Steam, Origin, Epic, Twitch, Good*, *Games Sales [2007-2021]

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Going through that much work for GW just to not have to pay for the box seems immensely stupid though, it's free to play, so why anyone feels the need to emulate it is somewhat beyond me really.

Perhaps this would open the door for modding and whatnot, but still... Years just to crack the protocol before any of the real work can start... Imagine all the more useful things these people could have accomplished in the same timespan. ;)
 
Davros said:
Publisher
"Are you sure this will work the last one you sold us didnt, neither did the one before that or one before that, or the one before that"

Copy protection salesman
"Work ? of course it is not going to work"

Publisher
"Excellent we'll take it"
Click to expand...

more like:

Publisher: you think itll really work this time?

Safedisc guy: Hell no, but what do you care? Youre just in it to tell the shareholders youre trying, right?

Publisher: Oh right. Whatll it cost?

Safedisc guy: Again, does it matter? Youre just going to charge the developer for it right?

Publisher: Oh right, and theyre under contract so they really have no choice! Hahaha!

Safedisc guy: Hahaha, girls, we need more Courvoisier, and more strippers!
 
Grall said:
Going through that much work for GW just to not have to pay for the box seems immensely stupid though, it's free to play, so why anyone feels the need to emulate it is somewhat beyond me really.

Perhaps this would open the door for modding and whatnot, but still... Years just to crack the protocol before any of the real work can start... Imagine all the more useful things these people could have accomplished in the same timespan. ;)
Click to expand...

Hence, why Diablo III is going fully client/server similar to what Guild Wars did. Will it take as long for a working pirated version to come out? Shorter? Longer?

People complain about restrictive DRM. Well the the restrictive DRM is completely gone. But the consequence is that you'll have to be online whenever you wish to play. Not a big deal for me, I'm a 20+ year MMO vet. So no stranger to online requirements to play. But to others, they don't feel the same.

And with most publishers pushing for DD, it's only a matter of time until you can only purchase games online.

iOS, Android, and Metro are all paving the way to get people used to the idea of there being no physical media for their computing needs (gaming, apps, everything). Which then naturally segways into online requirements to play said games...

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
People complain about restrictive DRM. Well the the restrictive DRM is completely gone.
Click to expand...

Absolutely NOT.
The mandatory internet connection while playing IS the DRM.
There's no reason for the game to be written like that, except preventing piracy.
 
Rodéric said:
There's no reason for the game to be written like that, except preventing piracy.
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No reason, except easing the multiplayerability of the game title, allowing your friend(s) to join your game at any time quickly and easily. Assuming there is such a word, of course... ;) There is also the social aspects tied into the new Battle.net service, and so on.

Now, you may not consider this a worthwile goal, and fine, I grant you it's a bit of a stretch, but still, it IS there on some level, and DRM in the form of running the game on an internet server, requiring a constant internet connection STILL beats out Ubi's version, which is running the game locally and requiring a constant internet connection anyway.

The former version of DRM has an advantage (although not one all may care about), while the latter has no advantage at all.

And safeguarding a game against piracy is not inherently evil, especially considering the hundreds of man-years of work plowed into a title like D3. Blizzard deserves reward for that work, while pirates don't deserve anything at all. :p
 
Grall said:
No reason, except easing the multiplayerability of the game title, allowing your friend(s) to join your game at any time quickly and easily.
Click to expand...

None of that requires a mandatory Internet connection, they could of done all that and allowed the game to be played without a connection
 
Sure, as long as you have 2 game clients. We all saw how well that went for Hellgate: London.

And there's also numerous benefits to always connected to play. You'll always have the latest version of the game. Hence you'll never have to play the version game like I used to have do in the LAN days.

It also allows the developer to tweak modifiers and mob difficulty without even patching your game. With combat being resolved severside they can fix imbalances without patching. Adjust loot drops rates without patching. Etc.

The drawback is that you can't use cheats without the risk of being banned from the game. But, meh, I never saw the point of cheat programs anyway.

This is all assuming a proper client/server type of setup.

Heck, Guild Wars even went so far as to allow the developers to modify in game assets without requiring a patch. Mostly due to the fact that if anything changes within a level you just download the changes when you zone into that level. So instead of a monolithic download to play if they do some temporary change for the holidays or whatever, you just have a very small quick download when zoning into a zone that has been changed.

Speaking of Guild Wars. After 7 years they are finally making the decisions to drop support for Win 9x. :D I didn't even know any developer still supported gaming on Win 9x.

Regards,
SB
 
Eh, look at unreal tournament i can play online people can join/leave whenever they want, and if i unplug my Internet the game replaces the players with bots and i carry on as if nothings happened no need for 2 game clients no need for an Internet connection
 
Davros, everybody can see the point you're making, but D3 isn't UT3. D3 is in a totally different ballpark of a game, in terms of scope, gameplay and invested development work and $.

So, there's your answer, really.
 
Grall said:
Davros, everybody can see the point you're making, but D3 isn't UT3. D3 is in a totally different ballpark of a game, in terms of scope, gameplay and invested development work and $.

So, there's your answer, really.
Click to expand...

Still can't play it on a 14 hour flight :(
 
Grall said:
Davros, everybody can see the point you're making, but D3 isn't UT3. D3 is in a totally different ballpark of a game, in terms of scope, gameplay and invested development work and $.

So, there's your answer, really.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think Mize summed up the proper response: regardless of whether it's UT3 or not, there is no obvious reason why it has to be online all the time.
 
Albuquerque said:
Yeah, I think Mize summed up the proper response: regardless of whether it's UT3 or not, there is no obvious reason why it has to be online all the time.
Click to expand...

I would imagine the most obvious reason is obvious. Piracy. The second most obvious reason is with the advent of iOS and Android, people are getting more and more accustomed to being online all the time.

It won't be long until most people under 20 years of age won't even know what it was like to not be online almost all the time.

Like it or not the future appears to be an online all the time service structure.

Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Google, and soon Nintendo are all pushing for getting all your needs met online. Each pushing to make it so that the only reason you need to go to a retail store is to get the hardware. All of whom are assuming that in the near future virtually all of their customer will be online virtually all the time.

Why wouldn't game companies follow suite and take advantage of the numerous benefits of gamers and hence games being connected almost all the time?

Hell, airlines are also trying to get people connected while in flight. That push is still in its infancy and hence still a bit costly, but its there and will become more prevalent in the future. It wasn't all that long ago (less than 10 years) when many internet services still charged by the hour and some cellular plans still are. At some point internet in planes will be just as ubiquitous as cellular internet.

I guess at that point old fogies like us will have to come up with something else to complain about.

Regards,
SB
 
Grall said:
...Well, apart from piracy, naturally... It's obviously a concern to them, wether you want to acknowledge it or not. :)
Click to expand...

I don't play their game, simply because it isn't a genre that I'm interested in. Any games that I'm playing have been paid for, and for the record, I do indeed have a number of them. Maybe not as many as Davros though ;)

But let's go ahead and use me as the strawman, just for argument's sake.

I used to travel, quite a bit actually, for my company. There were many, many places I've been where there is no broadband in the hotel. Or if there was, it wasn't worth the abhorrent fee because I wasn't going to be able to expense it back to my company anyway. So I fire up Steam, pick out something like Half Life 2, Just Cause 2, or Oblivion, or maybe the original Far Cry. I dunno, just some bubblegum-for-the-brain sort of stuff.

I bought these games through a DRM provider named Steam (except for FarCry and Oblivion, although I repurchased both via Steam just because it's easier to transport now.) I have no need, or want, or even so much as passing interest in being "online" to play my games.

If I discovered that a game i wanted to play had an always-online mandate tied to it? I wouldn't buy it, I wouldn't pirate it, in fact I just wouldn't ever mess with it. I have no interest in always online gaming, especially if I will never play it online.

I own only a few "online" games -- the entire Unreal series and Saints Row 2. My only "online" time with those is those rare occasions where I can hook up with my brother who lives four states away. We occasionally can find a random weekend night for brother-bonding time while our wives and kids are asleep and while we kill bots and eachother.

Yeah, maybe I'm lame. I'm cool with that. But I'm not an online gamer by any stretch of the imagination; Call of Brotherhood Warfare Eleventy Three: Another Rehash of An Overplayed World Battle is not interesting to me. I just don't care. So when it comes time for DRM that mandates always online? Nope, not interested.
 
Malo said:
Thanks for the new signature Albuquerque
Click to expand...
LOL! Always glad to contribute :D

Richard said:
Ooooh-kay. DD store sales thread people!
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Yeah, dammit! The whole reason I came in here was to see what kind of cool deals I was missing out on, and then I got suckered into this online DRM crap. I really wish Steam carried Crysis 2, because I hate EA's Digital Distro system. Sadly, looks like that ship has long since sailed :(

Maybe we need another humble bundle or something...
 
Yeah, I was lucky enough to get Crysis 2 when it was still on Steam. Also looks like it might be the last EA game I ever buy on PC...

Regards,
SB
 
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