It's a good thing Blu-Rays have that anti-scratching surface. It really does work. I haven't come across a rental Blu-Ray yet that didn't have a perfect surface.
I originally didn't believe in those claims when I first heard about them, and regretted the loss of the MiniDisc-like casing they were originally planning to use. But it really seems like they've managed to reduce the risk of accidental scratching a lot.
I'm sure you can still scratch the discs if you really go in for it though... a screwdriver should do the trick!
DRM sucks because it can be a hassle for paying customers and not for thieves.
But that's my point- this argument is really old and most people have their minds entirely made up. Some people will always buy legal copies and deal with the DRM because they hate the thought of stealing games. Some people will always download free games, and if a game has DRM, they'll use that as an excuse to pirate it. A hell of a lot more people are probably somewhere in between. I really doubt that we'll be changing any minds here >_>
@Chyron: Concerning the ISO-option, that's not really a possibility for, say, Steam. Since it doesn't allow you to download an installer on your PC, like, say, TTG.
But that's my point- this argument is really old and most people have their minds entirely made up. Some people will always buy legal copies and deal with the DRM because they hate the thought of stealing games. Some people will always download free games, and if a game has DRM, they'll use that as an excuse to pirate it. A hell of a lot more people are probably somewhere in between. I really doubt that we'll be changing any minds here >_>
If I'm not mistaken, the only reason anyone uses DRM (aside from crazy evil companies like Ubisoft etc.) is to prevent casual piracy, not ALL piracy.
I remember casual piracy quite clearly, back when CD burners first came out and all you had to do was burn a copy of a game for your buddy and they had it too. If there are even minor deterrents preventing someone from doing that, odds are, they won't. If minor DRM isn't enough to stop someone from making pirated copies of a game, neither is major DRM. That's always been my understanding of the issue.
And if you're worried about losing the ability to play your games if an activation service shuts down, we have non-DRMed copies of our games on our internal servers that I'm pretty sure we'd release if for some reason our games were about to become completely non-unlockable.
"Internal servers"? :eek:
I hope you guys also do off-site backups, in case a meteorite happens to land on the TTG offices...
np: The Fall - Hey Luciani (Rebellious Jukebox Volume 2 (Disc 1))
DRM isn't to keep people from pirating, in the strictest sense, it is more an action to keep the stock holders happy.
I've already addressed this. It IS to keep people from pirating, but it is NOT to keep pirates from pirating. It exists primarily as a hoop that most people aren't willing to jump through. I know from personal experience that in the pre-DRM days, people would be more than willing to burn off copies of games for their buddies, or let them borrow the disc to install the game, etc.
The entire purpose of DRM is to prevent CASUAL piracy, it is not intended nor expected to prevent someone who has no intention of buying the software in the first place from pirating it, nor should it. You cannot protect software from hackers, you CAN protect it from casual piracy, as most people are not willing to go online to download cracks in order to be able to share a game with a friend.
If talking about energy production, only nuclear is the sensible way forward. People are scared of it for simple misunderstanding and an individual catastrophe which happened due to bad design. People fear what has once gone wrong, yet it is probably a lot safer than current methods.
Haven't there been two nuclear accidents? Chenobyl and Long island (although i think that was a near miss).
Anyway, I don't think Nuclear is the way forward. It takes years to set up, isn't renewable (granted the supplies of radioactive elements will last for hundreds of years, but what if a new use is discovered for it?), and produces radioactive waste that has to be disposed of somehow.
Plus, nuclear disasters, as rare as they may be, are far too severe for the risks. Chenobyl is still outputting high portions of radioactive material. It affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and was a major force in the collapse of the soviet union. If a similair disaster occured in the UK, i don't think our country could cope.
Nuclear power may be pretty safe, but theres still the chance that it could fail, leading to severe consequences.
Factoid: uranium isn't green. In fact, in nuclear powerplants, it causes the water to glow blue.
Anyway, OT: I preffer digital versions, if i can port it onto different consoles or whatever. I love being able to just boot a game from the harddrive without discswapping, but i hate the fact Nintendo (aswell as limiting games to 40MB, and overpricing alot of it) only allow it to be used on one console. If my wii breaks? I've lost £90 worth of games (albeit £40 of those were bought with free points from club nintendo, but still), ontop of the £180 for the console. It's one of the factors that would put me off buying a new one.And one of the reasons i won't buy DSiware (i'll inevitably upgrade to the 3DS in the future, so why bother?)
I still like disc versions of certain games, which is why i think TTG have the perefect strategy. Digital downloads, earlier, and/or a DVD later, and slightly more expensive (with shipping).
The entire purpose of DRM is to prevent CASUAL piracy, it is not intended nor expected to prevent someone who has no intention of buying the software in the first place from pirating it, nor should it. You cannot protect software from hackers, you CAN protect it from casual piracy, as most people are not willing to go online to download cracks in order to be able to share a game with a friend.
This and your previous post are dead on. I feel like you have to just get over the hump of it being not trivially simple to copy your games.
If I'm not mistaken, the only reason anyone uses DRM (aside from crazy evil companies like Ubisoft etc.) is to prevent casual piracy, not ALL piracy.
I remember casual piracy quite clearly, back when CD burners first came out and all you had to do was burn a copy of a game for your buddy and they had it too. If there are even minor deterrents preventing someone from doing that, odds are, they won't. If minor DRM isn't enough to stop someone from making pirated copies of a game, neither is major DRM. That's always been my understanding of the issue.
I understand that, but simply putting copy protection is enough to stop most people. I for one can't copy DVD's, or games post 2000 (or at least i couldn't before). Isn't "you must be online at all times!" or "4 installs and thats it" overkill? In fact, Ubi's DRM has probably put off alot more customers than it's gained by force. I know i won't be touching a Ubi PC game with a barge pole anytime soon.
@Chyron: Concerning the ISO-option, that's not really a possibility for, say, Steam. Since it doesn't allow you to download an installer on your PC, like, say, TTG.
No, but there is an option to backup your games on a disc. It also creates an installer which installs Steam (if you haven't already) and installs the game files from the disc to your hard drive. It'll even span across DVDs, I believe, if it's too big too fit on one. Still requires Steam to work, but it's a decent quick-backup option if you don't want to wait to download games every time you format. I used to do this, but now that I've acquired a 640GB external hard drive I find that much more intuitive than creating a backup and using up blank discs.
I originally didn't believe in those claims when I first heard about them, and regretted the loss of the MiniDisc-like casing they were originally planning to use. But it really seems like they've managed to reduce the risk of accidental scratching a lot.
I'm sure you can still scratch the discs if you really go in for it though... a screwdriver should do the trick!
I display my physical media as a point of pride. I love being able to peruse a real tangible shelf to find a DVD or game to play. It's not quite the same as clicking a little button on a screen.
In the future, you and guests in your home will be wearing augmented-reality glasses (like in Heavy Rain) that make your (mostly empty) walls appear to be lined with physical copies of all the digital books and games and movies you own.
You'll also have the feeling of physically perusing them, because your augmented-reality gloves (again, Heavy Rain) will have a haptic-feedback setting that presses back on your fingers when you "pick up" a game, making it feel like you're holding a physical object.
(Of course, some elements of your library and decor will be password protected - your X-rated movies, your trashy romance novels, your Con Air poster. You'll see those, but guests won't.)
I understand that, but simply putting copy protection is enough to stop most people. I for one can't copy DVD's, or games post 2000 (or at least i couldn't before). Isn't "you must be online at all times!" or "4 installs and thats it" overkill? In fact, Ubi's DRM has probably put off alot more customers than it's gained by force. I know i won't be touching a Ubi PC game with a barge pole anytime soon.
Well, I am talking about the kind of DRM that has to exist. I agree that for a retail disc-based game, online activation is ridiculous. Requiring you to be online at all times is flat out ridiculous, no question about that.
For something like TTG's downloads, they don't have much of an alternative, but the fact that they give out so many activations, and will even increase your activations (within reasonable circumstances) if you ask nicely, makes me not even concerned with it.
I think TTG has got a pretty good handle on the proper application of DRM though, in any case. (W&G Collector's DVD aside)
Haven't there been two nuclear accidents? Chenobyl and Long island (although i think that was a near miss).
Anyway, I don't think Nuclear is the way forward. It takes years to set up, isn't renewable (granted the supplies of radioactive elements will last for hundreds of years, but what if a new use is discovered for it?), and produces radioactive waste that has to be disposed of somehow.
Plus, nuclear disasters, as rare as they may be, are far too severe for the risks. Chenobyl is still outputting high portions of radioactive material. It affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and was a major force in the collapse of the soviet union. If a similair disaster occured in the UK, i don't think our country could cope.
Nuclear power may be pretty safe, but theres still the chance that it could fail, leading to severe consequences.
Factoid: uranium isn't green. In fact, in nuclear powerplants, it causes the water to glow blue.
Well in the UK we have been using nuclear power for over half a century, supplying 20% of our power. Something like Chernobyl happening only means that we will have tighter safety precautions. Nuclear power is the only method we have to replace oil, nothing else even in combination is plausible. Estimations suggest we have centuries worth of it. In that time it is more than likely a solution will occur, possibly involving fusion.
I still lean more to the Physical side because most of the time it IS better, I've spent money here on the TellTale website and Steam but not once has it gave me the feeling of getting my hands on a new game, unwrapping it and looking at the case/artwork/poster/manual. And of course there's the argument that it's yours, you can lend it to a mate easily, etc, you don't get that with Downloads. Of course from a business sense companies would love to abolish Physical media, it means they can cut out all that side of production costs AND eliminate second hand sales which is what most Game Companies are gunning at currently, but it feels like we, the buyer, get less for that, other companies don't take away those costs so we end up paying the same as we would for the physical version but all we get is a download link to the exe in most cases and the Unlock Code!
As for Music, Physical all the time, Digital Music is an abomination, Many people have low standards but there is no way I'll ever fully convert myself to paying full price for an album just to get low quality MP3's. CD and Vinyl kick the shit out of MP3 quality wise and most major Online Music Stores don't acknowledge this and act like they are doing us a big favour by upping the bit rate to 256kbps! And again, with Physical, not only do you get a lot better sound quality, you get something to hold in your hands, artwork, booklets, etc.
As for Music, Physical all the time, Digital Music is an abomination, Many people have low standards but there is no way I'll ever fully convert myself to paying full price for an album just to get low quality MP3's. CD and Vinyl kick the shit out of MP3 quality wise and most major Online Music Stores don't acknowledge this and act like they are doing us a big favour by upping the bit rate to 256kbps!
I don't get the obsession with people wanting a boxed version of their games. It's not like because if you can't hold it it doesn't exist, I play games for the games, I really just care for the games quality and content, not the packaging.
Behind me on a shelf I have every Bond film on VHS (bar the last two cos they never came out on VHS) because I started collecting them years ago on VHS, now it's just a redundant waste of space pretty much and I actually find it kinda embarassing to have a big collection like that on display. But I don't wanna throw em out, i'd rather they found a new home.
I wish Telltale would make all the Bonus DVD content available on their website for people who bought the games direct from them, that way I could enjoy the fruits of the DVD's without the hassle of having to send the box halfway across the world.
As for DRM, i've had to use a pirate solution to play games I genuinely bought at times (Dreamfalls DRM actually completley stopped my computer from booting altogether) the most recent being the new Splinter Cell (which I had to race through fearing an update would circumvent the crack) because my internet is too damned unreliable and I thought i'd give Ubisoft the benefit of the doubt. When game companies are putting legit customers into contact with pirates because the products won't work for them as sold, they're doing a pretty shitty job
I like packaging because I feel more secure to be able to play it whenever I want. The nice packaging is a bonus, really. But I'm not that paranoid. I'd really just rather I have a retail package than simply a download. It's just personal preference. Not an obsession.
All the services I use for my digitally downloaded games promise to make them available should they go belly up. And even in the unlikely event they don't if you keep a copy of the games files (which I find easier, rather than having a pile of boxes just one big hard drive for everything) some smarty pants will find a way to unlock them, I doubt anyone would begrudge the users for reverse engineering on that level
No, but there is an option to backup your games on a disc. It also creates an installer which installs Steam (if you haven't already) and installs the game files from the disc to your hard drive. It'll even span across DVDs, I believe, if it's too big too fit on one. Still requires Steam to work, but it's a decent quick-backup option if you don't want to wait to download games every time you format. I used to do this, but now that I've acquired a 640GB external hard drive I find that much more intuitive than creating a backup and using up blank discs.
Kind of defeats doing it for the purpose of playing games if Steam is dead, no?
I usually won't buy games unless they come on physical media in some way, unless it's something really trivial that doesn't take much to play. I get caught up in real life too much, and I don't have a lot of time to play games, but I still want them and buy them. As a result, I have games bought years and years ago, which still haven't been installed, but maybe eventually, hopefully before computers evolve to the point that they won't play that old stuff.
It also helps in case the Copyright SWAT team bursts through the front door and demands immediate proof that I have a valid license for the software installed on my PC. If I don't have something physical, it becomes, oh, well, my information is on some server in another state somewhere. No, not under that E-mail address, under a different one, that I use for buying on-line things. They were just bought out by MegaCorp and their servers were shut down? Well.... no, not the red hot pokers!
Kind of defeats doing it for the purpose of playing games if Steam is dead, no?
I never said otherwise. That's why I started my post with "No, but...". I just meant it's a faster way to reinstall your games with disc-based media instead of re-downloading them. And you always have a physical copy in case Steam dies (it won't). And if it does die then, well, JedExodus put it best:
And even in the unlikely event they don't if you keep a copy of the games files (which I find easier, rather than having a pile of boxes just one big hard drive for everything) some smarty pants will find a way to unlock them, I doubt anyone would begrudge the users for reverse engineering on that level
And that's if Valve or whatever developer who created the game you "owned" doesn't provide a way to detach your game from Steam and have an un-Steamed authentic official digital (possibly DRM-free) copy of the game beforehand/afterwards.
Valve makes no such promise. It's in the agreement that they are not required to do so should they ever shut down Steam.
That's my impression as well. I've never seen a digital distribution service make any such promise; though users on the Steam forums sometimes claim that Steam did. It's hardly an official promise if it isn't posted publicly on their website.
Even if a digital distribution service did claim something like that, would it really be a good idea to trust them? A company going though bankruptcy or another type of radical change probably has far more important things to keep them busy. It would also be a nightmare to get permission from all third party publishers. It seems extremely unlikely to me that any digital distribution service would be able to keep such a promise, or that they would even care when they break it.
It seems extremely unlikely to me that any digital distribution service would be able to keep such a promise, or that they would even care when they break it.
This is why I don't want to have to attach myself to a company in order to enjoy a game that I have already paid for. Once I buy it, I don't want to be dependent on anything but my own ability to get it working on my future computers.
I listed all my reasons in the Gamestop thread, so I won't reiterate them, but there are very few games I would purchase if I was not getting a physical/non internet based copy sometime in the future.
In fact, Ubi's DRM has probably put off alot more customers than it's gained by force. I know i won't be touching a Ubi PC game with a barge pole anytime soon.
Seconded... as a result, Ubisoft now "shifts its effort towards the consoles". Scare your customers away first, then tell everyone the PC is not a gaming platform anymore. Brilliant marketing strategy!
I haven't pirated a single game since I was 15 (AMIGA times...), that's more than half my life ago. I haven't felt the need since then. Presently, unfortunately, the various DRM measures actually keep me from being a "gamer" anymore. This year, it's been Tomb Raider Underworld, Runaway 3 and Sam & Max, and that's it. Not much for a brand-new computer.
I keep watching out for new and cool games, but as soon as I get news about their DRM measures, I just wipe them off my list. Assassin's Creed 2 & Alpha Protocol are this year's saddest losses. If there actually will be a PC version of Beyond Good & Evil 2, my heart will probably break.
Valve makes no such promise. It's in the agreement that they are not required to do so should they ever shut down Steam.
They've covered themselves legally so they can't be held accountable, but Gabe sayed in an interview they have a procedure in place should the worst befall them. I'm willing to take his word this time round
They've covered themselves legally so they can't be held accountable, but Gabe sayed in an interview they have a procedure in place should the worst befall them. I'm willing to take his word this time round
That might go for Valve's own games, but I'm pretty sure 3rd party developers will not be amused if Steam released de-Steam-ifying patches for their games...
The argument that goes: "I don't want to buy my games as digital downloads because what if the company goes out of business..." just doesn't make any sense to me personally.
If you own a physical media copy of a game, you are much more likely to lose access to it over time because physical media breaks and wears out! I had almost every Sierra Game and Lucasarts/Lucasfilm game ever made in the 80s and 90s, mostly on 3.5inch disks and a few on CDs. Where are they now? Those wonderful boxes and disks are all lost or broken!! I can't just call up Sierra and have them mail me a new copy of Space Quest 1 - Disk 2. However, I can go on Steam and buy the entire Space Quest collection for $20, and own it forever even if Steam goes out of business.
With digital downloads, you not only save the environmental impact of physical media, but you make it MORE likely to still be able to play your games long into the future.
Digital downloads is far superior to physical media in every way. Physical storage units get lost, broken or stolen eventually. You either leave the discs out in the sun for too long, or they scratched or you spill red wine all over them.
With downloads you never have to worry about that, the games will never mysteriously vanish and you can install, uninstall and play them whenever you want. Plus it's generally cheaper to buy the games digitally.
Honestly, at the moment I have trouble imagining a situation where Steam would go out of business anytime soon. I mean, not to sound naive or anything, but I think such an event would be the result of a massive sea change in the industry.
Honestly, at the moment I have trouble imagining a situation where Steam would go out of business anytime soon. I mean, not to sound naive or anything, but I think such an event would be the result of a massive sea change in the industry.
I agree. I think Valve would be able to predict any problems far enough in advance to be able to change its service to adapt to the industry's needs.
Honestly, at the moment I have trouble imagining a situation where Steam would go out of business anytime soon. I mean, not to sound naive or anything, but I think such an event would be the result of a massive sea change in the industry.
Bigger companies have gone down. There won't be a government bailout for Valve if they end up going the way of Citigroup, Bank of America, or General Motors.
Honestly, at the moment I have trouble imagining a situation where Steam would go out of business anytime soon.
The key words being "at the moment" and "anytime soon". You don't know what will happen long term. Besides, as I pointed out in my overly long post a few pages back, there are lots of ways for Steam customers to lose access to their games that don't involve Valve going out of business.
Physical storage units get lost, broken or stolen eventually. You either leave the discs out in the sun for too long, or they scratched or you spill red wine all over them.
Speak for yourself some of us are very careful with our physical media.
Bigger companies have gone down. There won't be a government bailout for Valve if they end up going the way of Citigroup, Bank of America, or General Motors.
The entertainment industry is pretty resillent though, DVD sales over here boomed when the shit started hitting the fan in the financial world. The catering and hospitality trade took a pretty big hit though, people were just staying in of an evening because it was cheaper, laods of pubs round here are only beggining to get back to a full working week. Plus Valve have managed to get themselves in a position where they make money off games they don't even make, they're smart cookies.
Honestly, at the moment I have trouble imagining a situation where Steam would go out of business anytime soon. I mean, not to sound naive or anything, but I think such an event would be the result of a massive sea change in the industry.
But what if some virus got into their system, and somehow found it's way into an update? They would be forced to pay compensation for alot of people. Such a thing is highly unlikely though.
Comments
I'm sure you can still scratch the discs if you really go in for it though... a screwdriver should do the trick!
But that's my point- this argument is really old and most people have their minds entirely made up. Some people will always buy legal copies and deal with the DRM because they hate the thought of stealing games. Some people will always download free games, and if a game has DRM, they'll use that as an excuse to pirate it. A hell of a lot more people are probably somewhere in between. I really doubt that we'll be changing any minds here >_>
If I'm not mistaken, the only reason anyone uses DRM (aside from crazy evil companies like Ubisoft etc.) is to prevent casual piracy, not ALL piracy.
I remember casual piracy quite clearly, back when CD burners first came out and all you had to do was burn a copy of a game for your buddy and they had it too. If there are even minor deterrents preventing someone from doing that, odds are, they won't. If minor DRM isn't enough to stop someone from making pirated copies of a game, neither is major DRM. That's always been my understanding of the issue.
I hope you guys also do off-site backups, in case a meteorite happens to land on the TTG offices...
np: The Fall - Hey Luciani (Rebellious Jukebox Volume 2 (Disc 1))
DRM isn't to keep people from pirating, in the strictest sense, it is more an action to keep the stock holders happy.
I've already addressed this. It IS to keep people from pirating, but it is NOT to keep pirates from pirating. It exists primarily as a hoop that most people aren't willing to jump through. I know from personal experience that in the pre-DRM days, people would be more than willing to burn off copies of games for their buddies, or let them borrow the disc to install the game, etc.
The entire purpose of DRM is to prevent CASUAL piracy, it is not intended nor expected to prevent someone who has no intention of buying the software in the first place from pirating it, nor should it. You cannot protect software from hackers, you CAN protect it from casual piracy, as most people are not willing to go online to download cracks in order to be able to share a game with a friend.
Anyway, I don't think Nuclear is the way forward. It takes years to set up, isn't renewable (granted the supplies of radioactive elements will last for hundreds of years, but what if a new use is discovered for it?), and produces radioactive waste that has to be disposed of somehow.
Plus, nuclear disasters, as rare as they may be, are far too severe for the risks. Chenobyl is still outputting high portions of radioactive material. It affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and was a major force in the collapse of the soviet union. If a similair disaster occured in the UK, i don't think our country could cope.
Nuclear power may be pretty safe, but theres still the chance that it could fail, leading to severe consequences.
Factoid: uranium isn't green. In fact, in nuclear powerplants, it causes the water to glow blue.
Anyway, OT: I preffer digital versions, if i can port it onto different consoles or whatever. I love being able to just boot a game from the harddrive without discswapping, but i hate the fact Nintendo (aswell as limiting games to 40MB, and overpricing alot of it) only allow it to be used on one console. If my wii breaks? I've lost £90 worth of games (albeit £40 of those were bought with free points from club nintendo, but still), ontop of the £180 for the console. It's one of the factors that would put me off buying a new one.And one of the reasons i won't buy DSiware (i'll inevitably upgrade to the 3DS in the future, so why bother?)
I still like disc versions of certain games, which is why i think TTG have the perefect strategy. Digital downloads, earlier, and/or a DVD later, and slightly more expensive (with shipping).
No, but there is an option to backup your games on a disc. It also creates an installer which installs Steam (if you haven't already) and installs the game files from the disc to your hard drive. It'll even span across DVDs, I believe, if it's too big too fit on one. Still requires Steam to work, but it's a decent quick-backup option if you don't want to wait to download games every time you format. I used to do this, but now that I've acquired a 640GB external hard drive I find that much more intuitive than creating a backup and using up blank discs.
My screwdriver is reserved for AOL CDs
In the future, you and guests in your home will be wearing augmented-reality glasses (like in Heavy Rain) that make your (mostly empty) walls appear to be lined with physical copies of all the digital books and games and movies you own.
You'll also have the feeling of physically perusing them, because your augmented-reality gloves (again, Heavy Rain) will have a haptic-feedback setting that presses back on your fingers when you "pick up" a game, making it feel like you're holding a physical object.
(Of course, some elements of your library and decor will be password protected - your X-rated movies, your trashy romance novels, your Con Air poster. You'll see those, but guests won't.)
Well, I am talking about the kind of DRM that has to exist. I agree that for a retail disc-based game, online activation is ridiculous. Requiring you to be online at all times is flat out ridiculous, no question about that.
For something like TTG's downloads, they don't have much of an alternative, but the fact that they give out so many activations, and will even increase your activations (within reasonable circumstances) if you ask nicely, makes me not even concerned with it.
I think TTG has got a pretty good handle on the proper application of DRM though, in any case. (W&G Collector's DVD aside)
I hereby award you one internet.
Well in the UK we have been using nuclear power for over half a century, supplying 20% of our power. Something like Chernobyl happening only means that we will have tighter safety precautions. Nuclear power is the only method we have to replace oil, nothing else even in combination is plausible. Estimations suggest we have centuries worth of it. In that time it is more than likely a solution will occur, possibly involving fusion.
If you are interested this is interesting: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html
As for Music, Physical all the time, Digital Music is an abomination, Many people have low standards but there is no way I'll ever fully convert myself to paying full price for an album just to get low quality MP3's. CD and Vinyl kick the shit out of MP3 quality wise and most major Online Music Stores don't acknowledge this and act like they are doing us a big favour by upping the bit rate to 256kbps! And again, with Physical, not only do you get a lot better sound quality, you get something to hold in your hands, artwork, booklets, etc.
No FLAC = no sale.
Behind me on a shelf I have every Bond film on VHS (bar the last two cos they never came out on VHS) because I started collecting them years ago on VHS, now it's just a redundant waste of space pretty much and I actually find it kinda embarassing to have a big collection like that on display. But I don't wanna throw em out, i'd rather they found a new home.
I wish Telltale would make all the Bonus DVD content available on their website for people who bought the games direct from them, that way I could enjoy the fruits of the DVD's without the hassle of having to send the box halfway across the world.
As for DRM, i've had to use a pirate solution to play games I genuinely bought at times (Dreamfalls DRM actually completley stopped my computer from booting altogether) the most recent being the new Splinter Cell (which I had to race through fearing an update would circumvent the crack) because my internet is too damned unreliable and I thought i'd give Ubisoft the benefit of the doubt. When game companies are putting legit customers into contact with pirates because the products won't work for them as sold, they're doing a pretty shitty job
It also helps in case the Copyright SWAT team bursts through the front door and demands immediate proof that I have a valid license for the software installed on my PC. If I don't have something physical, it becomes, oh, well, my information is on some server in another state somewhere. No, not under that E-mail address, under a different one, that I use for buying on-line things. They were just bought out by MegaCorp and their servers were shut down? Well.... no, not the red hot pokers!
I never said otherwise. That's why I started my post with "No, but...". I just meant it's a faster way to reinstall your games with disc-based media instead of re-downloading them. And you always have a physical copy in case Steam dies (it won't). And if it does die then, well, JedExodus put it best:
And that's if Valve or whatever developer who created the game you "owned" doesn't provide a way to detach your game from Steam and have an un-Steamed authentic official digital (possibly DRM-free) copy of the game beforehand/afterwards.
Valve makes no such promise. It's in the agreement that they are not required to do so should they ever shut down Steam.
I still find weird english negates subject instead of the action...
You can do that in Spanish too, can't you? With "ningun".
Even if a digital distribution service did claim something like that, would it really be a good idea to trust them? A company going though bankruptcy or another type of radical change probably has far more important things to keep them busy. It would also be a nightmare to get permission from all third party publishers. It seems extremely unlikely to me that any digital distribution service would be able to keep such a promise, or that they would even care when they break it.
This is why I don't want to have to attach myself to a company in order to enjoy a game that I have already paid for. Once I buy it, I don't want to be dependent on anything but my own ability to get it working on my future computers.
I listed all my reasons in the Gamestop thread, so I won't reiterate them, but there are very few games I would purchase if I was not getting a physical/non internet based copy sometime in the future.
Seconded... as a result, Ubisoft now "shifts its effort towards the consoles". Scare your customers away first, then tell everyone the PC is not a gaming platform anymore. Brilliant marketing strategy!
I haven't pirated a single game since I was 15 (AMIGA times...), that's more than half my life ago. I haven't felt the need since then. Presently, unfortunately, the various DRM measures actually keep me from being a "gamer" anymore. This year, it's been Tomb Raider Underworld, Runaway 3 and Sam & Max, and that's it. Not much for a brand-new computer.
I keep watching out for new and cool games, but as soon as I get news about their DRM measures, I just wipe them off my list. Assassin's Creed 2 & Alpha Protocol are this year's saddest losses. If there actually will be a PC version of Beyond Good & Evil 2, my heart will probably break.
They've covered themselves legally so they can't be held accountable, but Gabe sayed in an interview they have a procedure in place should the worst befall them. I'm willing to take his word this time round
Yeah, but we always negate the action first anyway.
If you own a physical media copy of a game, you are much more likely to lose access to it over time because physical media breaks and wears out! I had almost every Sierra Game and Lucasarts/Lucasfilm game ever made in the 80s and 90s, mostly on 3.5inch disks and a few on CDs. Where are they now? Those wonderful boxes and disks are all lost or broken!! I can't just call up Sierra and have them mail me a new copy of Space Quest 1 - Disk 2. However, I can go on Steam and buy the entire Space Quest collection for $20, and own it forever even if Steam goes out of business.
With digital downloads, you not only save the environmental impact of physical media, but you make it MORE likely to still be able to play your games long into the future.
With downloads you never have to worry about that, the games will never mysteriously vanish and you can install, uninstall and play them whenever you want. Plus it's generally cheaper to buy the games digitally.
I agree. I think Valve would be able to predict any problems far enough in advance to be able to change its service to adapt to the industry's needs.
Speak for yourself
The entertainment industry is pretty resillent though, DVD sales over here boomed when the shit started hitting the fan in the financial world. The catering and hospitality trade took a pretty big hit though, people were just staying in of an evening because it was cheaper, laods of pubs round here are only beggining to get back to a full working week. Plus Valve have managed to get themselves in a position where they make money off games they don't even make, they're smart cookies.
That said, never say never
But what if some virus got into their system, and somehow found it's way into an update? They would be forced to pay compensation for alot of people. Such a thing is highly unlikely though.