The Settlers 7 was looking really promising until Ubisoft announced their new DRM. I might still get it, but not unless a working crack exists, and after waiting for that I might as well wait for it to hit the bargain bin too. The “secret war” on second hand resales is also a bit worrying. Even though I don’t buy or sell used games, the systems they’re coming up with mean that it’s going to be harder to get a game working again after too many years have passed. It’s also going to be harder to let a friend play one of my games when I’m done, which I’ve done a time or two before. All of that contributes to making me feel like a game isn’t worth quite as much, and encourages me to wait for it to hit the bargain bin or a steam deal.

The D2D point about not noticing any avoidance of DRM items is interesting, but I’m not sure it’s very meaningful. There’s a large difference in the mainstream appeal of their DRM-free titles, which are almost all indie, and their DRM titles, which are everything else including almost all the AAA titles.

D2D also seem to have taken that data about customers finding a DRM title less appealing than a DRM-free title to heart, and when a game does have DRM they avoid mentioning it anywhere. If a title is DRM-free they shout it out all over the game’s page, but the other games’ pages are completely silent on the point, not even telling you a game will be protected, much less by what. They say customers aren’t avoiding DRM, but they’re also trying to make sure those customers aren’t aware there’s any DRM to avoid until after they’ve already bought it.

I also think the StarForce guy is a bit disingenuous to suggest such long protection times on titles when these days he really only means Russian releases of those titles. Why would a non-Russian cracking group bother with even Clear Sky while it’s still only in Russian language, what’s the rush? Or why bother cracking Russian releases of Mount&Blade when cracks for the English versions have been available for months before the Russian version has even been published? I’m sure there’s a market for protecting Russian translated editions of games, but it’s wrong for StarForce to pretend they’re successful at protecting anything more than a niche market.

BS2, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Ugh.

In addition to that the insane prices charged for games(especially digital distributions that cost virtually nothing to distribute) add another reason to pirate the game before buying simply because things like honest marketing(all games are groundbreaking jadajadajada) clearly don’t apply to game makers/publishers.

As for the DRM, i personally crack ever single legit game i own simply because the DRM’s used in games often slows down the game(X3 was unplayable with starforce and ran like a dream after i installed a crack) and cause unnecessary crashes, i don’t really base my decisions to buy games on their DRM level but it certainly helps the user experience if there’s no DRM to begin with.

StarForce is bullshit and I personally would have absolutely no qualms about pirating a game with StarForce. The pubilsher decided he can fuck with the players as much as he wants, I feel no shame in not giving them any of my money. That combined with the Ubi$oft reaction and lack thereof to their forums exploding with anti-StarForce bias is enough for me to just flip the bird at that company and never buy their product again.

That said, I don’t really play modern games. The ones that I do play are on consoles and I still haven’t had the incentive to mod or softbreak my consoles. The anti-2nd hand initiative worries me, though, as I generally go for those simply because I really don’t give a hoot about playing games on “day 1″. I also follow the gaming news (although a bit sporadically), and I’ve gotten to see the rotten side a lot, too. It’s one thing for publishers to emphatize with consumers who buy their product and have trouble using it compared to, say, the recent breaking of low-level PS3 protections and the HUGE “gr8 now gimm3 cr4ckd g4m3s” response. That is a part of gaming culture I’ll happily avoid by paying for the games I appreciate.

Funnily enough, I don’t think there ever will be any correlation between GAMER HAET DRM and game sales. Modern Warfare 2 is an excellent example on this — really bad DRM, absolutely no modding or clan server support, huge gaming crowds bitching “We’re never going to buy this game” — and record sales. I guess it’s true — no such thing as bad PR.

Considering this result surely won’t be long before other software suppliers get chased/reprimanded for enforcing a system that blocks the 2nd hand market. With the sue-you mentality of the States how long before shopkeepers dealing with 2nd hand software start pursuing these DRM systems as an argument for lost revenue?

Yeah, I know they keep stating piracy as the reason behind DRM, but it’s arguably also in place to limit reselling as it’s just as much a “lost sale” as a downloaded one – hell, it’s worse… at least some pirates use a download as a trial before purchase – no chance at all of a new purchase if someone’s got it 2nd hand.

Just a thought for the next set of interviews…

Starforce are scum. I wrote to multiple companies explaining why I wasn’t buying their software all the time it came with Starforce.

Conversely I bought Galactic Civilizations II purely BECAUSE Stardock didn’t treat the customer like a thief and provided a product that had no DRM beyond a serial number. And even then you only had to use that if you wanted to patches.

That treatment, like a decent human being and not a thief, meant that I also bought the two expansion packs for the game too.

$120 or so that could have easily gone to, say, Ubisoft, had they not gotten into bed with the snake oil salesman and borderline criminals at Starforce. (Remember, Starforce linked to a torrent of Galactic Civilizations II to prove how bad releasing stuff with no DRM was. )

1) Have a Geforece 4 in your computer (with drivers from that period in time)
2) Install Beyond Good and Evil
3) Install I-ninja
4) Try to run I-ninja. Note the blue screen details indicating that it was the Geforce drivers that crashed.
5) Notice this happens every single time you try to run the game.
6) Uninstall Starforce
7) Note that you can now play the game, but due to the crashes the lifespan of your card has decreased exponentially.

Plus I loved this line. “Nobody will pay for something that actually useless.”

Yes. That’s why Securom is busted wide open and yet still winds up on most AAA titles.