My Declaration of Freedom

I was lucky to get a brief (one day) go at Valve's Portal before my Steam account was banned because of this message i posted on Steam's support site:

Look, i am fed-up.
I am fed-up with brilliant company's like Valve scaring off legit customers with DRM.
I am fed-up with having to 'activate' a game just to play offline.
I am fed-up with company's ignoring the precious few who actually pay for their games.

I purchased, that's right I PAID MY HARD EARNED for a product that may as well be a blank DVD in a box.
I cannot find a crack for it, so i will simply not play it.

Ok, as of the 18th of December 2008 I will NEVER pay for another game again, ever. Not just from Valve, but from anyone (EA are worse than Valve in regards to DRM). There are TWO exception to my rule, both of which must be met for me to consider paying for a game:

1) The game ("product") contains NO DRM ("Digital Rights Management") technologies or copy protection technologies of any kind.

2) The game ("product") DOES NOT require online activation, or even an active internet connection to play off-line content, including but not limited to the games campaign.

If BOTH of these conditions are met, i will gladly purchase a legitimate copy of the game.

I illegally downloaded Crysis from a torrent site, played it and loved it... so i paid $50AU for it just a few weeks ago (Christmas discount). I haven't even removed the disk from it's case, but i have supported Crytek because they made a great game. Unfortunately Crysis includes DRM, so i downloaded a crack, and no-DVD patch for it. Now my disk is safe from wear and tear as i don't need it in the drive to play. Same story for Quake, Quake II, Quake III: Arena, Quake 4, Doom 3, Prey, Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer Generals, Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. I own legit copies of all of these games, and cracks for all those that require the disk to be in the drive to play. That's not even mentioning the xBox and xBox 360 games i have bought.

I strongly believe in supporting the developers of these great games, but i strongly disagree with DRM, i believe you are only shooting yourselves in the foot by punishing the genuine customer with activation limits, DRM, copy-protection etc. while the pirates get away with a free product, with no DRM or activation limits to be heard of.

In conclusion, if there is actually someone who reads this (wich i kind of doubt judging by your customer "support" to-date) i would like you (Valve, Steam, and any other developer who should read this) to know that you have just lost another customer thanks to DRM. You know what to do to fix this problem, so the ball is in your court.

by the way, the game i purchased was Portal.

Regards, Caboose.

Here is the reply i got:

Hello, A staff member has replied to your question: Caboose,I'm very sorry you are so against DRM. Sadly, it is behavior that you have admitted to that has caused gaming companies to take appropriate measures to protect their intellectual property. Games that do not require DRM or some form of online verification are few and far between anymore so I have a feeling your gaming days may be limited. I wish you luck! I have taken the liberty of disabling your Steam account since you are so unhappy with the product and have admitted to attempting to crack Steam and/or Portal. This is a violation of our EULA and your account will not be re-enabled.

Wonderful huh? So i posted this final comment:

Thank you, i am guessing that by disabling my Steam account i cannot play Portal anymore, right?
Good, you have just done exactly what i am so against. I am a legitimate customer who paid for Portal, and now i cannot even play it.

"since you are so unhappy with the product"

Would i have bought it if i didn't like it? HELL NO! I think Portal is one of the best games ever. And i don't say that lightly, i am very hard to please when it comes to games and Portal is one of the best.

"and have admitted to attempting to crack Steam and/or Portal"

No, actually i said "I cannot find a crack for it, so i will simply not play it." I clearly stated that i have NOT cracked it, and NOT cracking it is not a violation of the EULA.

"I have a feeling your gaming days may be limited"

I don't think so, not as long as talented crackers defeat your stupid stupid DRM.

Anyway, none of this matters anymore, because one of my friends has recently informed me that he has a steam-free crack of Portal and i will be getting a copy soon.

In conclusion, i hope game developers in general realize soon that DRM is only hurting the legitimate customer, and helping pirates. I stand by my claim, that as of the 18th of December 2008 i will never pay for a game again.

Regards, Caboose.

And that brings me to my declaration of freedom, the claim i made in my first post. It has been slightly modified, as i accidentally included copy protection in exception 1. This may be considered my final declaration, and for the rest of my life i will stand by this.

Caboose's Declaration of Freedom

As of the 18th of December 2008 I, Caboose, will NEVER pay for another game again, ever. There are TWO exceptions to my rule, both of which must be met for me to consider paying for a game:

1) The game ("product") contains NO DRM ("Digital Rights Management") technologies of any kind.

2) The game ("product") DOES NOT require my computer to be connected to the internet ("Online") in order to play offline content, including but not limited to the games campaign. A single online activation when the game is first installed is acceptable.

If BOTH of these conditions are met, i will gladly purchase a legitimate copy of the game.

So there it is. I believe if everyone follows these two simple rules game developers will get it through their thick skulls that DRM is not the answer.

This is not the Gamers Bill of Rights, I'm still working on that. Stay tuned.

Caboose.

DRM is killing the games industry by trying to protect it

My current topic of discussion is DRM, and how I believe it's killing the very industry it's intended to protect.

If your not sure what DRM is or involves I recommend reading this article on Wikipedia.

"Digital rights management (DRM) is a term that refers to access control technologies used by hardware manufacturers, publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices" - Wikipedia.

DRM is intended to restrict an end users right to use a product that is legally licensed to them, adding extra restrictions to them, beyond those enforced by intellectual property law. These restrictions can include access limits, installation limits or copying restrictions.

DRM technologies are the actual software (or even hardware) used to enforce these restrictions.

Ok, so how exactly is this killing the games industry? Well, I'll explain with an example. Lets say you have a choice.

Firstly you could purchase the game 'legally':

An avid gamer from way back, you wander into your local EB Games store and spot a great looking new game - Spore. You decide $80 is a fair price for a game, so you buy it. When you get home the first thing you do is fire up your PC and start installing Spore.

Little do you know, a second program "SecuROM" is also being installed, you are not asked to accept anything, it simply installs itself quietly. What's worse, this software is being installed into your computers kernel (the core of your operating system). This allows SecuROM full access to your ENTIRE computer, without restrictions. It will monitor your activities and you will never even know it is there.

Months later, after a virus has raped your computer again, you must format. How many times is that now? Lets see, the drive that broke, and you upgraded to a new computer after that, that's two, plus that time you got a bigger hard drive... hmm i guess this will be your sixth install of Sopre. To your horror you find Spore installation is refused, because you have reached your 'Activation Limit'. You try calling customer support, but fail to convince them you purchased the game legit - it's your word against theirs. Well bugger, guess you just paid $80 for three months of Spore.

Next you try to uninstall Spore, it all seems to go smoothly and the game is gone, but SecuROM is not, it remains on your computer, hidden, and very difficult to remove.

Secondly you could get the game 'illegally':

Your thumbing around on your favorite torrent site, when you notice Spore has been cracked (all DRM has been removed). You download the entire game over a couple of days and install it. No activation, no restrictions, nothing. All you have to do is play Spore.

Now, ask yourself, would you prefer to get Spore for free with absolutely no restrictions or pay $80 for a 5 install limit on only one computer at a time? Be honest, don't give me the "I would buy it because I'm legit and believe the developers deserve their income" bullshit, you know you would download it, even if you wouldn't 500,000 people downloaded it from torrent sites in it's first week of release making it the most pirated game in 2008 - because of its restrictive DRM.

Most mainstream games are being released with ever more restrictive DRM, take Bioshock, Mass Effect and Crysis just to name a few. DRM is an annoyance gamers in general would rather live without, so they download. This is very effectively driving customers away from legitimate purchases and toward DRM-free illegal downloads.

That is my argument, that when faced with the choice a gamer will never buy into the restrictive DRM schemes game developers are resorting to.

In my next post I'll discuss a concept I've been thinking about for a while now - 'The gamers bill of rights'. It will be, at the very least, the rules I will live by for the rest of my life and will outline what the end users rights should be as I see them. I would like to see growing support for the bill and it would be a dream come true if it was ever legally enforced. Stay tuned for a draft.

Caboose out.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. This is my third blog, and the only one I intend to keep running. My micro$oft hate-blog may not last as this is a more generic blog for all my little annoyances that I think are relevant to a larger audience. Currently my topic of discussion is DRM (Digital Rights Management) in games, and how DRM is, in my opinion, killing the games industry.