The gawd-almighty merged DRM in Silent Hunter V thread

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by horden

Are we connected Neal ? nothing to say to my message ?

What can I say? I don't like the DRM either, but I have a wholly different opinion about accepting it in order to stop/delay piracy. I don't want to argue that pirates won't but the game anyway, or all the stock arguements which no one can prove. I have my opinion, and my principles like everyone else. And in 2 weeks, I will be playing the game and discussing it here. You can enjoy SH4, more power to you, it's a great game. I may see you in the SH4 forums when I post there about my Pacific adventures.

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

Crack proof games would be great, because they'd have one less excuse for poor sales figures. There have been lots of number flying around - 10 pirate copies to one legitimate one springs to mind, but that may have been an extrapolation of the MW2 figures. There was a more 'offiicial' looking report, I think from Australia on world piracy rates, can't find the link now, but that said the average rate was 38% world wide, with about 20% is the US and 33% in the UK. I think those figures are more belivable, so the question is, how much do these anti piracy measures cost? Perhaps Ubi is moving to their own system as Starforce is becoming too expensive to license.

The budget lables usually remove DRM not, I suspect, because of phillantropic reasons, but because they don't want to pay the licensing fee to Starforce. For them, piracy isn't much of a threat as I guess most people would have pirated it by then so they would be making a loss on the anti piracy measures.

So what's the cost of DRM versus the cost of lost profit (not revenue!)? I have no idea, but that's your tipping point. The needs or conveniences of the customer don't seem to factor into the equation at all.

You read that report I posted in the other forum, right? Yes, I don't know how accurate it is but it makes a lot of sense. Console games (difficult to crack) being released before PC versions (easy to crack); the number of downloads on torrent sites, and massive numbers reported through patch and MP records, etc. At least with a major title like Assassin's Creed II, if it is not cracked, it could demonstrate the strength of sales. Of course, with so many people refusing to buy it because of DRM, it really hampers good reporting. No matter how one does the numbers, it's obvious that a lot of vocal opponents to strong DRM are motivated because they never intended to buy the game in the first place, they see their 5-finger discount abilities being restricted.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Letum

The starforce interviews are on the left of the page under "starforce interviews".

Ok, thanks, Letum, I was not looking hard enough.

Is this the part you are referring to?

Dmitry:
Well when we first heard about the cases of optical drives crashing using StarForce-Protected product our immediate response was to get back to our testing labs, make an effort to reproduce the results and contact our partners to do the same. Initially, our results came in negative but we had to validate them, obviously, through further testing. Needless to say, Microsoft’s assistance in the matter was nothing short of grateful. They’ve even kept their support page regarding this matter confirming that “this is a problem in their (Microsoft) product(s)”. With these findings we were quite confident at the time that this was not a StarForce-related issue. As you can understand there are numerous instances and causes for optical drives to fail. In addition, Windows optical subsystems are designed to not rely upon such methods like Direct Hardware Access.


RYG:
Some may point out that it is all the more reason not to be overly aggressive with authentication.


Dmitry:
There is a certain demand for aggressive protection schemes in many regions as piracy in those parts are a real issue. As you can understand, this can seriously maim the domestic software industry. If we’re talking about optical subsystem, then it’s a case of realising that, really, the “disc-binding” methods have technically come to an end. Optical discs are now regarded to be the weakest protection point simply because it is quite easy to emulate. However, it’s still possible to protect against emulators, but as time passes those hurdles will eventually be jumped. I’m sure that “hardware binding” is our general future and protection providers should invest in this particular direction.

I'm not sure that supports the Starforce ruined my drive alarms, but I'm willing to listen. Sounds like he said it was a MS issue. Maybe it was the combination? Help me here.

[Letum]

Nah, that's not the bit...one moment...

edit: Here we go:

I'm not quoting in full, so I advise anyone reading this to read it from HERE.

Q.11. There are reports by consumers that some DRM software damages optical drives. StarForce, SecuROM, etc. Do you think these complaints are based on objective reality? If so, what causes this technically?

[...]

-b. If so, have you taken steps to correct this?

In 2006 when it was first mentioned about optical drives being damaged started to appear over the internet, we launched a round of deep investigations and tests with help of our clients and partners worldwide. No one was able to reproduce the issue and we were in great confidence that StarForce didn’t have anything to do with it.

But reports were continuing to come in and things were that we had to attempt something towards solving the issue. That was a tough decision but we’ve removed some tricks that were most bug capacious such as direct hardware access (DHA). DHA had been designed to communicate with optical drive directly bypassing the Windows drivers- cdrom.sys and atapi.sys and allowed us to implement tremendous anti-emulation stuff. Removing that feature reduced overall reliability level, but greatly improved compatibility. We believed that DHA made optical drive un-accessible by the OS and seems we were right - since that time we haven’t receive any optical drive failure reports.

[Ships-R-Us]

From Neal: "as seeing their 5 fingered discount abilities restricted".

I LOVE IT.......: arrgh!:

[Sockeye]

A couple more cents to throw into the piggy bank:

All this DRM mumbo-jumbo and quackery, whatchamacallit and malarkey is really a turn-off.

Fooey!

It's a bad trip, man, a bad DReaM.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Letum

Nah, that's not the bit...one moment...

edit: Here we go:

I'm not quoting in full, so I advise anyone reading this to read it from HERE.

Help me, Obi-wan, my attention span has diminished over the last few weeks of turmoil

Score one, that's the first solid information I've seen about that. I am persuaded.

Edit: Oh wait, I read the full thing, I am getting the impression there is no "damage", just that the device can become "unaccessible by the OS". Which appears to be remedied by reinstalling its drivers.

Q.11. There are reports by consumers that some DRM software damages optical drives. StarForce, SecuROM, etc. Do you think these complaints are based on objective reality? If so, what causes this technically?

I consulted with out engineers and they weren’t able to describe the situation when a piece of software is able to physically damage optical drive, unlike software, which has been directly designed for harmful activity. For instance - sudden voltage rising. But it is pretty possible when software makes a device un-accessible by the OS. In this case the device is still operable but it needs to be re-installed, for instance, its driver.

-a. Have you heard such complaints about your product?

Yes. And all the issues that hit our support was solved by reinstalling the software for the optical drive or IDE controller.

-b. If so, have you taken steps to correct this?

In 2006 when it was first mentioned about optical drives being damaged started to appear over the internet, we launched a round of deep investigations and tests with help of our clients and partners worldwide. No one was able to reproduce the issue and we were in great confidence that StarForce didn’t have anything to do with it.

But reports were continuing to come in and things were that we had to attempt something towards solving the issue. That was a tough decision but we’ve removed some tricks that were most bug capacious such as direct hardware access (DHA). DHA had been designed to communicate with optical drive directly bypassing the Windows drivers- cdrom.sys and atapi.sys and allowed us to implement tremendous anti-emulation stuff. Removing that feature reduced overall reliability level, but greatly improved compatibility. We believed that DHA made optical drive un-accessible by the OS and seems we were right - since that time we haven’t receive any optical drive failure reports.

Note the bolded part, isn't he saying in part 1 that the copy protection could make device un-accessible by the OS and in the last part, they continued to get reports of this problem (does not make it clear to me that this problem was more severe than the first mention, ie device driver remedies); and they removed some tricks and "We believed that DHA made optical drive un-accessible by the OS and seems we were right - since that time we haven’t receive any optical drive failure reports." So, is there really full device failure, or what?

I agree, this says there were issues with Starforce and devices, I'm just not sure the extent.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

my attention span has diminished over the last few weeks of turmoil

Nah, my bad. It wasn't the clearest of citations in my first post.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Edit: Oh wait, I read the full thing, I am getting the impression there is no "damage", just that the device can become "unaccessible by the OS". Which appears to be remedied by reinstalling its drivers.

Yes, that is correct.

However, this problem is unrelated to the problem of old versions of SF
switching devices in to 16bit PIO mode. That can cause physical damage
to a small number of optical drives and causes a reduction in speed of all
IDE connected components.

That problem is not confirmed by SF.
Neither are the enforced reboots, despite the SF induced reboot being reproducible.

[Ships-R-Us]

Excellent reading. Thanks Neal. This link takes you directly to the DRM page.

http://reclaimyourgame.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=b log&id=18&Itemid=20

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Letum

Nah, my bad. It wasn't the clearest of citations in my first post.

Edit:


Yes, that is correct.

However, this problem is unrelated to the problem of old versions of SF
switching devices in to 16bit PIO mode. That can cause physical damage
to a small number of optical drives and causes a reduction in speed of all
IDE connected components.

That problem is not confirmed by SF.
Neither are the enforced reboots, despite the SF induced reboot being reproducible.

Yeah. And I acknowledge that even though the SF did not admit to some physical damage, or danced around the subject, that does not mean SF does not damage drives. I've never held a rock solid belief that SF did not damage drives, I just have never found really good 3rd party, unbiased tests.

[Heckler]

RE: The whole starforce and optical drives issue.


I suffered two failed drives because of SHIII and Race Driver 2 (Both used starforce).

Both drives eventually gave up on me, refused to write CD's or DVD's and eventually refused to recognise the very games that installed it.

One of the drives I removed and tested in another PC and it worked fine... thus supporting the idea that it's a driver issue... however, trying to reinstall those drivers did absolutely nothing to resolve the problem... Windows simply would not accept drive ever again and it was only when I reinstalled the OS that it worked once more.

The second drive however was toast... and never worked again.

Now that second drive could have expired by other means... but isn't it funny that the 'only' drives that were being reported as failing where cd/dvd writers... nothing else was affected and the connection was refuted by starforce and they even claimed they would pay money to anyone who could prove it... providing you made you own way to Russia with your own equipment and did it there... thus defeating the point of making such an empty gesture in the first place.

Some DRM isn't a bad thing... providing it does not interfere with my experience of the game. I prefer to play offline, got fed up with the amount of smacktards in every game I played... But what Ubisoft are planning is potential suicidal for the company... but I will wait and see.

I refused to get steam when that first arrived... In fact I refused to buy HL2 because of it, and wasn't I thankful after the people who bought it got screwed over the episodic content. But I did eventually install Steam about 18 months ago and bought the Orange box, since then I've purchased a couple more games.. but only budget ones or older titles that were on offer... SHIII, SHIV, Far Cry... revisited some older stuff I used to enjoy.

I don't mind steam now, it's handy to know that I can download the games again to another PC if I wanted too... and Valve are now making more money from steam than they are from games, so I don't think they'll be going out of business any time soon.

If Ubisoft are trying to position themselves as competition for steam, that's fine... but steam allows me to save my games locally and play offline... It doesn't kick me of a game when my connection drops and doesn't demand I am online every time I want to play once it's been activated.

I'm all for some competition for Steam, maybe it will force the prices down rather than keeping them artificially high to avoid them harming retail sales.

But they way Ubisoft are doing this is crazy... and it will only harm sales... which they will no doubt use as an excuse to blame piracy and justify it's use... and then quietly drop it just like they did starforce.

The freetards created the campaigns against some of the better DRM protections... and they won, it's a war that the developers cannot win, only delay... the smart ones seem to get this, the stupid ones seem to be intent on using it as an excuse to create new revenue streams and outlaw resale... Valve did this the smart way, Ubisoft are going down the stupid route.

[Heckler]

RE: The whole starforce and optical drives issue.


I suffered two failed drives because of SHIII and Race Driver 2 (Both used starforce).

Both drives eventually gave up on me, refused to write CD's or DVD's and eventually refused to recognise the very games that installed it.

One of the drives I removed and tested in another PC and it worked fine... thus supporting the idea that it's a driver issue... however, trying to reinstall those drivers did absolutely nothing to resolve the problem... Windows simply would not accept drive ever again and it was only when I reinstalled the OS that it worked once more.

The second drive however was toast... and never worked again.

Now that second drive could have expired by other means... but isn't it funny that the 'only' drives that were being reported as failing where cd/dvd writers... nothing else was affected and the connection was refuted by starforce and they even claimed they would pay money to anyone who could prove it... providing you made you own way to Russia with your own equipment and did it there... thus defeating the point of making such an empty gesture in the first place.

Some DRM isn't a bad thing... providing it does not interfere with my experience of the game. I prefer to play offline, got fed up with the amount of smacktards in every game I played... But what Ubisoft are planning is potential suicidal for the company... but I will wait and see.

I refused to get steam when that first arrived... In fact I refused to buy HL2 because of it, and wasn't I thankful after the people who bought it got screwed over the episodic content. But I did eventually install Steam about 18 months ago and bought the Orange box, since then I've purchased a couple more games.. but only budget ones or older titles that were on offer... SHIII, SHIV, Far Cry... revisited some older stuff I used to enjoy.

I don't mind steam now, it's handy to know that I can download the games again to another PC if I wanted too... and Valve are now making more money from steam than they are from games, so I don't think they'll be going out of business any time soon.

If Ubisoft are trying to position themselves as competition for steam, that's fine... but steam allows me to save my games locally and play offline... It doesn't kick me of a game when my connection drops and doesn't demand I am online every time I want to play once it's been activated.

I'm all for some competition for Steam, maybe it will force the prices down rather than keeping them artificially high to avoid them harming retail sales.

But they way Ubisoft are doing this is crazy... and it will only harm sales... which they will no doubt use as an excuse to blame piracy and justify it's use... and then quietly drop it just like they did starforce.

The freetards created the campaigns against some of the better DRM protections... and they won, it's a war that the developers cannot win, only delay... the smart ones seem to get this, the stupid ones seem to be intent on using it as an excuse to create new revenue streams and outlaw resale... Valve did this the smart way, Ubisoft are going down the stupid route.

[RDDR]

I fly IL2 and have for the last 9 years or so and I have to tell you Neal there are thousands and thousands of off line players...Thousands...........
They stay away from places like Hyperlobby Online flying...Why?
Too many online idiots that are hard to control and often times everything gets ruined for others.. Offline players have many options such as incredibly well written Campaigns la,la,la,. Lots of happy folks .

Having not dropped in for a while. I saw this and the other thread ,and felt my wallet start to twitch in my pocket as well as a shot of "Total Recall" when that criminal company "Star Farce" almost destroyed my hard drive way back when. They ended up facing criminal action from a number of countries and were ordered to release a patch to repair the damage.. Remember that one folks? Thanks Ubi.
I will buy SH5 but not under those conditions.I dont want the Ubistapo company store on my PC under any circumstances.They wont ever be if I have my way,and I certainly do at this moment..
I have SH4 and 3 on my hard drive.Great sims plus all the wonderful eye candy on SH4 I love both of those sims a lot and life goes on. With all thats happening out there in the world every day I just cant bring myself to having a simmers breakdown over this. Like the previous writer has said,These dummies will get it right in time.This has happened before..Remember? Buck up guys.
Cheers,RDDR

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Yeah. And I acknowledge that even though the SF did not admit to some physical damage, or danced around the subject, that does not mean SF does not damage drives. I've never held a rock solid belief that SF did not damage drives, I just have never found really good 3rd party, unbiased tests.

I did read that link earlier yes, I like to read :-).

The DRM software installed itself silently and also installed itself in such a way that bypassed the normal way the software is meant to talk to the hardware and caused problems by interrupting the OS when it tried to talk to the CD/DVD. The remedy, if I remember correctly, was to flash the firmware of your drive, but as the DRM maker in question didn't admit to anything, no one really knew what to do. This was compounded by Ubisoft's attitude to customer support. All they knew was they bought a game they'd been waiting for, went home and some time later, their DVD drive was not working. Here is a test link, which provides details of the slow down and security problems. Eventually some people's drives got so slow that they were unusable as they would timeout.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/30..._malware_.html

The aove site, as well as CNet got a letter threatening to sue, with a warning saying they had contacted the FBI - that's pretty scarey isn't it? Some might call it a scare tactic... remember that for later. Ubisoft were apparently deleting all references to the problems, so that compounded the problem of getting help (can you say 'customer service'?), so everyone was left feeling like they were on their own, even though if you watched the forums, you could see the LOTS of threads being created and deleted. This forced the hand of some and:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/legal/5m-cl...rce-164303.php

Because, you can only go so far without being listened to.

Some of the statistics being banded about, like 10 pirate copies for every game sold, I wouldn't be surprised if they had emerged from a source that has a vested interest in the paranoia over piracy and scare tactics. OK, the publishers get their figures from the industry experts, but who are the industry experts? Well, the people that make anti-piracty software of course. After all, some companies makes large amounts of money due to piracy prevention - can you guess the name of one of those systems? Can you think of any reason why they'd inflate the piracy figures? All this, plus the link I am about to post make me feel distrustful of those that say they are working for the games industry and I bet a large amount of the distrust the publishers have for the consumer can be put down to certain business practices and scare mongering.

Don't have DRM? Then looks like a certain DRM company won't be on your side. Questionable business practice perhaps?:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3148721

Was this ethical? Perhaps it was punishment for not using DRM, or perhaps a dangerous new idea (DRM free software) that needed to be stopped if money was to be made, I mean piracy was to be defereated. Here is the screenshot of the incident:

http://www.galciv2.com/temp/starfo2.jpg

There's more than one reason to hate DRM.

[martes86]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Yeah. And I acknowledge that even though the SF did not admit to some physical damage, or danced around the subject, that does not mean SF does not damage drives. I've never held a rock solid belief that SF did not damage drives, I just have never found really good 3rd party, unbiased tests.

Well, it does cause damage. Back then I had a Phillips drive, which started to make weird noises some time after installing SH3. I remember my dad telling me that no way he'd install it with SF in it, and he called it a virus. It certainly remembered me of the virus back when they loved to just destroy stuff instead of stealing data or using your pc for auto-spam.

[Letum]

I don't think it helps to make blanket statements about all DRM.
It can, and has, been done right in the past.

There are DRM systems that do not infringe customers rights to what
they have bought, control over their own PC, privacy and convinience.