The Official "I'm not buying Mass Effect or Spore" Thread

[damonposey]

Uhh... isn't that the definition of capitalism? We all have the right to drive a company out of business by not buying its products. We are not pirates, we just want a game. Piracy is not our issue, it's the company's. If their implementations to reduce piracy start affecting a consumer's ability to play the game, and the consumer decides not to purchase anything else from that company, then that is how it should be.

You miss my point entirely. My point is that it's not right to justify piracy by determining an arbitrary point at which a company stops deserving money for their product. That's not anyones call to make.

A pop artist is making millions on a record, and people justify pirating their album because they deem 'they have enough money, so its okay'. But they have no right to make that statement. How would you feel if some seedy organization determined that 90% of your current paycheck is 'good enough', and they take that 10% from you? I mean it must be right since THEY deemed it right. Give me a break and wake up.

 

[Fumarole]

Guys, the What If game can be played forever, there's no point to it. Deal with the here-and-now. Oh, and calling people retards is hardly evidence of growing up.

I for one will be waiting until after release to see what kinds of problems may result from this copy protection.

 

[Netrat33]

You're going to buy it, and then crack it?

That still makes you a pirate in violation of the DMCA.

So the only thing DRM does is increase the number of people who turn to cracked software. DRM creates pirates.

Heh. I'm not a pirate if obviously they got my money. Claiming me to be a pirate is a ridiculous argument. Especially like I said when in 5 years if servers went down or no support like I did with Alice. Violation of the EULA yes. Pirate no.

 

[Frostex]

The flaw in your thinking is you still subscribe to the logic that YOU get to decide when a company is successful, and when they can stop making a profit. That's WRONG, you have no right to do that. A company deserves every penny worth of every copy of their software used, regardless of how the software functions.

Many successful titles could have been more successful if piracy didn't exist. Explore the possibilities of what this could mean with me for a second. If it meant more revenue, maybe it could mean expansion in the company? more jobs? More money to fund well-known voice actors, better engines, more leniency from publishers so the developer can take their time and make a quality product.

but I'm sure these things have never crossed your mind.

I'm not saying piracy is necessarily justifiable in circumstance x, y or z, the point most people are trying to make here is that anti-piracy HURTS legitimate users, and doesn't do anything to stop pirates. It's in their own best interests to make the game as appealing to their potential buyers as possible (of which i am one) and so far all that springs to mind is the utter mess Bioshock was with it's DRM issues and I don't feel confident about wanting to purchase the game, I'm MORE likely to pirate this game because of these issues now.

As for more money, jobs, etc etc, I don't think on the whole it matters that much, the net total of money going into the PC gaming industy is increasing rapidly, any money that isn't spent on game X is spent elsewhere on game Y, all thats really happening is the money is being funnled towards developers who make games that people want to buy. By the reactions in this thread (and all others like it for years and years now) people DO NOT WANT harsh anti-piracy, if they insist on using it they will suffer in sales and pirates and going to pirate it anyhow, I don't have any sympathy for a company that pulls retarded stunts like that.

If I were a pirate, I'd have nothing to complain about.

Yup, pirates will get the game DRM free, if you can't see the trend here you need your brain looking at because it's blatently obvious that any anti-piracy added to games can simply be coded out. it's a cycle thats repeated thousands of times already and no one is learning, it's quite astonishing actually.

Yes, you have a right to drive a company out of business by not buying it's products. I'm all for it. But you don't have teh right to steal the game.

*snip*

So maybe none of the pirated copies would equate to a sale. That doesn't mean a company doesn't have a right to defend itself. Maybe it's piracy measures hurt their customer base. That happens. All I'm asking is that many of you who constantly whine about piracy measures just get off your hypocritical high horse.

This is not to say that I'll be buying Mass Effect. I won't. But I won't be pirating it either. Honestly, piracy doesn't bother me as much as the attitudes that they bring, and I'm all for the PC genre dieing. PC Games dieing means fewer people. Fewer people means fewer pirates. Fewer pirates means less copy protection. Fewer people also means a smaller audience. A smaller audience means that my voice in what I consider a good game is louder, and games which I like will come out over the games that are currently out.

Again i dont think anyone is trying to justify pirating games.

What you say is mostly true, however I dont see anything anywhere which justifys the decision to impliment harsh anti-piracy measures at the expense of their loyal customer base, the net effect is to drive away potential customers and not save any sales due to piracy, the net effect is only ever going to be negative.

Summed up well in the post below:-

THIS IS THE ENTIRE POINT. You're hurting the actual buyers not the pirates. Can those defending this anti-piracy scheme not see this?

Hate to look like devil's advocate to most of you, but I honestly don't see the problem. If you are buying the game legitimately you WILL NOT have a problem. It'll check in every 10 days, and you will continue to have fun. Simple.

All i can say is this is very nieve, less harsh copy protection systems have caused significant uproar, visit the Bioshock forums sometime, the response to their DRM was so bad that they actually loosend the restricts a few weeks after the games launch to ease the imminent volcanic erruption of pissed users that was quickly reaching critical mass.

You're going to buy it, and then crack it?

That still makes you a pirate in violation of the DMCA.

So the only thing DRM does is increase the number of people who turn to cracked software. DRM creates pirates.

Purely from a personal standpoint I can say that the odds of me pirating a game go up significantly if the game uses harsh copy protection, i actually wont buy a game that uses starforce for example, just out of pure boycott.

 

[Dillirium]

Guys, the What If game can be played forever, there's no point to it. Deal with the here-and-now. Oh, and calling people retards is hardly evidence of growing up.

I for one will be waiting until after release to see what kinds of problems may result from this copy protection.

You need to start picking up on sarcasm. r-tard is from Southpark Make love not warcraft

 

[Fumarole]

You need to start picking up on sarcasm. r-tard is from Southpark Make love not warcraft

You need to realize that sarcasm comes through very poorly in web forums, if at all. Poor spelling and abominable grammar certainly do not help, either.

 

[Krenum]

These companies are so stupid, there promoting piracy more than detouring it. The game will be hacked, where theres a will theres a way. Why not just make good games and have people buy them? what happend to the good ole days of PC gaming.

 

[Dillirium]

You need to realize that sarcasm comes through very poorly in web forums, if at all. Poor spelling and abominable grammar certainly do not help, either.

Please post something constructive and stop singling out stuff like this. I'm posting quick responses while I work.. I'm not taking the time to read over them before posting.. so get over yourself Professor.

 

[vengence]

I won't buy this game because of the DRM crap that will come with it. Period. I won't pirate it either. I will simply lodge my protest by one less copy of the game sold. I would really like to play mass effect but pirating it just to avoid the DRM crap is wrong. If they ever decide to release it without stuff like securom then I'll buy it.

 

[sparks]

some seedy organization determined that 90% of your current paycheck is 'good enough', and they take that 10% from you?

OH you mean the federal government? Its more like 40%

 

[Rurik]

You miss my point entirely. My point is that it's not right to justify piracy by determining an arbitrary point at which a company stops deserving money for their product. That's not anyones call to make.

A pop artist is making millions on a record, and people justify pirating their album because they deem 'they have enough money, so its okay'. But they have no right to make that statement. How would you feel if some seedy organization determined that 90% of your current paycheck is 'good enough', and they take that 10% from you? I mean it must be right since THEY deemed it right. Give me a break and wake up.

Piracy is a whole other issue on top of the base discussion here, even though this has gone completely into a piracy talk. I've looked through the thread again and don't see any posts of people trying to defend why they're going to pirate the game, just that they're going to not purchase it. Most of the posts here seem to be lots of people getting mad while agreeing with each other?

The importance here is not how piracy effects a company's bottom-line, because that involves no one here (unless someone here works at a VG company or is a pirate ), but is more on how such changes to disrupt casual piracy will cause people to outright avoid a product altogether.

I purposely avoided BioShock on the PC because of its DRM (I instead purchased a used copy for Xbox - which doesn't limit you to using it on three Xboxes).

There's also the side effect that many of these measures are benefiting the publishers by eliminating the used market. You can never re-sell your copy of Half Life 2, as you could with a console game. I'm curious if this is another nail in the coffin for people moving from PCs to consoles. I have held off on Mass

 

[Nytegard]

These companies are so stupid, there promoting piracy more than detouring it. The game will be hacked, where theres a will theres a way. Why not just make good games and have people buy them? what happend to the good ole days of PC gaming.

Because the good ole days of PC gaming never existed.

I'm an avid game collector, with about 5000 overall games (about 3500 PC games), and I can find copy protection in my games going back to the 1970's.

I have C64 disks which have copy protection, preventing them from being able to be copied normally. I have floppy disks that have holes in them (back in the good ole days before DOS, where you pretty much wrote your own hardware handlers yourself. The games would purposely spin the reader in weird angles to read the disk. If, however, you used a normal copy program, which tried to read in a circle, you'd encounter an error, as the program would think that your disk was destroyed, when in reality, it was purposely made with holes).

Then you have the days of code wheels, and "PLEASE ENTER WORD 4, PARAGRAPH 3, SENTENCE 6".

The only reason the early CD games didn't have copy protection is because back in 1992, it would take 100 hours to download a 600 mb game online with your state of the art 14.4 kb Baud modem, and require 90% of your hard disk space to copy a game there, or you'd have to spend $6000 for a CD Burner and $40 for a CD.

Good games won't deter piracy. People will steal as long as they think they can get away with it. The only thing that will deter piracy is to target games at people who will actually pay for the games. And then you can get rid of copy protection. But most likely that will mean no more FPS's, no more RTS's, etc. It will be an audience that probably none of us on these forums will belong too.

 

[balthan]

Because the good ole days of PC gaming never existed.

I'm an avid game collector, with about 5000 overall games (about 3500 PC games), and I can find copy protection in my games going back to the 1970's.

The ones I absolutely hated was the dark purplish ink that you needed the red filter to be able to see the lettering. I always ended up losing the stupid red plastic.

 

[SockMan!]

Well, I was 'on the fence' about these games since I've never really kept up with the news thus didn't know if I wanted to buy them in the first place. And I haven't been playing many games lately.

This definitely makes me want to avoid these games though. Partly out of principle and partly because I don't want to take a chance that this seemingly elaborate anti-piracy measure won't compromise security, privacy, or system stability.

There are other great games out there with either far less intrusive/restrictive DRM or no DRM at all.

 

[Dome]

Because the good ole days of PC gaming never existed.
Then you have the days of code wheels, and "PLEASE ENTER WORD 4, PARAGRAPH 3, SENTENCE 6".

you win, my friend, i love those things.

seriously though, the people who say they only buy games without copy protection are lying, delusional, or pompous.

the guys who say they will download a cracked game because the copy protection method is bad are hypocrits and only prove the publishers' point.

the guys who buy a game and crack the copy protection are still contributing to the need to create better methods of DRM.

i have a modded xbox, and let's just say i won't deny pirating games. i've bit torrented games in the past, as well as other software. i've since stopped, now that i have a job and can afford this stuff, and i'm not here to justify piracy or tell others to stop.

i would like to say that here at [H] we're a pretty elitist group of people. i don't mean that in a bad way, but it's true. we like to act like we're better than the common computer user, smarter, etc. the reality of it is: for every truly principled person here, who REFUSES to buy OR pirate a poorly copy-protected game (or software, or hardware) there are 10 people who lie or are hipocrits and there are 1000 people who don't feel a damn thing wrong about stealing music, movies, PORN (yes it counts) or video games.

i think what really needs to happen is that people like us need to take a step back and put things into better perspective. if developers really stopped implementing and developing new copy protection, what would happen? if all i had to do was copy from one cd to another, install w/ no cd key no seriel number, no registration?

neither am i saying the system works, or is good. as this thread is all about: there are a million and a half flaws with the system, but what i think will happen is that this will keep going in circles until something fundamental changes. what that is i have no idea, but while games are developed as they currently are: finish the product and then add copy protection, the game will always be cracked and leaked and stolen.

anyhow, if i like a game, i buy it now, if for principle's sake i don't want to buy it, i won't download it either. but people, please, remember that PC gaming is declining because of pirates; because of people who use ANYTHING to justify stealing

 

[Itchyeyes]

where's the delete button for these forums

 

[Wildace]

i already bought mass effect for the 360, ill probly "try" it on the pc see if it fixed the graphical issues.

as fr this whole 10 day issue. so you dont have internet service for more than 10 days they want to screw the people that paid for it. so not only do they have to live with no internet for said time but they also have to live with no games to play way to fail.

 

[FadedSpark]

For those who don't seem to be able to comprehend the problem with DRM I have a recent example.

On August 31 MSN Music Authentication Servers will be shut down. Anyone who bought music from Microsoft will never be able to install it again. If you get a new PC, upgrade, or change your hard drive, all the music you purchased from them will be gone. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2286736,00.asp

Now do you really want to trust EA games? MS just screwed over everyone who bought music from them, do you really think EA is any more trustworthy than MS?

Assuming you're willing to be their bitch:
You have a 3 install limit what happens after that?
What happens if they go out of business?
What happens when Mass Effect 2 or Spore 2 comes out, and they want you to stop playing the old one and upgrade to the new one?
What happens when they decide to cut cost by not keeping the authentication servers running after a couple of year?
What if they decide to start charging you a yearly fee to play your game?

EA does not believe in supporting older games, I would never trust them to keep reactivating the game for as long as I want to play it.

I have lots of old games, and most of the publisher and developers of those games are gone now.

You can patch out the DRM in a game in a worst case scenario sort of thing since it is built in with exe's and dll files, in an MP3, it is in ONE container and would take a LOT of work. Not to say it's "right" at all, but its not MS's fault you can lose your music.

 

[Fumarole]

Please post something constructive and stop singling out stuff like this. I'm posting quick responses while I work.. I'm not taking the time to read over them before posting.. so get over yourself Professor.

Constructive as in calling people names and getting your feathers ruffled when someone calls you out on your bullshit? You've already got that covered. I'll leave it to you, as you seem rather good at it.

If this is the future of EA's games, I think they may soon be joining other developers who seem to be moving in a more console-oriented direction. And that's a damn shame too, with Bioware's pedigree. Here's to hoping all this is just paranoid speculation on our part, or that this latest protection scheme doesn't end up becoming more and more commonplace.

 

[BladeVenom]

Heh. I'm not a pirate if obviously they got my money. Claiming me to be a pirate is a ridiculous argument. Especially like I said when in 5 years if servers went down or no support like I did with Alice. Violation of the EULA yes. Pirate no.

I'm not trying be accusatory, but a crack is still a violation of the DMCA even if you bought the game. So it is a bit more than just a violation of the EULA.

I don't agree with the DMCA, but if you're in the USA it is still the law.

 

[BladeVenom]

You can patch out the DRM in a game in a worst case scenario sort of thing since it is built in with exe's and dll files, ...

You'd still be relying on EA's goodwill to fix the problem with a patch. You can't legally do it yourself, because it would be a violation of the DMCA.

 

[finalgt]

You miss my point entirely. My point is that it's not right to justify piracy by determining an arbitrary point at which a company stops deserving money for their product. That's not anyones call to make.

A pop artist is making millions on a record, and people justify pirating their album because they deem 'they have enough money, so its okay'. But they have no right to make that statement. How would you feel if some seedy organization determined that 90% of your current paycheck is 'good enough', and they take that 10% from you? I mean it must be right since THEY deemed it right. Give me a break and wake up.

I don't know what aspects of the discussion led to this statement because I haven't read anything beyond the last page, but I'm going to go ahead and say, yes, I have the right to determine the point at which a company stops deserving money for their product. And it's not arbitrary. I'm not saying I'm going to obtain the product anyway, and maybe that's the context in which this statement was made.

Any company that uses SecuRom or these Draconian anti-piracy protection methods that don't actually safeguard against piracy does not deserve my money, nor will they receive it.

 

[ynnek888]

This shouldn't really bother anyone that also embraces Steam.. They just need to loosen the authentication timing requirements a bit, to allow the game to still be played until the next time it can obtain remote authentication - just like how Steam operates.


The DVD in this case simply becomes a data transport medium. In other words, besides getting a physical box and not having to download gigs over the net, there's little or no value of buying the game on DVD vs downloading it from an legit online gaming provider. A popular example and and success of this model is Steam and Half Life 2.

 

[qbert3]

You can add me to the list, played Mass effect on the 360, dont care about Spore.

 

[Khanmots]

Didn't buy bioshock because of its DRM (and no, I didn't pirate it either)... and this DRM is worse!

Much as I want both games I'll have to pass.

And to think, I was looking forward to spore

 

[TheCowOfNow]

I sympathize for the gaming industry but this is excessive. Rules are going to be broken, you're going to go bankrupt from piracy. The game won't fail to generate profit. I mean seriously, this is just ridiculous. Silly.

 

[tskiller]

Heh, there are plenty of games out there that i enjoy just as much as i would spore or mass effect. I wont have this shit protection on my machine.

 

[bigbadgreen]

what scares me most about this new stance by EA is the effect on their future games. I wasn't really concerned about either of the two games being discussed here but more about BF3.

I have a real life example of how hardware fingerprints can really create headaches. A couple of years ago I was building a computer for my parents and it wouldn't boot. I was going through my checklist of possible problems. So just to check the RAM, before the days of memtest or other easily available ram diagnostics, I dropped their stick into my system and booted up. I should have shut off the power but instead let it boot into windows (XP pro) to test stability. windows asked me to verify and because this was a new computer for myself as well (parents computer was part hand me down from me) and this was after a reformat a few months back I had apparently validated my windows key too many times in a short period of time. They have since relaxed those validation standards. However at this time I had to call MS and wait for an hour, three times, because the first two a-holes wouldn't help me revailidate.

How is this relevant you ask. well if just pluggin in one extra stick of RAM changed my hardware fingerprint for windows it's almost certain it would do the same for these games. You better do any upgrading to your system before you install them. If you want more RAM later on, or change a video card, or add a video card, think about the bugdet sli people who buy one card now and one later. How about a cpu upgrade. Will this be set off if you update motherboard drivers, because it may detect the soonboard sound as a seperate device. All of this relies on how strict they are in their definitions of hardware changes and something tells me it's not going to be lax. CPU, RAM, mobo, vid card are almost all certain markers and possibly hard drives and optical drives.

I'm not meanging to get all doomsday on this issue. But I just think how this would effect older games. I still play starcraft and warcraft III, I have been through 8 total upgrades since starcraft not to count the upgrading process.

I'm not that concerned with the checking in part of the copy scheme, but it should only be for online play. Say you take a vacation and bring along a laptop to relax some and maybe play a bit. It's been known to happen, no it wouldn't be the reason or major part of any vacation. And now you can't play because of this purposly made scheme. This isn't the same as hardware malfunctions which companies can't predict, or compatability issues not know about. This is a concious decision made by the developers to render their product useless.

I would rather have them look into what hardcore busniess suites are doing and use an external hardware key. It's on an isolated usb drive that can't be written to or copied. if it's not plugged into the system the program won't run. It uses a key changing script to match a generated key by the program, similar to how modern garage doors rotate codes. Sure it would be cracked, but it would take longer and be more difficult. It would also discourage a lot of the people who pirate just to see because they would need an extra thumbdrive to be used solely for this one thing. I said a lot, not all.

 

[g1xx3r]

Screw it, I was going to buy this game, but now hmm yes I believe I will aquire it from other sources.

Im sure if it would have hit retail on an even numbered day instead of odd you would find a reason to steal it..

 

[Mr. Bluntman]

I was looking forward to Mass Effect making it's way to the PC but I can forget about that now. Fuck EA with an AIDS infected dildo. I'm sorry, but an "activate once and forget" is already hard to stomach, but every ten fucking days? These f00z aren't getting my money.

 

[defiant007]

I'm not trying be accusatory, but a crack is still a violation of the DMCA even if you bought the game. So it is a bit more than just a violation of the EULA.

I don't agree with the DMCA, but if you're in the USA it is still the law.

Good thing the USA does not comprise the entire world, until then I and everybody else in the sane world will use cracks to bypass this type of draconian DRM.

 

[Megalomaniac]

And in the mean time, go make your friend happy. go out and buy another Stardock game and give it to a friend.

vote with your dollars!!!

 

[finalgt]

Screw it, I was going to buy this game, but now hmm yes I believe I will aquire it from other sources.

Way to miss the entire fucking point of the thread.

 

[LeviathanZERO]

Wow. just ..... wow.
Are they TRYING to kill PC gaming? I mean, seriously, how the hell does something so jacked up get approved?

Everyone thank EA for their wonderful job in destroying this amazing game, just from stupid ass distribution.
Morons.

 

[FadedSpark]

Way to miss the entire fucking point of the thread.

He's the entire reason threads like this for things like this exist. He tries to justify stealing and blaming it on the manufacturers.

So here's a big enthusiastic Screw Off! To everyone who thinks it is right to just take these things because you don't like the way something is done. Your right that makes you think you should be able to do what you want with your property is the same right that lets them put all of this DRM in. Rather than bitching about it in forums, and saying you're going to steal it, you should be hunting down the email addresses and phone numbers of these CEO's and contacting them 'til they're blue in the face.

Do it up.

 

[PWMK2]

He's the entire reason threads like this for things like this exist. He tries to justify stealing and blaming it on the manufacturers.

So here's a big enthusiastic Screw Off! To everyone who thinks it is right to just take these things because you don't like the way something is done. Your right that makes you think you should be able to do what you want with your property is the same right that lets them put all of this DRM in. Rather than bitching about it in forums, and saying you're going to steal it, you should be hunting down the email addresses and phone numbers of these CEO's and contacting them 'til they're blue in the face.

Do it up.

Wow... I have nothing to say but... QFT...

 

[Archer75]

And it will be cracked the moment it comes out

 

[Roufuss]

Wow. just ..... wow.
Are they TRYING to kill PC gaming? I mean, seriously, how the hell does something so jacked up get approved?

Everyone thank EA for their wonderful job in destroying this amazing game, just from stupid ass distribution.
Morons.

These things exist because developers and publishers keep thinking that one day, their DRM will be so foolproof, pirates will have NO CHOICE but to go buy a legit copy.

When the developers and publishers finally realize that the pirates won't buy a legit copy in the first place and to consider them a non factor, only then things will change.

But every publisher wants a piece of that demographic because it's huge, but that demographic will never buy their game anyways, or just work twice as hard at cracking it.

Stardock has the right idea... someone told me the Stardock CEO doesn't consider pirates to ever be potential customers, so they just ignore them, so they don't screw their real customers with stupid DRM.

 

[Nytegard]

These things exist because developers and publishers keep thinking that one day, their DRM will be so foolproof, pirates will have NO CHOICE but to go buy a legit copy.

When the developers and publishers finally realize that the pirates won't buy a legit copy in the first place and to consider them a non factor, only then things will change.

But every publisher wants a piece of that demographic because it's huge, but that demographic will never buy their game anyways, or just work twice as hard at cracking it.

Stardock has the right idea... someone told me the Stardock CEO doesn't consider pirates to ever be potential customers, so they just ignore them, so they don't screw their real customers with stupid DRM.

No, these things exist because of idiots like him. Regardless of if you like it, regardless of if EA's screwing their customers, IT'S THEIR PROPERTY! And they have EVERY RIGHT to defend it. You don't have a right to play it. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. You're pay for the privelege to play their property.

If Stardock doesn't want to put copy protection on their software, it's their right, just as it's EA's right to put copy protection on their software. Some people don't mind others stealing their stuff, and some do.

While pirates will most likely always have the upper hand, in the end, DRM will become so intrusive that we won't mind it. To the average person we won't be able to steal the program. The thing is, the DRM will be so intrusive that it will make the general pirates (the ones who do the actual cracking, not the children who take their work) not distribute their cracks to the public. They'll be private cracks.

Now, you say why would we not mind intrusive software? Because PC's will soon have hardware copy protection, making them like consoles. They'll require knowledge of soldering making the average person not want to risk destroying their computer. Laws will be made that take away 100% of our software rights from what we have now, so when we get 20% of those rights back, we'll be happy, and forget that we lost 80% of our rights.

And this is coming soon mind you.

 

[Archer75]

It's true that pirates wouldn't buy software should the DRM become uncrackable. Personally if I can download music, movies or games for free then i'll do it. If for whatever reason I was unable to download these or to access the content I still wouldn't buy it. If I can get something for free then sure, i'll get it. If not, no big deal, i'm still not going to buy it.
Not every pirate is a potential source of income. I very much doubt most are.