Xbox One

[rivalary]

 

Plus why would anyone create video games if they had no ability to protect their creation from those who would steal it? Why would anyone play a game that has no ability to protect them either? Don't forget that DRM can also protect the user. Take a free-to-play game, say League of Legends. It has DRM in the form of a required, password protected account. This prevents people from access accounts that are not theirs, and thereby stealing the efforts of someone else, and it gives the developers the ability to ban people who violate the rules and who the community has deemed unwanted.

I guess DRM-free game companies are all bankrupt, right? As for LoL - do you really think you can classify that as DRM? I don't.

Face it, DRM is a necessity today and is, unto itself, not a bad thing. Abuses of it are bad, just like abuses of anything are bad. Stepping away from DRM is taking a step back to the days of LAN multiplayer only, or fully anonymous online multiplayer, with no score tracking, no achievements, no awards. That is not what the majority of gamers want and not what the industry wants. The industry and majority of gamers want to innovate, and to do so requires the ability to say "This is mine, not yours!" and "This is yours, not theirs!" DRM gives that ability.

DRM gives the ability for the publisher to control when, where, and how you can play a game that you paid for. I would heartily welcome back the days of LAN multiplayer as well as essentially anonymous online multiplayer via private servers. The centralized model used today only guarantees that the games will be unplayable (through legal means) in the future.

 

I miss the days before cd-keys and DRM became the norm.  Sorry, I don't care about achievements or online stats.  I'd rather just play the game.  I'd also rather feel like I'm buying a product rather than a license.  I understand that it's always been a license, but that part was invisible before DRM reared its ugly  head.  Piracy is bad, but screwing your customers with DRM and having the pirates completely unaffected by the DRM is worse.  I'd like to go back to the days where I can go to a store and buy a cool looking game without having to research what DRM system the game is using before buying said game.

[Guest_Jim_*]

Plus why would anyone create video games if they had no ability to protect their creation from those who would steal it? Why would anyone play a game that has no ability to protect them either? Don't forget that DRM can also protect the user. Take a free-to-play game, say League of Legends. It has DRM in the form of a required, password protected account. This prevents people from access accounts that are not theirs, and thereby stealing the efforts of someone else, and it gives the developers the ability to ban people who violate the rules and who the community has deemed unwanted.

I guess DRM-free game companies are all bankrupt, right? As for LoL - do you really think you can classify that as DRM? I don't.

Face it, DRM is a necessity today and is, unto itself, not a bad thing. Abuses of it are bad, just like abuses of anything are bad. Stepping away from DRM is taking a step back to the days of LAN multiplayer only, or fully anonymous online multiplayer, with no score tracking, no achievements, no awards. That is not what the majority of gamers want and not what the industry wants. The industry and majority of gamers want to innovate, and to do so requires the ability to say "This is mine, not yours!" and "This is yours, not theirs!" DRM gives that ability.

DRM gives the ability for the publisher to control when, where, and how you can play a game that you paid for. I would heartily welcome back the days of LAN multiplayer as well as essentially anonymous online multiplayer via private servers. The centralized model used today only guarantees that the games will be unplayable (through legal means) in the future.

Yes, I do consider those accounts DRM because they lock game content to specific people; the purpose of all DRM. In the case of LoL that content includes your username, your unlocked characters, your unlocked spells, your level, your in-game purchases, and the in-game currency you purchase with real money. That protects you, the end-user, from theft, just as DRM like Steam protects the publisher/developer from theft. It digitally manages your rights to what you have earned and purchased, just as it manages a publisher's and developer's rights to what they create and distribute. Further, that account is what gives you access to the official servers, and if those go down, then the account becomes useless.

I defy your straw man of the bankrupt DRM-free company with the fact that many people are honest enough to purchase games instead of pirating them or not interested in putting the effort into pirating them. And those companies do lose out on revenue every time a game is pirated, which is only made easier when the titles are DRM-free. Add in the modern capability to digitally distribute the pirated game, and it only drops profits further.

I further defy your assumption that DRM is a long-term negative, claiming that the games will, with certainty, become unplayable in the future. As I stated previously about Steam, plans can be created and have been created to protect against that outcome. Further the issues which could lead to that are issues of specific DRM schemes and not DRM in general, and those specific schemes are rallied against by gamers, encouraging better schemes to be used and developed.

Also, while you may welcome back the days of LAN multiplayer and private servers, consider the fact that many games, especially MMOs, could not exist. They require central servers and authentication to protect the integrity of the game. Other games, like the CoD franchise for an obvious example, would be far less successful because of its limited, if present multiplayer features and the greater ease cheaters would have cheating, because those central servers would not exist. Without that central server and DRM you would also see game communities fragment by blocking or rolling back unwanted patches, because often games with different patched versions cannot play together, and even if they could, the gameplay would not be balanced.

 

Also, as you say, "DRM gives the ability for the publisher to control when, where, and how you can play a game you paid for." Well the DRM Microsoft wanted to use was going to give the player the ability to control when, where, and how you can play a game for the xBox One. Want it at your friends house? Log in there. Want to let you sibling or friend play it? Tell the console they can. DRM isn't bad for the industry. Zealots for and against DRM are.

[Waco]

So I'm a zealot now? Sorry, but I believe ALL forms of DRM are negative. Your examples of it "helping" consumers aren't even true.

 

If Microsoft's servers are down you cannot play your games anywhere (except maybe your own console)...yet you're trying to spin it like it's a good thing.

 

It's not just "log in and go" with 10+ GB games that you have to wait hours for to play.

 

I'm on my phone so I'm not going to write much more than that.

 

DRM-free games are the future. DRM is bad for everyone in the long run. No, I don't agree that account authentication is DRM in the sense that anyone is talking about. Of course MMOs need central servers...nobody claimed otherwise.

 

 

Note: piracy is not the issue. See: GOG and *gasp* open source games/software.

[Guest_Jim_*]

So I'm a zealot now? Sorry, but I believe ALL forms of DRM are negative. Your examples of it "helping" consumers aren't even true.

 

If Microsoft's servers are down you cannot play your games anywhere (except maybe your own console)...yet you're trying to spin it like it's a good thing.

 

It's not just "log in and go" with 10+ GB games that you have to wait hours for to play.

 

I'm on my phone so I'm not going to write much more than that.

 

DRM-free games are the future. DRM is bad for everyone in the long run. No, I don't agree that account authentication is DRM in the sense that anyone is talking about. Of course MMOs need central servers...nobody claimed otherwise.

 

 

Note: piracy is not the issue. See: GOG and *gasp* open source games/software.

It is not a very good idea to claim someone else's examples are not true, and then have inaccuracies a few lines deeper. One of the features to compliment the sharing on the xBox One was that it would download such that you could play before the download finishes. Therefore, you do not have to wait hours to play, unless you are on such a slow connection that the initial amount takes that long to download. In which case, you have the disc with you, pop it in, and run from that. And that was supported, in case you're going to claim that it wasn't.

"If Microsoft's servers go down...." Throwing the baby out with the bath water now? Accuse me if you want that I'm putting a positive spin on something, but do not claim you are not putting a negative spin on the same thing. Microsoft invests in making sure those servers stay up, and getting them back up if they ever go down. If they shut them down intentionally, it is because they can no longer support them either because the service is too old and not worth investing more in, or because the company itself collapses and no other company steps in to purchase the servers.

 

My example of MMOs was very clearly to make the point that DRM is necessary for them and without DRM they could not have been developed, or at least would not have the success they do now. So right there, everyone who plays MMOs have had a positive experience because of DRM, and their continued positive experience is protected by DRM.

 

DRM-free games are not the future because the services that come with DRM are. Examples: Steam; digital sharing; digital download. None of those will work without an amount of DRM. Good Old Games also is an odd example, given its catalog of almost mostly old games. What's more it does have the DRM of requiring an account. You cannot simply go there, pay some money, and get a game without ever identifying yourself so the purchase can be tied to you. That would be DRM-free. Instead you have to make an account for your personal and exclusive use and every purchase you make is tied to that account (which is only possible because of account-DRM). Get caught sharing that account and what happens, it gets taken away from you, just like if you pirate software and get caught. So yes, piracy is the issue because if you get caught, you suffer the consequences no matter what service you are dealing with.

 

Open source games and software are a different beast. Not the future though. They will almost certainly impact the future, as many already have affected the present, but there is never going to be a day that even a majority of software is open source, accept by an inundation of redundant applications. What open-source games I've played have always been unfinished and buggy after years of development. Similar closed source games available for purchase are finished and as bug free as can be expected of any piece of software. Also, just to be clear it is possible to pirate open source software by taking code from it without acknowledging the source, if that is a requirement of the open source license. Of course some may just call that stealing, instead of pirating.

 

Also, these are contradictory statements:

I only tolerate Steam's DRM because it provides me a useful service in exchange.

Sorry, but I believe ALL forms of DRM are negative. Your examples of it "helping" consumers aren't even true.

Those useful services you, I, and many others use are the result of DRM. They help the consumers have a better experience and are only possible because of Steam's DRM scheme.

[Waco]

They aren't contradictory, they are complementary. The DRM isn't useful to me personally. The chat functions, game sales, and ease of use are.

 

I write open source software for a living, just so you know.

[Guest_Jim_*]

The statements are most certainly not complementary when the useful functions are reliant on DRM. The chat functionality requires authenticating who you are and your rights to speak with your username and with your friends. It manages your digital rights. The purchasing of games during sales again requires authenticating your digital rights to do so, and prevents someone else from assuming those same rights. Digital rights managed. Ease of use is too general a statement to reply to, but I will point this out; part of what is easy to use is the DRM because Valve intelligently designed their system to hide the DRM so the average user need never encounter it. They did a good job of it, but some companies do not. Also one of the more useful Steam functions, cache verification, utilizes DRM by authenticating not only your rights to the game but also authenticating the contents of the game, in order to repair/replace whatever fails authentication.

 

Your development of open source software hardly impacts the discussion/debate. Your critically examined and arrived at opinions are what matter.

[Locutus]

Jim, I don't think you understand what DRM is.

 

http://www.howstuffworks.com/drm.htm

 

Having to log in and authenticate your account isn't DRM, it isn't preventing piracy. Blizzard gives out their software for free and expects you to connect to their servers. Just because you have to log into your account to play doesn't mean WoW or any other MMO have any form of DRM attached.

[ClayMeow]

Jim, I don't think you understand what DRM is.

 

http://www.howstuffworks.com/drm.htm

 

Having to log in and authenticate your account isn't DRM, it isn't preventing piracy. Blizzard gives out their software for free and expects you to connect to their servers. Just because you have to log into your account to play doesn't mean WoW or any other MMO have any form of DRM attached.

I stopped reading this thread when it turned into a novel, but what are you smoking??? Online authentication is absolutely a form of DRM by anyone's standards (except I guess yours and waco's). If you cannot access the game without being connected, that is DRM. We accept always-on DRM in MMOs because having to be online is expected, but most people are against it when it's for single-player games (eg. SimCity).

[rivalary]

[snip]

"If Microsoft's servers go down...." Throwing the baby out with the bath water now? Accuse me if you want that I'm putting a positive spin on something, but do not claim you are not putting a negative spin on the same thing. Microsoft invests in making sure those servers stay up, and getting them back up if they ever go down. If they shut them down intentionally, it is because they can no longer support them either because the service is too old and not worth investing more in, or because the company itself collapses and no other company steps in to purchase the servers.

 

[/snip]

 

 

 

 

 

Jim, I don't think you understand what DRM is.

 

http://www.howstuffworks.com/drm.htm

 

Having to log in and authenticate your account isn't DRM, it isn't preventing piracy. Blizzard gives out their software for free and expects you to connect to their servers. Just because you have to log into your account to play doesn't mean WoW or any other MMO have any form of DRM attached.

I stopped reading this thread when it turned into a novel, but what are you smoking??? Online authentication is absolutely a form of DRM by anyone's standards (except I guess yours and waco's). If you cannot access the game without being connected, that is DRM. We accept always-on DRM in MMOs because having to be online is expected, but most people are against it when it's for single-player games (eg. SimCity).

 

Yes, the side-effect of needing a login to play an online-exclusive game is the game is protected by piracy.  However, it is a non-issue due to the game needing to be online in order to work at all.  That is why nobody considers it DRM.  Single-player games requiring always online and logins such at SimCity and the single-player portion of Diablo 3 just isn't right.  They tried to say that Diablo 3 was designed to be played online, but in playing the game it's quite apparent that they could have put an offline mode in and it would have worked.  SimCity requiring an internet connection was just a joke.  Both games, from massive gaming companies with huge experience, failed miserably at launch due to their servers not keeping up with the load.  Saying that Wako is "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" or being paranoid really ignores the issues that EA and Blizzard had.

 

Edit: I quoted multiple times for some reason

Edited June 21, 2013 by rivalary

[bp9801]

Is everyone done with the pissing contest now? Or must it continue on and on until everyone just keeps repeating the same things ad nauseam?

 

Microsoft had an Internet requirement and then it revoked it because of the outcry. Some features had to be axed because of that, and maybe it'll return eventually, but stuff like that happens. You move on, you deal with it, you either buy the console or not, no one cares.

 

If you're unhappy with what Microsoft is doing with the Xbox One...  don't freaking buy it! Don't just keep going on about how this or that feature/component/requirement sucks because really, at the end of the day it's your money that sends a bigger message. MS had a feature it thought people would like, well they didn't, so then MS removed the feature, and now people are still up in arms. Really? Either you like something or you don't, there's no going back and forth on it because honestly, it just gets very tiring hearing all the flopping around. This feature sucks, this one sucks more, holy crap they removed the one that sucks so lets pick on it being removed now.

 

Just stop. If you're unhappy with it, then you're unhappy with it. Don't buy the console.

[Waco]

I don't plan on it.

[ClayMeow]

Apparent confirmation that XBO will NOT support cross-platform play, and it's the main reason FFXIV will not be coming to it.