Quote: Original post by issch

Quote: Original post by kseh
Could be that the matter will be resolved for us anyways. I understand there's some sort of agreement (wiki article) in the works which is supposed to "solve" the problem. One rumor that I heard (which I can't back up but I believe it was from the Edmonton Metro paper) said that the plan is to get ISPs to actively watch out for and report any sort of activity that may look like piracy. Being suspected of piracy would basically get your internet turn off, potentially for life. There was also some conjecture that you'll need to be able to prove that any data you posess is yours as you cross international borders. And if you can't, you'd be saying good-bye to your mp3 player.

Not sure to what extent this is true but if there is an international effort to do so I could certainly see the potential for a massive massive crack down on piracy and to finally tame and civilize the wild wild web. It can be done and I wouldn't be suprised if we see something major come into effect in the next 5 years that throws modern day media piracy back to the '70s.

Except ACTA has been voted to hell by 95% of EU MEPs: votewatch.eu.

Actually the EU MEPs didn't vote on ACTA, they voted for a resolution to force the EU commision to stop with the secret negitiations and start following the lissabon treaty (which essentially is the EU constitution now).

Its important to remember that the commission isn't democratically elected and the fact that they are negotiating international treaties for all EU states in secret without those who are elected (The parliament) or the people having any ability to influence it is a problem. ACTA may still go through, but currently its not being handled in a very democratic fashion.
The media industry currently has more insight and influence than our elected representatives which is pretty darn close to fascism, it doesn't really matter if the treaty is good or bad at this point, if the secrecy doesn't end it might shatter the EU.
If our elected representatives can't represent us in the EU there is no point for us to be a part of it.

(I can't say wether ACTA is good or bad and neither can the european MEPs because none of us knows what is actually being discussed, all we got are some leaked documents that may or may not be accurate)

Just on casual piracy if you don't attempt to stop casual piracy people will assume its okay to copy and share games. No one really reads the EULAs, if the game lets you install it and run on as many computers as you want people will assume it's okay to do so. If you add a simple CD check all of a sudden you need to either: download a crack, or run special CD emulation software. That's enough to stop some people because it clearly signposts what's allowed and whats not.

But sometimes it can be a good idea to let people share their games around. Heroes of Might and Magic would let you install the game on as many computers as you want, but without the disk you could only join mutplayer games. Civ 4 had a similar thing (although not advertised) where you could share the disk around after the initial load. In a gamasutra article one of the developers said it was designed that way to allow you and your mates to have a game of civ together over a lan.

Personally I'm in favor of that kind of DRM over more intense client-only schemes can still be cracked and are a pain. But I think SaaS will win the day in the end provided they add some sort of value added service to player. Everyone loves steam* because they allow you to redownload any game you bought to any computer with your steam account on it. Gamers saw that, and didn't pay too much attention to the fact steam was a DRM framework.

* Except me, I still hate steam after I bought HL2 back in 03 and spent a week downloading forced updates on dial up. Seriously just give us the option to download the update in the background and let us play. Steam would almost be perfect then.

Quote: I just moved apartments and the cable guy who hooked me up mentioned that I should 'be careful what I upload'. I've also heard previously that they ( Time Warner ) monitor monthly upstream bandwidth.

How they're going to determine the legality of the content being shared is beyond me.

Optimum Online used to do this before. They would cap your upload bandwidth if you uploaded for a prelonged period of time (e.g indication of a server or bittorrent protocol usage). They don't do that anymore, I guess because they lost too many customers.

Quote: several independent companies monitor all public torrent trackers and log IPs involved. These might be running just clients, or perhaps trackers as well. In the past, similar companies were responsible for poisoning the transfers, but that probably didn't have desired effect.

On at least two occasions (Angels and Demons, I think, as well as the notorious Wolverine leak) these companies sent emails to all the ISPs owning the IPs logged including time and torrent/tracker details worldwide.

This happens much more often than you say. Nearly every popular movie, music album or software is monitored by Anti-P2P companies and they will send emails to the ISPs of the users. Some ISPs (like Verizon) choose to ignore the emails, other ISPs (like Optimum, guess Time Warner as well) will forward this email to the user. If a user gets cought too many times, he will be sued.
There are ways to circumvent the tracking, of course, through the use of specialized firewalls and protocol encryption. This is usually enough for most cases.


By the way, to the OP of this thread, Ubisoft's DRM was not cracked, this is false. The crack only allows you to go in-game, but not save. That's because at every save point, the game will phone back to Ubisoft's authentication servers and make sure the CD-key provided is valid and unique. It is unknown when the DRM will be fully hacked, it could take weeks or even months, by that time, most of the pirates with cash in their pockets would have just bought the game, and Ubisoft will be triumphant as piracy falls to its knees.

Quote: Original post by MrMark
Gamers saw that, and didn't pay too much attention to the fact steam was a DRM framework.

Gamers don't care about DRM, unless it makes their system slow/unstable (starforce/securom) or makes them jump through hoops to play what they've payed for.

The problem seems to be that publishers switch between really bad drm and no drm,

First they try shit like starforce, then they go "DRM Free", then they require you to be online constantly ...

My bet is that Ubisoft will release a DRM Free game soon after the backlash they're getting now.

It seems like the sane middle road that offers good enough protection without assraping your customers is hidden from some people.

Edit:
Allthough it does look like the OP was wrong, i did a search on tpb and it seems like the "crack" doesn't support saves (Just skimmed the descriptions and comments so i could be wrong), They might actually have bought themselves enough time to get some pirates to cave in, we're at 9 days and counting.

Oddly enough there seem to be an iso of the xbox360 version on tpb aswell though , but i assume it would require a modded box to run ?

Quote: Allthough it does look like the OP was wrong, i did a search on tpb and it seems like the "crack" doesn't support saves (Just skimmed the descriptions and comments so i could be wrong), They might actually have bought themselves enough time to get some pirates to cave in, we're at 9 days and counting.

Yeah that's exactly what I said. You can play the game but you cannot progress through the story, thus the game is not really playable.

DRM is an abomination. Fellow game developers, do me a favor and refrain from implementing such a ridiculous measure. It is nothing more than a slap to your paying customers.

The only protection that really does not bother me is a serial key check (an OFFLINE key check). Yes, it is easily cracked, but the point is not to serve as some huge titanium barrier. It is a soft way to give people their own unique copies (and to enforce online play).

Talk about DRM, I faced the same problem a few days ago.

Usually I bought CD's locally and rip them out - it's cheaper because we're 3rd world country and all. And of course, previously I don't have visa compatible debit card or a credit card.

Anyway I was buying kid cudi 'alive' and it has lot of problem registering the drm. it's like the drm software try to connect wit the server but failed. i've clicking on the mp3 like, 20 times.

Out of frustration, coupled with my programming debugging troubleshooting sense, i've asked myself - what if the playing software is the cause of the problem?

I was right, it seems that the DRM doesn't work with latest WimAmp. I have to right click, open with Window Media Player (this is because i've set wimamp as standard mp player). then the drm registration went well.

after that i can play the mp3 in winamp again.

oh well. at least I get to listen to Kid Cudi 'alive'.

Quote: Original post by frob
In order to get the tens of millions of dollars needed to develop and publish a game, we need those sales.

And guess what. You won't get those sales from me anymore. I refuse to buy DRM'd games.


So tell me, was it worth pissing your customers off? Whether a customer pirates a game or just outright doesn't care about its existence, the end result is the same.

The reason that I decided that the Steam DRM was acceptable is because Valve said, at launch, that the code for stripping out DRM (to be used in the event that Steam closes its doors) was already written and tested.

Ubisoft has said that it's possible they could write a patch, but they haven't got one yet - this is the same company that had to pirate a pirate's no-CD crack the last time they had to get rid of some DRM...

Quote: Original post by MrMark
But sometimes it can be a good idea to let people share their games around. Heroes of Might and Magic would let you install the game on as many computers as you want, but without the disk you could only join mutplayer games. Civ 4 had a similar thing (although not advertised) where you could share the disk around after the initial load. In a gamasutra article one of the developers said it was designed that way to allow you and your mates to have a game of civ together over a lan.

Which is a very good strategy, I shall note.

I've never seen a LAN party where games with a 1 player = 1 physical copy scheme have not been shared around illegally to some extent. The fundamental cause is that people will not buy 10 different games they never played before, that they MIGHT play for 1 hour each on a LAN party...

Now, if they do like the game they tried at the LAN party they are quite likely to buy it afterwards, especially if it features Internet play requiring a unique serial, because sharing a physical copy isn't very practical when you live more than 50 meters apart. Then, there's LAN simulation to get around that but usually an Internet match making service adds value...

Of course, MMOs and other games with online content streaming are exempt from this discourse.

I also acknowledge the subset of the population likely to engage in LAN parties is quite large, but the strategy applies in more instances, such as: Will most parents will buy one copy each for all of their children to have the family play together on LAN? Probably not, unless they're rich enough that expenses in the > 100$ category are trivial.