Removing DRM could decrease piracy say people who study these things

Lycanthrope said:
You've just hit a point I've been wondering about for a while: Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood don't have DRM any more?

Been eyeballing them for a while but really don't want to put money towards them otherwise.
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MOnk said:
They removed the always-on DRM from AC2 and never had it in ACB.

*not 100% sure if you still need to be online to start the game with the UbiLauncher, didn't actually pay attention to that.
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They patched the launcher in some strange way. You still need the launcher afaik, but if your internet drops the game shouldn't kick you out. Not sure though never had the net fail on me while I was playing Assassins Creed 2.
 
Lycanthrope said:
I have no problem with Steam. It works, your games are always readily-available, it keeps games updated, there is no need for other third-party (actually intrusive) DRM like rootkits, activation limits, etc and it's entirely possible to play offline. Steamworks games also have achievements which, while not everyone's cup of tea, makes for some added replayability just to see or do things you would otherwise not have.

Put it this way: I own physical copies of a number of my games, including the Gothic series (minus the shitty ones of which I will not speak), I've basically bought them all over again on Steam. My original retail copies are kept safe and I have a digital version which works as well as you'd expect.

Steam isn't perfect, of course. It has its disadvantages too such as resale, specifically. But that's not an issue for someone like me who will never sell his games anyway.

If I had to choose between a Steamworks game and a Securom/Ubisoft-DRM game it would be an easy choice.

Hell, the only reason I haven't bought Risen again on Steam is because it has Tages of all bloody things as well. As much as I love the game, I won't support a game using DRM of that nature.

I'm also bloody sick of Games for Windows Live.

Also, regarding your uninstalling of Steam games... Yeah, I have a separate 1TB drive dedicated to Steam :p

I don't uninstall Steam games :D
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did not know that about steam, o well my stupid ignorance strikes again 0o lol
hmm you say shitty ones as in plural. I presume that was mistake and it was meant singular being the "not" number 4 and its expansion, as the PB Gothic's are awesome.
I too hate GFWL.
But I would still probably buy the game and get a pirate copy to get away from the DRM's kak.
 
MOnk said:
Actually they do remove the DRM, like Assassin's Creed 2 which I bought a year after release when the DRM was gone. Other games that have had their DRM removed weeks/months after release include Bioshock, Mass Effect, Spore, From Dust and numerous others.
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Yeah, but what I was meaning was stopping DRM from all games for good, not releasing games with DRM and removing it a year or whatever later. IE not making use of DRM ever
 
simon said:
Yeah, but what I was meaning was stopping DRM from all games for good, not releasing games with DRM and removing it a year or whatever later. IE not making use of DRM ever
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Well hopefully if they see sales pick up AFTER they remove the DRM then maybe they will put two and two together. :)
 
czc said:
They patched the launcher in some strange way. You still need the launcher afaik, but if your internet drops the game shouldn't kick you out. Not sure though never had the net fail on me while I was playing Assassins Creed 2.
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See it's that "launcher" bit that gets me. I saw UPlay and that was enough to make me feel like puking.

Let me rather put it this way: when the game updates, does Steam update it or does the launcher (Ubisoft servers)?

simon said:
did not know that about steam, o well my stupid ignorance strikes again 0o lol
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Nah, you live and you learn. Nothing stupid about that. I used to be really, really anti-Steam but have grown to be really fond of it. If a game is a Steamworks game, I'll buy it retail (so that I have both the box and have it linked to my Steam account). If there's no collector's edition of a game and it's not Steamworks, I'll just grab it off Steam--generally you get to pre-load a week before the game is released and then you get to play at about midnight--1AM on release.

hmm you say shitty ones as in plural. I presume that was mistake and it was meant singular being the "not" number 4 and its expansion, as the PB Gothic's are awesome.
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Gothic 3's expansion--Forsaken Gods is the other one :)

MOnk said:
Well hopefully if they see sales pick up AFTER they remove the DRM then maybe they will put two and two together. :)
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*nod* Assuming they're willing to pay attention to those sorts of figures.

It's why I have such an immense amount of respect for CDProject RED. Not only do they release their games with the bare minimum of DRM and remove that later, they also give significant support in the form of updates, changes, etc to better please the community and improve on their games.

Not a lot of devs or publishers out there that have that kind of commitment to their products.

Hell, look at Bethesda--it's been half a decade and Oblivion still has bugs to high-heaven, bugs that were still present in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Of course you can blame the engine but surely at some point you FIX the bloody engine, especially before releasing new games on it?
 
Ok just tested it and you need to be online to start AC2 because of the Ubilauncher but once you're in game you are fine. (meh)
 
Lycanthrope said:
Gothic 3's expansion--Forsaken Gods is the other one :)
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got you to mention it, even though you said you wouldn't haha :D
Ah ok, coz I was about to call you a heathen for insulting my fave developer lol
Yeah I haven't tried it yet.

Problem is, because of my ignorant mistake I now need to download the client again for Darksiders if I want to play it. My lady bought it for me so I kinda owe it to her, but the download is huge and my hellkom internet won't allow it
 
James said:
Removing DRM could decrease piracy say people who study these things

Does restrictive DRM act as a deterrent to legitimate customers?
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Sort of a duh; One that every legit customer since the beginning has been saying all along.

Graal said:
Well, that's pretty obvious. Just glad someone is actually saying it out loud for once.
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Well yeah, but this time they're backing it up with some research and hard data.
Can only hope this sinks in somewhere, but a reality check tells me that it wouldn't make a single cent's worth of difference.
 
simon said:
Problem is, because of my ignorant mistake I now need to download the client again for Darksiders if I want to play it. My lady bought it for me so I kinda owe it to her, but the download is huge and my hellkom internet won't allow it
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Do you have the CD? Cause then you'll only download the updates.
 
simon said:
Problem is, because of my ignorant mistake I now need to download the client again for Darksiders if I want to play it. My lady bought it for me so I kinda owe it to her, but the download is huge and my hellkom internet won't allow it
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Get a 1GB Web Africa account and set your Steam to download from the WA servers. Since it's part of the freezone it doesn't count towards your cap.
 
MOnk said:
Get a 1GB Web Africa account and set your Steam to download from the WA servers. Since it's part of the freezone it doesn't count towards your cap.
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To be clear. Get SteamWatch, sometimes steam switches servers it downloads from to the nearest location, in my case MWEB - Johannesburg.
 
MOnk said:
Get a 1GB Web Africa account and set your Steam to download from the WA servers. Since it's part of the freezone it doesn't count towards your cap.
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Would love to, but because I might be going to Austria in a few months I can't commit to any internet things.
If I did stay, I see that Mweb are doing a 1mp/s uncapped for R299 per month which is really good, as far as I know
 
simon said:
got you to mention it, even though you said you wouldn't haha :D
Ah ok, coz I was about to call you a heathen for insulting my fave developer lol
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Pfff :p

Problem is, because of my ignorant mistake I now need to download the client again for Darksiders if I want to play it. My lady bought it for me so I kinda owe it to her, but the download is huge and my hellkom internet won't allow it
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Understandable...

I might be able to snailmail it to you at some point on DVD, if you like?
 
Ok. Now the BIG question. How many publishers are going to decide to drop DRM or consider dropping DRM due to this study? Can we see some hands?

Similar case studies have been conducted on DRM since it's inception. Sony even admitted that DRM increases piracy 3 odds years ago. And debates have raged on for years. And still it continues to fall on deaf ears.

Companies need to step up to the cutting block and stop pleading ignorance when it comes to DRM and piracy. We vote with our wallets, but they still fight back harder, pushing up prices and adding more annoying forms of DRM. BUT we need to be careful about this matter. We say that we will support Steam DRM, but to other companies this seems like we are willing to support all forms of DRM (albeit an utter lie). They aren't always about specifics or the people. They only choose to hear what they want to hear. The sound of money hitting the cash registers as unknowing sheep continue to buy their games :-p

Plus, I don't know if anyone has come across this yet. Pity really if it does happen =/.

Plus as has been mentioned. You don't need an always online connection for AC 2 and ACB. Your progress and so forth still gets synced even if you're internet goes wonky. You do however need to be connected to get the launcher going, which remains a pain in the ass. But that usually checks for updates in anycase.

We can only hope that developers ease off DRM and rather spend their time on developing games rather than faffing about this. But then again, if we take DRM away, what will management have left to do other than slouch about and come up with horrible ideas? :p
 
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