Give me one example of a known DRMed game that hasn't been cracked.

Exactly. And while those who decide to play the game using the crack suffer absolutely no consequences whatsoever of the holy™ DRM applied to the game, those who play it legally do. It's only so big because people apparently think that this is "not self-evident". :shrug:

The effectiveness of the measure has nothing to do with it's purpose. Gun control laws don't stop criminals from getting guns, but that doesn't mean we just give up and stop trying. Drug control laws don't stop criminals from selling drugs, but that doesn't mean we just throw our hands up and say "forget it".

DRM isn't there to make anybody suffer either, nor is it there for punishment. It's there to prevent piracy, and that's all.



That's how laws work. Why have speed limits? Why have taxes? Why have any law at all? Every single law affects all citizens and applies to all citizens, just because of the few who break those laws.

The point is that gun laws actually do make it harder to get guns illegally, while DRM doesn't make it harder to illegally play a game at all.

Yeah? What about people who burn their friend's disc or something just to find out that it doesn't work? Not everyone is knowledgeable about cracks, so I would argue that DRM does work to a degree.

*reads first page*.....
*reads last page*

Oh bother.

When I was younger and had no value for money, I use to pay to play this really cheap isometric game called Dark Ages. It was 14$ a month and looking back at it now, it was the biggest waste of money EVER.

A couple years back I started playing Runes of Magic, a world of warcraft MMO clone. It was Free to play but of course there was an online shop that would sell items that could speed up stuff like leveling, or even colour your armor and what not. I think I dropped a third of my payment from a client on a few dyes and XP doublers. Of course, like any MMO you can't buy what you want, you have to buy the game currency, so I dropped roughly 120$

Once again, looking back on it...

BIGGEST WASTE EVER.

If I pay for something, I want ownership and access to it FORVER, like an Xbox game or a pair of shoes.

I'd have to agree. Well, except perhaps times when the media makes it known to the world and makes a big deal about it. Nice to know that I'm not the only one on the forum who thinks this.

Edit: I don't want to upset anyone and I don't want to question the intelligence of anyone here. But I often get the impression on this forum that a large portion of people in charge of making video games are idiots, and I find myself skeptical of such a drastic idea.

well, its time for me to chime in here.

Money, its for spending!
I am going to die some day, all the money in the world ever is not going to stop that, so hording money is, to me, very stupid.

I have not played a MMO in a while, but I will admit when I played EVE online I spent right at $200 buying plexes and selling them in game ( 100% legal ) for in game ISK, I had a boat load of fun over 6 months.
Two accounts for 6 months, then a few plexes.

Wow?
Three accounts for almost 4 months

Warhammer?
one account for 5 months.

Really? its $15 a month, whoopide do.

Unlike some of you, not all of us can play the same SP off line game over and over, Dragon age is the last SP game since NWN2, I have more than 40 hours on ( 115 ATM and am completely burned out ) spent $60 for COD MW2, got 50ish hours from it, as opposed to WOW where ( counting only 1 account/toon play time ) some where around 1 month on my warrior, no counting the priest, pally and rogue.

O.K so WOW is not the best mmo I ever played ( rpg world, SWG and EQ 1 come to mind ) but each class plays completely different, not counting all the content you get, the social interaction as well as just goofing around.

Yeah you can say mods, but as I have just gotten back into moding FO-3 I remember why I quit out of anger.

Mod A is cool, so you get it.
Mod B is neat so you get it.
Mod C is the best thing ever, but won't work with mod A or B, so either loose the things you like about those of skip out on C. OR have two separate game saves, and two separate load orders ( how I hate load orders )

MMO have "mods" as well, I ran three completely separate UI's, raid meters and countless other things depending on class.

Own it?
so what? I own Lords of the realm 3, I paid $53 for it, and I played it all of 45 mins!
I have a five foot long shelf FULL from one end to the other of games and then games stacked on top of them, out of all of those dragon age and KOTOR and mass effect have over 60 hours on them, the MMOs setting on my shelf ( minus EQ 1 ) all have well over 2-3 weeks on them.
WOW,
Warhammer
LOTRO
SWG
I do not have boxes to all of them, some where bought and D/L like EVE and RPG world.
EQ 1 is the only game I have over 1 years worth of "/played" time, right at 1 year 4 moths when I quit right down to LOTRO and that has a little over a month on it.

What does it really matter if you own it and you are not playing it? sure you may have been playing morrowwind off and on for 8 years, but not all of use are like that.
When I die, it won't matter what I "own".

so, where does that money go? I think it takes a lot of sales and maybe a few months to turn a profit., why?

1) first you have to come up with a idea
2) then you need a team, and you have to pay them
3) then you need 2-5 years of spending to make it, while paying for the team, and the software/hardware to create the game.
4) then you need to buy and set-up servers and such
5) then you have to pay to have the discs and boxes made, as well as all the instructions, the web page and T.V ads and other ads.
6) Marketing has to be paid, and has costs. ^
7) I am sure the connection type for so many connections is not cheep.
8) you kinda need a building to do all the making and testing
9) gotta have some place to house the servers
10) money to fix/replace servers that go down, and to add new ones as needed
11) money to pay people to monitor the servers and ensure they are working, and fix them when they stop.
12) gotta pay people to make patch's and beta test them.
13) power/water heating and A/C for the buildings.

I am sure there is much more to it as well.

If that is the case in which DRM functions as it was meant to, then a far simpler CD/DVD copy protection mechanisms would have done, while being much easier on the legal player than DRM. :-/

I agree. I think a serial key + copy protection is all we really need. Anything else is overkill, since pirates crack everything in a day anyways.

I pay for World of Warcraft because it's fun, and it's worth paying for. :shrug:
That's the only reason I need.

Well that was my point in the first place!

I know what you guys mean, these multimillion dollar companies obviously have no idea what they're doing or how to spend money..

Edit: OT, I play free MMO's because I lose nothing but a bit of time trying them. I don't play pay to play MMO's because I'd much rather spend my money elsewhere.

I don't see any reason at all why any game should be a monthly subscription based game to be frank. When I buy a game from a store, I expect to be able to go home, put in the disk drive, install it and be off without further complications (of course for games with online multiplayer, creating a user account is included), and NOT giving my credit/debit card details. And before the words "It's a much bigger game than those that don't have monthly subscriptions" are uttered, I will have to say X3: Terran Conflict. Granted that game isn't multiplayer, but I've spent much more time playing that than any MMO that I've played.

Another thing I would like to note is the fact that while you have to pay however-much-a-month for WoW, you still have to go out and buy the disks for the expansions. Now, I don't know about you but I would very much like my however-much-a-month to pay for ANY new content that gets released, not just some of it

That is just a mute and weak weasel-argument. The fact that someone has X dollars has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, we're talking about whether the modern DRM application in game copy protection is fair towards the end-user or not, not whether they manage to gather bunchloads of money despite it not being fair.

My argument is that the companies publishing these games obviously know far more about what they're doing than you.

Again, that has got absolutely nothing to do whether what they're doing is fair to the end-user or not.

DRM doesn't work. In fact, counter pointing what Capitol said, EA released a tool to remove DRM. How about that eh? They sure knew what they were doing!

DRM helps no one at all. Each game ever released has been cracked, DRM or not. No copy right prevention method will ever work.

Which has nothing to do with paying for MMOs.

When did we change to an arbitrary topic about the "fairness of DRM"?

Along the way. That's just what happens with discussions. :shrug:

But it does, if the end-user thought they were being screwed over, than the companies sales would go down. The publishers, without a doubt, thought about DRM and its effect on the public, decided to go ahead with implementing it.

Show me evidence that sales have decreased since they implemented DRM and solely because of that fact, or save yourself some time and realize that businesses think about what they're doing before they do it.

Last I checked the topic was about how DRM doesn't work... so why are ya shooting him down for giving his opinion? <_<

Like I said before:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/23014/Electronic_Arts_Releases_DRM_Reversal_Tool.php

Maybe not related to sales, but they definitely got a lot of vocal criticism and decided to remove it.

Exactly. Which proves only that the majority of the end-users think that they're not being screwed over, not that they indeed are not being screwed over.


edit: Plus what tesfanner said.

Well 3/4 (or more) of what you just said is needed for about all game developers.