You're right, console games are much easier to pirate. The difference is that pirating console games requires a mod chip, which most people don't have. Pirating a computer game only requires internet (common), Daemon Tools (free), and maybe 20 minutes to read how a crack works. More work is put into PC piracy, not because it's easier, but because more people have the means to do so.
You're right, console games are much easier to pirate. The difference is that pirating console games requires a mod chip, which most people don't have. Pirating a computer game only requires internet (common), Daemon Tools (free), and maybe 20 minutes to read how a crack works. More work is put into PC piracy, not because it's easier, but because more people have the means to do so.
And piracy is here to stay, and thats something you'll have to deal with. No amount of bitching and moaning will make pirates stop pirating.
But these DRMs methods arent meant to protect the game from leaking on the net to prevent mass piracy. Thats merely the excuse they use. These corporations arent stupid - they know they'll never be able to prevent that from happening, maybe only stall it for a little while. Pirates WILL pirate.
DRM (games, music, movies, etc) is primarily meant to keep you from handing your DVD to your friend and having you both use a single copy at the same time. Because it's single player, they can't rely on CD-keys, so they've come up with this crazy activation scheme. And they justify this to you by calling it a necessary measure to prevent mass piracy, a HUGE problem, so big that its enough of a justification for you to rationally accept its necessity. When they really just don't want you passing it to your neighbor.
Bioshock is crossing a certain line by not only preventing you from letting your friend use it (Cd-keys), but possibly preventing you from using it. Not to mention, in a few years, those securerom servers may go down, and you will be the proud owner of a coaster, no matter how legitimately you originally purchased it.
What you CAN do about this: Not buy these games that have such egregious DRM. Thats it. You can point the finger at pirates, but youre just buying into the propaganda. Cracking it will only give them ammunition to make it worse. Look in the mirror instead - you'll not only see the person to blame for this, but you'll also see who they REALLY consider the criminal, and in the court of DRM, its guilty before proven innocent.
That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
DRM is the corporate response to piracy. It's intended to maximize their investment return. If there was no piracy, there would be no need to enact anti-piracy methods. Why would there be? It would be a cost added onto the production to prevent something that's not happening in the first place.
Now, you have people stealing the product, so the corporate world invested into cost effective means of preserving their bottom line.
The ultimate effective response is NOT going to be more stealing. That only justifies their stance on using DRM and other measure and gives absolutely no legs for the cause because it doesn't work within the market system.
Learn to do without. Be stronger than the marketing team.
What a sad life it must be that a person is lead around by the industry, rather than the other way around. In such cases, they fall into the same category as corporate execs and housewives.
I gotta throw my DRM 2 cents on the pile also.
I thought about buying this game. But as its not looking good now. I'm not 100% against piracy protection, but this is just getting ridiculous. I buy a game and just happen to have (or had) an image mounting software installed (ie Alcohol). DRM picks up on that and won't allow me to play my freshly bought game that I now can't do anything but look at in frustration. And I can't return it now since it opened and the store/vendor assumes I just copied it anyways. I had this happen with C&C3 with patching - caused me a great deal of frustration. Copying protection is one thing but total disabling my game play...
As a number of other stated - I just want to look for hacked copies to avoid being out a legit piece of software I'm willing to pay money for. Forget about passing it on, I can't always use it myself...
I thought about buying this game. But as its not looking good now. I'm not 100% against piracy protection, but this is just getting ridiculous. I buy a game and just happen to have (or had) an image mounting software installed (ie Alcohol). DRM picks up on that and won't allow me to play my freshly bought game that I now can't do anything but look at in frustration. And I can't return it now since it opened and the store/vendor assumes I just copied it anyways. I had this happen with C&C3 with patching - caused me a great deal of frustration. Copying protection is one thing but total disabling my game play...
As a number of other stated - I just want to look for hacked copies to avoid being out a legit piece of software I'm willing to pay money for. Forget about passing it on, I can't always use it myself...
Zenoth
Diamond Member
- Jan 29, 2005
- 5,190
- 185
- 106
I disagree with everything you've tried to make me believe, respectfully. I still believe that we've all come to this because of the existence of piracy, ultimately. No matter how hard you try to justify it, I won't buy that.
My only personal complaint about the fact that I bought the game is perhaps that it was too expensive for my own financial capacity to buy a mere entertaining product, but that's pretty much about it. I've had issues activating it, too, and believe me it was a mess (I had to call SecuROM three times because the two previous ones weren't apparently clear enough for them that I couldn't play the game I just bought). Eventually, something like 6 hours later I could finally play it.
But moments just before I realized that I was finally going to play it my very first reaction was to impulsively shout insults at pirates for what they've made us all honest consumers come to, and not to actually shout at SecuROM or 2K Games. The undeniable responsibles are the pirates I shouted, and the indisputable truth was that without piracy there wouldn't have had the actual need, ever, of existence for anti-piracy measures. The same way a futile law would spawn criminal activities to counter it. Avoid creating stupid laws and illegal activity within the range of what it restricted and/or not permitted by it and the very idea of getting around it by the population won't exist because there'd be no reason to, since it's allowed.
Now, the consumers are the law in video-gaming, WE can control the way developers make their game because WE are the influence (most if not all developers were gamers in their youth). If us, the law, convince to ourselves that we should SIMPLY (really, it's so simple that it might be sending chills up to the spine of some people) buy desired games then why would and could the population even possibly have the mere thought of pirating. The actual concept of piracy wouldn't even probably exist in the best cases scenario. The "propaganda" as you refer to it at one point, in my book, doesn't come from such companies as SecuROM or 2K Games but from pirates. I laugh at and pity them, and I try my best to objectively see hope in them when they're even trying to justify their acts, to the best of my humanly capabilities. But alas, it's beyond me.
I've experienced this too. I can't remember which game it was, but I purchased some game distributed by Activision and it wouldn't install while Alcohol 120 was installed. I can't play a game because I like having a neatly organized CD library? Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
I don't even buy many games these days because of all this anti-piracy crap. Example: I bought a copy of Neverwinter Nights (a few years ago), and Alcohol 120 was not strong enough to run the game as a virtual CD. NWN could still detect that the real CD was not in the drive. The fix was to use a no-cd crack, but this presents a new problem. Whenever NWN gets a new patch, it changes the exe file. The current patch (at that time) had no available no-cd crack, so I had to choose between using the no-cd crack, or being able to play online. I chose the alternative - I uninstalled the game and never played it again.
RallyMaster
Diamond Member
- Dec 28, 2004
- 5,582
- 0
- 0
:laugh: Oh please...
The DRM in Bioshock is far from the worst thing from the corporate world. If this is how you "fight the man" then you live a petty and small life.
I've bought Bioshock and I enjoy it because I think the developers deserve the money and I wanted to play the game that's been called a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. I didn't buy it because I saw some ad online. :laugh:
This is such a small thing to think you're being "principled" about. If you really think DRM is the end of the world and can't go into the registry to remove it, or mirror your hard drive prior to installing the game, perhaps it's time to remove the tin-foil hat, step out of mom's basement, and read a paper or watch the news.
Propaganda? Are you people for real?
Here's a question. What's the difference between downloading a game online or getting it installed from a buddy's CD/DVD? You really think there's a difference between the two? Are you really going to use that as some kind of defense against anti-piracy measures?
I can guarantee this. The sales lost from people supposedly "fighting the man" is a fraction of the sales lost from people who would have bought the game if they didn't have access to a crack. If you don't believe that, you're either in denial, or you assume people are stupid enough to buy your "propaganda" bullshit.
shortylickens
No Lifer
- Jul 15, 2003
- 82,854
- 17,365
- 136
Galactic Civilizations 2 has no DRM.
Galactic Civilizations 2 debuted at 30 dollars.
Galactic Civilizations 2 is selling faster than hotcakes.
Galactic Civilizations 2 debuted at 30 dollars.
Galactic Civilizations 2 is selling faster than hotcakes.
CrystalBay
Platinum Member
- Apr 2, 2002
- 2,175
- 1
- 0
You know it's only going to get worse .... PepperBreath is stating facts , thank your legislators, lobbyists and lawyers.....
As Shawn said, not many people actually have the wherewithal to pirate console games, compared to the millions of consoles out there. PC games are less secure from a practical perspective because of the openness of the platform.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm really getting it. Clearly, DRM is meant to fight against piracy. But there's large scale piracy (crackers and torrents), and small-scale piracy (giving your friend a copy).
Clearly, large scale piracy is the bigger problem. The amount of pirated copies distributed via torrents etc is likely WAY higher than the casual stuff, even assuming both were as easy to accomplish. They *absolutely* lose more money there, as you claim - I'm in complete agreement with you.
But thats the crux of the argument - both are NOT equally easy to accomplish. Casual piracy is MUCH, MUCH more difficult, because the DRM actually works to prevent it. You cant start the game without the CD in the drive, and a copy won't work. Even if you did crack it (which would already be crossing the line into mass piracy), you couldnt simultaneously play online with the same cd-key. But over the past 30 odd years, there has not been a SINGLE method of DRM that has ever succeeded in fooling hackers for more than a few days.
Do you really think the publishers are telling themselves "This is going to be the one! The uncrackable DRM!", when EVERY attempt, ever, has failed, and quite miserably at that? Even the newest secureROM was impotent in the face of the hackers. CD-checks are trivial cracks at this point.
So in the face of this, why hasnt anyone at those publishers stopped and said "Hey, this DRM never works, so why are we wasting our money on developing it, and hassling consumers and possibly losing sales?" Because of casual piracy. DRM is, and always will be, impotent in preventing mass scale piracy. If it truely was all about preventing mass piracy, they would have given up a long time ago, because the only truely fool-proof methods would be so infringing and costly that no one would accept them.
Another point - once a game is cracked, it's cracked forever. This usually takes a day or two. If the DRM was there to protect against mass scale piracy, wouldnt the reasonable thing to do be to disable it in the next patch to stop hassling the "honest consumers" after the countermeasures have failed? And while this has happened on rare occasions, the reason it's so rare is because as long as you own a copy of the game, you are considered a potential distributor of pirate copies.
So to address your question: "What's the difference between downloading a game online or getting it installed from a buddy's CD/DVD? "
As far as the game and the offender is concerned, nothing. But there is a HUGE difference to the people who legally bought the game and don't plan on distributing pirate copies. Ask yourself this: Why do you accept DRM with the rationale being mass piracy and cracking, when it NEVER works for this intended purpose?
To use a ridiculous analogy - The government tells you that they have to bulldoze your house in order to create a national moat, to stem the tide of illegal aliens. You naturally accept it as your national duty. Then it dawns upon you - the illegals have boats, and it won't stop them from getting across one bit, and on top of that, they'll have a permanent, unassailable bridge built within a week. When the bulldozer finally comes around, are you going to blame the illegals for your woes, or are you going to try to stop the gov. from uselessly knocking your house down?
Mass piracy may have been the reason DRM was originally conceived, but its continued use is no longer due to mass piracy. It's failed at that purpose a long time ago. The only purpose is now to prevent casual piracy. But is a company going to come out and say "We don't trust the people who *bought* our game not to pirate?" Hell no! Using mass piracy as the rationale is and always will be more effective, as it places the blame on the big bad boogeyman, and doesnt insult the actual consumer...as long as people don't realize the inherent paradox.
The DRM on Bioshock was a particularly egregious offense. When DRM is both effective at preventing mass piracy without being a major hassle to the consumers, then it should be accepted. CD-checks and CD-keys are not enough of a hassle to get hot and bothered about, even though they are still completely ineffective at preventing piracy. But online activation and limiting your installs, for a single player game even? That is unacceptable, and with it's leaky rationale of mass piracy used to justify it after its been cracked, it's downright insulting.
DRM does NOT legitimize piracy - thats absolute nonsense. But neither does piracy legitimize DRM, especially when it doesnt even work.
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