The gawd-almighty merged DRM in Silent Hunter V thread

[Gilbou]

Online authentication, okay.

And they day they stop the servers ? What will you do ?
Stare at the DVD cover ? Play with memories of the game ?

You're no longer buying a game you can play as much as you want.
You're renting a game. And when they pull the plug, it ends for you.

I will not accept online requirement to play a game. Not because of
the hassle, but because someday they can pull the plug and either
diseappear or don't care about you playing an old game.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Gilbou

Online authentication, okay.

And they day they stop the servers ? What will you do ?
Stare at the DVD cover ? Play with memories of the game ?

You're no longer buying a game you can play as much as you want.
You're renting a game. And when they pull the plug, it ends for you.

I will not accept online requirement to play a game. Not because of
the hassle, but because someday they can pull the plug and either
diseappear or don't care about you playing an old game.

When they all become online auth, I guess you won't be playing games?

Blame the pirates, they know who they are.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Blame the pirates, they know who they are.

Same old song.

[Gilbou]

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.

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

When they all become online auth, I guess you won't be playing games?

yep thats exactly correct, there are plenty of older games that i can play, and when games stop selling they WILL get the message that only customers making mommy and daddy buy them will still buy their games.


i dont care if it stops Osama Bin Laden himself, i still will never "rent" a video game

i have no issue with a check in online authorization because that can be maintained with some little automatic check program after the game company no longer wants to support the game but this setup they are talking about is just stupid.

why waste my time at all, if thats what they want then forget the disk altogether and i'll log on with my credit card and buy one game play like the video arcade machines then play till i die and run my credit card through for another game.

thats 1000% pirate proof and i dont have to patch the game i DO NOT OWN

[Holdit]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

When they all become online auth, I guess you won't be playing games?

Blame the pirates, they know who they are.

No, I blame the game companies for introducing systems that ensure that a pirate actually has a better playing experience than a paying customer - after all DRM doesn't bother pirates, does it? That's just logic turned on its head - and all based on the (IMO) false premise that each pirate foiled = an additional sale.

No sale. But never mind, the money willl go to a game whose distributor doesn't treat me like a crook.

Holdit

[3Dfr34k2009]

2139 petitions signed and counting!.

Keep going guys until the battle against the Ubisoft morons are won.

[Ragtag]

Originally Posted by 3Dfr34k2009

2139 petitions signed and counting!.

Keep going guys until the battle against the Ubisoft morons are won.

LOL... epic

[frenema]

Originally Posted by 3Dfr34k2009

2139 petitions signed and counting!.

Keep going guys until the battle against the Ubisoft morons are won.

SH5 isn't the only game Ubisoft will release and they're a billion dollar company. So unless the petition signatures reach 10 million they're not going to care at all unfortunately.

And I just have one simple question to those who support DRM for whatever reason: Much has been said about how piracy is ruining PC game sales, but has there ever been a case where game sales went up because of DRM?

[Eightbit]

Man this is terrible. My net has been dropping randomly and constantly since the 18th. The last 7 hours it has been completely down. If any of you have ever had such a problem you can appreciate what a pain it is to try and get solved.

But for those that love drm. Especially this kind. Do me a favour and unplug your internet and leave it that way for 4 days and see how it feels.

Now here is the problem. Sure 99.9% of the time it may be just fine and dandy. Great connection enjoying the game etc. But it just makes that .01% of the time THAT much worse. And it's all for nothing.

Call me one of the "unlucky ones" but thats not all. Steam broke their offline feature on the 19th and only just fixed it today. So it was only insult to injury.

I like steam, and appreciate that things go wrong. But it's pretty frustrating not being to play any of the stuff I bought on it.

[Philipp_Thomsen]

The famous cryptographer and security guru Bruce Schneier has written about the futility of digital copy prevention and says it's an impossible task. He says "What the entertainment industry is trying to do is to use technology to contradict that natural law. They want a practical way to make copying hard enough to save their existing business. But they are doomed to fail."[62] He has also described trying to make digital files uncopyable as being like "trying to make water not wet".[63]

Thats from Wikipedia.

Depends on what they put on the EULA, but most likely yes.

Edited: PLEASE, read the rules. --NS


Its a long discussion whether this is nice or not, but once you buy the finished product, you will be pretty pissed off if you cant play cos of the temporary internet unavailability.

Are they paying for your internet? Nope.

[jwilliams]

Originally Posted by Eightbit

Call me one of the "unlucky ones" but thats not all. Steam broke their offline feature on the 19th and only just fixed it today. So it was only insult to injury.

I like steam, and appreciate that things go wrong. But it's pretty frustrating not being to play any of the stuff I bought on it.

The Steam i use, if it cant detect an internet (eg. if i unplug it or turn it off in windows) then it launches in offline mode. cant see how they could break it if im not connected???

Edit {unless you download a patch before the 19th that turned off the offline feature?}

[3Dfr34k2009]

I will like to see the faces of the Ubi-suits when the sales of Silent Hunter 5 are falling more deep than the Mariana Trench.

[AkbarGulag]

Originally Posted by Gilbou

Online authentication, okay.

And they day they stop the servers ? What will you do ?
Stare at the DVD cover ? Play with memories of the game ?

You're no longer buying a game you can play as much as you want.
You're renting a game. And when they pull the plug, it ends for you.

Ain't that the truth.

[Brag]

"6 days into his patrol, the first enemy ship was spotted... a trawler...

...It was at this point, Captain AkbarGulag realised how green his crew

w..."

Good opening lines, Akbar