Sometimes this place feels like a broken record. Game gets announced, it gets on Steam and the exact comments and sentiments are said. Maybe some of you should just stop playing games because it isn't going to get better for you, only worse. Steam isn't that fucking bad.
Maybe some of us think forums are meant for expressing thoughts and opinions? I don't know, what do you think? Discuss.
Do you think it's OK for these companies to tell you how and when to use what you buy? Can it be called "buying" when you need to ask permission every time to use what you paid for? Is it yours if you can't even access it unless you do whatever they tell you at their whim? Is it only getting worse for me, or perhaps for you as well? With over 30 years of perspective, it should be no surprise that my answers to all of those are negative (including the last, where "yes" is negative).
It sometimes baffles me at how vehement you are on making Steam and other DD platforms so anti-consumer. I can understand that you would prefer the physical copy but digital copies are not your enemy, even if it requires a connection. I'm sure you have dozens of PC games you can't even play anymore due to OS incompatibility, and if you can, you have to jump through dozens of hoops to get it to work again.Yeah, games like Vampire: Bloodlines can be a real bitch to get running on Win 7 - especially the Steam version b/c you can get other odd Steam errors. Just look at since their newest $5 deal for this game currently, where people jumped all over this deal and are having a really tough time trying to get it going and been expressing their frustration and asking for help like crazy on VTMBL Steam boards. (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=229)
Anyway, Im not going to delve into how PC indie games are also thriving on these platforms, I'll just throw that in as a perk of what came with all this.
Of course I'm vehement. This is something I feel strongly about. Emotion is sometimes infectious, and if I can wake up one complacent consumer to what's really happening, all of my time and effort will have been worthwhile. What I don't understand at all is the emotional defense of the abusive trends. There's nothing wrong with digital distribution. I have availed myself of it with generally satisfying results (e.g., Borderlands, Fable 2, Darksiders, multiple XBLA offerings). I get convenience (no trips to the store, no waiting days for delivery, no having to insert discs into the Xbox) in exchange for the risk that the HDD will fry and I won't be able to access XBL for whatever reason. I'm willing to take that risk. I see nothing wrong with it. But if MS all of a sudden popped up a message on my screen telling me I can't play my games unless I jump through some arbitrary new hoops, they'd lose my patronage in a heartbeat. If they forced me to be online to play, they'd have me by the balls anytime the company and I had a disagreement over anything. That my be fine by you, but not me; and I'll be damned if I'm going to be quiet about it as long as there's the remotest chance that my emphatic warnings will benefit someone.Enlighten me about consoles a little bit.
As for the future, I hope physical copies of games cease to exist, even on consoles, let everything get tossed on to the cloud.This, however, I do not understand. So YOU don't want to buy physical copies anymore, fine. I do. As it is I can't think of any modern PC game thats only sold at retail, but I can think of quite a few only sold DD. So what do you care if I buy a hard copy? No one is forcing you to.
Enlighten me about consoles a little bit.
What would you do, if your X360 HDD fries? Sure, you can re-download your stuff to another 360, as long as Live is up. But, where do you guys back-up just your game alone? I like putting my PC games back-ups on DVD disc(s), in case my PC HDD fries or something happens to it. Can you back up your entire game files on say portable X360 memory sticks so you can reinstall them?
Can you guys hook up your X360 to your PC and then copy those files from your 360 onto a DVD disc(s) or something?
I'm not a big fan of MMO's b/c if the game's unplugged, you got yourself a coaster. But, honestly - we don't live forever, right? So, life and games are basically all rentals, then.
Online Rating NoticeSource (http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp)
Online-enabled games carry the notice "Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB." This notice warns those who intend to play the game online about possible exposure to chat (text, audio, video) or other types of user-generated content (e.g., maps, skins) that have not been considered in the ESRB rating assignment.
And just to give you an idea of how poorly Steam works for me:
Xessive gifted me a copy of Terraria (thanks dude!) during the summer sale. I got home from my trip and decided to download it. We were going to the bookstore for a couple hours so I decided to let Steam download it while I was out. The game was only 18MB and on any other download service or manager that should take no more than 2 hours to complete. I came back 5 hours later, surely it completed long ago! Nope. Steam tells me it downloaded 45MB of data and that only 3 out of the 18MB for Terraria was complete. That was the only game it was downloading! I just....how?
D, the sale was long over by the time I attempted to download it.I had enough of 56K dial-up back when Far Cry 1 had that 150 MB patch download. That was the tip of the iceberg for me to move to DSL. Then, after GTA4 PC took over 10 hours to DL w/ DSL [about a year ago], it was time for me to move again to something faster.
Add customer-hostile DRM
PC gamers openly attacked Spore when it was released with activation limits, but Ubisoft has to be the king of annoying paying customers. It has recently been announced that Driver: San Francisco will require the player to be online to play the game.
Ubisoft claims this is a win for the company. It has seen "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success," a company representative told PC Gamer. The always-on requirement has been dropped from other games from Ubisoft in the past after the players complained, but it looks like it may be here to stay.
It's also worth pointing out that Ubisoft's servers have been hacked in the past, making certain games unplayable. Ubisoft may claim that piracy has been diminished, and we certainly can't argue with that assertion given that the company doesn't share usage data, but this is bad news for people who just want to play the games and don't have their systems hooked up to an always-on Internet connection.
SecuROM, activation limits, and always-on Internet connection requirements—there are multiple ways companies can choose to punish customers who pay for their games. In the past we've even talked to soldiers who are kept from playing certain games by these strategies.
Diablo 3 will also require a persistent Internet connection, and Blizzard's Rob Pardo agrees that it's kind of a pain in the butt. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that," he told 1up.
Just so we're clear, when you're bored on a plane, and you have your laptop, and you want to play the game you bought in order to fight boredom, Blizzard's official recommendation is that you play someone else's game. That's pride, right there.
Just so we're clear, when you're bored on a plane, and you have your laptop, and you want to play the game you bought in order to fight boredom, Blizzard's official recommendation is that you play someone else's game. That's pride, right there.
Welcome to the horrible future. (http://pc.ign.com/articles/118/1185726p1.html)I have no problem w/ buying digitally, given how much LESS this often costs. Most people have DVD, BR, or extra HDD's for back-up storage - so this ain't the issue. The kicker is - you need a fast Internet connection or this whole thing is just no good to you.
A number of readers have written in to express concern about this clause in the terms of service for Electronic Arts’ new digital distribution, Origin.
Here’s the key bit:
“If you have not used your Entitlements or Account for twenty four (24) months or more and your Account has associated Entitlements, your Entitlements will expire and your Account may be cancelled for non-use.” The “entitlements” it’s talking about are “paid and free downloadable content, unlockable content, digital and/or virtual assets, rights of use tied to unlock keys or codes, serial codes and/or online authentication of any kind, in-game achievements and virtual or fictional currency.”
We’ve asked Electronic Arts for clarification on this, but it suggests you might lose DLC, achievements, and even your account if you don’t log on for two years. Not exactly the kind of permanence we’ve come to expect from certain online services, is it? I can think of quite a few services I’ve not logged into for two years, and I’d still expect all my stuff to be there. Is anyone aware of similar clauses in other distribution systems or online game services?
We’ve had word back from EA regarding their peculiarly-worded terms of service for Origin.
Senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg explains: “The Origin terms of service are designed to protect against misuse of the Origin system. No Origin user who has paid entitlements and/or downloaded games will have their account cancelled or games expired due to extended non-use. The term regarding account cancellation for non-use is designed to guard against creation of non-active accounts for inappropriate reasons.”
So that’s good. As long as you weren’t intending to create non-active accounts for inappropriate reasons, anyway.
"Diablo 3 will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected," he [Tim Willits] said. "If you have a juggernaut, you can make change. I'm all for that. If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome."
I guess this sorta fits in this thread about "gaming trends".
Tim Willits of id Software thinks always-on internet requirements are A-OK! (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-10-id-software-on-always-on-internet-debate)
If he's right, my current disdain for PC gaming will become permanent. If consoles go that way too, or disappear in favor of telephones, I think my backlog will keep me entertained for the rest of my lucid life.
On the notorious flip side, if you're going to do the time, you may as well do the crime.
Next up, video! You must be online to watch that new movie, even if you aren't streaming it. New mandatory Bluray firmware could make it happen too. (I.e., new discs could be made not to work w/o it.)That's sorta what happened with the first batch of Avatar Blur-Rays, you had to connect online for it to download an update which would allow the movie to play. For someone like me, that's not really a problem I know how to do it but I'm imagining if my parents bought it and settled in to watch the movie only to be disappointed that it's not working unless they do some intricate task.
And I love how 90% of the people you talk to don't think this is a problem. It's the future, why the fuck are you so backward?I know! It's such a piss-off!
I can't wait for a nuclear war.
I'm beginning to think that these restrictive DRM measures aren't meant to prevent piracy, rather they seem more like an excuse to monitor the players.I'll go one step further - I say it's BOTH; they're meant to stop piracy AND monitor players.