your PC at home, for years when it's not protected. When you want to play online, a check is made. That's how things should be. Because the pirates already distribute cracked games without protection, and because where the editors can nail them and hurt them is when they want to play online. This is where the editors should hit the crackers : when they try to play online.
I bought Vegas 2 : can't play it with friends. I had to sell it without ever playing it. Vegas 1 ? Only works if I crack it. Since most servers use Punk Buster I cannot join them. When I play with friends, we have to keep the server with a password to avoid cheaters that are interested by my Punkbuster-free server here at home....
Ubisoft support could not help me (I have 3 DVD-readers, am I supposed to keep buying them until I found one that works for each of my games ? And who will refund me for buying hardware that doesn't solve the problem ?)
Securom never bothered to answer me. I did use their tool, did three reports and asked for help. It's been six monthes over. Ubisoft doesn't care if Securom does no support, they each send the ball back at each other.
Meanwhile, crackers are distributing the games, full cracked and they even go play online... Great job.
I did play with three friends all the time in the last few years. We had created a kind of "clan" with our own online forum, we have over 10 members, and we all did buy each FPS-like game we liked. So each time there was a good game we bought it in group to play together online. We played all the Ghost Recon series games, all the Rainbow Six series games, and so on.
It all broke down. Because in the latest games we bought, about half of us had problems with copy protection : so people could not install the game. Or the game would install but then it would fail to connect to the online authentication server. And when it worked, you still had to cope with unfinished games, full of bugs and crashes. And each evening of play where about 1/3 to 1/2 the players were able to play... We had to restart the server between 3 and 5 times over 3/4 hours of play because it would either freeze or crash.
Today it's all gone. All players I played everyday with, good friends, are nowhere to be seen. I have only kept contact with two of them : one I tried to play online (Vegas1 and Vegas2 fiasco....) and failed. The other went back to play older games we played (Rainbox Six Ravenshield and VC) and all the others are only playing cracked games they download, because they were fed up of buying games full price, not be able to play.
Copy protection did break the community of friends I played with. This is reality.
You have no idea of what I could do to an Ubisoft representative talking to me about copy protection. I would probably break his both arms and legs just for fun. They ruined my gaming environment and ruined the small gaming community we slowly built over the last then years with friends. All gone because of copy protection and online authentication failing (about half players could not authenticate 50 % of each evening we tried to play at any Ubisoft Ghost Recon recent games online authentication....).
If SH5 does indeed require online authentication, I will buy SH3, install a mod and leave the SH5 and later versions series like I did give up on the Ghost Recon series and the Rainbow Six series and Splinter Cell too.
No surprise editors only try to sell to console players. It's not that PC people are no longer buying games, they're just disgusted to see crackers play at home and online without any hassle while we either can't install copy protected games, can install them but we're having trouble with online authentication, having to send to the editors PROOFS of purchase and wait between one or two weeks for an answer that half of the time, doesn't solve the problem, and most of the time they tell you to change your PC (albeit you bought it less than a month ago....) or to buy hardware (and when you do and it doesn't work they tell you to buy more DVD-readers until it works).
Some editors have realized this and their latest games have NO copy protection at all. Because if it had, a few weeks after the release the game will be downloadable with no protection at all online. And because people know they can buy the game without fear of having problems. This is where my money is going.
Just read about the Starforce fiasco. The Sony hidden-software scandal of the recent years. And keep in mind that you go to pirate bay and within a minute you can start downloading any protected game and not only play on PC but very often even play online. And then think about people like me that saw his community of friends broken and torn away because as each game went out, each evening less and less people could come play online, sometimes not even install the game.
I do not disklike copy protection. I utterly hate it to a level you are far from being able to imagine. And if I ever meet an official moron from a game company that patronizes me, I will torn him to pieces where he stands.
I will go back to the old games. And I will only buy unprotected ones.
I've had enough, Neal. Really.