Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.Now, this is something I fail to understand altogether. The whole idea of selling a game at 60€ and then adding a ridiculous amount of double-checks of "whether or not this is legit" while the pirates will have cracks hanging around for free on the next day or so is stupid beyond belief. When, and if I buy a consumer product, I don't want to figure out for hours how to even get to use it, and then worry that it might stop working because someone else has faked the serial key for it. I don't want to spend hours on figuring out on how to eat a grape, if I did, I'd install Linux.
After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez'd and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn't become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can't contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.
Now, that aside, another matter that I fail to understand is the apparent lack of comprehension of basic economy laws that the fine people of EA and of other companies that represent electronic entertainment have. Is it truly hard to comprehend the target audiences and the maximum profit/maximum price curve? Even I know how to calculate it, can't possibly be that the marketologists (spellcheck suggests herpetologists here, heh) at EA don't know it.
So what do we have? DRMs, which probably cost around 2-5$ per copy as license, RIAA fees, publisher fees, European Committea On Some Useless Crap That Is Supposed To Fight Piracy fees, "Record Tax", VAT, Voice-over superstars (that perform poorly anyway), production costs. Out of these, we can safely toss out, well, almost all of the listed items. In turn, this lowers the costs by nearly 50 bloody percent, imagine that. Fifty. Which suddenly makes everything about twice more affordable and about four times more attractive, since cheap = attractive, as pretty much any supermarket manager will tell you. The purchaser amount would, in turn, soar - far more than twice, and the eventual turnout from the sales would increase by a lot due to the simple reason of not having to share all the income with about a dozen separate agencies.
However, none of this is done, the prices on games increase every year, the amount of the protection included is ridiculous, the purchaser base collapses and, in turn, certain parts of it turn to the consoles.
However, the consoles as such are, firstly, somewhat costly and second, each game purchased is pretty much an investment, because, no matter how expensive the PC games are, consoles beat them with ease. Which brings us to the point of the target audience, and the simple fact that the said audience seems to include the pre-"independent" children and the people with a steady income. In turn, this cancels out the students and, in some degree, people with steady income but a lack of desire to purchase a separate machine to play a game on for reason ranging from lack of room to peer phobia.
Stupid.
A few points to consider:
ReplyDelete1) An increasingly popular trend with DRM systems these days is online validation. For instance, Steam checks for a game license every time you want to play a game, and only allows you to play in "offline" mode because Valve does not want to alienate laptop users. Offline mode requires you to log on to the online section of Steam at least once per session of Windows, after which the license is verified and you may continue to play until you restart your system. That said, most DRM systems today are less intrusive and more transparent to the user, but this will soon become a standard part of the gaming industry's development process. So basically when I download a pirated game, I get it for free, without pesky DRM, and for that reason it's easier to install and play.
2) The gaming industry is trying more novel approaches to anti-piracy: online subscription-based gaming and free gaming. An example of the former is WoW, which you can't play without paying Blizzard money (or would have to go to extreme lengths to play illegitimately) and the latter approach is substantiated in games like Maple Story and Battlefield Heroes, both of which are free to play, but constantly tempt their users to pay for items and other kinds of crap. Personally, I find the former type of game more appealing - everyone pays the same fee and gets the same benefits in-game.
3) Consoles are all-around better for game makers and game marketers for several reasons: the hardware configuration is predictable and hence the software could be tuned to perform smoothly; the cost of development is decreased because you have to develop for one machine instead of testing on a whole range of computers, consoles are simple, package deals that can be made to look like the latest spaceship and are easy for the end-user to install and get good performance out of (iPod-style marketing) and most importantly: consoles are under the control of the manufacturer, whereas the computer is (as of now) under the control of the end-user. However, nVidia and ATI don't want to see PC gaming dead, and for once, their profit is my benefit as well.
4) Linux is actually not that bad. I'm not trying to say anything, really, just that if you're not a hardcore gamer, say, if you need a cheap office computer, Linux is a cheap choice and it has come a long way since the days of the command line. Still, it's probably not suitable for the majority of PC users simply because Microsoft controls game developers by shoving DirectX down their throats, despite the existence of free (and arguably better) alternatives.
4) I don't feel like learning how to configure, write scripts and do other fancy things with Linux. My programming level is slightly above "monkey" and slightly below "walrus", so, as long as I can have cheap/free Windows (or, alternatively, Mac), I don't see why I should bother just to have a slightly more efficient, though gimped in terms of gaming, system!
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, well. They're still pretty much trying to cut the branch they're sitting on - and through elimination of record taxes, RIAA and a bunch of other *useless* offices, the end-sum received by publisher and dev would be way more, with a way lower product price.
That was the original intention of Steam and the like, but they ended up getting greedy and now Steam charges as much for CoD4 as retail stores do, if not more.
ReplyDeleteThe gaming industry, like many others, is designed to make money. That is obvious, but my point is that it's designed to make money for the people who invest in it, who want it to generate as much as it can, and so all other aspects of the trade are cast aside and the knowledgeable experts, be they programmers, artists, etc. are only brought in if it's absolutely necessary.
As long as gaming, music, films, and more are to make money for the venture capitalists, we won't see real care for the end-user. That's why we're seeing a lot of privately-funded companies sprouting now. They should benefit the audience as well as the authors, not the business people.
But that's too good to be true...
Of course it is. Private companies aren't ran by idealists, they're ran by people that have a clear(ish) business plan, and are intending to make more money than they would if they'd be employed to some company or another, or make at least as much. So, naturally, when a possibility to make more money comes along, they'll take it. Such is the human nature, to grab for the bigger piece of the pie. That particular matter cannot be helped, really.
ReplyDeleteNow, my problem - still - is the bunch of offices all over the world that waste the legit users' money to "fight piracy", which they, in essence, don't, and when they do, it's usually some poor sod that installed a pirated version of Office to help his kid write an assignment for school. There's national and international law, and, by and large, the pirate sites and organisations, if ever caught, are shut down and prosecuted by the laws of the country they were caught/resident in, rather than by some vague RIAA ruling.
Now, if RIAA and other anti-piracy commissions were proven incompetent and useless, if the DRMs they partially *enforce* would be repelled, and if some of the antiquated tax regulations were removed, the greedy people would still get their money through publishing second-rate computer entertainment products, BUT, they'd actually fight the piracy, instead of *stimulating* it.
A precedent has been set: Amazon.com stopped selling DRM MP3s. They realised that DRM is crap...
ReplyDeleteOooh, didn't know that, awesome of Amazon to do that. Hopefully more companies follow with that - one of the publishers, was it Ubisoft or something, too, has decided to stop using DRMs some few months ago, so, maybe it's symptomatic.
ReplyDeleteThey just want to get rid of the overhead. They're not stupid - they see the games on Mininova just like we do, and that's proof that the fancy DRM schemes that SecureRom and their like are selling are worthless.
ReplyDeletePretty much. For some reason, game producers think the same way as movie producers do - "first week(end) sales = 40% of the total income sum", which, frankly, is stupid. As some of the more popular and lasting titles (urgh, WoW, urgh, Sims) have proven, people are ready to buy them without the insta-hype-followup. Hell, I remember when Starcraft got its own "battlechest", it was up to Top 5 in US sales right away, 7 years after it was published. Without ad campaigns.
ReplyDeleteSo, by adding DRMs, they *presume* that they have a week's time to have people buy legit. Which, again, is stupid. The market purchasers segment into the "frontiersmen" - which buy ANYTHING new as soon as it's out; their copycats, which buy anything that these guys think is cool; the people that know what they want to buy but are ready to wait (and, alternatively, ready to pirate if hit with a wall of bullshit DRMs - main consumer group, too, I might add) and people that go around shops looking at fancy titles and cleavage on epic-looking Fantasy "RPGs". Meaning, in essence, that this particular approach is, well, worthless, as the people will buy it just as much as they would otherwise.
There'll always be freeloaders, and people that can't afford buying all the stuff they want, but, by generating hype among their friends, these people more than pay back for their vile deeds. The "anti-piracy" war, in truth, really only increases dissent among the main purchase group, and eventually, leads honest people to pirate things.
*remembers the good old days of cheap SimCity, sheds a lonely tear*
Oh, and a followup on the Bioware stuff -
ReplyDelete"There has been a lot of discussion in the past few days on how the security requirements for Mass Effect for PC will work. BioWare, a division of EA, wants to let fans know that Mass Effect will not require 10- day periodic re-authentication.
The solution being implemented for Mass Effect for the PC changes copy protection from being key disc based, which requires authentication every time you play the game by requiring a disc in the drive, to a one time online authentication.
BioWare has always listened very closely to its fans and we made this decision to ensure we are delivering the best possible experience to them. To all the fans including our many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able re-authenticate as often as required, EA and BioWare want you to know that your feedback is important to us."
So they decided to edge their head out of their collective ass a little.
With piracy networks becoming more and more decenteralised and less publicly visible, piracy can't be won by fighting it.
ReplyDeleteCompanies will be forced to develop a model that will be based on the free distribution of their content.
Not quite necessarily. Companies might, however, either declare the PC market dead, or reconsider their affiliations and price politics. One thing I really hope for is the day when the management level will at least partly be filled with people that actually know something about Internet, piracy etc, that's when things might actually start changing for the better.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, it's like any other industry that's being controlled by people that are regarded as, and consider themselves smart, but in fact haven't the slightest idea of how things actually work in the field they're supposed to be making money out at.
Management is always composed of the people who care only about management, so nothing will change.
ReplyDeleteThe PC market won't be declared dead soon if video card makers get to have their say. Most of their money is still made by selling products to the end consumers, not by designing a specialised component for xboxes...
But I like managing! Or was it "I am easily drunk with power and want more and more and more of it!"? Hmm, I forget.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, true, video card companies and the rest of the component market is quite helpful with keeping the damn thing alive, but that's not exactly enough, is it?