Beware of BioWare!

[nando2002]

JoWood develop his own protection which include in the games it publish. Intrusive or not they create a protection just like Atari is doing - each one follows his own path.

I still believe in big publishers like Sierra, THQ, JoWood, etc. Even if some of the products they publish don't worth a cent.
The support is a formality for the publisher if the dev company has his own forum, ex:
CoH/OF/DoW: Relicnews
World in Conflict: Massgate
Universe at War: Petroglyphgames
The Witcher: thewitcherforum
etc.
The Witcher, Never Winter Nights, and others has his own space in Atari forums but is useless in content comparative to the devs forums.

Many others uses the publisher forum space as HQ for they customers like:
Phenomic (Spellforce) uses JoWood forums
Eden Studios (TDU), Eugen Systems (AoW) uses Atari forums
etc.

[TippeX]

jowood had a bit more 'skill' though... even if their protections were very intensive (and occasionally buggy)... didn't really help them much in the end though...

[nando2002]

This conversation leads me to a story (false but true at the same time):
An engineer's competition between USA and Japan was raised to found who can create a machine to make the most thin gold wire in all the world. In the end no one could create that machine but the japaneses develop another machine that will drill the most thin gold wire in the world.

[wolfsrain]

That was the case for the first GalCiv indeed. For the second, I never had that problem. Neither for Sins of a the Solar Empire. But to get their patches, usually you have to get the game registered

[nando2002]

I think it's more related to statistic than in user control/software limitations.
It's a must for every company try to keep their customers happy, what better way to know your customers than check in when they play.
How many times they log and how long they stay logged.
If many customers stop login for a long period after being logged almost every day (ABC Stats) they can give something to catch their atention again (more maps, mod kit, news, etc. ) and makes them play again often.

This option (Login Autentication) is marketing behind.
Take a look at Relic (Company of Heroes), when they see less people online they create a custom map competition 1 or 2 per year until they launch a new game. Simple but efficient.

In the other hand... they must provide a way to play the game without log in - case you want to play it in the middle of nowhere without net connection or the server are down.

[wolfsrain]

Then why don't use the same anger on the ATARI forums in the NWN section? Remember their premium modules? You pay a nice sum for all of them and end up with a product that it will be useless later on. And yes I've missed the 1.6 patch, as at the time when it was released I've had enough of GalCiv2.

[nando2002]

"Soryy I know You gonna hate but I have to agree with the Nando Guy and his anger in some point"
Me, anger?
where?
I just post about connection on-line and stats - where's the anger?

You must be referring "AstralWanderer" post.

[acal3000]

Yes you are right I edited my post

[wolfsrain]

Adding my own comments:
The big companies wnat their product to reach a larger categorie, but they always forget that the larger categories are what you call computer illiterates. They won't know if their PC meets the sysreq of the game that they've just bought due to some hype or aggressive marketing campaign. The hardcore gamer will always have their systems uptodate, will know where to look for their fixes, how to avoid sites that would give trouble to your PC and such. The casual gamer it's the one that considers Solitaire fun. Or games like the one published by companies like Big Fish Games, Reflexive Arcade and such. But those companies are very aware of the people who will buy their games. Companies that are selling casual games are aware that their customer are not computer geniuses or hardcore games. So their games are nice looking, working even on very old computers and not too hard to play.
Big companies are always talking about games reaching many people, but in the end they fail because they don't understand the casual gamer that they are trying to reach.
If you want to go on the casual games market, than you won't make multimillion budget title who is heavy on the system requirements. The casual gamer doesn't have the latest PC. Hell, you are lucky if he has a recent entry level model from a company like Dell or Gateway. So the big companies are failing to understand the very market that they are trying to reach. So their sales are taking a dump, and they think: it must be the goddamn pirates: let's enforce the copy protection. Well, no: treating your paying customers as potential criminals and making their life hard does not bring more sales indeed. And while I can agree with one activation and a later patch(after let's say two years, when the game gets old and the need for such measures it's gone) who would disable the activation, I can't agree with an online activation, staying online while playing single player games and having a recheck at avery 10 days. IF, I as a hardcore gamer and a pretty tolerant person I can accept a thing like online activation, I can't accept a combination like the one that EA wants to impose. If I've wanted a game that would require for me to stay online, I would play an MMO. End of story. Those being said, with regret I say, that I'll wait a few years until I'll buy games like Spore or Mass Effect. As any new protection, this one will have quite a few problems and sincerely I've had enough of playing the guinea pig for the gaming companies who are more concerned of implementing some new form of protection instead of repairing the bugs from thier games.
Now, that's my long post.

[nando2002]

Thanks acal

Now on topic:
I have friends without Internet connection: they say there are more important things in life to spend money than Internet. So Online-Activation-only games are a no go for them. But if the devs allows a way to check the DVD if no on-line connection is possible they buy and play the game.
Devs must give alternatives.

Removing the activation after a period of time won't help sells many more game since new games comes out almost every week.

[DABhand]

Oh look, hes now getting back at me now lol

Do you want to do this Wanderer? Im not that dumb either :P

[TippeX]

i actually think he's being honest, the argument / discussion is an interesting one for me anyway, online activation is a two edged sword, used rightly, you don't (usually) have the disk checks so there's freedom for the user, however the check is online and drm based..

so, lets see where it goes, lets just keep it on track and relative eh

[guenthar]

Tippex: The data would already be in plain text on the persons computer so they wouldn't copy it over to another place to encrypt it. You may beable to see the data on your computer but how do you know what they encrypted and transfered since they would encrypt it directly.

When it comes to game companies/DRM companies taking your personal information why can't they. Online companies do it all the time and lawmakers can't make a law to let online companies do it but game companies/DRM companies can't. All they would have to do is put a clause in their EULA that states that information is transfered to the company and the company has no obligation to reveal what it does with said information.

I have read this thread and unlike what you are implying it is the other way around when it comes to who is the troll. DABhand has been spouting off BS and only one time gave any kind of evidence and they were isolated factors to this argument.

Just to let everyone know Securom is one of the most used game protection systems in use and you can't do an activation by phone so all games that come out with Securom protection won't work on offline computers. How it is going I can see there not being one game that comes out from the big publishers not using online activation and a majority of those won't have phone activations. The only thing you can do by phone is get more activation attempts with Securom.

PS. Tippex: Not all excryptions have been decrypted and for such a small amount of information as "personal information" it would be easy to have it encrypted in an undecryptable encryption and send it over the internet.

PS. DABhand: From how you view things it sounds like if all games start using this kind of protection then I guess someone that uses and offline computer to play games shouldn't even play newer games at all and leave his computer either to rot or only play older games. Thsi is going to happen soon since most games are going like that. (there are also indie games he/she could play but not much more soon)

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by guenthar

PS. DABhand: From how you view things it sounds like if all games start using this kind of protection then I guess someone that uses and offline computer to play games shouldn't even play newer games at all and leave his computer either to rot or only play older games. Thsi is going to happen soon since most games are going like that. (there are also indie games he/she could play but not much more soon)

I didnt say all games, I said games that require online activation.

But unfortunate that it is, the PC market is an ever growing one in terms of hardware, its inevitable that people will have to upgrade their systems.

And again people have to stop just lifting software from shelves without checking specifics first.

I own a PC store, and the amount of people who had to spend more money just to play a game their kid was desperatly wanting to play is huge. When they could have took the time (even if they are not PC savvy) to check things first.

Even the savvy PC users fail to even check specs for software and whats required to play.

[guenthar]

What does anything you said have anything to do with what I said?

1. I said that most games are going to "online activation" which would prevent anyone who plays games on an offline computer not to be able to play almost any modern game. If I could afford it I would have a seperate computer for playing games and using the internet since all the overhead for having an internet connection slows down other things you are doing. I guess by the time I get out of college and can afford to do that there will be very few games available that I could play other then old games and indie games. With this by your reasoning I should either keep suffering through slow downs and unstable gameplay on a computer that has all the excess bagage that comes with having an internet conection or not even beable to play games at all (I could play indie games and older games with my internet based computer since they have lower requirements.)

There are probably other gamers like me that actually want to play there games at the highest settings without slowdowns and since I don't have to listen to you I will beable to since I can just download cracks for all those games I will be playing on my high end offline gaming pc since all of them will have online activation.

PS. Soon enough you will be looking at game boxes and every one of them will say "Internet Access Required" and then a group of hackers take down the DNS servers and noone will be buying games anymore.