Continuously online or no game (DRM)

[Strider]

But you pretty much 'rent' all digital games, because you're always reliant on the service providing you with the game actually being around. Take Sword and Power 1 + 2 on the iPhone for example. I paid ?1.75 for both games and deleted them (never got around to saving them on my PC) for some reason they are no longer available on the AppStore, so I'll never be able to play something I paid money for.

I have around 167 PS3 games. If my machine's hard drive dies in 10 years time, it's highly unlikely that the servers will still be around, so I've effectviely rented all those games and have lost them for ever.

Digital downloads, it's the future.

[Strider]

Oh and I'm playing Biopnic Commando 2 Rearmed right now and while it's tosh I have noticed something. You only have to be signed in to load the game. My connection seems really intermittant and has disconnected me most of the night, however I'm still playing the game though, even though I'm no longer signed into PSN.

[Family Fry]

I am sure you only have to be online to startup the game, it's like a one time check.
If you get disconnected mid-game it doesn't do an Ubi and boot you from the game.

comments like this about Final Fight make it comedy gold...

"yeah that **** pissed me off with Final Fight. I remember letting a friend sign on my account on his ps3 and when he downloaded it and switched to his account it locked us both out for 24 hours. I would love to play with a friend rather than some random person...... "

Then your friend can use his ****ing cash to pay for it you douche!
Oh almost forgot to say before Capcom said when they did this with Final Fight and I quote.

DRM was a "limitation of the Sony network" the inclusion on Final Fight: Double Impact was meant "to combat the rampant 'PSN Sharing' that has been going on over the last year."

"We are not committed to do this with all titles moving forward but the only way to evaluate impact was to try it with one title first,"

Evaluation worked it seems.

[Sketcz]

You know, I'd rather pay more money, for a version of the same game that only allows one download, than have that DRM.

Why can't they simply have two versions up: a one-download only version, so no sharing. And a DRM-protected multi-download.

It would be interesting to see which sells more.

[Family Fry]

One time only would cause just as much of a headache, download 20 games then your console dies and those games die with it, would much rather have access to allows me to re-download the title if required.

[JohnMcL7]

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.

Only when it's working which I don't find to be the case, for a while when I was travelling I was trying to play HL2 on my laptop without an internet connection. The game was fully activated but frequently refused to go offline and insisted I go back online which I couldn't do so I gave up on it. The complete lack of any error handling capability is incredibly frustrating as well particularly now I have a fairly large catalogue of games on the system which I get cut off from when Steam is in a bad mood.

Even though I have a 100% fully functional internet connection at home I'm still against some of these really poor DRM implementations. It came to a head for me a couple of years ago when trying to play a LAN game of RA3 which thanks to DRM limitations you couldn't do, instead myself and my brother had to go online, find each other and join the game that way. Because the game was new at the time the online service wasn't working too well plus an internet connection was never going to be as good as a local gigabit lan. We quickly got fed up of rarely being able to play a single game from start to finish and looked for solutions, the only viable one seemed to be to use a pirated version of the game which allowed for LAN play. Needless to say that was the end of that, there's something seriously wrong when you need to pirate a game to play it legally.

What really frustrates me about these DRM policies is that they don't actually prevent piracy and they just end up making it more difficult for legimate users to play the game while those who have pirated the game may be having a far easier time.

John

[EvilBoris]

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

Probably because they could see that more unique machines were playing the game that had bought it.

[Sketcz]

What really frustrates me about these DRM policies is that they don't actually prevent piracy and they just end up making it more difficult for legimate users to play the game while those who have pirated the game may be having a far easier time.

Exactly. If you're hell bent on getting it for free, you'll find a way. So for PC gaming it's absurd. The only thing it does it stop casual game sharing, and that's Sony's fault for allowing it - I stand by my view that there's no need for multiple downloads as a precautionary measure against dying systems. There must be a better workaround than 5 downloads but with bull**** DRM.

[charlesr]

Ring a law firm. Ask if there's any grounds for a discrimination action. Or something.

[Jusatsushi]

Just bumping this as I've had some ridiculous issues with Steam and DRM this last weekend. Got in from work friday evening after looking forward to a rare evening of games and Steam wouldn't load at all. Not only that, but it wouldn't let me start games offline, telling me that 'this game is unavailable at this time, please try again later'.

Yeah, I worked my ass off all week looking forward to a couple of glasses of red and a bit of Arkham Asylum on a friday evening and I instead spent two hours googling fixes blah blah blah...

And these are games I physically OWN. I have the boxes two feet away from my PC.

By the time it was fixed by deleting some files and rebooting my PC several times, I couldn't be arsed and went to bed.

Same thing this evening. Totally sick of DRM to the point that I would consider cracking steam games in the future because the f**king pirates don't have to deal with this rubbish, only the legitimate consumers do and as a practice it needs to stop.

Pirates crack DRM in hours. And then the only people it affects are the consumer and that's just ridiculous. There has to be a better way than this.

[eastyy]

well heard that diablo 3 will need a online only connection even for singleplayer

and the next stalker game will need a constant online connection...as it actually downloads files while you play

now i hate that...one thing my internet connection is not the best...but i think it will be worse for people who have a download allowance

as dara o briain said "the good thing about pirate dvds is that you dont have to put up with the warning about pirating dvds"

[Deuteros]

Somewhat related to its upcoming 10th anniversary, GOG.com has launched an initiative called FCK DRM.