Piracy in the gaming industry: Am I the only one seeing a pattern here?

larch

larch

Banned
[Warning] This blog post contains massive amounts of truth based on reality laced with sarcasm and humor. If you dont have any of the last mentioned dont bother reading. But if you insist reading might I suggest you go buy a sense of humor and some sarcasm online. If people can sell there virginity online I am sure you would be able to find some sarcasm and a sense of humor for sale online.

Am I the only one who is currently seeing a recurring pattern when it comes to piracy and DRM? What bought on this epiphany you may ask? Well the latest DRM versus general gaming public debacle. And for those of you who have been living under a rock the past week, what it boils down too is the fact that when playing Assasins Creed 2 for the PC you need to be online while playing if not you get kicked out of your game. Now before I start discussing this pattern I have been seeing lately, lets just forget about the legal and moral issues regarding piracy for a moment because that horse is dead and beaten already. And just for the record I dont agree with this type of DRM for a single player game if it was for a multiplayer game then yes that would be understandable. But I can see were the developers and publishers are coming from in trying to protect their work from piracy on a platform, that to be honest is diseased with it like a crack whore is with AIDS.

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Sir Isaac Newtons law of motion describes this pattern in the gaming industry perfectly: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Simply put the reaction in this endless pattern is piracy and the people who pirate. And the equal and opposite reaction to this is DRM protection that is implemented by the developers and publishers. Then the reaction on the DRM by "some" of the angry and discontent raises is by raising the god damned Jolly Roger flag and say they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it making to okay. The gaming industries reaction too all of this? They start focusing on platforms that are less piracy prone, and you guessed it some of the gamers start complaining that they are receiving dumbed down console ports. And so the cycle continues....

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Visit any thread regarding the topic, and I mean any thread, and it won't be three posts until someone raises the Goddamned Jolly Roger and says they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it. It's entirely possible that you don't like being spoken to in this way, but somebody has to get this done. What Ubisoft is doing here is Draconian - I don't mean those lizard dudes, I'm talking about laws which are characterized by their severity. Before they eventually dismantle it, and it will be dismantled, it will have achieved exactly the opposite of their intention. But what I won't tolerate from rational beings is the idea that you don't understand why they're doing it. The trouble is that this dialogue between pirates and publishers, one which was always characterized by falsehood and ill-will, has ceased to exist in this case. A maneuver this extreme means that they're finished talking altogether: this mechanism is their response, the final word
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Source: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/2/19/
 
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Good write up. If only publishers would learn that by reacting so aggressively to piracy they only in turn promote further piracy by pissing of the legitimate consumer. What they are doing will not affect the pirates in the least, but will most certainly inconvenience those who do buy the game. I don't mind DRM so long as its fair. The cycle goes, I make game, you pirate, i make better DRM, you still pirate, I now make slightly more heavy DRM and slightly inconvenience legit customer, you still pirate, I make very stupidly amazing DRM that massively inconveniences legit customer aaand you still pirate. So who wins in the end? Not the publisher, not the customer but the pirate. They seriously need to reconsider their strategy to fight piracy since DRM has never and probably will NEVER work. /end rant :)
 
Just look at the comments sections under any article describing any DRM scheme, and it's full of "WELL I'M JUST GOING TO PIRATE THE GAME THEN" sentiments. PC gamers love playing the hard-done-by card, but let's not pretend that this isn't a problem going both ways.

For those of you with short term memory problems, Ubisoft's last Prince of Persia game was released - experimentally - with no DRM attached. The company said at the time, "A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP PC has no DRM we'll see how truthful people actually are. Not very, I imagine." I guess they learned a valuable lesson there.

GG, pirates. :/
 
Tsar said:
Piracy will never go away:(. Just like crime and war.
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And love and happiness :D. Why is piracy always associated with the darker side of life ... it's more of a sharing, caring kinda behaviour in my opinion ;)
 
roman said:
And love and happiness :D. Why is piracy always associated with the darker side of life ... it's more of a sharing, caring kinda behaviour in my opinion ;)
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So you dont mind someone breaking into your house and "shares" your stuff? It boils down to the same thing, I think once people stop justifying what they do and be consumers like they are supposed to be things like piracy well lessen.
 
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Piracy is the unstoppable force. There are people that just refuse to pay for games at all.

Then there are those of who refuse to pay for anything short of the best of the best.

Than theres those who just buy any crap crap no matter what it is.
 
Raven Gold said:
Piracy is the unstoppable force. There are people that just refuse to pay for games at all.

Then there are those of who refuse to pay for anything short of the best of the best.

Than theres those who just buy any crap crap no matter what it is.
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No.

There are people who steal games, and there are people who don't. It's as simple as that.
 
They arnt making any easier for the honest end users - I was laughing at Zap ranting the other night trying to get his Bioshock 2 installed - He has no intention of playing online but he still had to go through the mission of trying to open a windows live account and then downloading the patch
It must have taken well over an hour for him to install.
 
MooDy said:
They arnt making any easier for the honest end users - I was laughing at Zap ranting the other night trying to get his Bioshock 2 installed - He has no intention of playing online but he still had to go through the mission of trying to open a windows live account and then downloading the patch
It must have taken well over an hour for him to install.
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No, I agree that DRM methods are becoming much more of a hindrance to legitimate buyers than anything else. But as larch has pointed out, increasingly restrictive DRM is simply a reaction to increasing piracy. Who backs down first?

Raven Gold said:
Coming from the pope of the religion of the 3 shades of gray.
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Context is everything. Gaming isn't necessary for survival, so where stealing food is obviously in a grey area, stealing games really isn't.
 
Raven Gold said:
Piracy is the unstoppable force. There are people that just refuse to pay for games at all.

Then there are those of who refuse to pay for anything short of the best of the best.

Than theres those who just buy any crap crap no matter what it is.
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Piracy 1 on 1 they will always justify their actions no matter how much logic and truth you throw at them. In the end piracy is taking someone's work and not paying for it which equals stealing.
 
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larch said:
Piracy 1 on 1 they will always justify their actions no matter how much logic and truth you throw at them. In the end piracy is taking someone's work and not paying for it which equals stealing.
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But this is africa, it is the african way:rolleyes::D
 
e1ace said:
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+1 QFT! :D

It is however only a minor annoyance on DVD, so I keep buying them, but if they suddenly had to add a DRM that made it impossible to watch the movie without an internet connection I'd stop buying them then and there.

I don't see why Ubisoft doesn't just use Steam, in the end of the day it will get pirated just as much, but we'd have an offline mode. Even in first world countries a stable internet connection is not fact, they have issues with downtime too, it's just nonsensical to expect everyone to have an always on internet connection. :(
 
Ubisoft has long had some controversial ideas about how DRM should be used, but when PC Gamer was given a review copy of Assassin's Creed 2 on the PC it seemed as if the reality was going to be much worse than what opponents to DRM had feared: the game requires an always-on 'Net connection and constant communication with the home server. If your connection is dropped, the game kicks you out, and you lose any progress you had made since your last save.

If you have flaky wireless in your home, it sounds like it's time to move onto a wired solution. We caught up with an Ubisoft representative to get the full story, and it may not be as bad as it sounds... but it's still certainly not good.

Here's how PC Gamer described its test:
The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you're not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers'. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen—all my progress since it last autosaved was lost.

We reached out to Ubisoft to see how accurate this account was. "As long as you do not quit the game, the game will continue to try to reconnect for an unlimited time. Once the game is able to reconnect, you will immediately be returned to your game," Ars was told. What about your progress?

"Where exactly you are reconnected in the game may differ from title to title. Settlers 7 reconnects at the exact point where the connection was lost, AC2 reconnects you at the last checkpoint (and not the last auto save, as indicated in the CVG article). There are many checkpoints so you're back to the point where you got disconnected in no time."

We were assured that only happens if the disconnection is lengthy. If you're cut off for just a second or two, the game simply pauses and continues on. Ars was also told that nothing will happen if your connection slows down. "Our online services platform will require a maximum of 50kbps of available bandwidth, so even with the slowest connection, gameplay won’t be affected."
What does this mean for you?

Since upcoming Ubisoft PC games will require you to be connected to the Internet through your entire gaming session, members the armed forces may have a hard time playing games on their laptops. If you're flying, you'll have to pay for onflight Internet or not play. If your Internet goes out in your house, you can't play, and if you were playing while it happened, you could lose progress.

There is a certain weirdness to a company demanding to know every time you play the game, and requiring you to be talking to their servers for the entirety of your session. Does this DRM come at the cost of privacy? That's debatable, but it will be a deterrent for those who travel or play games where there isn't Internet to buy the game at all.
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Direct Link

The highlighted part is what wipes the smile from my face. Ubisoft does go on to say that if it's a slight connection drop you will start from your last checkpoint. Well call it whatever you want but this sounds like it might be a tad annoying.
 
My thoughts on piracy are simple - if you can afford the gear, you can afford the game. Done.

Although DRM is getting a leeetle bit out of hand though, connecting to an authentication server (like with Dead Space) is perfectly fine. But yeah, like Moody said, end users are the ones getting the shite end of it and Ubisofts latest move will never be something I can agree with.
Azimuth put it well, who IS going to back down first?
 
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Azimuth said:
Context is everything. Gaming isn't necessary for survival, so where stealing food is obviously in a grey area, stealing games really isn't.
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And the gray shade with piracy is the "Stealing" of games is to teach a lession to these dumb quaks that they should stop being greedy idiots.

The Greedy and the Dumb deserve nothing.
 
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