Did Atari not learn anything from EA and 3 activation limits?!

[Golgatha]

http://www.ataricommunity.com/...57b7d842096ca&t=672558

The protection on the PC version of The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is an activation system with online authentication required the first time you install the game on a machine. The activation code lets you install the game on up to 3 machines, with an unlimited number of installs on each assuming that you don?t change any major hardware in your PC or re-install your operating system.

If you reach the maximum number of installations you can contact the Atari hotline and if it?s a legitimate request you can get a new activation code.

We implement this protection in an effort to avoid early piracy.

I read this as not being equal to 3 hardware changes on three machines, but rather one hardware change on three "machines". Essentially you get, for example, an installation of the game, one motherboard swap, and an OS crash and re-installation before you have a coaster that needs ATARI's customer support phoenix down to bring it back to life for that inevitable 4th install.

 

[Golgatha]

How would you like to be this guy.

He/she might be outright lying, but I hope chizow gets his copy, installs it three times, and can confirm if this is the level of customer service we can come to expect from ATARI. I am eagerly awaiting your results chizow and I mean that with the utmost sincerity.

Originally posted by: chizow

Personally I think that nothing has changed and you do get installations returned if you uninstall and Atari has just done an incredibly poor job of communicating that fact. Sure its possible they've changed it so that it is locked onto a certain machine, but I doubt it given that's not how any of the previous versions worked. I guess we shall see, I just so happen to have 4 machines/OS installations handy and my copy should be in sometime next week.

 

[Bateluer]

I'm gonna guess Dark Athena is also the reason I started getting email alerts on the Anti-Securom thread on the Atari forums.

Dark Athena will probably earn its 1 star Amazon rating, just like Warhead and Spore before it.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: mindcycle

Originally posted by: apoppin
ONE example: Pirate Bay gets millions of hits a day and that translates to huge ad dollars

Ok, you're right about that. I see your point with the whole business comparison. I still think most of the people outraged and posting about the DRM are the legit customers, as can be seen in this forum and many others. The reason being is they are the ones that have to deal with it. By the time it gets into the pirates hands the DRM will already have been cracked, so really it's a non-issue for them unless they were planning on buying it beforehand.

The pirates have a good reason to spread fear and FUD ..
come to their site and steal it .. and PAY *them* for ripping off the Dev

you may be able trace all those negative ratings on Amazon to them

Steam is evil DRM .. yet they convinced the sheep that is is good by their BS and PR marketing
- it could be also within the realm of possibilities that they are also encouraging the spreading the of misinfo about their DRM competitors.



Letsee, i have 2 partitions that can be seen as 2 different PCs .. and i am upgrading both to Vista 64 this weekend; i also have a laptop with a Geforce 8200 .. so i will give it a try for 4 installs .. for Dark Athena ... i have an XP machine also that may be able to run it also but i am not sure .. that would be 5. i will make sure i UNinstall it before reformatting.

i am probably 3/4s thru Dark Athena
- it is better than EfBB in some ways; it is a quite creative and you keep doing new things in different ways .. depending on the story's conclusion, it might be an awesome game. The original EfBB was my GotY and my favorite FPS to date. So i need to be impressed. EFBB is now the SAME game but with better graphics; i played thru most of it but i got discouraged with losing saves and constant crashing to desktop with 4870-1GB

Upgrading from Cat 9-3 to 9-4 solved that issue, but by then i remembered every *detail* of the story and i did not want to play the LONG mine chapter all over again - which was my last good save [and i had got way past there]. So i have been playing DA over 3 sessions - last night the longest from 2AM to 5 AM
:Q

good game

!!

{so far}

 

[Reckoner]

Atari is a disgrace

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: apoppin



ONE example: Pirate Bay gets millions of hits a day and that translates to huge ad dollars

Pirating has become a business

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tech...nologysection.insideit

Svenska Dagbladet, a Stockholm morning paper, claims the site is making tens of thousands of pounds every month from advertising: the firm that handles the site's Swedish business told the Guardian that the largest ads cost 200,000 SEK (about £14,700) and that they had sold four of these, and a great many smaller ads in the last month. The price has risen in the past few weeks after the government's attempts to shut the site brought widespread publicity.

Localised advertisements

The Pirate Bay offers services in 20 languages, two of which are forms of Norwegian. When I was browsing, the ads were all relevant to my location of Cambridge, England, which suggests the ads are localised through different brokers for different locations.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/n...pirate-bay-trial-comes

Sunde says that claims made by the Swedish government and IFPI pertaining to the revenue generated by advertising on the site?which include estimates that The Pirate Bay's annual revenue exceeds $3 million?overstate the real situation. Although Sunde did not provide Ars with specific financial details regarding The Pirate Bay's operational expenses, he did argue that the site's high bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit. The Pirate Bay, he says, may ultimately be operating at a loss.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...ted-by-prosecutors.ars

So which account's right?

 

[apoppin]

Trust the defense lawyer
- not the Swedish Government

ANYway, wasn't Pirate Bay bought out and is now legit? Clearly they were wildly successful and were making huge bucks

AND .. i just finished Dark Athena .. love it

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Sunde says that claims made by the Swedish government and IFPI pertaining to the revenue generated by advertising on the site?which include estimates that The Pirate Bay's annual revenue exceeds $3 million?overstate the real situation. Although Sunde did not provide Ars with specific financial details regarding The Pirate Bay's operational expenses, he did argue that the site's high bandwidth, power, and hardware costs eliminate the potential for profit. The Pirate Bay, he says, may ultimately be operating at a loss.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...ted-by-prosecutors.ars

So which account's right?

I work in the hosting industry, and given the amount of traffic that must come by that site on a daily basis, they have to have huge bandwidth charges. Not including the hardware cost of the sheer number of servers it would take to handle that load, that has to be huge as well. I could see this as being true, but again, it's hard to guess since none of us know how much advertising money they are making.

If they were in fact operating with a huge profit, the government would surely want a piece of it. I doubt it would take the Swedish government that long to figure it out if the were in fact making 3 million a year like some claim.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: mindcycle
Just an update for you guys about the non-revocable installs issue. Below is a post from the Atari forums from a guy who has 3 copies of the game and did a test with one to prove the 3 installs are indeed non-revocable.

For some proof here. I installed and uninstalled the game on one of my laptops 3 times and with an attempted 4th install which failed.

I will be posting more on this later through my blog http://drmnewsbits.blogspot.com/

-Jollyrigger

Here's a link to the thread, post #27, near the bottom of the thread right now: http://www.ataricommunity.com/...1bd4c65829a62&t=671930

This was also reported in PC Gamer magazine in their review of the game.
http://www.giantbomb.com/the-c...n-revocable/35-235726/

Have you even bothered evaluating that source or are you just taking it at face value? Not only does his account do nothing to disprove or confirm the supposed 3 machine limit with no revocation, but it also claims the DRM doesn't even work as described with regard to unlimited installations on a single machine:

• Alienware Laptop: installed and uninstalled 3 times and authenticated when Atari's server wasn't burping. Upon 4th install and authentication it was a no go for launch.
  
  Custom Built PC #1: Same result as laptop
  
  Custom Built PC #2: Installed 10 times and Uninstalled and authenticated with ease. DRM now acting as Atari said it should be.

He's saying 2 machines "ate" their installations and refused to authenticate after a 3rd installation, which clearly goes beyond the claim of 3 machines max, unlimited installs. He claims the 3rd machine works as advertised, but there is no mention of a potential 4th install. Again, I'd say his results are highly suspect, especially given no hardware or OS changes are made on the first two machines and his results clearly don't fit the "worst-case" DRM scenarios. There's also no mention of a 4th machine install whatsoever.

Originally posted by: Golgatha
This situation (as far as I can tell from the ATARI forums) is actually worse than the original SecuROM 3 install limitation imposed by EA, because at least those were given back when you uninstalled the game. Regardless, we should be making progress towards consumer friendly implementations of DRM instead of traveling back to 2007.

And I don't disagree with this at all. I agree that any form of DRM with regard to activation limits needs to be clearly articulated to the consumer in order to help avoid problems caused by any gratuitous installs or lost activations due to hardware or OS changes. I also agree that a system not returning activations is a step backward and a reason for concern if it turns out to be true.

My point is that this 3 machine limit assumption goes directly against other forms of activation-based DRM used in the past including one used by Atari in the past with Alone in the Dark that returned activations on uninstall. All the misinformation and FUD surrounding Riddick is EXACTLY the same as the noise surrounding previous launches of Spore, Warhead, Mass Effect etc. where SecuROM's activation was accused of similar limited activations. And those claims turned out to be lies and misinformation with regard to not returning installations, did they not?

As you can see, the resulting unfounded hysteria and misinformation has made it virtually impossible to find factual information or relevant info about Riddick's DRM, as its all lost in the sea of bullshit created by those with an anti-DRM agenda. There's no doubt Atari has done a horrible job of communicating the scope of Riddick's DRM, but even if they did clarify how much difference would it make in light of similar past reactions to EA's SecuROM?

In any case, I should have my copy tomorrow or Wednesday, needless to say I'll also provide screenshots with time stamps and system info etc. for validity.

 

[Maximilian]

Thread title should be changed to "Did chizow not learn anything from the many other threads hes wrecked?"

 

[mindcycle]

To clear up any confusion. Riddick uses a custom version of TAGES, not SecuROM. I brought this up a few pages back in this thread, but now it's confirmed by multiple sources.

http://drmnewsbits.blogspot.co...correction-notice.html

http://www.ataricommunity.com/...wthread.php?p=11145225

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Thread title should be changed to "Did chizow not learn anything from the many other threads hes wrecked?"

QFT lol

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: mindcycle

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Thread title should be changed to "Did chizow not learn anything from the many other threads hes wrecked?"

QFT lol

Uh, last I checked QFT was an acronym for Quoted For Truth. If we've learned anything from all these threads, we've learned the truth is a concept completely foreign and uninteresting to both of you.

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: chizow
Uh, last I checked QFT was an acronym for Quoted For Truth. If we've learned anything from all these threads, we've learned the truth is a concept completely foreign and uninteresting to both of you.

Originally posted by: chizow
What makes anyone think this version of activation SecuROM is any different from the others used in the past, where activations are returned automatically when the game is uninstalled on any given machine?

..had to break my own advice of avoiding replies to chizow, but this one was too good to pass up. lol

 

[lupi]

The way he continually steps into himself maybe we should start calling him dave.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: mindcycle



..had to break my own advice of avoiding replies to chizow, but this one was too good to pass up. lol

And? Same as I asked above, what made you or anyone else think Riddick's DRM doesn't return activations on uninstall similar to activation-based forms of DRM used in the past? The veracity of the example you provided is not only suspect, it does nothing to confirm or deny whether or not activations are returned on uninstall. Its obvious you don't know the truth, nor do you care to ensure the accuracy of the rumors about Riddick's DRM.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: apoppin
The pirates have a good reason to spread fear and FUD ..
come to their site and steal it .. and PAY *them* for ripping off the Dev

you may be able trace all those negative ratings on Amazon to them

Steam is evil DRM .. yet they convinced the sheep that is is good by their BS and PR marketing
- it could be also within the realm of possibilities that they are also encouraging the spreading the of misinfo about their DRM competitors.

I don't have inside information about Valve, but don't you feel that there is a simple answer here which doesn't require a conspiracy theory?

Steam prevents reselling games completely, but it does so in a transparent method and in return the user doesn't have to worry about install limits, CD checks, or transferring their games library to an upgraded computer. It also makes sharing games across as many computers as you want completely painless - as long as you are the only one using them - which makes it perfect for people with gaming systems at home and gaming laptops they take on the road.

Assuming that people who prefer Steam over SecuRom are ignorant "sheep" brainwashed by Valve completely overlooks the positives in the Steam platform and the negatives with SecuRom. Do you have some personal poor experience with Steam that is the cause of all this vitriol besides not being able to resell your games?

Originally posted by: ZzZGuy
Was going to buy both Riddick games, now I'm buying none.

I am in the same boat, which is a shame because Dark Athena (and the pitch black multiplayer mode) is one of the games I've mentioned that I was most looking forward to this spring.

Companies such as Atari have every right to push for the most draconian form of DRM they can while seeking profits, much like the posters in this thread have every right to negotiate for the highest salary they can get in their jobs. On the other hand, consumers can vote with their wallets to stay away from products that include DRM they dislike.

If you have a problem with SecuRom then by all means give your business to companies like Stardock that are releasing software without DRM. Try to convince others to do the same, but just don't waste your time portraying a company seeking profits as evil when you do the same thing in your life.

 

[pmv]

"just don't waste your time portraying a company seeking profits as evil when you do the same thing in your life."

I wouldn't dream of it. I hardly think botching the release of a computer game constitutes 'evil' (what words would we have left to describe serial killers and Nazis?). I think I am entitled to portray a company that doesn't seem to understand its driving away customers as _incompetent_ however. It surely makes sense to try and get through to them _why_ they are losing sales, before they draw all the wrong lessons from it?

 

[JoshGuru7]

Originally posted by: pmv
"just don't waste your time portraying a company seeking profits as evil when you do the same thing in your life."

I wouldn't dream of it. I hardly think botching the release of a computer game constitutes 'evil' (what words would we have left to describe serial killers and Nazis?). I think I am entitled to portray a company that doesn't seem to understand its driving away customers as _incompetent_ however. It surely makes sense to try and get through to them _why_ they are losing sales, before they draw all the wrong lessons from it?

No disagreement here. However, I do think there's something to be said for looking at the basic rationality behind decision making and starting from the position that the decision makers believe they are furthering their own cause.

I can think of at least a couple of reasons why companies may release DRM like SecuRom and still believe they are protecting their own interests:

1) They assume the public in general is uneducated about DRM. Forums like this one may have a higher level of technical sophistication then the norm and the typical walmart shopper may not know anything about DRM.

2) There is a widespread lack of information about the state of the PC industry. Chizow linked to a quote in a previous thread from John Romero stating he didn't know why the PC industry was losing market share to consoles, and with as many factors as there are at play it doesn't surprise me.

3) Publicity of sites like PirateBay. Business executives may theoretically understand elasticity of demand and the difference between a pirated copy of software and a lost sale, but that knowledge gets ignored pretty quickly when they see that X hundreds of thousands of people have pirated their latest game.

4) Executive accountability. It's a lot easier to blame slumping performance on "them", regardless of whether you are talking about pirates or China or consoles. It takes a rare sort of manager to closely examine an issue when there is an oft-cited excuse sitting at the top of the stack just waiting to be used.

I'm somewhat of a cynic, but #4 certainly provides a strong impetuous for DRM when you are blaming the lack of success of your product on piracy and your stockholders want to know if you did anything to prevent piracy. "We implemented the best DRM on the market" sounds a lot better than "actually, the real problem was that we priced our game $20 too high considering the mixed reviews it got".

 

[zerogear]

Hrm, so Dark Athena is Online Authentication + TAGES + Starforce?

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7
"We implemented the best DRM on the market" sounds a lot better than "actually, the real problem was that we priced our game $20 too high considering the mixed reviews it got".

Or stating the fact that piracy can't be stopped so other ideas need to be looked into other than "better/stronger" DRM. That one didn't sit very well with the shareholders of big music publishers at first either, but eventually they were forced to see the reality of the situation.

More incentive to buy, less roadblocks for potential customers, easy and convenient ways of obtaining the product, good support, etc.. Those topics are hard to bring up when all people are focused on is profit. Implementing many of those ideas may take extra money to accomplish, so they'll waste more time and effort on ineffective DRM convincing everyone it's going to somehow solve the piracy issue. They can only avoid reality for so long though..

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: zerogear
Hrm, so Dark Athena is Online Authentication + TAGES + Starforce?

haha, they've got enough junk on there already that they might as well throw starforce in for good measure..

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7

Originally posted by: pmv
"just don't waste your time portraying a company seeking profits as evil when you do the same thing in your life."

I wouldn't dream of it. I hardly think botching the release of a computer game constitutes 'evil' (what words would we have left to describe serial killers and Nazis?). I think I am entitled to portray a company that doesn't seem to understand its driving away customers as _incompetent_ however. It surely makes sense to try and get through to them _why_ they are losing sales, before they draw all the wrong lessons from it?

No disagreement here. However, I do think there's something to be said for looking at the basic rationality behind decision making and starting from the position that the decision makers believe they are furthering their own cause.

I can think of at least a couple of reasons why companies may release DRM like SecuRom and still believe they are protecting their own interests:

1) They assume the public in general is uneducated about DRM. Forums like this one may have a higher level of technical sophistication then the norm and the typical walmart shopper may not know anything about DRM.

2) There is a widespread lack of information about the state of the PC industry. Chizow linked to a quote in a previous thread from John Romero stating he didn't know why the PC industry was losing market share to consoles, and with as many factors as there are at play it doesn't surprise me.

3) Publicity of sites like PirateBay. Business executives may theoretically understand elasticity of demand and the difference between a pirated copy of software and a lost sale, but that knowledge gets ignored pretty quickly when they see that X hundreds of thousands of people have pirated their latest game.

4) Executive accountability. It's a lot easier to blame slumping performance on "them", regardless of whether you are talking about pirates or China or consoles. It takes a rare sort of manager to closely examine an issue when there is an oft-cited excuse sitting at the top of the stack just waiting to be used.

I'm somewhat of a cynic, but #4 certainly provides a strong impetuous for DRM when you are blaming the lack of success of your product on piracy and your stockholders want to know if you did anything to prevent piracy. "We implemented the best DRM on the market" sounds a lot better than "actually, the real problem was that we priced our game $20 too high considering the mixed reviews it got".

All of your explanations with regards to the decision making behind the choice to go with Securom/stringent DRM seem plausible and I agree with the points you make. However, given the limited success of Securom in preventing piracy, I firmly believe that, when they employ activation based Securom, the main concern of the companies is not to attack piracy, but rather the second-hand sales market. This is not a conspiracy theory, but rather a logical conclusion, given the piracy figures for games employing the most stringent DRM (I am referring to total illegal downloads rather than downloads in comparison to sales, before anyone gets the urge to attempt to describe Spore's Securom as an anti-piracy success story).

Your point 1), above, presents another cause for concern: game content may increasingly be geared towards these "typical walmart shoppers".

Point 2) draws attention to an interesting trend; however, the lost share to consoles may in fact be part of the companies' designs. In any event, whether or not the companies are aware that they are contributing to this trend by using Securom is not an issue that we need to debate. For the record I believe they are aware. The fact remains that in my own circle of friends I know of several people who now buy everything on XBOX rather than PC and who have lost all interest in upgrading their rig as they no longer use it for gaming. We have Securom to thank for that. Moreover, why suffer a bad port and several patches subsequent to release when an XBOX can now be purchased for the price of a mid-range graphics card? Of course, if you can convince enough "typical walmart shoppers" to buy your product and thereby offset these dessertions, then I suppose they can be chalked up as collateral damage.

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: mindcycle

Originally posted by: JoshGuru7
"We implemented the best DRM on the market" sounds a lot better than "actually, the real problem was that we priced our game $20 too high considering the mixed reviews it got".

Or stating the fact that piracy can't be stopped so other ideas need to be looked into other than "better/stronger" DRM. That one didn't sit very well with the shareholders of big music publishers at first either, but eventually they were forced to see the reality of the situation.

More incentive to buy, less roadblocks for potential customers, easy and convenient ways of obtaining the product, good support, etc.. Those topics are hard to bring up when all people are focused on is profit. Implementing many of those ideas may take extra money to accomplish, so they'll waste more time and effort on ineffective DRM convincing everyone it's going to somehow solve the piracy issue. They can only avoid reality for so long though..

:thumbsup:

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: zerogear
Hrm, so Dark Athena is Online Authentication + TAGES + Starforce?

No, Starforce is just used for the rest of the world. So far the USA is pretty safe from it. This game uses Tages + Tages Online Authentication.