Quote:
Originally Posted by leggit
this is the 21st century....if your using a machine without internet access you really should rethink your setup....i have to agree regarding this whole copyright protection arguement its old and out of date....the FACTS are that studios are turning away from the pc platform because of the constant problem of piracy...suck it up people if you want quality games for your pc in the future its got to have some sort of DRM...you can't have your cake and eat it anymore.
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Well, i agree with
some sort of DRM. What i don't agree with is "i'll take any kind of DRM they throw at me". Nope, not gonna happen. If i can't play a game due to factors outside my direct control i won't support it, or at least i'll wait until it drops in price first.
And for clarification's sake, a problem within my direct control is a drivers problem or a busted graphics card. I can work to repair such a software issue or save some money, go out and buy a new GPU.
However, i can't do jack about a road construction crew accidentally cutting a bunch of fiber optic cables midway between where i live and the country's capital (where incidentally, the main hub to connections in other countries for all local ISPs happens to be).
This is not within my control and as such, it's not fit to have something that depends on it as part of the system requirements. If it is part of them, i refuse to support such a title at its initial asking price or completely.
And before someone says i got a wild imagination, this exact thing happened a couple of years ago and i was stuck with a DSL line that dropped the moment my router requested the slightest amount of traffic. Sorry, but i wouldn't pay for a car i can't drive whenever there's a storm half way across the globe, so i won't do something similar for a game either.
The encouraging bit for me is that Ubi's in-house DRM already failed and mr. Maddox himself has said he's not partial to such solutions.
I've never used Steam and i'm getting mixed opinions and reviews about it from different people. To be honest i'd prefer they have their own infrastructure just for activations and maybe an integrated multiplayer server browser, with the rest of the network traffic being exchanged between the users to keep bandwidth costs down. All the server browser would need to do is tell your installation that it needs to "talk" to a certain server/host/IP, then your PC would communicate directly with that IP address.
As long as the rest of the game runs locally on our PCs without a constant connection requirement the traffic would be cheap enough to manage for someone like Ubi, but since they went "all or nothing" on their previous DRM that flopped so badly maybe they can't afford it anyway
The ideal process for me would be something like this:
1) Go to the game's website and create an account.
2) While the sim is installing log into the website's members area with this account, go to your profile, click on "bind your account to your product key" or something similar and input the product key found in your DVD box. This tells the service that your account corresponds to the owner of a legally purchased copy.
3) Use this verified account to log into the game in order to "unlock" your installation and you're done, but ONLY the first time a fresh installation of the game is being executed.
4) Allow unlimited installs/uninstalls. This way i can grab the DVD box, my TrackIR and my stick, go to a friend's house while we're having a LAN party, install it on his PC, log in with my account to activate it and do some free advertising for the game. But how will this stop me and my friend from "sharing" one key so we can both play the game? See next point.
5) Whenever i'm connected to the internet the game communicates with the authentication servers in random intervals. It could be once a week, once a month or even every single time, whatever,
but it ONLY happens when i'm ALREADY connected to the internet. If i'm not if won't ask me to.
So, if i am online and it detects that the same key is used more than once simultaneously, both players get an "multiple log-ins detected" message and they need to reactivate. I can, since i know my account details, my friend can't since he doesn't. If he likes the game that bad, he's gonna have to buy it
6) Want to take this one step further? Allow customized "client" installations without any activation required. What for? So we can fly in multi-crew with people who don't have the game yet. Restrictions for such an installation would be
a) unable to fly any single player missions (apart from 1-2 sample missions or certain QMB scenarios, hey, presto, we got a demo this way)
b) unable to host multiplayer sessions
c) able to join a multiplayer session hosted by a player with a fully activated installation, or a dedicated server
d) once joining a multiplayer session, unable to act as the only human player in the aircraft (so, no piloting single seaters for you if you don't buy the game, actually, no piloting bombers either if you don't have a registered fellow in the same airplane)
e) able to join in with a player who has an activated installation into the same aircraft, either as pilot/copilot or as a bomb aimer/gunner.
This way i could install "client" installations on all my friends' PCs and give the game some extra exposure, without enabling them to play it for free. It would just get them interested in it and they might buy it.
Out of about 10 people i regularly game with there are 4-5 that have an interest in WWII history, one i already managed to get into flying IL2 with me (he was into falcon 4.0 back in the day) but the rest think sims are "too difficult/time consuming". That's where the Tiger Moth and the multi-crew feature comes in, teaching them to fly. Sooner or later, i might be able to convince an extra two guys to buy a cheap stick and the game.
See, there are ways to do this that can be mutually beneficial to the fans and the developers/publishers alike