Widescreen Gaming Forum

I skipped Bioshock, took a pass on Mass Effect, and will skip Crysis Warhead now that I know it, too, uses the same overly-restrictive DRM.

Hang on... Crysis Warhead has phone-home activation?

Well, I'll be cancelling my pre-order, then.

I can just about accept phone-home activation for an OS. Games are optional, so I'll just pass on Crysis Warhead.

Red Alert 3 is another game that I won't be buying because of this nonsense.

I swear, it ain't gonna be too much longer before I stop buying new games on the PC. :|

Have you ever played Bioshock?

Yes. I "got" a copy after the magic tricks were down to a minimum.

My god, that was an amazing game. Great story, shocking twist, terric gameplay, and an environment that almost made me crap my pants when that hydropsphere came over that ridge.

But once I beat it...I didn't want to play it again so soon. I just finished beating it on Hard without Vita-chambers, and that's why its on my mind, but still. It was an amazing game, but just had no replayability value.

You just proved my point. Even with an AMAZING single player, I wasn't interested in purchasing it because I knew after the story....there was nothing left!

Now COD4? I can literally beat that story in under two hours. It's a complete joke. If I want to buy a game that is almost entirely multiplayer only, I'd buy one that actually LASTS and continues having value months and months afters its release date. Team Fortress 2 anyone?

COD4 is more for people have been COD fans, I was in a very serious clan for CODUO and I loved it. COD4 is a fast passed multiplayer thats not for everyone, I understand that. Sure the single player was short sited, but they never came in thinking wow what a great storyline, it was more for the multiplayer like all the other ones.

I agree TF2 is fantastic, and I still play alot. Just to me, the Orangebox was a great deal because I got a multiplayer game with single player games, HL2 gave me CSS with it as well. Fantastic deals. It makes me want to buy it! That is what most pirates look for. Single player? who cares...I'll crack it and play it. Multiplayer? oh that looks like fun. Maybe I should buy it.

Just stating.

oh and I'd thought I'd pass along a comic from my daily reading

If a a game is too expensive I wont play it. Cause if I rat it and play it then I will talk about it and maybe my buddies will want it and its not too expensive for them so they will buy it thus throwing a wrench in the supply and demand thingy.

Hang on... Crysis Warhead has phone-home activation?

I'd put money on this being the same SecuROM as other EA titles:


For the sight-impaired ;)

Like that other bit about the EULA? Made me laugh inside...

Red Alert 3 is another game that I won't be buying because of this nonsense.

I swear, it ain't gonna be too much longer before I stop buying new games on the PC. :|

Same here. EA is making it easy for me to keep more of my money.

-UPDATE-
EA continues to get spanked by pirates and customers.

[quote]Now COD4? I can literally beat that story in under two hours. It's a complete joke. If I want to buy a game that is almost entirely multiplayer only, I'd buy one that actually LASTS and continues having value months and months afters its release date. Team Fortress 2 anyone?

COD4 is more for people have been COD fans, I was in a very serious clan for CODUO and I loved it. COD4 is a fast passed multiplayer thats not for everyone, I understand that. Sure the single player was short sited, but they never came in thinking wow what a great storyline, it was more for the multiplayer like all the other ones.I was a COD fan from the beginning of the series, and would still be playing COD2 if they didn't shut off the master server :roll:

It's just that the multiplayer leaves something to be desired. It's not very deep and is incredibly easy. The singleplayer is simply a joke though. Not a single aspect of it is good.

Now COD4? I can literally beat that story in under two hours. It's a complete joke. If I want to buy a game that is almost entirely multiplayer only, I'd buy one that actually LASTS and continues having value months and months afters its release date. Team Fortress 2 anyone?

2 hours?! :shock: Thanks for mentioning that detail. The demo map did seem to move at quite a fast pace, but if the SP content is THAT small I'll probably pass on CoD4 until it's in the $10 range (or on http://www.gog.com ;) ) With the little time I have for gameplay, I really don't need another MP title.

On the whole the CoD games really never hooked me like other guys. I own the CoD 1 deluxe box and have actually completed the SP campaigns. They were fun, but I have no interest in replaying them. MP was fun the few times I LANed with friends, otherwise it was back to Desert Combat (yeah, baby!).

Also, I played CoD before seeing Enemy at the Gates and Band of Brothers. After I saw those my respect for CoD's design team dropped. People raved about CoD's SP campaign...but come on, they lifted ENTIRE sections from movies/shows and used them verbatim. When I played the Siege of Stalingrad level in CoD I was amazed and enthralled. A year later my wife and I were watching Enemy at the Gates, and she was the one who spoke up first and said "Isn't this just like one of your games?" (and she had only watched me play for 1 or 2 minutes...maybe). I just sat there with my mouth open.

2 hours?! :shock: Thanks for mentioning that detail. The demo map did seem to move at quite a fast pace, but if the SP content is THAT small I'll probably pass on CoD4 until it's in the $10 range (or on http://www.gog.com ;) ) With the little time I have for gameplay, I really don't need another MP title.

I dont know if im bad or something but it took me 6-8 hours to play through.

For the sight-impaired ;)
Like that other bit about the EULA? Made me laugh inside...

The bit about the EULA makes me want to cry inside, I know that much. With the attitude of stores in the UK about returning opened PC games (because of the fact that, obviously, every person trying to return a game in the UK is a dirty pirate who has copied the disc) they need to start printing the EULA up so you can read it in-store. Because to read the EULA means opening the box and inserting the disc into your computer, and by opening the box, most shops here will not allow you to return the game.

Makes me want to take my laptop with me one day, buy a game, open it in store, read the EULA and then say, "I don't agree with this EULA - and according to it, I can get a full refund right now. So yes please - refund, hurry it up!"

Red Alert 3 is another game that I won't be buying because of this nonsense.

I swear, it ain't gonna be too much longer before I stop buying new games on the PC. :|

Same here. EA is making it easy for me to keep more of my money.

I really want to buy Crysis: Warhead. I want to buy Red Alert 3.

But I refuse, point blank, to support this sort of crap.

Now I just hope that Fallout 3 won't have this bollocks on it as well. Or I'll be cancelling my pre-order for the Collectors Edition of that, too.

-UPDATE-
EA continues to get spanked by pirates and customers.

That was a fairly interesting read, actually. Thanks. :) Although EA's response is funny, "We've not changed our DRM scheme." Uh, no, no you haven't. You are using a newer form of SecuROM, which people are so far reacting badly toward. What amazes me is that it's no more successful than the older DRM schemes, but at least 'disc in the drive' games weren't a 'rental' scenario like the 'limited activations then you have to beg us for more' one.

The last paragraph is fairly amusing, though... in a 'despair for their stupidity' kind of way... "DRM can encourage the best customers to behave slightly better"... uh... honestly, I'd have said that the 'best' customers were already following to the letter, so all you've done is give them another hoop to jump through. It won't make the already good customers behave better. But it will make the perennial wavers lean more toward the 'bad' choice.



edit:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2330377,00.asp

Editorial. Boils down to "Thanks EA. Thanks for nothing."

Brings up an excellent point about using games for benchmarks, too - reviewers aren't going to go out and buy hundreds of licenses for a game just so they can use it as a benchmark... so Spore, Crysis Warhead, RA3, Mass Effect... the 'free-neutral' advertising given when using a game as a benchmark is non-existent.

Paradigm, you and I are in the same foxhole. I'll skip quoting your entire post to save screen space, but it still gets a QFT. :)

I'd like to buy Warhead as well, especially since it seems to be the fully polished game Crysis almost was:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/909/909584p1.html

But hey, at least Spore is up to 1.5 stars on Amazon, so maybe I should "look on the bright side" ;) Of course, the cynic in me says someone at EA said "Fix Amazon! Release the shills!" :lol:


-EDIT-
ROFL. PWNed by customer image:


On a serious note...I'd say this confirms games are now RENTALS.

It's going down in history as a flop because of its DRM now;

It's way too early to call it a flop, regardless of how much the DRM is hated.

what's your point?

My point is that you can't point to Sins and conclude that removing DRM "works." All you can conclude is that it's worked for the games produced by that one company - you can't even prove whether they succeeded because of or in spite of the lack of DRM, much less that removing DRM is the correct way to go for every other company.

my thoughts on the issue is that the harder companies become on piracy, the more problems of piracy they will cause themselves.

There's really no grounds for claiming this. Pirates may feign indignance at DRM and use it as an excuse to download a game, but if someone's main reason for pirating a game was to avoid DRM and being cheap had nothing to do with it, the logical response would be to buy the game and bypass the DRM. DRM might deter legitimate buyers who don't know how to bypass it, but it isn't going to make legitimate buyers turn pirate.

A lot of pirates will pirate a game because it's fifty dollars versus one that is twenty dollars, simply because they don't have the budget to and/or don't want to spend that much for a software that cost less than five dollars to physically manufacture (not produce).

I've heard this claim before. Until I hear about "a lot of pirates" also sending $20 checks to the publishers after helping themselves to their $50 games, I'm not in a hurry to take this claim seriously.

I loved COD4...its on my "to buy list if I ever have money" but honestly besides that game not much makes me think...yeah $40 is worth it for a 10 hour game...or a 20 hour game....nope...give me a GOOD multiplayer too...then I'm interested...

That's quite unfair to the developers. You have their game, you didn't pay them a cent. What right do you have to declare the game worth it or not worth it? That's like being hired to mow someone's lawn and then being told the agreed fee isn't "worth it" unless you water the flowers too.

Even with an AMAZING single player, I wasn't interested in purchasing it because I knew after the story....there was nothing left!

Which is like the guy who hired you saying "I'm not interested in paying you because after you mowed my lawn, there's nothing more you can do for me."

I agree TF2 is fantastic, and I still play alot. Just to me, the Orangebox was a great deal because I got a multiplayer game with single player games, HL2 gave me CSS with it as well. Fantastic deals. It makes me want to buy it! That is what most pirates look for. Single player? who cares...I'll crack it and play it. Multiplayer? oh that looks like fun. Maybe I should buy it.

This is a problem. If developers are forced to focus on multiplayer just so that their games can seem like "fantastic deals" to those who would otherwise take what they want for free, then singleplayer games will stop being cost effective.

The bit about the EULA makes me want to cry inside, I know that much

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. EULAs are really just legal boiler plate. No matter what you "agree" to in a EULA, it can't take away rights that are granted to you by law. They could literally say "you agree to be Will Wright's towel boy for life," and it would mean nothing at all. The only thing a EULA can really do (aside from being legal boiler plate) is grant you additional rights. For instance, the Freespace 2 EULA gives you permission to install the game on your friends' computers using your copy of the physical disc.

With the attitude of stores in the UK about returning opened PC games

Pretty much everywhere, actually. Most places in the US don't even accept opened DVDs anymore.

My take on the DRM is simple. If I want the game, I'll buy it and bypass the DRM regardless of what kind it is. If I don't want the game, I don't buy it, and I won't complain about the DRM because I didn't want the game it "protects" in the first place. And I don't want Spore - the game sounds fascinating on a technical level, but ultimately really boring to play.

A lot of pirates will pirate a game because it's fifty dollars versus one that is twenty dollars, simply because they don't have the budget to and/or don't want to spend that much for a software that cost less than five dollars to physically manufacture (not produce).

I've heard this claim before. Until I hear about "a lot of pirates" also sending $20 checks to the publishers after helping themselves to their $50 games, I'm not in a hurry to take this claim seriously.

The problem with that logic though, is that if you can get it for free, why pay?

If you would spend twenty dollars on a game but because it's fifty you aren't going to buy it, why should you bother sending the publisher money for something you don't believe you should need to pay that much for?

It's not only monetary, it's also principle.

The problem with that logic though, is that if you can get it for free, why pay?

Thank you for reinforcing my original point. As I said, lowering prices won't do anything to stop piracy - why would the pirates pay a lower price for something they already get for free?

If you would spend twenty dollars on a game but because it's fifty you aren't going to buy it,

Then I would wait until the game actually does cost twenty dollars and then buy it.

If you would spend twenty dollars on a game but because it's fifty you aren't going to buy it,

Then I would wait until the game actually does cost twenty dollars and then buy it.

Which they won't do because they either already pirated it and played it, and thus it serves no point to buy it, or because it's not the "cool" or "hip" game any longer, and therefore they don't want to buy it and instead want to focus their attention on newer games.

This is the sort of discussion that can simply never end.

Every single one of em has his/her reasons to pirate.

A long time ago I did too, plain fact is without an income I couldn't afford 50$ for 10-20 hours of play.

And to top it off, most games I would have bought (ex: bandits, phoenix rising) weren't even on shelves. And not, they were there briefly, not at all. Only ones to find are the mass productions quakes, unreals, etc. Most of which don't appeal to me.

Even these days, I have to resort to ebay, amazon marketplace among others just to get games, even recent ones, that are simply NOT available. I can come in a local store with a fistfull of cash but I cannot buy the games I want.

Yes pirating is wrong, but drm is also the wrong way to go about fighting it.

Make your game available, even if it's ordered from your website and shipped from your own factory with local franchises so I don't get hit with twice the game's value in border fees. Otherwise the -only- way for me to get your game is pirating it.

granted, I agree.

If I were rich, I wouldn't be sitting here stating I can download the latest games. But honestly I have no money.

what attracts me is the multiplayer games. The last good single player game I played was probably bioshock or even mass effect I found to be good.

But still, with no replay value its harder to determine the price per game.

Back at Cranky's ideology.
Lets say you agree to mow the grass. Should he pay me upfront? No. When the job is done. AND you've done a good job, he's not going to pay me for mowing a maze on his yard...no matter how graphically impressive it would be simply retarded. And a waste of time. He'd toss you out. Its the same logic we are doing with companies. Sure we can get it for free. But are you going to appeal to us so that we feel that you've done a good job to be worth being paid? Or should we toss you out on your butt for a half-done job.

Lets say you agree to mow the grass. Should he pay me upfront? No. When the job is done. AND you've done a good job, he's not going to pay me for mowing a maze on his yard...no matter how graphically impressive it would be simply retarded. And a waste of time. He'd toss you out. Its the same logic we are doing with companies. Sure we can get it for free. But are you going to appeal to us so that we feel that you've done a good job to be worth being paid? Or should we toss you out on your butt for a half-done job.

Unless we're talking about MMOs, then the grass mowing analogy is incorrect. Games are products, mowing is a service. I could certainly see refusing to pay someone if they did a bad or incomplete job mowing a lawn, but I don't see how the same recourse system could be applied to games or any other product while maintaining a viable business model. If all I have to do is say I don't like a product and that frees me from having to pay for it, what reason would any company have to make products at all?

Now, if a game does not actually work, or it causes harm to my computer, I believe that is justifiable grounds for me to box it up, go to the store, and get a full refund. If this is the kind of scenario to which you referred as a half-done job, then obviously I agree with you.

I'm a fan of .exe cracks for no-disc checks but I am also a big fan of pirating, so I guess I don't have much say in the matter. :/

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. EULAs are really just legal boiler plate. No matter what you "agree" to in a EULA, it can't take away rights that are granted to you by law. They could literally say "you agree to be Will Wright's towel boy for life," and it would mean nothing at all.

I'm sure some would argue otherwise. But I'll bow to your greater knowledge on this matter.

...

I didn't really want this to turn into a piracy thread... but I guess that was unavoidable. Any discussion of DRM invariably descends into a back and forth about piracy. :(

I was curious about how the game sold in stores with all this discussion about DRM, so I checked the 4 online shops I use. Sold Out, in every single one.
That's kind of impressive, usually only limited editions and such sells this fast.
Sorry, this was a bit off-topic, I'll leave now :oops:

All this thread did was remind me about how long the grass on my lawn is.