Any clue who is gonna be the European distributor?

[Splitter]

Two thoughts:

If the copy protection is too intrusive and may mess up other games or render the new game unplayable, I won't buy it.

I totally understand companies wanting to protect their hard work, but I also know there are less intrusive ways to keep them from losing vast amounts of sales.

For example, the DVD that came in the box is usually not the end all and be all of the game. Most of the time, there are bugs. Much of the time, there are updates to improve the game (there better be).

The companies that support their games after release are the ones that I support with my money. I've been ripped off a number of times (cough...EA) with incomplete releases that were not properly patched and updated.

I do no think it is too much to ask of the customer that a game's authenticity be validated when it is first installed and then for subsequent updates. Any pirated copy would not be able to be updated and improved. This discourages piracy AND encourages companies to support the products they produce. Any pirated copy would then simply be a "beta" which probably includes all kinds of viruses.

Second thought: verify the authenticity of a game's files for multiplayer modes. I HATE CHEATERS. You want to cheat offline? I have no problem with that, turn on god mode. Don't do it when competing with other humans. I have participated in a few efforts to eliminate cheaters from competition and it's not easy...except for the developers. When game companies did not do enough to protect the online community from cheaters, the leagues had to develop their own special mods and watch like hawks.

If a game has "tighter" authentication for multiplayer, I am ok with that as long as it works. Here again, pirates would not be able to participate which protects both the customers and the developers.

I can't defend software pirates but I do not see the tie in to music piracy. Once you buy a song you should be able to copy that song to any format you wish (legal in the US, btw, under "fair use"). The music and movie industries have cried about piracy issues since magnetic tape became available but I see a lot of really rich artists out there. They must have figured out some way to still make a buck, right?

Youngsters have no idea lol. We used to buy albums for $10 (worth more back then!) that had maybe two or three hit songs and 7 songs you skipped over. We couldn't really buy single songs for a buck. Artists even cried back then that people were recording songs off the radio. But they adapted to the "new ways" and are raking in money hand over fist.

Poor products and anti-piracy attempts that are too intrusive actually lead to piracy. Adapt and overcome, software companies need to do the same.

Splitter

[Immermann]

My thoughts. Any publisher but UBI or Activision.
Use the same copy protection as Black Shark.

[Bobb4]

Originally Posted by Immermann

My thoughts. Any publisher but UBI or Activision.
Use the same copy protection as Black Shark.

Okay who has not downloaded a cracked copy of Black Shark?
Mods - Just kidding
Seriously copy protection is not a major issue. Could not care which one is used. The always on Internet is however.
Ubisoft and EA games all burnt their fingers with always on Internet drms. Look at Command and Conquer 4. A few months after release it is for sale as a cheap classic title?
Always on Internet DRM has bombed.
But with Blizzard following the same example with Starcraft 2 one has to wonder. The game (Starcraft 2) was more expensive at release than any other game. Obviously designed to catch the young suckers that will accept the drm and then it will be sold cheaper later with drm removed for the ordinary folk. They sold a million games on day one and another two million since release
A win for the DRM I think. But also proof that sales are starting to taper-off.

[Blackdog_kt]

I was on the Starcraft 2 beta test and some of my friends have bought the game. I'll buy it too at some point, i'm just taking my time. There's quite a few things that could have been done better for SC2, but the actual activation is kind of mild compared to other games.

You don't need to be always online to play. You just need to activate the game once after you install, just like with a new installation of windows. The only reason to be online is achievement tracking in single player and while i agree it's stupid to prevent it from working unless a user is logged in, it's by no means detrimental to how the single player works. So in summary you can play offline just fine, you just won't get the annoying pop-ups and the shiny badges while doing so.

SC2 is expensive and it comes in 3 installments that are probably all going to be full price games, but it's also a case of getting around 30 missions for the single player campaign in each episode (that's 3 times the amount of maps of the first game) and a game that will be played online for years, so the price is somewhat justified. Plus, because it's a game with a big competitive online scene there's none of that DLC nonsense, since it would unbalance things a lot in multiplayer if people could pick and choose between DLC units for their armies.

What was worrisome was the way they treat stuff like publishing of user created maps and how exactly will the next episodes function. Nobody knows if they will add new units for multiplayer with them and if for example, someone who wants a unit from episode 3 will have to buy episode 2 as well as a pre-requisite for the installation of episode 3, but this is still speculation pretty much.

The only annoying thing so far is that you can't have two people playing multiplayer on one installation with their stats being kept separate. I'm not the kind of guy who frets over stats and achievements but when the match-making system (and by consequence, getting matched with players of your skill level in multiplayer matches) is based on that, it's kind of stupid to tell me that me and a brother/sister/roommate have to buy the game two times just to be able to keep our stats separate.

You can still logoff and login with another account for multiplayer, but that account needs to be tied to a purchased game as well. It's strictly one nickname per account, which sucks, and one account per cd-key. If it was one account per cd-key but each account could have more than one nicknames, it would be just fine.

[KaHzModAn]

Yes, Starcraft 2 was kindof a win...

BUT only because SC1 was a huge success, and i've heard that people who bought it (hardocre ones at least) said it was'nt really that good

I didn't buy it while i loved the first one, because blizzard got too greedy, and it worked that time... good for them but I hope it won't work anymore

DRM is a pain for customers, its pretty much like the FBI message at the beginning of films, DVDs and stuff... you get Warnings that insult you, treats you like a thief... when you buy a DVD ! No way a pirated film has such kind of messages !

I didn't buy ROF until they said there would be a offline possibility for it, I bought it right after that mainly because they did the effort of doing it !

[Revvin]

Unfortunately DRM usually only hinders the genuine user though sometimes - though very rarely it will slow down the pirates enough for a developer to claw back some money from the first months sales.

Having just re-installed my OS I've found out just how irritating DRM has become with a few games I have. I'm not even going to bother trying to get GT Legends to install because to do so I'd have to go and hunt down a load of files because the DRM is not supported under Windows 7. Lock On was another nuisance, I had to go and hunt down a special update app just for the DRM for the totally legal copy I have.

Black Shark and Lock On 2 use limited install numbers so in the past where I've just wiped my HDD knowing I have the original disc's now I have to jump through hoops and remember to deactivate the programs else I lose an activation on a system format or upgrade. NetKar Pro also uses a limited activation number.

I wouldn't have a problem with this method if they used the same format as Live For Speed where you get three activations and one activation is replenished each week. I wouldn't even mind if it was 10 activations over 6 or 12 months and it was reset but 10 for the lifetime of a product? Even good old IL-2 is not without its problems with the disc checking. Again a little more searching required for that too.

Too much messing around just to install my totally legal sim collection. I respect the right for the developer to protect their work but respectfully ask that in doing so they consider carefully the impact on the end user, their customer and potential future customer.

[Chivas]

Originally Posted by Revvin

Unfortunately DRM usually only hinders the genuine user though sometimes - though very rarely it will slow down the pirates enough for a developer to claw back some money from the first months sales.

Having just re-installed my OS I've found out just how irritating DRM has become with a few games I have. I'm not even going to bother trying to get GT Legends to install because to do so I'd have to go and hunt down a load of files because the DRM is not supported under Windows 7. Lock On was another nuisance, I had to go and hunt down a special update app just for the DRM for the totally legal copy I have.

Black Shark and Lock On 2 use limited install numbers so in the past where I've just wiped my HDD knowing I have the original disc's now I have to jump through hoops and remember to deactivate the programs else I lose an activation on a system format or upgrade. NetKar Pro also uses a limited activation number.

I wouldn't have a problem with this method if they used the same format as Live For Speed where you get three activations and one activation is replenished each week. I wouldn't even mind if it was 10 activations over 6 or 12 months and it was reset but 10 for the lifetime of a product? Even good old IL-2 is not without its problems with the disc checking. Again a little more searching required for that too.

Too much messing around just to install my totally legal sim collection. I respect the right for the developer to protect their work but respectfully ask that in doing so they consider carefully the impact on the end user, their customer and potential future customer.

"though very rarely it will slow down the pirates enough for a developer to claw back some money from the first months sales"

If that statement were true developers wouldn't have bothered wasting money on copy protection.

[Revvin]

You'll find plenty of cracked copy protection's online and copies of games circulating on the day of release if not before. Copy protection is a futile effort to reduce casual piracy i.e friends lending friends their CD's not the pirates circulating the software through bittorrents and newsgroups. I'm not saying I have an answer and as I said I support the developers right to try and protect their work but the DRM's being used by some developers are becomming more and more draconian.