What do you think about DRM?

[Delete this account pls]

Been reading up sum stuff on the internet about drm
if u dont know what it is please read on and you may know
Wanted to get ur opinions on it

here's my opinion:
DRM the biggest clusterfuck(sorry for swearing ) to ever come to video gaming history, forget that lame E.T game that atari made (prolly the worst game in history for those who dont know what im talking about)
I used to get only pirated games but then (for god knows why) stopped pirating and started to pay for my games.
Some months ago ive been getting lots of messages around the web about drm and I wanted to see what it is.
I think its disgusting that the guys that that make games (not talking about all of them) treat paying customers who CHOOSE to buy from them a game and dont resort to piracy like petty thieves.
When I go to pay for a game I want to be able to enjoy it and not have to go and contact customer support all the time or go surfing the web for like 3-4 hours to find a fix, nor do I want to be treated like a criminal when I pay 50-60 euros for a game .
DRM is basically the devs saying "hey thank you for buying our game and making us a bit richer.
Now its time to show you our great apreciation by installing unremovable hidden software in your computer that doesnt allow any codecs, emulators, third party programs and basically anything that you didnt buy to be in your computer"






For those of you who actually read all this crap I just wrote, CONGRATULATIONS (not really )
If you are as surprised as I am about me writing so much crap you may say so
As I said up there please post your opinions on DRM and thank you for reading.
I was just pissed that my spore only had 1 instalation left and I had to let it out somewhere.

EDIT: Guess i had to make something special for my 400th post

[Apollo]

Buy a console.

[partydevil]

ea games got suwed for useing drm
they had to pay so much that they made losts on there game spore (1 of the 2 games they have putted it in)
even tho that spore was a big succes ( it still gets sold whit drm in it)

ea games will think twice befor putting it in a game again
and so will other publicers
beside there was a drm free version of the game online in about 2 days after release (wich is prety long for piretsy)
so it doesn't help, especialy not cause judges have state the costumers in there right

[}TCP{Ramses]

I just avoid games that make you jump through too many hoops before you can play (mandatory online registration, drm etc). I never played Half Life 2 even though I really enjoyed the original Half Life, because of the steam thing.

I always buy my games, so those companies who go overboard on protection lose out on my few pounds, and I am less likely to buy their titles in future. It's not just the bit of hastle that it creates, it's the affrontary of them trying to force registration that I don't like, not to mention them potentially messing up my pc.

[Delete this account pls]

@partydevil: Its not just EA that puts DRM in their games
I heard that fallout 3 (another game I have) searches your disc for stuff like nero, daemon tools, alchohol 120% and other disc burning programs and if any one of them is running it doesnt let you install the game although sometimes it doesnt let you install even if you dont have the programs.
I heard people complaining and I think its awfull that people already spend like 40 euros for a game that is full of crashes and issues and it doesnt even let you install it.
They should just get rid of the whole DRM thing.

[Hyper]

I hate DRM because it gives additional headache for playback and has no long-time strategy. For example: When I bought an audio CD in 1989 I can still play it in my CD player or on my computer. That's a 20 year old medium.

When I buy DRM'ed music now, it is not very likely that I can still play it 20 years from now. In most cases, the licenses are stored on an external license server at the online music store. Now the availability of your music depends on business decisions which tends to change as fast as the weather. (The Dutch/UK weather that is).

I un-DRM'ed all my legally purchased WMA music with FairUse4WM to make sure it plays whenever I want it to play.

DRM and IP protection measures also give other problems. We all know those games that fully install to the harddisk, but still ask for the CD/DVD every time, just to check that you indeed have the CD. Quite frustrating. Therefore I downloaded no-cd cracks for all my legally purchased games. Fortunately, pirated versions usually work without trouble. So, maybe the industry is promoting piracy this way...

[}TCP{Coco]

Hi!

I always buy my music and games and don't have any copies at all. Therefore, I always test and try these things prior to buying (i.e. I download demo versions, pre-listen the tracks of a CD, read revisions on the internet, etc.).

I can just strongly encourage all of you not to pay a single penny for any software or music with DRM or similar protection! This is the completely wrong way of their companies to solve their problems at the cost of the paying customers. As Lizard man wrote already, it is only the customers who have to live with all the limitations as they're usually removed in the cracked/copied versions.

Personally, I simply don't buy a game with hidden security software or required online registration/login (unless it is a pure online game, of course). I also don't buy songs with DRM. Apple just demonstrates how it should be done with iTunes plus: no DRM anymore but a watermark that marks the song as bought by you, which is totally ok for me since I don't copy the files anyway.

Of course, renouncement means that I can't have some things, but I'm not the type of guy who collects everything and mostly doesn't use it anyway. E.g. I know so many people having thousands of MP3s and just listening to a minimal fraction of them. Better know what you want and pay for it! But don't let them bother you with any unwanted stuff!

Companies will have to learn that they can't do anything to their customers and it's up to you to show them!

Coco.

[}TCP{Wolf]

^^

[}TCP{Snowbird]

I agree with Wolf, and his long statement. And I also agree with all others. I did buy and play Half Life 2, and no, Ramses, you did not miss too much. The first part was the better one. I really did not have much of a problem with the DRM, just that it took so long to load. As soon as I was finished playing the game, I "nuked" my computer, and started over.

This is why I do not buy games anymore, and also do not DownLoad them either. I just either play UT. Unreal, or one of the other thousands of old games I have stacked up in the celar. I am curently playing Warlords Battlecry 2. And I was thinking of reinstalling Serious Sam. (Krabbel did that on the weekend, because there was no internet). So The great guys that make the games, and want to protect them, should find another way of protecting them. Frank

[}TCP{Cee]

Its an unavoidable gaming standard by now. Luckily most games just plain suck, so its easy to withstand the urge to buy anything (and there are still teh Downloadzzzz for the better games) Its even less of a problem here in Germany, since buying games means receiving cut, bastardized and localized junk instead of the Original. The DRM does have a good side though. Now you can download the game and buy a cheap key over ebay for a small price to make ur version a legal one. Or just buy it from a cheap country :p
Dont care about DRM music as long as theres Internet Radio and programs like StationRipper or that Winamp rip thing :p

[}TCP{aLICe]

DRM is fail by design

http://nodrm.org/
http://stopdrmnow.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management

[partydevil]

=o thats actualy the 1st post whit something possitive about drm since the 1st time i heared something about it =o

it however doesn't sound possitive to me tho


why is the gameing market crying so much about pirates?
the movie market are not such baby's, still people also download movies like hell

if the game developers whold make a rly good game
then they will sell more games
people mainly download games wich they find not worthy enoufg to pay for (or they download EVRYTHING)

example: i wont buy a game that will take me trouh a storyline
and when your done whit that there is nothing els to do
after playing the storyline once it's no fun to start over again
those kinda games are not worth to buy (except when it's a rpg) but they are good enoufg to play once
while other games (example: ut2k4) got more then only a storyline and is actualy fun to play longer then once
those game are worth to buy, and will sell more copy's


and what the hell anyway
the companys useing drm are all big
they wont lose money if they don't put drm in
if so then the gaming market whold never have become this big
it's just the difference of making 20kk dollar or 100kk dollar
and both are big profits they should be happy to make so much money allrdy
but no they only want more
(example: ea games offert epic games 3.2KKK for exclusive rights to use unreal engine 3.0
still they cry about pirates) (3.2kkk was there starting offer, epic rejected)

[Apollo]

Buy a console.

[Delete this account pls]

PC ftw!
nuff said

[}TCP{Coco]

Hi!

Sorry, party, you're totally wrong about all that. A big lot of people is not willing to pay anything at all for software - no matter how good and how cheap it is. Just take our favourite game as an example: many players won't even pay 5 euros for it although they play it every day.

Second is the games industry. It became that big because there were good times before the internet. In the early days, software could just be shared by visiting friends and copying disks or sending them by snail mail. It wasn't like today with servers that have few hours old wares accessible by millions of people. Same goes for music, of course.

Nevertheless it's their own fault. For many years they kept the prices for CDs far too high. Those for games are still too high for what you get. But since so many users don't pay for them, they can't drop the prices that much, because they must at least cover their development costs.

Coco.