Earlier this month, one of the Fallout 3 developers at Bethesda described the intended DRM for the game as the “mildest form possible.” Well, Securom7 isn’t really the mildest form possible, since it has a serious problem coexisting with drive emulation software like Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120%. Now, they could have done a lot worse, and to be honest, it doesn’t interfere with most users. But it doesn’t seem to be deterring pirates (I count about 50,000 people downloading it on TPB as I write this), and after making a serious statement like your DRM will be “basically nothing,” the vocal minority will have its say. Even the pirates will complain! (look on the right)
The solution? Get that sucker on Steam. I did. No disc, no worries, and it doesn’t seem to have any trouble living next to my Daemon Tools, either. Clicky there –>
The risks associated with digital distribution are all but eliminated at this point, while the difficulty of using discs becomes greater and greater. Like Blu-Ray, boxed copies are going the way of the dodo. It’s too much effort to go kicking and screaming so I’m just going to go limp.
[thanks for the tip, Matt]
I think it’s interesting to watch thieves drive up the price of video games, video game consoles and online gaming by stealing games from The Pirate Bay. That is really a wild situation because you would think that legitimate consumers and customers of these types of products would work to stomp out piracy. In time games will become so expensive that only the rich will be able to buy them because thieves will have driven the margins into the ground.
There is a VERY simple solution to this…. STOP MAKING THE PIRATED VERSION LESS OF A HASSLE TO USE THAN THE LEGAL VERSION!
Why can’t the publishers understand this? If you make the consumer jump through a million hoops to get something to work, they will just pirate it not just for money, but just for the sake of not having to go through that nonsense.
At this rate copy protections do absolutely NOTHING but punish the local consumer who purchased the item legally, meanwhile the pirates are able to enjoy the game the day it comes out with no copy protection hoops to jump through.
There are publishers who have tried not putting any DRM on some of their games, and the result is usually overwhelmingly positive from the community.. many times going as far as to make pirates purcahse the game just to show support and be strictly AGAINST the pirating of the game.
very good work by asmin more Technology News http://skilltech.blogspot.com
Nice email addresses.
heh heh, forgot the step where i blur those out
I thought they were fake ones and said it as a joke, or they were the ones everyone knew.
ANOTHER one of these “Digital Distrobution will kill physical media” rants?
I also notice this site seems to have been on a warpath against Blu-Ray lately as well.
… in fact, Crunchgear in the last month or so seems to have had complete and utter hatred for any technology that is more than 5 years old.
You have a landline? How anchient
You use physical disks? How anchient
I for one cannot think of a WORSE fate for gaming or movies than the end of physical media. I honestly don’t understand how you can possibly support the idea of a Digital Distrobution-only media culture, the restrictions are WORSE than DRM.
Want to try a game before you buy it? Better hope there is a demo, because you can’t rent a DD game. Good luck deciding if a movie is good from the trailers, or you could read a review and basically have the movie spoiled for you.
Want to buy a game used? Sorry, only one or two sites sell the game download, and they are NOT going to lower their price.
Lower competition means less frecuqncy of pricecuts.
Want to borrow a game or movie from a friend or let them borrow one? Too bad.
Want to buy an older game for an older system? Sorry, system is usless without the servers that were taken offline for new systems…. but im sure you can repurchase these “classic” games on the new system’s DD service.
Backwards Compability will be a boon….. because it means rebuying all your games whenever the new system is out.
Have more than one console/DVR in the house? Better hope by some rare chance they allow shifting your media to another, but I woulden’t hold my breath.
Honestly, about the ONLY advantage DD has with replacing physical media is you don’t have to leave the house and go to the store, great trade-off there.
Just because its new dosen’t mean you need to toss everything else away to jump on the bandwagon, most people, even gadget geeks, still prefer regular miliena-design-old books to e-book readers.
All the publishers want to switch to DD-only because they have everything to gain and nohing to lose…. at the expense of consumer rights. They have full control and can restrict or even take back anything. Funny how this site seems to be against kill-switches on cellphones but a DD-only world would be kill-switches on steroids couples with dosens of other problems.
And finally, some of us like to collect, we enjoy having a collection of games or movies, a PHYSICAL one, not a collection that is nothing more than a bunch of magnetic impulses on a platter that will not last more than maybe 5 years, 10 if you are lucky. At least if the disk somehow gets damaged that is ONE item you lose, if your harddrive gets damaged, and it will, you lose EVERTHING in one shot.
Don’t get me wrong, I do NOT hate DD, I love the idea, I just don’t want DD to be the ONLY option.
Honestly, WHY is everybody so dead-set on killing off all physical media and having NO choice but DD? Other than handhelds so you would not need to carry around several cartridges/disks, what possible advantage is it in the home over physical media?
Excellent points across the board in this comment, Akuma. The control grab by devs and publishers for our PCs and the naïve acceptance of most gamers that it’s OK for them to hold all the cards as the merchant and for us to have no rights as the consumer is disturbing to say the least.