Mass Effect on PC [May/June '08]

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That's exactly what I've been doing. No internet petition or anything like that will have any effect on the system - the only way we can vote against schemes we dislike is with our money. Every game I've bought in the past several years had a less-irritating form of copy protection, or none at all. I almost bought Galactic Civilization II, even though I had not interest in the game whatsoever, just because this article showed the developer had unusual insight into piracy and how to fight it. As for pirating games - no, not going to do that. After all this ranting about publishers' paranoia and their hypocrisy, how big a hypocrite would I be if I started pirating games with annoying copy protection?

If "change systems" includes reinstalling the OS, that's not good enough.
I think the saddest thing in this affair is when we perceive such measures as being "fair". They're not. But considering we've had some seriously crazy ones, just about all the moderately crazy ones seem fair and perfectly normal. Raise your hand if you remember the days when the game manual had, on the first page, in large bold letters: "Before you start playing the game, be sure to back up your original discs first!"

 

And a more detailed text by the same guys that Ziad linked to: piracy and PC gaming.

The problem I have with the DRM that is currently on Mass Effect is that I don't understand what its purpose is. Who is it supposed to affect? As far as I can tell:
1. stopping small scale piracy (me lending the game to a friend) - effective
2. stopping large scale piracy (cracked copy appearing on torrents) - ineffective (possibly a small delay but unlikely)
3. stopping a legal user from enjoying his legally purchaced game - effective

I agree with what Tal said, in some way they must have figured that stopping 1. is worth the lost sales from 3. I'm just not sure that EA is thinking that clearly.

If I now choose to vote with my wallet and not buy ME(PC), than I represent a lost sale. However, since piracy of the game will continue, they have no way of knowing if I actually pirated the game or not. In other words, EA could easily ascribe the lost sale as being due to:
- their own DRM
or
- piracy

Guess which one will they choose to do?

 

Indeed, the irony here is that heavy duty protection methods like these might encourage piracy instead of preventing it.

 

It definitely does, although perhaps not in the way the publishers might expect. I've known a number of people I know (most recently a friend who got Bioshock) who get so pissed off with copy protection schemes that they buy the original game and then get a crack or, in some extreme cases, download a pre-cracked version of the game. While I wouldn't go down this route (for reasons I've discussed in my previous post) I honestly understand their frustration. I just wish they did themselves and the industry a favor by not getting the game in any shape or form and actually making a point. One friend is going to buy Mass Effect and I'm trying to convince him to look at the copy protection they eventually implement before doing so

Great article Vukodlak.

 

You never own any piece of intellectual property. You pay for a license to use it. You don't own Paul McCartney's "Yesterday" just because you paid 99 cents for it and downloaded it from iTunes.

There's a lot of whining about this issue and the bottom line is: no one's forcing you to buy anything. You can live the rest of your life just fine without ever buying another stupid video game or listening to a pop song or, God forbid, your cellphone has to just ring with a generic ring rather than the latest ring-tone ("aw yeah, yo, that's my jam!"). There's an attitude of entitlement in too many folks these days, i.e. I have a right to listen to whatever music I want, watch whatever movies I want and play whatever games I want and the accountants, politicians and lawyers have no right to stop me!

 

True. However, I expect to own the mp3 file and to be able to listen to it when I want, where I want and how I want. In the same way that, while I do not intellectually own the Beatles Red and Blue albums, I own the CDs and the boxes and the booklets, and can listen to them when I want, where I want and how I want.

You're right, which is precisely why I only buy games that don't impose some bizarre copy protection scheme, why I buy all my music as CDs that don't have DRM protections and why my mobile has that generic ring (which doesn't bother me in the least. Besides I think my mobile's too old to have customisable and downloadable content). It's not so much an "I'm entitled to!" as much as a "this is what I expect, and if that's not what the company has to offer then I'm not getting it". It's Tal's "vote with your dollars" approach, with louder noise added