What's with all the DRM and price hate?

[Renefoetsie]

I mean, really?

Everyone seems to have a problem with a DRM that simply ensures the developer people won't pirate (AKA steal) the game. It's like putting security gates at the entrance/exit of a store. Yes they're not perfect and will go off falsely from time to time, but still it's fine. I've played serveral game with Denuvo enabled, and yes, I can confirm that it does need an internet connection the first time you launch it and after every update. While I don't have the alpha, And after reading the Developer's responses I'm pretty confident the same will be in Planet Coaster. And let's be honest here. It's 2016. The internet has been around since 1983, is that much of a problem to just launch the game after an update? I mean, we all complain when the servers are down of a game, but on the other hand we don't want a program that protects developers.

And yes, in a very specific case, that is if your game updates and you don't play it unless you go offline, it may not work, and I'm aware of that.

Also the price, it has come to light that the price has not been altered in some regions to stay in touch with the average wage. While this is understandable when talking about big publishers, like Bethesda, Square Enix and EA, smaller publisher like Frontier, will essentially generate less revenue. And think about it, you pay less for something simply because your country doesn't earn as much is understandle, if it is actually produced in your country. This game is built in the UK, and let's say, it's not the cheapest country.

While it is frustrating that this game is more expensive than other game, you do have to look at the developers side, which just wants to pay it's employees, and get enough money to actually keep supporting the game.

Yes, I am supporting the developer, but this is my unbiased opinion.

Feel free to discuss anything in the comments, if the moderators allow it.

But please, keep in civil.

[Jacknm2]

My exception to the Denuvo DRM is the fact its the spiritual successor to SecuRom. A rootkit device DRM that embedded itself on your PC once installed, would delete files that it thought could be used to infringe on the copyright of games, would flat out refuse to run the game if it couldnt do this and it remained when you uninstalled the game. It also opened a few security issues. At any rate the info is there on google, EA got sued over the DRM, settled out of court and had to remove it from their games.

Of course DRM is anti consumer, example if Denuvo, like suddenly went down, servers got destroyed never to come back up and Devs of Denuvo games didnt release a patchto clean the .exe then everytime you tried to play the game after an update or hardware change you wouldnt be able to.

Much like steam, in the event they close their doors, however unlikely, would you have enough time to download every game you own but dont have installed? For some that could be thousands of games and the potential loss of invrstment is massive, steam is also a form of DRM in my opinion but a less aggressive more consumer friendly version.

I have no quarrel with any thing else in your post. And this topic has been done to death so im not going to respond further. Its all over with now, people moan its their thing here on steam.

[Renefoetsie]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Jacknm2:

My exception to the Denuvo DRM is the fact its the spiritual successor to SecuRom. A rootkit device DRM that embedded itself on your PC once installed, would delete files that it thought could be used to infringe on the copyright of games, would flat out refuse to run the game if it couldnt do this and it remained when you uninstalled the game. It also opened a few security issues. At any rate the info is there on google, EA got sued over the DRM, settled out of court and had to remove it from their games.

Of course DRM is anti consumer, example if Denuvo, like suddenly went down, servers got destroyed never to come back up and Devs of Denuvo games didnt release a patchto clean the .exe then everytime you tried to play the game after an update or hardware change you wouldnt be able to.

Much like steam, in the event they close their doors, however unlikely, would you have enough time to download every game you own but dont have installed? For some that could be thousands of games and the potential loss of invrstment is massive, steam is also a form of DRM in my opinion but a less aggressive more consumer friendly version.

I have no quarrel with any thing else in your post. And this topic has been done to death so im not going to respond further. Its all over with now, people moan its their thing here on steam.

You certainly have a good point about what happens if Denuvo or any company closed it's doors. Honestly hadn't thought of that.

And you do give a good point, about Denuvo as a DRM, however I think people are overreacting when they say they will turn down a perfectly fine game simply because it has any kind of DRM.

[Clover]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Renefoetsie:

Also the price, it has come to light that the price has not been altered in some regions to stay in touch with the average wage. While this is understandable when talking about big publishers, like Bethesda, Square Enix and EA, smaller publisher like Frontier, will essentially generate less revenue.

But this isn't a practice that only big AAA publishers do, typically every Steam vendor does it. One not doing it is out of the ordinary. Also it's not less money for the developer if no one buys it because they can't afford it.

And on the DRM, my concerns have always been within performance. I've made my opinions known elsewhere and I don't really have anything to add here. People who are going to buy things will buy them, people who don't want to won't. Clearly Frontier disagrees with my opinion on the matter and that's just something I'll have to deal with. I'm certainly not happy about it but the game looks too good to pass up, which is similarly why I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition recently.

[Renefoetsie]

Początkowo opublikowane przez hype:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Renefoetsie:

Also the price, it has come to light that the price has not been altered in some regions to stay in touch with the average wage. While this is understandable when talking about big publishers, like Bethesda, Square Enix and EA, smaller publisher like Frontier, will essentially generate less revenue.

But this isn't a practice that only big AAA publishers do, typically every Steam vendor does it. One not doing it is out of the ordinary. Also it's not less money for the developer if no one buys it because they can't afford it.

And on the DRM, my concerns have always been within performance. I've made my opinions known elsewhere and I don't really have anything to add here. People who are going to buy things will buy them, people who don't want to won't. Clearly Frontier disagrees with my opinion on the matter and that's just something I'll have to deal with. I'm certainly not happy about it but the game looks too good to pass up, which is similarly why I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition recently.

Well yes, you are right that virtually every steam vendor does it, but I still think it's a weird practice. While morally right, it's an economic flop.

[xyphic]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Jacknm2:

My exception to the Denuvo DRM is the fact its the spiritual successor to SecuRom.

Unfortunately for Denuvo, the internet has a long memory and I think that's what a lot of the Denuvo hate comes down to. Had this been a new company with new engineers, I think that we'd be a whole lot more welcoming of their attempts to provide an anti-tamper mechanism that doesn't use any of these traditionally invasive processes. We'll never be *completely* accepting of such a solution, but while there are people who'd prefer to game for free there'll always be companies looking to provide services to prevent that.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Jacknm2:

Of course DRM is anti consumer, example if Denuvo, like suddenly went down, servers got destroyed never to come back up and Devs of Denuvo games didnt release a patchto clean the .exe then everytime you tried to play the game after an update or hardware change you wouldnt be able to.

Clearly. The question is what it would cost Frontier to *not* patch it. Would Steam allow refunds on a no longer playable game? You have to think that they've considered the possibility of Denuvo going down and have *some* sort of mitigation in place.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Jacknm2:

Much like steam, in the event they close their doors, however unlikely, would you have enough time to download every game you own but dont have installed? For some that could be thousands of games and the potential loss of invrstment is massive, steam is also a form of DRM in my opinion but a less aggressive more consumer friendly version.

If Steam closed down there'd literally be *no* time to download your games again because bandwidth costs money and millions of people all trying to pull their games down in a panic would be a massive cash drain. No, if Steam goes then the best we can hope for is some form of crowdsourcing to enable us to get our games back (and the legality of which would be dubious).

I don't really see why we give Steam a free pass when it comes to the anti-consumer argument. Is it because they're ubiquitous? Is it because in most cases (these days anyway) you can get most games from services other than Steam? Valve's customer support is well documented as downright awful, so when you run in to problems you'll be banging your head against that problem for a long time (while not being able to play your game, or possibly even any of your games if they've done something to block your account).

[xyphic]

As to the reason why Frontier aren't providing price parity in foreign markets, you can presumably blame key vendors for that. I'm sure that they'd prefer to sell their game anywhere they can but there's a balance to be struck between not selling their game, and selling it to everyone at the lower price. I would hope they've at least attempted to run the numbers on that before coming to their decision.

[Clover]

You have to think that they've considered the possibility of Denuvo going down and have *some* sort of mitigation in place.

You'd think, yet no developers did that with GFWL. Some of them never even got it patched out afterwards, and since it doesn't function correctly on Windows 10 it can be pretty difficult to get certain games running now.

DRM will never be consumer friendly. You can argue about the benefits all you want, but fact of the matter is that DRM doesn't hurt anyone but paying customers.

I don't really see why we give Steam a free pass when it comes to the anti-consumer argument.

Because Steam is a platform, it's offering me a service. I can purchase and download games here, chat with friends, they host forums for every individual game, they even offer anti-cheat and mod sharing capability. Denuvo doesn't do anything good for me. That's why things like Steam, Origin, and Uplay get a pass, at least in my opinion.

you can presumably blame key vendors for that.

Publishers have some pretty bad options in terms of dealing with key resellers. Region locking being the absolute worst. Grey market resellers are causing problems and sadly the regions being taken advantage of are suffering the most from it. It would be nice if people would stop buying stolen keys from shady websites, but I don't think a lot of people even know where those keys are coming from. And then a lot of others just want cheaper games and don't care about the side effects of buying those keys.

[R3sistance]

DRM often inconviences the legitimate players while often only slowing pirates down for a few months... that's why people hate DRM, almost all DRM. Naturally getting a pirated copy is NOT advised, not only is it illegal the pirated copies can have malware and viruses loaded into them. But to put it in perspective, it is often percieved that the DRM is as often questionable as the priates who use it as a method to give people spyware.

Naturally pirated versions won't have access to Steam Workshop since it won't be registered, I am more a fan of using services/etc which pirates could never give access to as a method to "sell" the game so to speak. It'd be nice if the games industry as a whole promoted the image of pirating as dangerous, that would also decrease it but it needs an industry body and not a single company to action that :).

[Sire Bear]

Here is my reason on the Denuvo thing. This is less talked about compared to the pirates which everyone likes to push & that is forced unpaid overtime, it is also refered to as cruch time. Sadly this problem is widespread and only ever came to the main stage during the Kojima saga & Konami when it was discovered employees working conditions.

I know EA was found guilty of this in the past, i also suspect Ubisoft & maybe Square Enix of practising this. Ubisoft games have been know to be broken at release, it is possible that Ubisoft is forcing workers to put 80hr a week to be shipped for the release date. This is where the problem is no one can do something like 80hr a week continuously and not get burnt out fast, your productivity will drop greatly & things get messy leading games to be broken on release.

This is one of the reasons why i don't support denuvo, publishers will reap all the gold but what of the workers, some of them don't equally get compensated & people can try to blame denuvo for affecting game performance but the real problem might actually be "crunch time". Companies can even get away with this because you are expandable, they know there is someone out there that is will to do this.

Sadly alot of your favourite games may have had crunch time SIlent Hill had one guy sleeping in his office, Skyrim had some suppose quote talking about the crunch time & the same about gta. That first terrible game homefront had the studio saying working 10hr a day was normal , witcher 3 had some rumor about doing crunch time for a year i think.

[Nerdfection]

They can DRM their game however they please, and the price asked is very low. Most games now are $60 plus if you want a full experience gotta buy the $50 season pass.

[Kosmozuikis]

Only russians complain about prices because they are used to buy all the games day one for almost nothing (~10€), and this one cost more (~28€). Don't pay attention to those whiners.
DRM is a bad thing in general. At least denuvo is not intrusive, but it limits game modding for example.

[xyphic]

Początkowo opublikowane przez hype:

You'd think, yet no developers did that with GFWL. Some of them never even got it patched out afterwards, and since it doesn't function correctly on Windows 10 it can be pretty difficult to get certain games running now.

Fair play. It really depends how pervasive it is. As far as I understand it, GFWL had its little hooks everywhere, so patching it out (assuming you hadn't planned for it) would be hard. I suspect (but obviously can't confirm) that Frontier will have Denuvo-free build options for PC.

Początkowo opublikowane przez hype:

DRM will never be consumer friendly. You can argue about the benefits all you want, but fact of the matter is that DRM doesn't hurt anyone but paying customers.

It's hard to argue the point, but there's much more to it than just "hurting" anyone. The whole point of Denuvo is not to hurt anyone. The crackers don't anything out of cracking the game other than kudos. The whole point of Denuvo is to simply delay that process for long enough to convert some potentially lost sales into actually realised sales.

Początkowo opublikowane przez hype:

Because Steam is a platform, it's offering me a service. I can purchase and download games here, chat with friends, they host forums for every individual game, they even offer anti-cheat and mod sharing capability. Denuvo doesn't do anything good for me. That's why things like Steam, Origin, and Uplay get a pass, at least in my opinion.

I still think you're being selective here. What Denuvo does for you -- even if you can't directly see it -- is to give Frontier a slightly better return on their outgoings. Every sale achieved helps them to grow, invest and create more and better games for us, the consumer. I know enough about them as a company to know that they're not trying to do anything nefarious here.

Początkowo opublikowane przez hype:

Publishers have some pretty bad options in terms of dealing with key resellers. Region locking being the absolute worst. Grey market resellers are causing problems and sadly the regions being taken advantage of are suffering the most from it. It would be nice if people would stop buying stolen keys from shady websites, but I don't think a lot of people even know where those keys are coming from. And then a lot of others just want cheaper games and don't care about the side effects of buying those keys.

Anyone with the knowhow to buy keys from a reseller has the knowhow to stick the seller name into Google and browse the results. I would certainly want to know how a site can sell a Steam key for significantly less than you can buy the game for on Steam directly. So if someone is ignorant to how that's achieved, I think it's wilful ignorance. There *are* sellers who are legit, and they tend to be the ones who buy up the keys in bulk from the cheaper markets. There's little that anyone can do about it, and Frontier have chosen the route of pricing it the same across all markets, which will lose them some sales in some regions but ensures they get full price in most.

You do raise a good point here, and it harks back to the Denuvo thing. Many people morally don't care about whether a game is good or bad, or whether the developer deserves to be paid. If there's a free version that they can get without any real repercussion, they'll do it. If that game isn't available for nothing (or for cheap), some of those *will* buy it. It's those sales that Frontier are chasing with their implementation of Denuvo. Nothing more.

[LemonyNebula]

I don't care about 'DRM'. That is, when it is done properly. DRM doesnt have to be invasive and is not by definition consumer unfriendly, unless that 'consumer' is a pirate.
Yes there have been large amounts of bad DRM as a lot have already been listed and they basiclly broke the game and the users right to even own the game in most cases. Badly designed DRM can be one of the worst things a game has and is the go to point argument against it. It's why I dont trust it normally and get things from GoG when I can.
However, nobody cares about this distinction. DRM = Anti-consumer to most people and the mere mention of it makes them get out their pitchforks. What they dont realise is Denuvo basically seems as invasive as steam itself.

Companies vary in their need for anti-piracy measures. It effects each differently and what works for one may not work for the other due to size, cost and exposure. While some can go the route on not having DRM at all, or others who have my personal favourite, slight inconviences and fake error codes that trigger and point out the pirates, other games get hugley harmed by not having any.

People believe that the smaller games need drm more because they get less back already, but the exposure piracy can give is sometimes conversely even a boon. These get more back from the inconvienience method, as the stories generated from the tricked pirates causes more advertisment. That and the cost of DRM makes them more likely to be 'the good guys' and not use it as they have the choice.
On the flip side huge companies get the most pirated and although they can eat the loss, they are still having huge amounts of money taken from them as the games cost ridiculous money to make. But due to huge exposure they reach more people who dont even understand piracy or just simply more people willing to buy than those of smaller companies. So its hit or miss wether piracy is a huge enough issue to risk, but as it stops money being taken, and profit= a new game being picked up it can be crippling.
Middle ground companies, with semi large teams, expensive games and not as huge exposure get hurt the most by piracy. They need the money to make up for the larger game cost and team wage, but do not have the exposure or money to eat the loss via previous cash or other sales.

Basically what I'm getting at is it should be entirley up to the company on wether DRM is sufficient and only they would know whats right for them as situations change drastically. I was just giving a few examples. If it wasnt for piracy they wouldnt even have an excuse to use the stuff so it all falls down to the many 'consumers' who refuse to pay. But they are more likely to get off the hook by people because a) Free games and b) They are giving to consumers. Its wrong and people shouldnt promote it. It is not theirs to give and by taking from the creators they are activley shutting down the creation of more games.
If you dont like it, don't buy it. But they are doing nothing wrong from protecting their product and lives. Yes if they put invasive DRM in they are stopping their sales and causing controversy but who cares. If you didn't buy it or can get a refund then it is their loss. A reason against invasive DRM people use is it costs in loss of sales... but they don't need to tell them that, the loss itself hits them more than you telling them does and is why there is so many DRM types. They are trying to make them work in a way everyone is happy.


As for Price its the same situation. If its too expensive and it doesnt sell to the mass then they are hurting themselves. It shouldnt matter what we think individually. If they sell a game for £100 and the majority of people buy it then enough believe its worth is of that value to warrent them selling it at that. Yeah we can sit back and sulk that we cant afford it but thats life. The truth is though is they wont make enough sales if they did. Of course people dont want to pay above its worth so they lower the price to reasonable amounts for their audience. It is why they lower it for other countries. If noone can afford it, then they get nothing. So they cut their losses and sell it cheap to get at least something back. However due to key resellers and the risk of selling too low it is up to the company wether they should lower this price. If everyone got it as cheap as the cheapest country the game would make no money. Richer companies are funding the development and the poorer reap the benefits. So if a game comes out at a normal price they shouldnt expect it for less as they are already getting them cheaper than they should. Its all business.

Thats where I stand anyway

[north]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Renefoetsie:

And think about it, you pay less for something simply because your country doesn't earn as much is understandle, if it is actually produced in your country.

That's now how it works and it shows a lack of understanding, possibly even xenophobia, on your part. The time it took you to write all of that you could have done some very low level research through Google instead of passing comment (and judgement?) on people from poorer countries.

[Steve]

I don't like Denuvo either but it is what Frontier decided upon, so we either accept their decision and buy the game or simply not buy it. No point arguing about it as I cannot see FD changing their minds at such a late date.

(for the record as much as I dislike Denuvo, I do trust FD and I am going to buy this)