They love to destroy their customer base with draconian restrictions and then bawl about how piracy is cutting into their bottom line. Regular as clockwork.
Dr.Gonzo
It wasn't an interesting enough topic for two bumps within 8 minutes of the original post to fish for a response. But since you're trawling, I'll come trolling:
No, I don't like invasive DRM. I speak with my wallet as well. The only game I'm tracking that uses Tages is X3: Reunion (Edit: I meant X3: Terran Conflict. X3: Reunion was already released sans DRM. Thank you, Egosoft). Egosoft historically re-releases a DRM-free package sometime around a year after original release. I'll wait for that release. Egosoft can have my money for their otherwise awesome game when their unspoken promise of a no-DRM release is fulfilled.
As for Anno 1404 (a.k.a Dawn of Discovery outside of Europe), the only reason I'm even aware of the game is because I saw it on Steam - where even the Steam install hsa a 3 machine activation limit and NO RESETS available. Pretty game, and I think I'll pass. Steam DRM + Tages 3 activation limit would break for me because my main gaming PC is XP - soon to move to Win7. My other gaming PC is a laptop (Vista) which may or may not get migrated to Vista. Either way, that's going to be seen as 3 or 4 machines right there and no room for OS reinstalls or any error at all. I don't need the grief over a game.
There's some confusion in the original post. You can install and uninstall as much as you want. Activation has to be done if you put new hardware in your PC and that limit is at 3. Ubisoft support over at the German forums has already stated they just have to be contacted and they'll reset that if needed.
I too am unhappy they chose this method and hope they won't in the future. That isn't going to stop me from enjoying probably the best city-building game I've seen in years.
They put annoying DRM to Steam too. Ubisoft is really dumb, I really like game demo and wanted to buy the game but with this DRM I won't. I hope they will remove this soon.
And pirates are going to remove all that crap from the game within 48 hours of release. Honestly, I don't know what's the point. Needless expense for the software license, needless expense for increased customer support when the "protection" starts screwing with legit customers, needless grief and bad rep when people start complaining about it on the internet.
So basically, if you employ this kind of draconian DRM in your game, you pay to shoot yourself in the foot.
Is it illegal to download the pirated, DRM free game, if you purchased it legally?
If it has an activation limit; I don't buy it. Period. Besides, steam is wrong. It was still showing multiplayer, and all the previews talked about multiplayer... this game has no multiplayer element. It looked like a nice game. Oh wells.
If that's actually true, then what is the point of the DRM at all? It won't stop pirates for more then 3 seconds. If you can *really* just call to get it reset (and I don't buy that), then it won't stop the resale market either. So just who are they targetting with this defective by design garbage?
The only way these companies will learn is by refusing to buy games that have this type of nonsense on them.
Well, think about it though, it's not like the only data they collect is number of times it was activated and then take your word for it. They will probably store the ip of activations and the system specs since it's tied to hardware. If they see 3 activations from 3 different states, it's pretty unlikely that they'll give more activations.
These systems are pretty devious these days.
Yeah, don't get me wrong, it's plenty irritating and the wrong way to go. I've just seen or heard about a lot worse and I personally don't mind a possible future annoyance for a very enjoyable game right now.
I can't believe they screwed up this game like that. The game itself is great, it received great reviews and certainly lives up to it's predecessors (well, not counting Anno 1503).
But dear god, the DRM protection!
And not only that, they did not include Multiplayer... how in the world could they let this happen? I wonder if the devs of Anno 1404 have any knowledge of the history of Anno at all. Don't they know about the Anno 1503 incident? Not including Multiplayer in Anno is just ludicrous. Everything was perfect in Anno 1701, the game itself and the Multiplayer part...
Well, ok, they "promise" to deliver Multiplayer functionality with a patch. But so did the devs of Anno 1503... and they actually had to give up.
Well.....I bought the game.
Yes the DRM is a piss-off, however I haven't noticed anything different about my system (ie. rootkit type behaviour) since having the game installed. I do agree that these type of DRM schemes are horrid and should be done away with, I do also however think many people blow this shit out of proportion and some "issues" reported could be traced back to something else going wrong with a user's system (ie. not DRM rootkit etc. related). My gaming-only rig is a Vanilla (plus Service Packs and all other patches) XP Pro x64 system.
The game itself is fantastic.....and yes.....probably one of the best city-builders to date.
I think many people blow it out of proportion because nowadays we have two extremes: either games with no DRM, like Supreme Commander, Demigod, Sins and also any games on Steam for example (not counting Steam itself as DRM here )... and then there is the other extreme, games with intrusive DRM like in Anno 1404, newer SecuROM versions, Starforce (though is Starforce even used anymore?) etc.
So naturally people could get outraged about intrusive DRM, because they know that there are also games that won't give them any trouble at all.
In the past, DRM was not a big deal. Neither for the customer or the pirates.
And now DRM is not a big deal for pirates only.
Do you know why they put such insane and intrusive DRM schemes on their games? Because the guys calling the shots are accountants, not designers or gamers. And accountants say "this sort of a scheme is going to annoy an X percentage of our customers, of whom a Y percentage is going to ask for a refund, while it is going to dissuade a Z percentage of potential downloaders of illegal copies from going through all the steps necessary to get it working.
Then they calculate they can earn one more dollar from discouraged would-be pirates who end up buying the game than lose from refunds and that's it.
That, and shareholders, who more often than not definitely are not gamers and just rich guys in suits that hear the word piracy and get all panicky.
Really, the biggest reason Stardock can do what they do is because they're private and the Frog calls all the shots. If they were public, the stock holders would have a say and it all goes downhill from there. And hey, most of these publishers are public.
Shareholders can certainly get in the way, but if you maintain your controlling stake and have management that is concerned with the longevity of a company and not just their own bonus and short-term gains for their shareholders, even public companies can proceed competently. It's not like EA or Ubisoft came out of the gate as evil empires.
Management HAS to be concerned primarily with the gain of shareholders...that's actually part of US business law. Management of a corporation cannot run counter to the profit motives of it's shareholders (unless of course the shareholders have agreed to it).
Too bad. I really enjoyed Anno 1701 and the demo for this one was really good.
yes, but what really is shareholder gain? modern business literature would tell you things like EVA, but I think the timing here is very important. focusing on the short term or on the long term yields very different results, bc in short term you may maximise revenues and profits by not investing as much, not binding your clients to such a degree and lots more. if will affec your long term position, but if all you care is quarterly profits and if that is the way you design your management's bonuses, then short term profit and long term stagnation/ collapse is what you end up with.
and trust me, companies do see that and do realise that being public has advantages ( mostly more equity or in general more resources) but also drawbacks (as I said maybe overly focus on short term and a certain limitations as to what you can do). an ipo is not always a no-brainer.
And there are no laws on the books that dictate companies have to provide outrageous quarterly profits and screw the company, including shareholders, in the long-term. There simply isn't.
other than the law of the capital market if you want to call it such. of course if you have the choice between a return of 5% and 10%, you take the latter and if you can have 10% in 3 months or in 3 years, you take it sooner than later. and the point is, the market just puts an enourmous amount of pressure on a company to behave in certain ways and doing certain things, because of that. add to that the most fiendish aspect of all: behave accordingly or get eaten. either your shareholders fire you, bc they feel you're not maximising their returns or you company gets acquired and the new guys kick you out, bc they think they can squeeze the organisation better. yeah, in such a situation, you have a lot less choice than you might initally think.
so: law? not exactly. but let's just say it's a course of action, a certain way of doing things that you can't really say no to.
It's your kind of thinking that caused a lot of people to loose their life savings and watch big companies that had no reason to fail, fall under the weight of their own greed. Think what you want, but there is no law that says businesses have to work with only with short-term goals in mind as Crass suggests. And not all companies that go public have managers and boards incapable of thinking beyond the horizon.
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