How many people have actually been burned by DRM?

[legoman666]

Like the title says, has anyone ever had problems with the DRM schemes on games these days? I always thought people over reacted about DRM until I had a problem with it myself.

I just bought The Witcher, installed it just fine, but when I went to play it, it wouldn't open. It kept telling me to insert the original game DVD. The damned disc was in the drive. Apparently, the game won't play from a drive that isn't IDE. So my USB DVD drive wouldn't work and neither would the game work for anyone with a SATA or SCSI dvd drive.

However, I just installed Vista Ultimate x64 to finally use my 4gb ram and now the game works perfectly using the same dvd drive. So who knows.

Anyone else have stories?

 

[Bateluer]

Hmm, I have both SATA and PATA DVDROM drives, but never bothered to try The Witcher in my SATA drive, perhaps I should try that and see what happens?

I've only had minor difficulties with DRM in games, but main because I've dodged some bullets. These days, I wait for a time after a game's release to see how it is. Usually when there's draconian DRM, its all over the net before the game's release. This is how I avoided the Bioshock clusterfvck.

 

[ITPaladin]

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2134515&enterthread=y

 

[KaOTiK]

I have quite a few times. Talking about making me want to just download the pirated version. Hell only reason I don't is it would be stealing from friends and co-workers and be hurting my career by stealing from my own field.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: KaOTiK
I have quite a few times. Talking about making me want to just download the pirated version. Hell only reason I don't is it would be stealing from friends and co-workers and be hurting my career by stealing from my own field.

is there a way around it?
- can you just buy the DVD for the license and then D/L and install the cracked one?


i have 2 "squeaky clean" partitions that i keep for benchmarking ... they never connect to the net [unless i must get a MS update that way] nor do they see anti-virus or any programs that some DRM has problems with. Those are now my default partitions just for gaming. Kinda sad, really to have to do this for problem-free gaming.

 

[BladeVenom]

I won't buy a game any more until there's a crack out for it. You never know when copy protection will keep you from playing a game, and stores don't accept returns on software.

 

[legoman666]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
I won't buy a game any more until there's a crack out for it. You never know when copy protection will keep you from playing a game, and stores don't accept returns on software.

Yea no kidding. There is no reason to force me to keep the disc in the drive to play. I don't want it there, the game is already installed dammit. This isnt 1998 when all of the actualy game data was stored on the disc.

 

[manko]

Yes, on NWN2. It took days of troubleshooting and screwing up the rest of my system (hardware and software) to get it playing the first time and then after the first patch it never worked no matter what I tried. Official support and Atari were useless. I had it on the shelf for a while before I first tried to play it, so it was too late to return it to the store.

 

[BFG10K]

I don't have problems with DRM because I use no-CD cracks on all of my games (which are all legit).

 

[coloumb]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom
I won't buy a game any more until there's a crack out for it. You never know when copy protection will keep you from playing a game, and stores don't accept returns on software.

same here. I really hate the requirement of having the damn DVD/CD in the drive anyhow... My PC isn't a console!

 

[Hacp]

DiabloII DRM forced me to buy another CD drive. It sucked.

 

[lupi]

I've got several games from when CD's just started to be popular that I can't play anymore as mnay of them have copy protection schemes that throw up flags with the number of "drives" that appear on a modern comp.

 

[imported_Imp]

Once with Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Game wouldn't run cause it couldn't "find" the CD (real, freash from store) sitting in my freaking unmodded, basic DVD drive. Only solution was using a CD crack; was either that or 5 years of b!tching with no results. So in trying to force me to buy legal, which I did, it made me go un-legal: classic.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

I've switched to Digital Distro so I no longer have to worry about the cd's dvd's.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: onlyCOpunk
I've switched to Digital Distro so I no longer have to worry about the cd's dvd's.

But that's not trouble free either. Bioshock has the same DRM problems whether you have the box version of the downloaded version.


On a positive not, Stardock's method is the best. I have Galactic Civilization 2 on disk with no copy protection, and can still download it from their site if I ever need to.

 

[lupi]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: onlyCOpunk
I've switched to Digital Distro so I no longer have to worry about the cd's dvd's.

But that's not trouble free either. Bioshock has the same DRM problems whether you have the box version of the downloaded version.


On a positive not, Stardock's method is the best. I have Galactic Civilization 2 on disk with no copy protection, and can still download it from their site if I ever need to.

While I still dislike a large extent about what Steam is about; those sites that offer digital sales and then limit the time in which you have the ability to download are the most absurd merchants.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

^^^True, which is why Steam and Direct2Drive are probably the best as there is no download limit that some sites impose unless you make a fee. But no worries if you just back them up on an external HD as I can't even remember the last time I formatted one of my data only backup drives.

 

[XZeroII]

Never, but it's my top concern. I'm terrified that one of these days DRM is going to come to my house and torch me.

 

[pontifex]

nope, not yet.

 

[Thor86]

You guys really need to be informed about Daemon tools and cd/dvd images. The only thing I need cd/dvds for are installation, and use images for the stupid cd/dvd checks. Works great for all my games.

 

[Canai]

I run all my games from images, and run into various DRM schemes pretty constantly. The Witcher was a bitch to get started, since I have only SATA drives, but other than that, I really don't have any problem with any DRM, since my MO is install, patch, crack, play

It's a pain to download mini images and cracks for all my games, but hey, if they want to force shitty DRM down my throat, fuck 'em. I'm not going to let it stop my from playing the game. It will, however, stop me from buying the game

 

[ayabe]

No I've never had an issue of any kind. But, I don't own SATA optical drives and I don't have Alcohol or any of that other crap installed.

Anything with a virtual drive will cause you problems, this should be well known by now, so anyone experiencing difficulties should be looking in the mirror for the cause of their problem.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: ayabe
No I've never had an issue of any kind. But, I don't own SATA optical drives and I don't have Alcohol or any of that other crap installed.

Anything with a virtual drive will cause you problems, this should be well known by now, so anyone experiencing difficulties should be looking in the mirror for the cause of their problem.

i've had virtual drive software installed for a long time, have used several games that ahd drm and have not had an issue.