I have HAD IT with games

[philehidiot]

I swore I wouldn't do it. I swore I'd not buy the new COD game but I did.

I started trying to play it for the 30 minutes I had free at 2000. It's now 2022 and I've tried starting it about 8 times. It will not work and it's all because it demands a server connection even for the single player. The server connection appears to be playing up and so my £30 is worthless.

This anti-piracy stuff (requiring YET ANOTHER LAUNCHER) with more mandatory updates is making gaming untenable for me. I can not cope with 20-25 minutes of pratting around every time I want to play a game. It's a GAME. It's easier to launch a SAM against an airliner.

If this gets any worse, I'm done with PC gaming. It's anti-consumer tactics at its worse.

I've actually spent more time faffing with the DRM related stuff than I have playing the game. It's utterly stupid.

[philehidiot]

I searched for support and they suggested running a cable to rule out wifi issues. Sure, I'll drill a hole or 20 in my house, run a cable downstairs to the other side of the house and plug my PC in after spending a load of money on cable and bits, just to help your troubleshooting. Or should I just unplug my PC, remove the carefully routed cabling and spend a couple of hours removing and reassembling downstairs (and back again) purely so you can tick the box?

My wifi is connected to a stupidly expensive Alfa USB deelie (because everyone needs packet injection, right?) and I've got an antenna that has a 4 mile range (2-3 in poor conditions) and it has all been configured manually with the router. It works. Stop blaming me for awful development. Oh and for tech support, the first link is to.... REDDIT!!!!! Why ask their paid, professional tech support when you can get nerds to help for free?

I have demanded a refund and sent a very angry email about launchers, mandatory updates, singleplayer that kicks you off if the internet even farts and said I'd be better off pirating it as I'd not have these issues which only affect the honest consumer. It's like banning guns - the criminals have them illegally anyway, you just punish the honest folk.

[Scryder]

I don't play COD, or many AAA games. But I do understand and feel your frustration of always on DRM's, I've been disconnected on a number of single player games... it kills your anticipation and excitement for a new game.

Most of the games I play on PC however don't have this issue. Just the AAA games, and console ports.

An exception is Silent Hunter 4, which I got years ago... but I was not a fan of Tages DRM. So I installed it 3 years ago but never played it. I now have a folder for it, which will turn on Tages (if I ever choose to actually play it, my interest disappeared since then), then turn it off again when I stop playing. I actually call the file "_RUN FIRST AND LAST - TagesSetup_x64.exe"!

Anyways, if a game does what you've had to deal with, I'll give up, and play something else, unless I really want to play it.

EDIT: WOW, I wrote the above with your first post. That's just ridiculous!

[philehidiot]

I have my games and related stuff on the right side of my screen. There are quite a few old games on there which require no launcher and could be bought on CD. So exclude them and we have:

Far Cry 4 - next to Uplay. Stopped playing as I went to level up my character and explore the world and it ramped up the "random attacks" as it wanted me to play the story so I'd be exposed to more microtransactions (figured it out after reading an article on this a while back) which made the game unplayable. I can't travel for more than about 20 seconds away from a base without getting attacked and as soon as one attack finishes, another one starts. Which means you have to go back to the base to restock on ammo and armour and start it all over again. That got old. Fast.

COD II WW2 - console port which was almost completely unplayable until I worked out how they'd merged two sets of controls to make it an easy console port (one level with a tank and console orientated controls which conflicted completely with how PCs have always worked tank controls).

Battlefield 4 - next to Origin. Bug ridden, great game except for bugs which mean I never play it at all. Launcher keeps updating and asking for username and password which I now keep in a notepad file next to the icon. Security.

Legacy COD games bought on Steam - generally work but the mandatory updates are a PITA and often rob me of half the time I have to play. Sometimes you buy a game on steam and it installs another launcher and payment platform. For the latest COD I had to sign up to two different services and install a launcher in addition to 160GB+ of downloaded game.

Guessing my "amazing" gaming PC will be playing Portal and Skyrim for the foreseeable until this stuff either works itself out into some standard platform (it was really quite tolerable when it was just Steam) and the fragmentation ends or AAA titles just move completely to consoles. I suspect that may be their end game - only the most dedicated and resilient to bull will continue on PC and buy the expensive hardware but the casual gamers will give up and get a console.

[Saracen999]

I feel your pain, philehidiot.

I decided many years ago, when Steam came out, that I was not putting up with that, and for these and a few other reasons. I don't think many here understood my "no way" attitude, but it was primarily about hassle-avoidance, about not setting myself up for this kind of frustration.

With the spread of Steam, and a few others, making these kinds of DRM risks so widespread, I also declined to spend hours trying to work out exactly what obnoxious DRM some new game had, and would rather just not bother. So I didn't buy a 'new' game for years until someone here (thanks, Ferral) told me about GOG.

So now, I wait. I wait until it comes out on GOG. And if it doesn't ... well, it's a game. No matter how good it won't kill me if I never do play it. It makes life just a bit less frustrating and is good for my blood pressure.

[DanceswithUnix]

I suspect that may be their end game - only the most dedicated and resilient to bull will continue on PC and buy the expensive hardware but the casual gamers will give up and get a console.

I find consoles no better for casual use.

I bought a PS3 for use as a bluray player. If I want to binge play a game it has been great, but if I want to just dip into a game... first the OS wants to update (which thankfully isn't mandatory for playing a movie), then the game wants to update. Half an hour later, my window for a quick blast on whatever game I wanted to play is gone.

My son plays on his xbox and switch a lot, so the update overhead doesn't hurt.

[Ice Tea]

You never see anyone posting " I have HAD IT with PORN "

[philehidiot]

Funnily enough I was just on GOG.... It feels wrong to take a game from 1993 and play it on a Vega64 machine but.... it might just have to happen.

[Ferral]

Funnily enough with GOG there are a lot of games that don't work on X64 machines.

Sacrifice which is one of my favourite action/strategy games locks up during the tutorial which is no biggie as it is last bit. But when you actually start playing it the game locks up a few minutes into playing the first level.

Revenant is another great game which is an Action RPG. You cannot run it with 3D acceleration as it just won't start at all. You literally have to run it how GOG have configured it with a software renderer

There are also loads of titles that require you to add the exe files into the DEP settings on Windows or they just won't run at all.

I do have loads of games on PC on CD/DVD but it can be a chew getting them working. Last night was trying to play Mage Knight Apocalypse but it won't go at all. Discworld Noir is another that just won't go (granted it was REALLY buggy when it was released and never got completely fixed).

When it comes to Triple A titles I usually go for a copy for either my XB1X or PS4 Pro. Only niggle is updates can drop much like PC games and you can be sat waiting for it to finish before you can play. PS4 is worse for this as the network also tends to be slower.

[GamingLexus]

I feel your pain and sympathise. I no longer buy AAA games after being burnt too many times before. From previous experience, often, they're so riddled with bugs and £extortionate at release.

The additional launchers are annoying. I no longer buy the Battlefield franchise games because of Origin and the aforementioned, nor the Far Cry franchise on uplay.

I deleted my Epic account as I kept getting spammed with emails saying someone was trying to access my account. I deleted my Battle.net account for a number of well publicised incidents in the last 12 months.

I know that these other companies are trying to create competition which usually increases market standards and quality. However, I like having all my games on and accessible from one platform (Steam). More importantly, none of the other platforms even come close to the featureset offered by Steam, reviews and workshop the features I value most.

[adidan]

CDProject Red - great games and no DRM. In fact they've helped show how pointless DRM is, beyond annoying everyone.

[philehidiot]

Dunno where I saw it (probably on Hexus) but a dev put their game on torrent sites for free and they saw a 4 fold increase in paid for downloads.