Continuously online or no game (DRM)

[Sketcz]

With the recent announcement that those ***** at Capcom have put DRM forcing you to be online to play Bionic Commando 2, as they did for Final Fight, I thought it time to make a topic.

This is a worse, more insidious practice than regional lockout for digital downloads. At least with most DDs I can play the game once I've got it.

Apparently Command and Conquer 4 and all XBLIG require continuous online connection to play. I had wanted to get a cheap 360 just for XBLIG, but now I hear that none of them work offline. This is a total deal breaker for me.

I live in the countryside and am lucky to get broadband at all (it's actually dial-up broadband, since setting the router up takes 15 minutes of trawling cables around my house), and on good days I get dl speeds of 180kb per second, and on bad days 30kb a second. That's when it works at all. According to the phone company myself and 3 other farming families are sharing some kind of old WWII cable which was never really meant to deal with this.

It frequently cuts out, gets throttled or refuses to work at all on some days. And when others in the area are using it at the same time it crawls along.

Any company who uses this kind of DRM are absolute bastards, and I'd boycott them on principle. Thankfully Bionic Commando and Final Fight isn't something I care about. But what about the next game? This could soon stop me from buying games simply because there is no way in hell I can manage getting online as and when I please.

What kind of **** is this?! It removes any chance of having a quick casual game, and it means everything needs to be planned days in advance.

We need to start making complaints and boycotting these bastards before this gets way out of hand. It's driving me nuts that there doesn't appear to be any online rage about this.

It is the worst practice, bar none, to have appeared in videogames. Possible the digital world in general. I would rather take heavy censorship, publisher dictatorship, and regional lock-out than always online DRM. Hell, I don't even have the choice, if a game has always online DRM I can't even play, and I'm forced to do something else, like read or watch TV.

[eastyy]

it would be a nightmare for me ...my internet connection is patchy at best plus i am now on a pay as you go type connection

[Sketcz]

it would be a nightmare for me ...my internet connection is patchy at best plus i am now on a pay as you go type connection

There you go, my point proved.

Isn't there some legal precedent to protect consumers from this? What we need is some hotshot lawyer who can find some legal loophole and force Capcom to stop doing this - and when they fall, other publishers will fall in line too.

What also pisses me off is the press - they haven't been shouting about this at all. EDGE, GamesTM, EGM, Retro Gamer and all the single format magazines should be making a stand and say: The line must be drawn here! This far and no further! They have a duty to defend the consumer (their readers) and fight their corner, don't they? Isn't that what the press does?

Most reviews I've of these games maybe give it a tiny passing mention, but say that it's generally fine. C&C reviews were al like: well, we had to review while being online, but apart from one time the connection died it was cool.

No it's not ****ing cool you slack jawed reviewer pleb. If I owned a publishing house I'd try to go head to head with them, make it my magazines policy to award all such games 1/10 without question. Alas I'm just one man standing against multiple faceless corporations all in each other's back pockets. Too much advertising money involved for anyone in magazines to risk complaining.

This basically means that if you lose your net connection, such as moving house, you've lost your game. What about when the servers get shut down one day?

[briareos_kerensky]

IIRC it has been discussed before, indie games on XBL require to be online to avoid material submission to rating boards, which is probably a lenghty and surely too expensive process for indie developers.

However, I agree that the whole "be online" things has been pushed too far, even when PC games started to require online activation.
Steam is a great tool that luckily avoid this online madness by switching to offline mode, but it's a tiny beacon of light in the darkest reaches of the abyss.
Last April I was in Japan and bought Dawn of War II expansion, installed on my notebook and validated the serial number through Steam, thinking that there wouldn't have been no problems to play it on the long trip back home...while Steam was happy to start its offline mode, Windows Live wanted an online connection to start the single player campaign.
Long trip back home was spent uninstalling the game, playing with the PSP and watching a Rainbow DVD.

I remember that Ubisoft tried to pull something like that, only to see its servers crashing down three days after the first game using ti disservice was launched.

[Flabio]

Not that it'll placate you, but the reason for needing to be online to start an XBLIG is to do with the rating system it uses to determine if the content is 'appropriate'.

With full price and XBLA games, you have the full ESRB / PEGI / CERO rating system applied. Before you buy the game you know what it's age rating and content indicators are, they're right there on the shop screen.

XBLIG games don't go through PEGI etc... That means their content ratings (violence, sex, etc...) are voted for by the people that play it, it's community vetted.

Now, the rub comes here in that if a game picks up too many 'this game is inappropriate' votes, or is deemed to contain illegal content, it might have to be pulled. That's why you have to be online to start it, cause the system has the option of yanking the game (not sure if it refunds you if it does, I'd assume so, but who knows? They've only pulled one game off the system post launch to my knowledge)

So yes. Pretty rubbish and flimsy reason, especially if you're used to how indie works on Steam, but it's basically MS legally covering their backs.

The alternative would be to force every XBLIG to go through the full ratings system (remember, it's MS policy to not allow any AO rated games on the system, something you have to sign up to if you want to put your content on the machine). Or to have someone at MS vet every game before it goes on (and seeing how many 'massage' joypad rumblers get added, I sure as hell wouldn't want that job).

As for Capcom doing it for the PS3 games, I haven't got a clue what the reasoning is there...

[Dirty Sanchez]

By forcing the online connection does this make it easier for the devs to prevent piracy, thus protecting the industry?

[Neon Ignition]

There's no reason Capcom would need to have applied it to BC:R2 other than being awkward. That said it doesn't surprise me, it's just another symptom of the online digital future that everyone keeps harping on about and chasing as some grand ideal. Things like this are early examples of the price tag attached to such a future, the companies will always be looking for more and more ways of controlling not just what games we buy or how we buy them, but also how we play them.

[eastyy]

By forcing the online connection does this make it easier for the devs to prevent piracy, thus protecting the industry?

perhaps for consoles.....but the time i had to set up halflife 2 on a dial up connection the hassle it was nearly tempted me to try and pirate the game

[Sketcz]

By forcing the online connection does this make it easier for the devs to prevent piracy, thus protecting the industry?

"Thus protecting industry?" Bit of a sanctimonious attitude, isn't it?

They're not some cancer charity trying to help starving limbless orphans in war-torn Africa. They're corporations; purveyors of mere entertainment. They don't need yours or anyone else's sympathy, tender caress or soothing balm to help "protect" their fragile selves. They should be on a leash and at my beck and call because I'm the one funding them, much like you and everyone else funds them. We should dictate what they do.

I am their master by virtue of the fact they survive by my wallet; the tail doesn't wag the dog.

Protect the industry?

**** the industry. What about protecting me the consumer?

[Dirty Sanchez]

Quality rant.

[Dirty Sanchez]

Which console suffers the least from piracy?

[briareos_kerensky]

Which console suffers the least from piracy?

PS3, because it has been cracked only recently. MicroSoft routinely bans modded consoles but this hasn't stopped piracy on it. I don't think that Nintendo is even trying to stop piracy on Wii and DS, which is saddening.

Whilst the PC is a more complex system, it is the perfect example that excessively strict autentication methods will scare customers away while being rendered obsolete couple of days after their deployment.

[Profit]

The fact remains that these are the type of games which would not have been released at all if there were no DRM or use management in place.

[averybluemonkey]

They're not some cancer charity trying to help starving limbless orphans in war-torn Africa. They're corporations; purveyors of mere entertainment. They don't need yours or anyone else's sympathy, tender caress or soothing balm to help "protect" their fragile selves. They should be on a leash and at my beck and call because I'm the one funding them, much like you and everyone else funds them. We should dictate what they do.

I am their master by virtue of the fact they survive by my wallet; the tail doesn't wag the dog.

Protect the industry?

**** the industry. What about protecting me the consumer?

No they're employees with families and mortgages. It's not the "faceless corporation head-honchos" that get laid off when profit targets aren't met, it's the engineers on the ground who get thrown on the rubbish heap and have to scrabble to prevent the bank seizing their house.

But you're right, screw them right? I mean they only made the damn things in the first place. Your entertainment is more important than their livelihoods after all.

[Jay]

"Thus protecting industry?" Bit of a sanctimonious attitude, isn't it?

They're not some cancer charity trying to help starving limbless orphans in war-torn Africa. They're corporations; purveyors of mere entertainment. They don't need yours or anyone else's sympathy, tender caress or soothing balm to help "protect" their fragile selves. They should be on a leash and at my beck and call because I'm the one funding them, much like you and everyone else funds them. We should dictate what they do.

I am their master by virtue of the fact they survive by my wallet; the tail doesn't wag the dog.

Protect the industry?

**** the industry. What about protecting me the consumer?

Superb.