The anti-DRM thread

[BFG10K]

Fallout 76 not on Steam

Just what we need, yet another garbage “service” to add to Steam/Uplay/Origin/Rockstar/Battle.net/Denuvo/Windows store/etc.

Some people say this is competition with Steam but it isn’t. This is simply fracturing the gaming market and tying the pieces to different silos that create their own monopolies.

Also we were told Steam would never restrict access to games but it’s already happening when it stops working on XP/Vista. Many titles are sold there with XP/Vista as minimum requirements, but those users will be locked out of their purchases once it becomes impossible to deploy Steam on their platform. Imagine hundreds of unplayable DosBox titles if they too were locked down with Steam DRM.

It's Steam's decision to stop supporting those platforms so they should be stripping out their DRM with that mythical Steam killswitch GabeN told us about.

The only true competition to all others is GOG because it’s in a class of its own with regards to actual game ownership, so vote with your wallet to support the consumer rights that GOG offers.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/274976-fallout-76-wont-debut-on-steam

Also, proof Denuvo impacts performance. As usual paying customers get shafted while the pirates get a better experience.

 

[KMFJD]

Meh, don't really care to be honest, we've had to put up with this shit since steam started what's another one? Why exactly should Steam get a cut of in game purchases anyways?

/GOG almost never has anything i want to purchase

 

[Mem]

Meh, don't really care to be honest, we've had to put up with this shit since steam started what's another one? Why exactly should Steam get a cut of in game purchases anyways?

/GOG almost never has anything i want to purchase

I have to agree , end of the day STEAM,GOG etc will do what they have to do regardless of what you or I think, as to myself I buy the games I want at the cheapest legit price, regardless of where it's from and I use them all ie STEAM, GOG, Origin etc...

 

[BSim500]

Just what we need, yet another garbage “service” to add to Steam/Uplay/Origin/Rockstar/Battle.net/Denuvo/Windows store/etc. Some people say this is competition with Steam but it isn’t. This is simply fracturing the gaming market and tying the pieces to different silos that create their own monopolies.

Whilst you're correct, it's also inevitable given the similar trend for video streaming (eg, Disney and others eyeing up their own per-studio platform). When people see games like Fortnite bring in $2bn in one year, a 30% cut of that would be $600m. Pretty much enough to fund 6-8 new AAA games by itself if the publisher gains that extra money via selling only via their own store. Something I'm sure has been very much noticed by EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Squeenix, Epic, etc. One or two more non-Steam big money successes and expect more "Balkanization" of AAA games unless Steam do something drastic like lower their cut from 30% to 10-20%. (Or even more drastic, figure out they need to showcase more content themselves and finally do Half Life 3...)

It's also obvious in which direction the industry is going in general - high quality single-player titles are now "too much effort" whilst the base game for multi-player is increasingly becoming the "enabler" of MT revenue for the ever increasing "casual audience". I predict Fallout 76 will be no different, end up crammed with pay2win junk, paid mods that were free in previous games and have personally lost all interest in MP Fallout anyway regardless of what store-front it's exclusively on or how much media hype it gains.

As for GOG I totally agree about supporting them where possible, although it's doubtful Fallout 76 will be there either any time soon. GOG have up to FO3/NV and Oblivion, but expect at least 5x more variations of "Skyrim: Milk The Living Sh*t Out Of Unnecessary Re-Releases To Keep The Price Of 2011-Era Games Back Up To $60 Edition" before even that ends up on GOG, let alone newer games...

Also we were told Steam would never restrict access to games but it’s already happening when it stops working on XP/Vista. Many titles are sold there with XP/Vista as minimum requirements, but those users will be locked out of their purchases once it becomes impossible to deploy Steam on their platform. Imagine hundreds of unplayable DosBox titles if they too were locked down with Steam DRM.

As for old games on Steam I didn't think it was possible to start adding Windows based DRM (Steamworks, CEG, Denuvo, etc) to MS-DOS games. For others that have source ports (eg, Doom 1-2, Quake) or ScummVM games in general they don't even use any .exe that comes packaged with the game and so will naturally sidestep any new DRM. For others still (eg, Icewind Dale 2) they've lost all the source code. Due to these reasons, a lot of old games can't actually have new DRM added. If you mean artifical limitations on clients like Steam needing W7 to install games that only need XP/Vista, pretty much everyone in that situation already knows it and either buys the GOG version for the offline client-less installer or just sources a zip file on *cough* 'other' sites...

 

[Newbian]

http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/omg-omg-omg-fallout-76.2547358/

 

[BurnItDwn]

I assume it will eventually release to steam.
That said, it might be a heaping pile of crap, so it might not matter much.

 

[PeterScott]

Just what we need, yet another garbage “service” to add to Steam/Uplay/Origin/Rockstar/Battle.net/Denuvo/Windows store/etc.

Some people say this is competition with Steam but it isn’t. This is simply fracturing the gaming market and tying the pieces to different silos that create their own monopolies.

Also we were told Steam would never restrict access to games but it’s already happening when it stops working on XP/Vista. Many titles are sold there with XP/Vista as minimum requirements, but those users will be locked out of their purchases once it becomes impossible to deploy Steam on their platform. Imagine hundreds of unplayable DosBox titles if they too were locked down with Steam DRM.

It's Steam's decision to stop supporting those platforms so they should be stripping out their DRM with that mythical Steam killswitch GabeN told us about.

The only true competition to all others is GOG because it’s in a class of its own with regards to actual game ownership, so vote with your wallet to support the consumer rights that GOG offers.

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/274976-fallout-76-wont-debut-on-steam

IMO, there is GOG for buying games, and all the DRM services for renting. IMO anything with a DRM service is a rental not a purchase.

So far I am not using any of them, but if a game was truly must play, I might rent it and play it till I was sick of it. Then uninstall it, and it's DRM service.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

It's weird to think about it after all these years, but everyone (except maybe GoG, which has a different schtick in letting you find old games) has basically followed the same playbook Steam laid down when it launched alongside the Orange Box to rope people into using the service.

At the end of the day,it feels like everyone is going to end up with Steam + 1 from the developer/publisher they can't do without (Battle.Net/Origin/Bethesda.Net etc...)

I wonder if the Market will ever mature into a "timed exclusivity" sort of deal like we've seen with various titles on the consoles.

 

[DigDog]

I have used both Arc and Origin .. oh and Battlenet too, at some point .. for however long i play the game for.
I think it's just bloatware garbage, but then i uninstall the game AND the service.

What's weird to me is people keeping games like Skyrim installed for months, when they barely have enough content for a week - maybe your definition of content isn't as strict as mine.

I only keep steam because QuakeLive, Quake Champion, Reflex Arena and Blacklight Retribution all depend on it. And those are the only games i play, plus Angband (no-install game) and the occasional FTL game, also no-install. I recently got rid of Minecraft/Industrialcraft because i hadnt played it in a year.

Actually now that i think about it, i have not played a new game in over a year. I only really enjoy pro fps games because the ever-increasing skill ceiling provides me with more entertainment than any ESRB-rated content could.

Games are for children. Real men play eSports.

Well actually real men have sex but the second best thing is esports.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Per the norm, companies in their ever increasing greed miss the mark on why people flock to what they flock to. They always think they are missing some huge piece of the pie. Sometimes you just have to accept you missed out on a grand idea, and accept that you aren't THAT guy and do what you do best. Splitting the gaming community into all these fractions doesn't help anyone. The whole reason Steam is successful is because it is one place for everything. It helps make everything organized. No one says it is perfect but it does the main thing well. Once you start having a dozen different front ends for 1 or 2 games, you've basically negated the whole reason they were accepted to begin with.

It isn't just gaming, it is horribly bad on streaming services. It will only get worse. Competition is one thing we all like, but this isn't competition. This is segmentation so that they CAN control the pricing and keep them high. The only ones forcing competitive pricing are the non-storefront stores.

 

[Rifter]

No loss, looks like its not going to be a real fallout game anyways.

I decided long ago i was not doing the new client for each game bs, i use steam and GOG. Cant get the game there and it requires another service to be installed = i dont buy the game.

 

[SMOGZINN]

IMO, there is GOG for buying games, and all the DRM services for renting. IMO anything with a DRM service is a rental not a purchase.

So far I am not using any of them, but if a game was truly must play, I might rent it and play it till I was sick of it. Then uninstall it, and it's DRM service.

Even from GOG you are not buying the game, you are just buying a license to use it. One that they can revoke at any time. There is legally no difference.

 

[sandorski]

Not interested in this game, not interested in another damned service I need to login to. I'm sick of it, especially because Rockstar can't keep the bloody Russians from hacking my account between the times I decide to play GTA V.

Steam or Origin are as far as I am willing to go and I barely use Origin.

 

[paperfist]

It's starting to be a PITA, like all the websites I have to keep track of to log-in to now I have to do the same for games.

But there's a new annoying element for me. I keep getting notices about someone trying to log-in to my Epic account or Origin account, etc

I'd almost prefer the day of CDs which wouldn't be so bad with gargantuan HDDs

 

[PeterScott]

Even from GOG you are not buying the game, you are just buying a license to use it. One that they can revoke at any time. There is legally no difference.

Without DRM they have no way to revoke games I downloaded. That is a big practical difference.

Anything with online DRM system can potentially be revoked, without DRM, it can't be revoked.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Without DRM they have no way to revoke games I downloaded. That is a big practical difference.

Anything with online DRM system can potentially be revoked, without DRM, it can't be revoked.

So just pirate all games if you don't care about if you have the legal right to use the software.

 

[PeterScott]

So just pirate all games if you don't care about if you have the legal right to use the software.

Sometimes we should just have the downvote for really terrible arguments like that one.

Not having the practical ability to revoke software from customers who paid for it, tend to keep that idea from entering the heads of corporate executives in the first place.

Just because I don't like DRM and it's potential for abuse, doesn't mean I am a pirate. I paid for over 60 games on GOG, and expect none will ever get revoked.

 

[BSim500]

Even from GOG you are not buying the game, you are just buying a license to use it. One that they can revoke at any time. There is legally no difference.

So just pirate all games if you don't care about if you have the legal right to use the software.

Bold = Absolutely false information. First of all, there isn't a thing the publisher of any legally purchased game or movie can do by retroactively restricting the right to use it after you've bought something purely on a whim (ie, not due to the user breaking the EULA / law via piracy, but merely the publisher waking up one morning and deciding he wants to hold the digital equivalent of a medieval inquisition book burning. That isn't remotely how the law / EULA's work whether it's described as a "license" or not. All the publisher can do is remove it from sale from future purchases / re-purchases or pursue for user breach (piracy, hacking, etc). They can't demand the user retroactively "un-agree" for no reason as that's breach of contract. That's why games removed from Steam / GOG remain in owners accounts but only disappear from the store-page for non owners. And the publishers agreed to that with the distributors when they put their game up in the first place. And the distributors have to follow national retail laws, eg, not falsely misrepresent a time limited rental as a full sale by changing terms of purchase after it was purchased.

This is as true of Steam, Origin, uPlay, etc, as it is GOG, but what makes GOG games owned in an actual tangible real sense is the DRM-Free installers permanently guarantee a lifelong working good offline installer that's immune to remote changes (eg, distributor going out of business, online DRM servers going down, unwanted forced "upgrades" to newer versions of the game by developers, etc). You agree when you download it but that's it. It doesn't change as it can't change no different to older disc based games. Trying to equate legally purchased offline installers with "piracy" is the same legal nonsense as claiming everyone who owns a book / game / song which then goes out of print (eg, No One Lives Forever), must destroy it, and if they don't then the publisher can demand staff working for the retail store you bought it from to break into your home and steal the disc back. It's totally false fantasy gibberish.

Edit : Thirdly, the GOG User Agreement doesn't even say what you claim (the reasons we can terminate = "a serious breach which could cause significant harm to GOG, GOG users, piracy, hacking, etc"). At no point does it say there's some unrestricted power to randomly delete accounts at any time for no reason let alone in doing so = the user is forced to delete offline installers at their end. In fact, section 17.3 says the exact opposite - in the event they stop providing access "not because of any breach by you", you have 60 days to download all your games to continue to play offline, ie, you still own your offline installers even if GOG completely ceases to exist.

 

[DigDog]

Well, if it's an online game (like Battlefield) once they shut down the servers, you still own the game, but you cant play it.

Games that primarily depend on the online service, you need to accept that the $60 cost "of the game" is really just the buy-in token, not the game itself. The online service IS the game.

Offline, single player games, i dont see how you could lose access. Why would they revoke it, as it no longer is an expense to the owners. Besides, i think GOG, Steam, etc have some rules in the contracts with developers to prevent this. You can't "revoke ownership", at most a contract between developer and publisher can go down, resulting in a loss for the customer. But it's not like these things didnt happen "in the good ol days".

I mean, theres people who have paid full price for Daikatana.

But dont worry, Steam isnt gonna take away your copy of Skyrim.

 

[BFG10K]

As for old games on Steam I didn't think it was possible to start adding Windows based DRM (Steamworks, CEG, Denuvo, etc) to MS-DOS games.

Just to clarify, I'm arguing the opposite. I'm arguing to remove Steam DRM from any titles who have minimum requirements of platforms where Steam no longer works.

Newell should be sending that killswitch so people who decide to dual-boot/VM XP/Vista are entitled to do so with their legitimate purchases. Without it there's no way to deploy their games on said platforms.

No DRM is why we can run hundreds of DosBox games even though DOS is long dead.

 

[BFG10K]

Even from GOG you are not buying the game, you are just buying a license to use it. One that they can revoke at any time. There is legally no difference.

A five second search on GOG's front page would've addressed your confusion:

DRM-Free Content
You buy it - it's yours

DRM-free means no copy protection, on-line checks, or any other annoyances. It’s all about just you and your games and movies. You should feel you own the products that you buy - just like a book, or a DVD.

On GOG.com, no matter if you are online or offline, you will never be locked away from your purchases.

Furthermore, suspending an account for legal reasons (e.g. piracy) is completely different to "this operation cannot be completed in offline mode" or "the server is too busy to handle your request, please try again later".

 

[SMOGZINN]

A five second search on GOG's front page would've addressed your confusion:

DRM-Free Content
You buy it - it's yours

DRM-free means no copy protection, on-line checks, or any other annoyances. It’s all about just you and your games and movies. You should feel you own the products that you buy - just like a book, or a DVD.

On GOG.com, no matter if you are online or offline, you will never be locked away from your purchases.

Furthermore, suspending an account for legal reasons (e.g. piracy) is completely different to "this operation cannot be completed in offline mode" or "the server is too busy to handle your request, please try again later".

I have to say I went and actually read the licensing agreement with GOG and I was wrong about them. They have what might actually be the most reasonable licensing agreement I have ever read from a software company, and I was the software asset manager that negotiated licensing rights for a major corporation. I am just used to the default licensing agreements having a 'We can end your right to use this software at any time for any reason' clause buried in it somewhere.

 

[werepossum]

Well, if it's an online game (like Battlefield) once they shut down the servers, you still own the game, but you cant play it.

Games that primarily depend on the online service, you need to accept that the $60 cost "of the game" is really just the buy-in token, not the game itself. The online service IS the game.

Offline, single player games, i dont see how you could lose access. Why would they revoke it, as it no longer is an expense to the owners. Besides, i think GOG, Steam, etc have some rules in the contracts with developers to prevent this. You can't "revoke ownership", at most a contract between developer and publisher can go down, resulting in a loss for the customer. But it's not like these things didnt happen "in the good ol days".

I mean, theres people who have paid full price for Daikatana.

But dont worry, Steam isnt gonna take away your copy of Skyrim.

The movement among developers is to make ALL games services, like Fallout 76. We simply aren't going to be getting many more actual offline single player games anymore. Makes it too difficult to fleece the sheep, and old games using mods are simply unwanted competition for the developer's new games.

This isn't just games, it's all software. Autodesk products are now lease only. Microsoft is pushing it hard. And Visual Professional, the photometric calculation software we were using, has killed our perpetual licenses by killing their authentication software. All developers prefer that we pay them every year, whether they turn out anything that isn't pure shite or not.

 

[DigDog]

You need to consider that piracy exists. Im not a user simply because i dont even want all these games they are making now, but at any time, you can find a pirated copy of any offline game that isnt just clean and drm free, but often better than then standard release, smaller in size, faster install, prepatched, dlc unlocked.
Software houses know this.

I dont blame EA for selling garbage just like i dont blame McDonalds for doing the same.

Professional software has been license-only since the 80s.

I would add that, you were warned this would happen, but did nothing.

The 1990s pro-piracy argument (of which i am still a proponent) was not about stealing, but about ownership rights, and you gave away those rights.

 

[BFG10K]

EA account worth thousands of dollars was silently deleted: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/96e9j5/ea_deleted_my_origin_account_and_ea_help_is/

(The internet was telling us this sort of thing never happens).

FCKDRM, a new initiative from GOG: https://www.fckdrm.com/