Midianian's Blog / Tags / “drm”

DRM isn't All Bad

September 12, 2009, 11:22 AM
I actually have no problem with DRM provided that I can't tell if it's there or not. More specifically, if it:

• doesn't consume a noticeable amount of resources when running the game
• doesn't consume any resources when not running the game
• doesn't need a connection to Internet when the game doesn't
• doesn't introduce (additional) instability
• doesn't place any additional requirements to the hardware or software needed to run the game

For example, I have no problem with the DRM on consoles, as usually it's implemented within the above limits. I have no problem with Impulse, where the DRM-part takes place only during installation and updates (though a few games contain additional DRM. grrr).

No DRM in Retail Prince of Persia for PC

December 15, 2008, 04:21 PM
Wow. Just... wow.

Something like this really makes me want to buy it (if only to show support), but... from what I've seen, it sucks. I'm not going to buy a bad game just because it doesn't have DRM.

Well, I certainly won't be pirating it.

Review: Still Life

September 20, 2008, 03:38 PM
Most of what I wrote about the demo applies to this. Also, I'll be referring to what I said about the demo, so you should read that first.

The puzzles lessen in CSIness after the crimescene. They become much less sweep-the-room-with-the-mouse-enough-times-until-you-find-what-you're-looking-for variety and more the knowing-who-to-talk-to and using-the-right-item-on-the-right-thing variety. There's also occasionally actual puzzles, like a sliding puzzle and things like that. Some of these are a bit arbitrary or too complex and either slight brute force or the walkthrough is needed to solve them, but many are interesting brain-teasers.

The dialog system works like I described it. The thing is that in a game like this you're going to go through all the dialog possibilities anyway, so it simply doesn't matter whether you see what you're going to say next, or not. I think it's a good kind of interesting.

The game is much more straightforward than it's predecessor. The dialog is streamlined, and I don't think there's any possibility of getting stuck. There are very few moments when you don't know where to go or what to do, so the only showstoppers are the more complex puzzles.

The story is very interesting, though the cliffhangers between chapters are a bit annoying. Oh, there are two main characters. Victoria McPherson and her grandfather Gustav McPherson. Vic is in the present Chicago and Gus in the 20s' Prague. The character changes when the chapter changes.

I got a much worse impression of the ending from Eurogamer's review, but it really isn't that bad. The reviewer made it seem like it had just been cut right in the middle of the story.

This game tells one part of the story. There is closure, and this is a fairly obvious place to stop. Yeah, the story stays incomplete, but I'd say Matrix Revolutions and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest leave things at a much worse situation.

To use a popular expression; "The journey is more important than the destination". This should be true of any game. Also, with Still Life 2 coming out early next year, it shouldn't be a big problem.

The biggest downside to Still Life is that it uses StarForce (I mean this without exaggerating the downsides of StarForce). I'm not sure if you get it with the download-version, but the disc version does have it. Why is it bad? It crashed my computer three times for no good reason. That comes out as about half of the times I launched it.

If I had known (checked) whether it has StarForce or not before buying it, I'm not sure whether I would've bought it. Which would've been a shame, because this is pretty good.

The game itself was pretty stable. No problem alt-tabbing. It had some problems with the lock-picking puzzle, but other than that there were no troubles.

The soundtrack was quite excellent. Good enough to go spelunking into the game directories to find the files so that I can listen to them. Voice acting was good enough. Main characters were pretty good, with some less good actors thrown in there. Even the worse were still easily tolerable.

One thing that slightly annoyed me was that they mispronounced many of the Czech names. Mostly names containing a "C". This is nothing to worry about if you don't know how they should be pronounced, though. And I'm not even exactly sure about the mispronounciation. I've spent some time in Slovakia, and Slovakian is pretty close to Czech, and "C" is definitely pronounced differently in Slovakia.

Anyway, I give the game a Rocks!, even though it's on the lower end of that grade.

The official website (which just recently came back online) contains a good walkthrough for the game. I didn't use that, but it looks like it contains everything the one I used has, and more (namely, illustrations).

DRM Sucks

September 11, 2008, 05:58 PM
When are companies going to realize that using any form of DRM is a losing battle? DRM doesn't prevent piracy, it only delays it. With the bigger games this might only be a matter of days. The simple fact is that anything that can be played can be cracked. Once it's cracked, the DRM is just dead weight.

The inconvenience DRM brings is much bigger than the effect it has on piracy. Inconvenience for the users who bought the game and just want to play it. A good example of this is that many modern games simply cannot be played without an internet connection, even if the game itself doesn't require one.

EA on the DRM of Red Alert 3:

Wow. That's, like, so cool. A game I've paid for, that I can only install a limited number of times! If I buy a game, I also want to be able to sell it, which the limited number of installs hinders. Or maybe get it half-price. Either way is fine with me, but don't make me pay full price for a crippled product.

Also, any kind of piracy statistics and the "losses" calculated from those are horribly skewed. I don't think I've ever seen any of them that take into account the following:

• People who download a game just because it hasn't been released on their continent yet. These are people who buy the game when it does become available. Yet the companies count their downloads as losses.
• People who download games to test them. Similar to demos, except not pathetically short. After testing, many of them go out and buy the game.
• People who download a game several times. Say, because of harddrive meltdown or because they just deleted it for some reason and want to play it again.
• People who wouldn't pay for the game anyway. You can't call it's a loss if there was no possibility of gain in the first place.
• People who download it just because they can. Yes, there are these kind of people. They never actually play the game.

The fact is that you can get 99.9% of all games pirated. For free. Yet there are people who buy games.

They don't buy games because it's easier. Copy protection hassles are often worse for non-pirated software than for pirated software. The simplest example is the requirement of having the CD/DVD in the drive while playing.

They don't buy games because of the delay to crack it. On more popular titles, the delay might be only a couple of days, or the game might even be illegally available before the official release.

They buy games because they like the game, and want to support the company that made it. These are the people the companies should be thinking about. These are the people who get pissed off about horrible DRM.

Yeah, there are some companies that get some of these things right, but I don't think there's one that gets all of this.