God, I hate DRM.

[Mozgus]

DRM (copy protection) seems to play no other role than to screw existing customers. When is this shit going to end? Time after time, I spend my money, only to find out that the game either has performance issues, glitches, or flat out WONT BOOT AT ALL, all because the included DRM has some problem with my machine. It's always a nice surprise when you pirate a game and love it, then choose to give the developers money, only to find out that the DRM in the background actually causes the game to stutter, whereas the pirated version ran flawlessly.

Today I found out that Street Fighter 4 wont run anymore. I bought a new 1TB drive yesterday, to replace three 80GBs from 2004. I copied all my games over to it, and they are now drive D. Guess what? All 20 something installed games survived the migrations after relinking shortcuts. But not SF4. Shit no. No matter how many times I cleanly reinstall it and verify it's integrity, it refuses to run. The only solution is to give it a dedicated partition for E, in its exact prior folder path. It's all because of the copy protection called Goo that Impulse used on the game. This makes me wonder if even after a format, the game will ever successfully install again. It may be a totally worthless purchase at that point.

Guys, seriously. Just pirate all games that force DRM on you. Either we'll end this abuse, or we'll end the platform itself. I don't care either way. We'll always have quality freeware and DRM-free indie titles to enjoy on PC.

[Reverend]

I couldn't agree more! And I think the Spore fiasco was a rude awakening to DRM as a whole. It didn't stop it, but it certainly got the point across.

[Dylan]

It's just stunning to me that developers don't take the time to insure that it doesn't interfere with the actual game. People will either pirate or they won't, it's black and white. Therefore, by implementing security related complications into the architecture of the game, not only is performance comprised, but people who weren't going to pirate don't, and people who were going to pirate do.

All you need to do is set up a basic security check-point during installation, so people who generally wouldn't pirate are scared away from doing so, and everyone gets to play the game as it was meant to be.

[Mozgus]

It's just stunning to me that developers don't take the time to insure that it doesn't interfere with the actual game. People will either pirate or they won't, it's black and white. Therefore, by implementing security related complications into the architecture of the game, not only is performance comprised, but people who weren't going to pirate don't, and people who were going to pirate do.

All you need to do is set up a basic security check-point during installation, so people who generally wouldn't pirate are scared away from doing so, and everyone gets to play the game as it was meant to be.

CD Keys worked and basic disc checks worked fine for well over a decade. Only recently have they decided to start fucking around with heavy duty complicated methods that compromise the experience. Where do these companies get off claiming that piracy is oh so easy on PC? It's only easy if you download a version of the game that some uber hacker group spent all night hex editing cracks for. If you try to crack the game yourself, you'll never be able to, unless you really know your way around the disc emulation standards, study the DRM formats and know exactly how to rip a functional image from your retail disc, and how to mount it and hide with YASU and other utilities, and thats a huge hassle. You certainly wont be creating your own easy to run cracked EXE.

So really, who are these companies fighting? They will NEVER outsmart the cracker groups, so why do they even try? Everything gets cracked. The old conventional disc checks were perfectly fine at outsmarting the average user so they couldn't copy and sell the game during lunch breaks at their junior high schools.

And again, the claim that PC piracy is rampant and hurting sales is just bogus. Do they have any idea how idiot proof a CycloDS cart is? Provided you order one, you're set to pirate every single DS game easily, 99.9% all work without additional patching. PC piracy is way more complicated than that, and getting online functionality is usually impossible. But on DS, you can play your pirated games online, no sweat. And DS is the most popular platform out there. I don't hear any developers flipping out and saying DS piracy is hurting them.

I just don't understand why DRM exists. How long until they realize that its a huge waste of time and money? There's even been games that were delayed a month because the DRM wasn't tight enough to meet the publisher's standards. Fucking ridiculous.

[Dylan]

^ Exactly. I don't need a sub program continuously checking my game to make sure that it isn't pirated, as if it was somehow going to become more pirated mid game. Like you say, restrain the average user and give up the ghost on the super hacker. Nothing more, nothing less.

[BigTinz]

I completely agree.

I'll never purchase Fallout 3 for this same reason. DRM is an insult to customers and does nothing but annoy.

....it certainly doesn't stop piracy so what's the point?

[Inazuma]

Street Fighter IV PC version has DRM? God damn it. I was gonna buy it and now I'm fucked. I've already tried to run two different pirated versions and neither worked at all for me.

I refuse to buy any product that has DRM. I also stopped buying DVD's altogether because of unskippable commercials and company logos. I am one of those customers who really cares about getting a quality product. If the normal version is ruined with bullshit such as DRM, it prevents me from buying it.

Does Street Fighter IV really have DRM? I hope you are mistaken somehow. I was about to go through all the trouble to ask Hashiriyasan to send one to me...

*Inazuma is off to do some futher investigating*

[Mozgus]

I completely agree.

I'll never purchase Fallout 3 for this same reason. DRM is an insult to customers and does nothing but annoy.

....it certainly doesn't stop piracy so what's the point?

Yeah, I even used a tool that 100% removed G4WL from Fallout 3, and its proven to run better because of it. There's no reason to have G4WL on a strictly offline single player RPG.

[Inazuma]

OK, I'm back. It seems that all of the download versions of Street Fighter IV are fucked over with horrible methods of DRM, however Capcom has this to say about the retail boxed version:

For SFIV PC:

The retail DRM will be disc-based SecuROM (not network authenticated this time). It will require you to have the disc in the tray to play.

That means we can just leave it in the disk tray, or use a virtual drive if that's annoying. Or maybe there is some easy hack out there to get rid of the disk check altogether. Whew, what a relief. Looks like I will be able to buy the game after all.

tl;dr
physical media wins yet again

[Mozgus]

OK, I'm back. It seems that all of the download versions of Street Fighter IV are fucked over with horrible methods of DRM, however Capcom has this to say about the retail boxed version:

For SFIV PC:

The retail DRM will be disc-based SecuROM (not network authenticated this time). It will require you to have the disc in the tray to play.

That means we can just leave it in the disk tray, or use a virtual drive if that's annoying. Or maybe there is some easy hack out there to get rid of the disk check altogether. Whew, what a relief. Looks like I will be able to buy the game after all.

tl;dr
physical media wins yet again

Securom is notorious for failing to identify the disc though. Google it and you'll find all kinds of horror stories. Buy at your own risk. I went with Impulse to avoid Securom, but I still got fucked.