Well, of course writing a letter/mail as to why is a good idea - but your letter will be proven meaningless if you give them money for the product regardless. Income is what matters in the end, not words. Just look at the Modern Warfare 2 boycott if you have followed that - a lot of people went against a certain design decision and then vast majority bought it regardless, making their claims quite empty.
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Well, but that makes the âboycottâ argument pretty pointless in general⌠
What you can do if you really set a mark is not buying a game you like because it has DRM AND sending a letter to each of the publishers to explain why you donât want to buy the game. But tbh I donât think many of the âno-DRMâ group are doing so for each possible gameâŚ
Yup, this.
As i said, it is counter-productive in most cases. I don´t like publishers forcing their retarded portals onto me, doing things with my machine i cannot control, messing with my file structure, storing data where i have a hard time finding it, popping stupid social features and achievements into my face - nope, i´m not going down that road and thankfully i do have a choice.
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I honestly believe that any and all DRM⌠EVEN online drm should have a time limit or a patch to disregard it after 2 years or so⌠as soon as sales go downhill to the point where itâs basically not worth DRM being on it anymore.
No matter what any company does, DRM will always be destroyed⌠As with the mentioned spore game, itâs on pirate sites freely without the DRM as is, so in the end itâs kinda not worth it when people will just get around it within the first month or so. With crowdfunded games, itâs best to gain the profit before the release sale and Star Citizen has shown that profit can be made ahead of any crack or pirate copy attempt. Micro transactions before the release seems to be quite proven if 40 million is any evidence to go by that it works.
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Moreso no one would ever pirate a game where he´s personally involved with - nor would he/she want anyone of their acquaintance to do so.
If you support a project via Crowdfunding with your money you feel that this in part also has become YOUR OWN project, and rightfully so.
DRM enforcing portals are a necessity for big publishers with a completely different philosophy: max shareholder value. Aka: bring development cost vs sales in the best imaginable short-term balance.
That translates into producing financially contained sequels for an established segment and milk that for as long as possible. While doing so, try to feint the customer about the mediocre quality of your product for as much as possible.* Enclosed application âbiospheresâ come in very handy here: If the customer won´t realize there is a gaming world beyond his DRM portal/APP store/You name it he likely won´t spend money on products of an actual higher quality or higher innovation potential.
Informed and self-assured customers don´t fit into this philosophy, obviously.
Now, Warhorse studios should ask themselves to which category the majority of those who pledge on an Indie Kickstarter title that goes beyond established RPG tropes - and that no publisher wanted to support in this form - belongs to.
If you follow established DRM limitations you basically disregard the trust your backers have put into your project by mistrusting them in return.
*Anyone seen the new âThiefâ since release? I cannot puke as much as i want upon the dazzling on this sheer incarnation of mediocrity. Perfect example of a sequel stereotype.
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Pls stop with this bullshit. Itâs insulting attempt to manipulation⌠You are imagining it like HurvĂnek war and generalizing all DRMs as most evil thing man ever created on top of that. DRM has many forms.
Here read first paragraph and do it twice just for sure.
I say Martinâs perspective on DRM and copy protection in general is a very reasonable and valid one.
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Personally I would love to know, what experience the various Warhorse team members have with different funding schemes.
As a user (hardly ever will be on the other side) of SW I like the idea of donations-type of payment. Maker says âif you like it, hereâs where to donate, we would set the retail price at $âŚâ. At the same time, asking the customers to pay in advance (before their first chance to use the full version of SW) puts the studio into a âbetterâ society of companies doing the same. I would not be surprised to hear that the assembly of big companies (or at least of their managements) look down upon programmers, who work on the donations scheme. I donât really know, but this is how it feels to me.
- You propably misunderstood here. Game will only need connect to internet once after/during installation. You can install it as many times as you wish
- You propably wonât be able to do that. (If every distribution will need steam)
- Or they can release their own patch to solve it.
But remember this was not official statement just half of Martins opinion.
If a developer can prevent the game from being cracked/available for free illegally to the general public for the first month of sales DRM involvement is usually a success. This is because the majority of sales and profit happen during this time. So although it is a question of âwhenâ the crack will be available, that âwhenâ is a very important âwhenâ, since if a DRM can prevent 1st month cracks it is worth putting into the software. Generally my encouragement to developers is to include the DRM for the first month sales, and then after that point have it either remove itself/no longer included in retail versions. However, if you canât prevent that for the first month of release it certainly isnât worth putting it in the game in the first place.
And CEG (the Steamâs DRM implementation) wonât prevent first month piracy, because itâs already been cracked. So Warhorse can either waste resources on their own DRM implementation or just go without and get some positive rep.
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Why do you think, that someone, who wonât pay for a game, has a problem to wait for more than a month on crack?
The DRM for the first month sales will irritate only regular buyers.
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Or maybe they can release a version of the game on their official website? Without it being tired to Steam, GOG etcâŚ
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I donât plan installing steam as root (yes, because NT AUTHORITHY\System on windows is the very same as root, and steam wants to run that way) for a game as this is a security flaw.
If the games is sold with DRM, i will crack it instead of paying for it, because i want to play the game, but i donât want the free flaws and a permanent service running in background.
People that will buy it on Steam doesnât care, they will buy it as they do with every games, but you can get people that doesnât use steam to buy your game too, instead of passing or cracking it. Up to you.
People that had in mind to donât pay for it wonât pay for it anyway. Be it DRM free or not.
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"simple online check of a serial number "
Seems like a waste of time that will not have an affect on piracy. Piracy is a fact of life and will never go away nor will it ever lessen. This has been proven time after time. Still holding on to the hope that even something minor can be done is just a waste of time and counterproductive at this point
This is basically just an extra process that paying customers who opted out of the very easily accessible option of piracy will have to go through and the pirates will not. No matter how minor a simple serial number verification is, itâs still something extra the paying customers are forced to go through that will have no impact on pirates. It just seems like a waste of time doesnât it?
It is completely illogical to me for anyone in the year 2014 with full freedom for their games distribution to not have GOG as at least an option. There are plenty of people who are fine with Steam and love it. Donât let the positivity towards Steam fool you, there are plenty of people who refuse to buy games on Steam, because in the end, itâs still DRM.
It wonât stop me from paying for the game as I have hundreds of games on Steam. But itâs the principle of the matter. With full freedom on your part for distribution and quite a few people asking for this DRM free option, opting for any sort of DRM no matter how minor, wonât look good in a quite a few peoples eyes.
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I pledged only $5, because I am no longer interested in games with DRM (bad experience, I guess), there are plenty of DRM-free games for me. I like this one, but I am not willing to make compromises on this, I know that I can vote only with my money and that it is just a small drop in the ocean but without rains there would be no ocean.
So, what I wanted to say is, if you make Kingdom Come DRM-free, then I will pledge more. If not, well, I gave you $5 already;)
PS: Steam is DRM. I know that some people like it, I do not mind if it is optional, but if there is no DRM-free version for me, I will simply not buy any.
PPS: What is worse about Steam is their Steam Subscriber Agreement, which implies, that you do not own games you payed for. If you do not agree with that, your only option is to delete your account, with all games tied to it.
No. Only very few games on Steam are DRM free. My experience with Steam is bad. I went on Holiday with my laptop, I had terrible internet connection and I was not able to play in off-line mode because I was not able to connect to Steam first (because previously was logged someone else to it). I had problems at one point or another with every single DRM protection I encountered, including Steam. I had never ever had problems with DRM-free games that would be bigger than problems with games with DRM.
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Thats first relevant complaint about steam I saw like ever.
DRM think isnât decided yet. So if there hopefully will be DRM free version you can buy it later. And also anyone else who isnât willing to risk to lost acces to their game even for one day.
How about preparing your Steam account BEFORE you go on holidays if youâre not sure whether youâll have good internet there or not? And even if not: there is always the possibility to have access to the internet with a phone (at least to log into your Steam account once) almost everywhere on this planet.
Iâve been playing PC games for more than 15 years now and times were much, much worse 10 years ago with horrible disc-protection systems like Starforce and stuff. Todayâs âlite DRMâ on Steam/Uplay/Origin is much, much better than that and I never had any major problem with one of them yet with more than 500 games on these platforms and playing PC games on them almost every single day of the year.
I donât say that there shouldnât be a DRM-free version for people who want that. But like always the biggest problem in most cases is positioned in front of the monitor.
Yeah, blame the user for trusting Steam that playing off-line games is possible and not reading the fine print. The thing is that you notice problems only when you encounter them. I learned my lesson and I do not bother with games with DRM. As I said earlier all I can do now is vote with my money so I buy the best DRM-free games and by not buying games with DRM I have more money to support business model that does not treat customers as thieves. It would be easy for Steam to allow people play their games without Steam, but they decided against it.