Keboo, I think what’s at issue here is that saying the game has been simplified for the 360 version. Even if we accept the argument that the game has been simplified it doesn’t necessarily lead to “for the 360”.
Making the game more intuitive (or “simple” if you will) was probably done with the intention of making the game appeal to a wider demographic rather than trying to make it work on the console.
Anyway, I’m sure Steve is intimately aware of what motivations were behind the various decisions they made with the game (which incidentally after the latest AI patches has become fantastic). He’s a good guy, I think it’s safe to take him at his word.
Ok, I can accept whatever reason it is. Honestly I don’t even care why it was or what other people feel about it, I was responding to the idea of “it inconveniences me, so it is not justified”. Whatever changes were made to SupCom2, I assume, correct me if I’m wrong Steve, was to appeal, and thus sell, to a wider market. Just because I may not like the change (I still like the game) doesn’t mean GPG should have done differently. If Ubisoft could (I’m not saying they can, or have) increase their market base by using their DRM, what’s wrong with that? I’d rather take the DRM and have my favorite game make more money than the opposite. Obviously I don’t want the DRM if it doesn’t help the game sell more.
… And, to get to the point that brought me to this thread again - lucky me, my internet connection went down this morning and they won’t have a tech out onsite until Friday. My connection is normally rock solid, but it’s situations like this that I really despise Ubisoft’s DRM, and why I still haven’t purchased Settlers.
If I have to rely on 3rd party cracks to get my game to play, forget about it.
But that’s where your analogy falls apart. There are DRM systems that can actually make it so you can’t play your favorite game. For example, the Ubi DRM requires a constant internet connection. If your connection drops, you can no longer play. Other DRM systems have a limited number of activations, and it can be easy to run out of activations when upgrading an OS, forgetting to deactivate before upgrading, etc. This then requires that you contact support, pray you get ahold of someone soon (unlikely, you’ll probably wait 24 hours at least) and then pray further they give you more activations. If they don’t, you’re not playing your game. Then there are some of the more archaic DRM schemes that can actually fuck your computer up, or in a non-game related note, rootkit your PC and install a background process that chews up your resources.
If you are willing to accept the consequences of what might happen whenever a game uses a particular DRM system, then good for you. Some people aren’t. And of those some, a lot of them are on this board. But you already know that, so why in the goddamn hell to keep trying to press your point? We get that it’s acceptable to you to have a DRM system like Ubi’s in place. What you don’t get is that it’s not acceptable to many of us. Woe the day when you actually encounter an issue with a game’s DRM that literally prevents you from playing the piece of software you just paid for. Will you still be happy with it?
As for me, I want to go back to the days of “Page 54, 3rd paragraph, enter the second word to start the game:”.
I’ve come to accept many things can become inaccessible. If my cable goes out, I can’t watch cable TV. If my internet goes down, I can’t access the internet. If my phone goes out, I can’t make a phone call. Yes, games are different, they don’t have to go out. But the disc can break, the console can break. Having something be temporarily inaccessible is not the end of the world, I can’t imagine it’s this horrible attack on your very being, does anyone feel that strongly about it? I don’t like it. I don’t want DRM if it doesn’t help a developer a good deal. If it does, more power to them, I will accept the small chance of failure like I do most anything else I buy. This reproach and cracking of DRM might eventually lead developers, like that new OnLive service, to simply stream games in the future, so gaming will be a function of the internet as much as a website is. Will you simply stop gaming if that’s what it comes down to?
In the case of this the game doesn’t actually require any of that stuff and it just stops working on the whims of the publisher who decided to introduce a fragile form of DRM without care for the consequences.
Kind of like if your electricity only worked as long as you had an active internet connection.
OnLive seems like a huge ripoff as well. Seriously, who would want to pay someone more money than the game costs just to rent the game at the mercy of some new company and with a monthly fee (if i remember right)?
Yet everything stops working if electricity goes down. They could just include battery power with everything you buy, so that we don’t need electricity. Game developers may simply opt to make games require the internet, that is, they won’t even sell a hard copy to you and never have you install it. People may start to see games more like streaming a movie or show they pay money for. Do I want that direction? No, but if that’s how it ends up because it’s what will make them the most money, I won’t just give up gaming entirely, would you?
Yes, if it came to that. I’ve already weened myself off a lot of publishers because of their DRM.
As I said in one of the many other threads on the subject, there will always be game makers without the resources or inclination to make their DRM “always-on” so I doubt I’ll ever have to stop gaming entirely.
I feel dirty wading into this, but…a more realistic analogy is being unable to read a book because your Internet connection went down. There’s no logical connection between them; one’s standalone content that sits on a shelf and the other’s a content delivery mechanism; the failure of one shouldn’t affect the other.
I understand that. My point is that they may simply opt to stream games - prevent it from being stand alone, much like a web page, to make more money and squash the complaints of “I have the game, so I should get to play it at any time no matter what!”
Yeah. I’m really not getting this. Your electricity doesn’t have any sort of arbitrary check to keep it on – like, making sure your cat is in the living room and not the bedroom, and if it isn’t, your power goes off. Cable doesn’t have any arbitrary check to deliver service to you (although if you’re doing something illegal with it, that’s different, same goes with your internet service). The thing is, there are systems within these games that can actually prevent a paying, fully legal customer from playing the game merely because the system is there. It wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t part of the game.
This is where I (and many others) draw the line at unacceptable. If any other of your strawman services like electricity or cable had a similar system, I think, just maybe, you’d find it unacceptable as well.
My “seven points” were never meant to counter the implications of piracy or remotely suggest that PC gaming is as relatively healthy now compared to consoles as it was decades ago.
As PC gaming has gone digital more and more, those “consistent benchmarks” you keep raving out become less and less relevant. That’s the point.
The only real facts that matter are these:
-PC games are still getting made today
-PC ports of console games are in general better today than they were 5 years ago
-There are still PC exclusive games coming out, and at the same time, more and more console games are losing exclusivity and going multiplatform
-More games that would have never classically gone to PC are suddenly coming out for PC (Street Fighter IV? Darksiders? PC versions? crazy-talk!)
You used flawed statistics to reach a flawed conclusion. This is stuff I’ve been discussing for years, humorously to people who were proclaiming the imminent death of PC gaming right around the release of the original Xbox.
Oh, to clarify, I absolutely do think that piracy has had a negative effect on PC gaming sales. Fucking duh! But I’m not going to pretend like that’s the only reason, or that its negative is nearly as you claim, and I’m certainly not going to reference NPD to back up my assertion, or other assuredly inconsistent benchmarks to make such an argument.
Let me clarify the point of what I was saying, lest it be straw manned (and then be claimed a straw man of my own). I recognize the difference. My point was that your life isn’t crippled when something goes down. If it came down to “that’s the best game ever, but I won’t play it because there’s a chance it’ll be inaccessible to me for a day or a few hours”, no one else sees that as excessive?
