Far cry 2(bad news for pc)

[revol68]

I think Nick just likes to throw his weight around, people like him exist in every area of life I wouldn't let him bother you, I'd be shocked if he hasn't had or has any pirated material on his PC, tape deck, MP3 player or DVD player

[kalniel]

I think Nick just likes to throw his weight around

This is way off topic, but what? Nick has clarified the forum rules when they were questioned (as someone who is a Hexus employee he kind of knows best for), he's explained why the rules are in place, and he's now joining in the debate along with the rest of us. Why is it suddenly throwing weight around just because a Hexus employee joins in? Are they not allowed to post on their own forum or something?

[revol68]

This is way off topic, but what? Nick has clarified the forum rules when they were questioned (as someone who is a Hexus employee he kind of knows best for), he's explained why the rules are in place, and he's now joining in the debate along with the rest of us. Why is it suddenly throwing weight around just because a Hexus employee joins in? Are they not allowed to post on their own forum or something?

Well he's made it clear he wants to see me banned for simply having a different perspective on intellectual property rights, I've also seen him demand a poster post pics to prove the copy of a game they were discussing playing was 'legit' and now he feels free to wade into a debate and essentially declare all those opposed to DRM as pirates. Now I'm not opposed to piracy and such insinuations mean little to me but there are people who are opposed to piracy AND DRM. Now I think such behaviour counts as throwing your weight around or at the very least doesn't set a good example for discussion on the boards.

[kalniel]

Well he's made it clear he wants to see me banned

Then surely thowing his weight around would have resulted in you actually being banned, not just an opinion being expressed?

[SmileyUK]

let it go revol, you were politely asked to chill by one of the staff and struggle to be dealing with it. Just chill out and if the thread annoys you that much, steer clear of it

[dangel]

Well, I reckon not too many and perhaps that day is here now? I don't think it'll be long at all before retail boxed copies half only perhaps the level build on the disk and the game engine has to be downloaded on install and then validated for each level load. Sounds awful doesn't it? But that's where we're heading for PC gaming.

We are if people don't object to unreasonable DRM - just because you didn't have a problem with something as draconian as starforce doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea for a lot of people (some of which had real problems with it) to object to kernel-level drivers potentially destabalising their PC or disabling their DVD drive. That happened, and now starforce is gone - yay! And it's through people objecting that today's protection - securom - is being tailored better to encompass the needs of the paying punter (to some degree at least). After all, no pirate has to put up with it - and if i'm paying for a DRM payload along with my crack-cocaine-gaming-habit, i'd like it to be >>-=] Reasonable [=-<<

And sorry, but at the risk of sounding rude, that's just naive. Look at the number of iPod users... look at the success of iTunes store. That stuff is DRMd to the hilt and superbly successful... I honestly don't think 'the masses' care nearly as much as you think they do, even when they do know all about it.

Why does iTunes offer DRM-free music? Because people woke up to the fact that their music collections weren't nearly as much 'theirs' as they thought. And now we see more and more DRM-free music being sold outside of iTunes too. Why did Apple (and the music industry) make that transition?

[finlay666]

Why does iTunes offer DRM-free music? Because people woke up to the fact that their music collections weren't nearly as much 'theirs' as they thought. And now we see more and more DRM-free music being sold outside of iTunes too. Why did Apple (and the music industry) make that transition?

Actually I believe that was also down to anti-trust suits being filed against them aswell and it helped as a distraction for the public eye

http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itune...pe=allchandate

Seems Norway is doing a similar thing now with some pretty heavy EU support

saying that iTunes benefits from being convenient, you have all your content of one kind in one place, like steam you can back it up (don't know about re-downloading stuff as I don't but stuff off it...don't use it in fact any more and it's for all your music (provided you don't buy DRM encoded music from other sources)

It's quite a similar model to Steam in fact, which uses account authentication and online purchases/one time CD key linking in order to protect sales. It's a good model and people seem to like it on a whole compared to some other methods (Sony rootkits on CDs, EA Downloader and DRM/SecurROM in games)

[dangel]

Fair point - albeit consumer group led perhaps.

Convenient and reasonably priced works for me - Steam wins out on that one too as it's a well-resolved platform for games distribution (and the DRM, as such, is transparent).

[finlay666]

Having spoken to some people that did pirate music and no longer do so, the convenience seems a fairly high reason, as the music is properly tagged with artwork, it's easy to find reviews and falls under a microtransaction so an impulse purchase for the odd song

Unfortunately games aren't at that level due to the size and cost of production...but hopefully one day it will be possible

[shaithis]

Steam isn't too bad, it still has a number of drawbacks though.

Massive downloads which take a while, price and the file fragmentation (for those of us anal enough to be defrag whores!).

[dangel]

Pricing on Steam could be better - and hard copies usually cost less and arrive sooner. I guess that up to the publishers though and it does seem rough when their costs must be much less.

[Mblaster]

So if I'm making a game and invest perhaps millions into it, can you blame me for trying to protect my investment?

Trying to pretect your investment is a prefectly valid idea, but using methods that have been proven to not work, and get circumvented within just a couple days is a complete waste of time and only goes to disadvantage the customer.

That said, people are over-reacting at the impact this will have, I will probably still buy Far Cry 2, but only because it looks like it's going to be an awesome game, and I hate playing FPSs on consoles. If it was a game I wasn't sure if I was going to buy or not then the DRM would tip the scales against me buying it (as it did with Spore).

[kalniel]

Steam isn't too bad, it still has a number of drawbacks though.

Massive downloads which take a while, price and the file fragmentation (for those of us anal enough to be defrag whores!).

Price is an issue, but the others can be resolved by just using the Steam authentication and still installing off the disc, ala GTR Evolution.

[Agent]

I've also seen him demand a poster post pics to prove the copy of a game they were discussing playing was 'legit'

You clearly don't know the history of that thread then or you would have known exactly why a picture was requested. That is certainly not something that would have been done without very good reason.
It's not like we find a thread of someone asking for Photoshop help and ask them to prove they have a valid Photoshop licence....

[Hicks12]

ive never understood why online is normally more expensive since they have less costs, they have no costs for holding the stock(instore shelves etc), no paper manual/disk/box costs so that would certainly cover the costs of a sever and yet you pay sometimes double the price.

DRM fails but its not going to get sorted soon, tell the pirates to go die then maybe theres a chance.

[cleaverlch]

ive never understood why online is normally more expensive since they have less costs, they have no costs for holding the stock(instore shelves etc), no paper manual/disk/box costs so that would certainly cover the costs of a sever and yet you pay sometimes double the price.

I think the problem is that they only charge you in US dollars.

I personally find that the DRM which comes with far cry 2 isn't too bad, it could have been worse eg 1 install only.