I tend to agree, however that's not what the companies who actually publish Movies, Music and Games think.  As often discussed, it's a growing trend to see an EULA attached to something you buy.  This allows the Movie, Music or Game in question to be treated as a licenced product rather than a purchased one; you don't buy the thing, you buy a licence to use that thing.

Publishers are allowed to charge you for additional copies of a Game because they treat it like a product, however they then treat that same product as a licence by preventing you from doing with it as you please (such as installing it on multiple computers or not playing it online).  This kind of thinking, which is entirely unethical, will soon become international law with the ACT Agreement, which is being negotiated between Copyright Holders and the Governments of the World and is being kept from public viewing because its considered a matter of National Security.

To sum up the Copyright Holders basic position for the ACTA:
You can buy something, but it is not yours - you've just licenced it from the people you paid.  Because its not yours, you have to use it like you're told to use it and are not allowed to use it in any other way.  If the people you bought it from stop it from working, because its theirs, you can't do something to then make it work, and you're not allowed a refund.  If the product only works some of the time, you can't complain because its not yours, and you're not allowed a refund.  The Government or Utility providers, like an Internet Service Provider, are allowed to look through your house and devices that are needed to use whatever it is you've bought to make sure you're using it the way you're told to use it.  However if this thing becomes broken and needs replacing, well then its actually yours and not theirs and so you need to buy another one, and you're not allowed a refund for the broken one.  Oh, and disagreeing with any of this is illegal.

seems the new fallout is going to use steam works as well, realy annoying that these games will need steam to run it DRM isn't going to die is it?

From what I read from Jafo's position, this is exactly what some people think and believe is perfectly okay. They call it a hybrid, all the benefits for the developer/publisher and none for the consumer, and we (the gamers) are just supposed to gobble that up and say thank you. No. No I won't give them a pass on that one-sided thinking.

That's pretty much it right there. So long as gamers collectively behave like crack addicts always needing another fix, nothing will change. Why would the publishers worry about it? People whining on a forum doesn't mean anything if they all go buy the game anyway.

No, they won't notice.  Mainly because 99.9% of people who will buy the game will have no idea or won't care because they don't know any better.  Most don't hang out on forums like this and actually know what's going on.  Most won't know that Steam is required.

What will be interesting is to see if there is any backlash on the Steamworks requiremnet *after* launch.  Because Civ is very much a single player franchise and there a many, many people that only buy Civ games and very few others they will have no idea of the Steam requirement and will be in for a shock.  Heck, they will have never heard of Steam.  I've already had a couple friends ask me what this Steam thing is because they read about it in a Civ 5 review.

I don't think we'll see any backlash or effect until after the first couple big single player games come out with Steam required such as Civ 5 and Fallout NV.

Then again, most people are sheep and will just follow along...

Or they won't care because Steam works pretty well for them. There's a large group of people pretty happy to buy games on Steam, and even prefer it to retail (sure is a lot more convenient). For them, Steamworks doesn't matter in the slightest.

So long as Steam is working when the game comes out, I don't think there will be much of a backlash at all.

I don't dislike Steam - but I do not like having a game that requires a call home to some remote server to authenticate if you really own and have the right to use the product.

To me, you do not own this product-  you are simply renting it until the company that runs the servers crash or goes out of business (it could happen - look at the financial market last year - so much for bulletproof companies).

This also kills your ability to sell the game, which is my biggest complaint, period.  At least you can sell a single player game with a keycode (although it's almost a given you probably won't be able to play it online thanks to the registration key being used).

I frankly would prefer disc-based DRM but companies have given up on it.  I can still install and play Baldur's Gate II...somehow I think a lot of the games now will become a major PITA to play some years down the road when their remote authentication servers are gone.

For right now, I know that I will not buy Civ 5 out of the door for $60.  It's a rental in my mind until the requirement for online authentication is gone. Funny because I bought Civ4 SE on day 1 for full price.  Even though I had to struggle with its disc copy protection, at least I could do that.  It didn't rely on some remote server.  I'd likely be SOL on a remote server problem 10 years down the road.

Hell I saw the trailer for Disciples III which is coming out and thought "insta-buy!!"...but the byteshield protection that uses is the same thing - requires an online call home to install something YOU BOUGHT.

If companies said outright they would sunset the DRM in a year or two down the road, I'd be willing to tolerate it for the short term.  But until then...I'm not doing it. 

I'm willing to do Stardock games - at least you can install and play without any online authentication required.  I don't think they have the problem fixed entirely (what if I want to update the game some years from now and Impulse is gone or no longer supports it...?) but it's better than requiring a call home to install.  And they are trying to do the right thing with GOO as far as being able to resell digital content.

 

No, I know what the problem is. And I'm saying that there won't be a large backlash when it comes out, because that isn't really a problem for a lot of people.

Agreed (assuming there is a backlash of course).

"Future sales" will also include any non-civ games (errr.... I mean 'titles' or 'properties'  <--- gotta get with the marketing-speak!  ) by the devs and publishers.

I think you guys highly overestimate the strength of any backlash.  It will be minuscule.  The whole membership of the three big Civ fan sites is less than 20% of civ4's sales figures.  If only 10% of total fansite membership is active (not spam accounts, dead accounts, DL's etc) and looking to buy Civ5 then you're looking at 1% of Civ4's sales figures.

The ENTIRE hardcore Civ community represents 1% of total Civ4 sales.  Even if the entire hardcore Civ community does not buy the game, do you think it'll be noticed?

I wonder how much of gaming sales are from repeat customers who liked previous versions of the game or other games by the maker, and how much is from new customers, buying the game because of ads and hype, or a cold search for games of a certain genera at amazon or similar or from the info on the box at a store, or a recommendation from a friend? My impression is that games are one-off deals. Many customers probably buy the game without knowing the company's past games and history on a whim, due to ads or the box catching their interest while in a store. And later, if it didn't suit them, they don't retain the info of who made it (unless something really ticked them off) and may well buy another game from that company for the same reasons they bought the first one.Most people are casual gamers I would imagine, rather than hard core, so they don't put a lot of stock in games and treat them like films. I'll bet these casual gamers are the ones being specifically targeted now, since once the person has bought the game, they've got their money, and if the person doesn't like the game after trying it, who cares, the ads/store displays are bound to bring in other customers. Sometimes these companies may take a hefty hit when the backlash is huge and people condemn the game in large numbers, but most of the time dissatisfied customers simply bin the game and move on to something else and 6 months on down the line, buy something else from the same company, not remembering the company made the turkey they binned 6 months previous.

 

The point of all that I just wrote above is that if people want their dissatisfaction known, and to have any effect, they have to be very vocal about their complaints and back those up with refusals to buy from that company. This encourages the silent majority who probably wouldn't have said anything to then speak up. And it also sends a message to the company they'll be sure to hear about why their sales are down. They may not know otherwise.

I doubt it. The #1 rule for game forums of any size is that the complainers are always louder then everybody else. People who are happy don't go to the forums to say it in anywhere near the number that people go to complain. It's not a good sample at all.

We're talking about at the absolute most, 1% of the customer base (and really it's smaller then that most likely). Of that, the ratio of unhappy people to happy people will be higher then it is in the other 99%.

Unless something like the Demigod launch mess happens, there won't be a backlash of any real size. Even amongst the people complaining, a bunch of them will buy the game anyway (because gamers are like that) and once they start playing they'll be too busy to complain as much.