I cringe when someone tries to say their DRM isn’t DRM. There’s nothing inherently wrong with DRM. The problem thus far with it is that the R part of it (rights) is often ignored. A proper acronym for DRM thus far should be DrM . The rights in DRM were supposed to be between both developers and users.
So for months, since the Gamers Bill of Rights was launched we’ve been working on a technology that would provide the kind of protection publishers want and would accept but at the same time would give gamers a lot of the things they’ve been asking for.
The solution we’ve come up with and integrated into Impulse Reactor is called Game Object Obfuscation (GOO). When a developer runs GOO on their EXE, it encapsulates it and Impulse Reactor into a single encrypted EXE. When the user runs the program for the first time, they enter in their email address and serial #. It’s about as easy as logging into a forum except you only have to do this once.
Because the game is tied to a person instead of hardware, they can install on their other machines without being hassled. Also, because it’s all self-contained it makes possible 3 key things:
1. Universal Activation. If I buy a copy of a game from Steam or Direct2Drive or Impulse that is also available on one of the other platforms, I should be able to re-download it form any of the services that it’s available on. That way, if the place I buy from folds, I can still re-download my game from someone else. A Goo’d game makes this possible.
2. Used copies. One thing that holds digital distribution back is that a gamer who buys a game digitally can be made to feel like they’re renting it because the licenses are non-transferable. Publishers, however, really don’t like reselling games (I hate the way it’s currently done). But with Goo, now the game developer and the user can both benefit and let gamers resell their copy to someone else. That’s because the Goo’d EXE is encrypted and the user can voluntarily disable their access from it thus making it transferrable.
To demonstrate the business advantages of this, we plan to use this feature of Goo ourselves on Elemental– it lowers the risk of buying a game and thus can increase sales.
3. Untethered gaming. Because Goo is all self-contained, there’s no third party client floating around. A developer can use this on their game and have it available at retail or other digital distributors.
What’s nice about GOO is that a developer simply runs it on their program. They don’t have to mess with source code or anything. It takes care of it all for them. Legitimate customers end up with something that’s incredibly benign, publishers end up something that protects their rights, and both get something that opens the door to resolving some of the remaining challenges with digital distribution.
Internal beta of Impulse Phase 3 client. UI graphics are not finalized yet. Faster, cleaner, more streamlined view. More major publishers scheduled to come on board in the month of April.
Sounds good.
One issue- and this comes out of sheer laziness.
Some Steam users balk at having to enter in the serial and email manually. Perhaps Impulse, should, when you buy a game- enter in those things automatically once it's paid?
I know that's lazy, but it would be a convenience (unsure if it's practical)
The transferable rights- I wish I could have done that for Sins- good game, but just not for me.
Its all good to my ears! Go Frogboy, go!
It does, if you buy it digital from SD. You only have to enter it manually if you're buying a boxed version of a Stardock game.
I assume that this means the other use can't use it until the seller disables their own access? In essense, this is supposed to ensure that only one user can play the game at a time, unlike the current system where say you buy Sins, re-sell it, but you can still play it too?
Impulse has always done this. So did Stardock Central.
I'm loving how you keep pushing Stardock out of the comfort zone that other companies won't touch. I thought the main benefit of Digital Distribution was to finally stop the reselling of games. I applaud that you are willing to let users sell their games. Its one of my pet peeves. I believe that we should be able to sell the game for the simple reason of I'm not going to play this ever again, but there are other reasons too. My Dad died about 9 months ago and I asked Steam if we could transfer the games to my brother or me (which we purchased for him). They said no, just pointing to the user agreement, which is not very good customer service for someone who just lost a close family member. With GOO we could at least unlock his license and then transfer to one of our accounts. Keep up the good work Frogboy!
Really, I always remember getting an email from Stardock, then having to enter it in manually via a cut and paste.
Then again, was that only SDC?
SDC didn't work quite as well in that regard. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't.
While under both systems emails with registrations have been sent out, I personally have not had an issue with buying a product and having Impulse pull the relevant registered info-I haven't had to enter a serial in it yet.
I have two questions.
1. What happens if the user's registered email address lapses? For expamble: a user has registered a Hotmail address that is later closed due to inactivity.
Xbox live is currently having problems dealing with this account issue.
2. On license management: Lets say my brother and I each buy single player games like Fallout 3 and Fable II. Now, I buy Fallout 3 and he buys Fable II. After we both beat the game we bought, we swap licenses. This could potentially cost a publisher a sale. Would this be considered an acceptable practice? Also what about rings of friends buying inividual games, like in my example, and then swapping them? Would this also be an acceptable standard?
I'm sorry, but the forums won't let me edit my previous post. (Possible conspiracy? )
Anywho in annendum, I meant to add that the new version of Impulse looks nice and clean. I was also wondering if Stardock will be adding either Metacritic or Gamerankings scores to games listed in Impulse's Explore section; like Steam has in it's Store section?
Looks like there is a first game using the Impulse Reactor in the store.
It's a FPS, so I'm not personnaly interested, but I guess that we will now see how it fares against its competitors (SecuRom et al).
Actually, I've had to call Stardock about the email issue (gal civ 2), and it was a simple phonecall, no waiting or anything. I just watched the video from gdc, and I can say, ooooh boy I'm excited!
I like the keep it simple approach that benefits the user. That in itself will certainly boost sales and there's also the updates by digital platform only that rewards genuine owners while minimizing piracy.
However, cracking the GOO'd EXE seems to be less complex than the more overbearing DRM, and pirating intelectual property is still a big issue for many concerned publishers out there.
To date, there is not a single form of copy protection that has stopped crackers from breaking into it. Even hardware solutions like consoles have eventually get cracked.
When you want to protect your software from pirating, it's pointless to try and stop the real pirates (the ones that put things up on bit torrent, usenet, etc.). What you want to do is have just enough copy protection to stop average joe from copying it willy nilly but not so much that average joe has to do any work if he is a legitimate customer.
There are a number of times where I have pirated a game just because it was easier for me than it was to get/play the legitimate copy. Either they didn't offer a digital distrobution of the game in question or their DRM was so restrictive that it just wasn't worth the effort. Anytime it's easier for someone to get the game illegally than legally you know you have a problem.
I hope you paid for a legal copy anyway while you pirated. I'm sure the developers appreciate not getting paid for their work.
This looks good at first glance, Brad. A few questions, if you'd be so kind (feel free to direct me to a link if there's more info elsewhere):
- do you have to activate the game on-line?
- if yes for question 1, does it mean you have to activate it for each new machine on which it's installed?
- it appears by one of your statements that you could install the game and activate it on one of your rigs, then go ahead and install it on any of your other rigs as well. If this is the case, how does this stop piracy? Couldn't someone just activate a game and then give it to all their friends?Sorry if I seem dense, but I just don't see how this system works yet. But as I said, at first glance, it looks like it could be a good solution.
Didn`t Valve(Steam) just announce something very similar yeterday? I`m glad the competition is fierce. We`ll all be the better for it.
It`s not about stopping pirate`s, From my understanding. There is no stopping pirate`s. It`s about giving publisher`s "some" protection. It`s really about making it less painful for the "paying" customer`s.
Bad idea these GOO thing...
By example, i have a legit version of sins of solar empire and Entrenchment running on a Linux box... i am obligate to use windows for update the game since Impulse don't work with Linux... GOO being Impulse code who wrap the software, it will make these software incompatible with other OS...
First try to make a Impulse who work with various OS, a real multi platform thing... after, the GOO thing will be a good idea...
DRM and piracy issues have been discussed ad nauseum and there has been a noticeable shift on how to deal with the problem, where online solutions are taking an increasingly bigger role.
GOO, seems like a good way to even things out among digital distributors, but what's in it for the big publishers that dictate market rules and their "old" concerns?
Agreed.
Let's hope that more and more publishers see the wisdom in that. Though I believe that some in the gaming industry won't see in good eyes a tool that would be easier to crack than the more conventional ways, since the overbearing DRM seemed to signal a very strong resolve in that regard. There's also paying customers that won't like the fact that they'd need to be online to activate a product, though you can't please everyone.
I am also curious about the answer to this one. Can I burn the game to CD and install it on a machine without internet access?
How is this supposed to work? Is there a cloud of GOO authenticating servers, registering e-mail and serial Id, allowing unregistration and preventing serial id to be registred with 2 different e-mails?
Does this means that for the first run, the gaming rig must be connected to Internet?
Yeah. And that came some time after the announcement of the upcoming "online DRM" from Microsoft.
At least Stardock seems to be trying to reach common grounds.
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