In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I agree I would say the affect of DRM is 0% on piracy. or at least very close to it. I think DRM is an all lose for media companies, it adds cost to develop and produce, it gives them bad PR which ultimately loses them sales and it can in some cases compromise quality of the product. Its one of those things they do because they feel they have to do it.

I think some people get a bit hysterical when it comes to DRM, without actually thinking how it will affect them in reality.
When a gaming company is seeing say 5x the amount of "copies" of it's game in the wild compared to the amount it has sold, I think it's quite reasonable for them to take steps to curb it. Regardless of the technicalities the shareholders will probally want to see some action taken.

DRM is here to stay, but it will just become more integral and transparent to the user. For instance I use Valve's Steam platform for most my gaming and that by design prevents copyright infringement.

not really, its completely unreasonable for a start to assume those 5x copies are lost sales.

Adding DRM loses sales thats obvious enough, the question is it does it generate sales as well? in my opinion no. Its all too easy to get a cracked copy from somewhere regardless plus the numerous cloning copying methods available to anyone with a pc and a burner.

One game I wont be buying is fable 4, lionhead took greed to a new level (or probably microsoft). They had a release policy for fable 3 which was designed to make people buy the game multiple times to get the maximum potential from the game. That is just pure immoral, we talking about a game that had an RRP of £45 a swell. So £135 to get all the weapons in the game, plus xbox live gold subs as they made a chunk of it online only as well. Situations like that and they cant figure out why piracy exists in the gaming industry.

DRM hasnt stopped me buying games however it does stop some people and is a punishment to those who legally buy media.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

DRM hasnt stopped me buying games however it does stop some people and is a punishment to those who legally buy media.

As one who makes images of games to HDD for a 'no CD' setup, DRM has been a pain. The games that won't work have basically been dumped in a box (note that I paid for them). I have no objections to DRM in principle, but ever since the 90s users have had to run games with CD / DVD in drive. There's not sense to that at all from a performance perspective, and the manufacturers have basically been ignoring users' wants in that area.

Having said that, the folk to blame are the copiers. Not the makers. Not the paying customers. Since the advent of the (widespread) Internet it would have been far easier if a registration system had been put in place, with the registrant and the copy holder both responsible for a copy found in the wild. It might not have stopped the pirates, but it would have discouraged the amateurs.

Anything moret han £20 for most games is ridiculous when they can be finished in a day. Others, such as Football Manager can be played again and again for years, and are probably better value for money. With the exception of these sorts of games, I generally avoid them unless there's a 3 for £20 type offer. I don't use steam or similar and refuse to play any game which charges a monthly fee. That's a crazy idea (but better than spending the money on drink I suppose).

an example of inconveniance is the xbox360.

star ocean 4 quite a good game and is 3 discs. on the xbox there is an option to install the game to the hdd, which I do so to reduce wear and tear and speed up game loading times. However the disc swapping is still needed for DRM enforcement. Towards the end of the game this gets very annoying as its constant swapping between disc 2 and 3. A good medium ground would have just have the game ask for a random of disc 1,2 or 3 when loading game and thats it check done no more disc swapping during game, no need to check frequently during the game.

What i want to know is :when will we the humble consumer be better protected from these shark's , that call themselves games publishers?
they are no better than those they are whining about for "Stealing" their products, Maybe if they actually provided real support and actually finished their "precious" products before actual release then i maybe more inclined to feel a tiny bit of sympathy for them, as things are i don't

example ubisoft is one big fail ,, it insists upon users connecting via it's only master server located in Montreal ,Canada, but is happy to sell their games on a global basis, from the uk the latency is 90-95ms also their server is often down, so online game play is not possible, can we sue them? no, so when they whine about someone having their( unfinished unsupported rubbish they sell as a game ) free , i say good luck to those who where not so stupid as to pay for it, ubi and other big corporates you suck, if you seriously expect us to buy then you already know what to do , blocking censoring is not that answer,

Edited by tommy45 (Sun 07-Aug-11 21:58:23)

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Maybe if they actually provided real support and actually finished their "precious" products before actual release then i maybe more inclined to feel a tiny bit of sympathy for them, as things are i don't

So boycott them and spread the word. They will respond if enough people do this. If people keep buying their games and they are not fit for purpose, return them and boycott them.

Just a little OT: for tommy45, it appears due to your complaints about BE one of its snake oil sellers is now accusing you of multi reviews.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/which_isp/t/4035310...

Shocking the staff allow that user and a select few other BE supporters to keep flaming people and recommending a congested ISP.

More shocking that you choose to attack the staff whilst hiding behind the "Anonymous" label. Don't you have the courage of your convictions?

Time to get back under your bridge.

Harry

In reply to a post by AEP:

More shocking that you choose to attack the staff whilst hiding behind the "Anonymous" label. Don't you have the courage of your convictions?

Have no desire for an account here. Was not an attack on anyone except the person making the accusations i addressed. Go back to the BE forum