Not that long ago I wrote about the Long Con of DRM. As a follow-up to those thoughts, I talked about the fact that Valve’s Steam is often seen as an exception to the general vileness of DRM systems, largely because it (a) added value through instant delivery and by allowing you to access your Steam account from any computer in the world and (b) Steam is generally not as intrusive as it might be.
Valve apparently decided I hadn’t made my point about how goddamn awful DRM is strongly enough, so they decided to give me some compelling supportive evidence: As of September 1st, I can no longer play any of my games — games I have been playing for a decade — because Valve decided to retroactively make those games incompatible with my computer’s operating system.
Ah, DRM, how I despise you.
(And if you think I’m ever buying another piece of software through Steam then you must think I’m a goddamn idiot.)
ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS
Guest
get with the program!
Tuesday, December 21, 2010, 2:05:12 PM
Windows 200
It’s your fault… Windows 2000 is OLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLD. Just update and problem solved.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010, 2:01:36 AM
Justin Alexander
This is why I’m tempted every day to find a commenting system that imposes an age limit. Or possibly a breathalyzer.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010, 2:33:56 PM
Stargate525
Welcome to the Modern Era. If you haven’t noticed, there’s an argument going on right now about used games, and whether the ‘purchase’ of the ‘game’ is in fact simply renting it from the game company, leasing the ability to play it. Piracy is not the answer, as game companies will respond as all companies will; they will lock down their games even more, promoting more piracy, and eventually the companies will simply shut down. No games for anyone.
If you really, really want to fight against this, don’t pirate it, but get a class-action together on violations of consumer rights. Best of luck to you. The simple fact is that programs like steam are holding a very good peice of bait (great games) over our heads, and that there’s very little you can do at this point to have your cake and eat it too.
As technology progresses, it’s moving towards everything being integrated into everything else via the internet. We get more convenience in keeping things up-to-date, on-demand, and with minimum hassle on our end. In exchange, it is becoming easier for large corporations to maintain control of their product. There is no real sign of that trend slowing or reversing itself. Take it, or leave it and be left behind. There’s really no other option at this point.
Friday, October 29, 2010, 9:40:13 AM
Thomas D
Bull. 4% of gamers are pirates, and they likely buy some games.
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/npd-four-per-cent-of-us-gamers-admit-to-piracy
In a best case scenario, developers might increase their sales a percent or two by making some of those pirates pay. In a worst case scenario they might convert some legit users to pirates or non buyers with harsh antipiracy software, and put off others due to negative online reviews. The numbers for piracy simply aren’t that strong in the gaming industry.
Heavily locked down games, like Spore which inserted a rootkit program into people’s computers that checked every ten days that the copy was legit and run in the background poking around your system, tend to really piss off the other 96%. It’s unlikely game companies will do too much along that line, since, like with Spore, they do actually promote class action suits.
There’s actually a positive effect from anti-piracy efforts. Far more games have multiplayer. That’s in part because multiplayer allows you to control your software with constant online checks. Multiplayer is fun.
” In exchange, it is becoming easier for large corporations to maintain control of their product. There is no real sign of that trend slowing or reversing itself. Take it, or leave it and be left behind. There’s really no other option at this point.”
Or you could buy physical discs, as the author of this article suggests he may do.
Monday, November 01, 2010, 10:14:46 AM
Guest
Pity. My copy of Force Unleashed, Civ V, and Fallout 3 all require steam regardless of phyical disks.
And you’re missing my point. 4% is still a drop in their overall price, and in a million-dollar game that’s 40,000 dollars, or the years salary of a single employee. It’s worth putting anti-piracy measures onto the game for that extra employee’s-worth of cash. I didn’t say it makes sense, or that its productive, just that that is the mindset of the corporate machine.
Thursday, November 04, 2010, 10:32:28 AM
Guest
I’m not missing your point. Have a look at Fallout 3’s drm.
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1012
The reason he gives for the drm.
” But when you spend tens of millions of dollars, we don’t think it’s right to just put something out there and let everybody do whatever they want and pass it around. ”
He’s morally outraged by that. He doesn’t have any particular knowledge of what impact it would have, in terms of mathematics.
They also instinctively recognise that anti-piracy software hurts users, and so tone it down “It’s very important for us not to ruin the experience for the person who did buy a copy, so we try to be very careful. ”
So your actual core idea, that to move into the modern era you have to accept drm, is false. There’s a limit on how much anti-piracy software game developers can use because they recognise it hurts players- so they won’t make 40000, they’ll make a bit less because some of the other $960,000s worth of customers won’t buy it. They’ll install just enough to satisfy their sense of fairness and justice. By complaining we can shift the balance of that, towards less intrusive drm.
As shown with starcraft, less DRM is already an advertisement point for games.
Friday, November 05, 2010, 2:07:26 PM
Sir Wulf
I have three computers, the eldest of which works fine for word processing and other routine tasks, but which can’t handle Windows beyond Win98. It also runs many of my old games just fine. Why should I have to toss a perfectly good computer because it can’t handle a new OS? If it runs my programs fine, why should I have to accommodate software companies concern that someone might pirate their programs after ten or more years?
I’m punished for being honest.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 3:38:41 PM
Thomas W
There are also steam emulators like steam buster revolution, if you still want to play your games. They should be compatible with windows 2000. The internet can find a way to let you continue to play most games. No online play most of the time, but you can play singleplayer.
http://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35347
http://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=35347&sid=c9dc03b74f2ba89a16bacfd67561dde5&start=1815
Saturday, October 16, 2010, 8:06:51 AM
CogDissident
Actually, the main reason they’re “removing” support for this is that there is a well known exploit using older versions of steam that allow you to access the store and “buy” any item for 0$. Effectively turning steam into the easiest piracy method that exists.
Friday, October 08, 2010, 9:26:32 AM
Predrag
I didn’t say that DRM is a good thing. Quite the contrary, it is a blatant ripoff. But, i don’t see what is the problem with upgrading your OS. I understand it is a matter of principle for some people, but i for one have always looked forward to new technologies or software. Windows 7 is quite pleasant to he eye, and actualy user friendly. Of course, i have an older computer with windows 98 on it to play games made before year 2001…it is quite normal. But for new games, you need new computers and software…i mean newest games don’t even have support for directx 9 anymore…and the first operating system to have dx10 support is vista…and to use dx11 support i think you have to have win7…and of course software and hardware companies want you to buy their new product…that is why they made it. You forget that they employ people that need to be payed for their work. Of course, some of those companies actualy want you to HAVE to buy new stuff, by deliberately disabling older stuff. That is wrong, and, well, i see piracy as the only answer. Hit them where ut hurts. Get their stuff without paying for it.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010, 3:55:51 AM
TrentB
I hate to be dramatic, but it’s very easy to draw comparisons with this kind of intrusion and Orwell’s 1984.
I’ve despised steam since it came out with halflife-2. I changed my pc and was in an internet-free environment for a while and was unable to play the game. I very recently gave it another chance and, shortly after, my laptop failed. I do not have the capability to download all of the updates and other madness that I now require to play the games that already took far too long to download etc etc. This is obviously less invasive than the situation Mr. Alexander is talking about, but it is still an unpleasant and potentially impassable barrier between me and things that are mine.
I too have boycotted steam and its kin.
And I have nothing but sadness for those people who are commenting here suggesting that upgrading his OS is a good option. Why are you so eager to accept this situation? I find the whole thing appaling.
This is the problem with such a capitalist society. If these companies werent so driven by profits they wouldn’t have to go to such extreme measures (DRM) to make sure they reach their targets. see also: Project Ten Dollar.
Friday, October 01, 2010, 11:36:01 PM
Justin Alexander
The other factor that seems to be getting overlooked here (except by Fenyx) is that there are games and programs which work in Windows 2000 which don’t work in newer versions of Windows. That’s one of the reasons that I maintain a legacy box. (The other being that’s it’s nice to have an operating system that doesn’t have regressive DRM and privacy-violations built into it, and Windows 2000 was the last stable version of Windows for which that was true.)
I own a Blu-Ray player. But if I suddenly couldn’t play DVDs on the the DVD player I keep in the other room because the manufacturer says “we’re only supporting Blu-Rays now, so you can’t play DVDs any more”, I’d be pissed. I would hope Predrag, Brisbe, and the others would be pissed, too. DRM is horrific for the consumer and it’s horrific for cultural preservation. But make no mistake: Every IP corporation on the planet wants the market to work like this. They want us to pay for books, movies, music, and games that they can arbitrarily turn off at any time. We rejected it outright when they tried it with movies; we fought a long battle when it came to music (and largely won); but they’ve found a toehold with video games where they’ve somehow managed to convince people with no common sense and a lack of self-preservation instinct that the “pirate boogeyman” makes it okay for the consumer to get screwed.
You can call this an over-reaction if you like, but you need to seriously think:
(1) About the personal consequences of letting faceless corporations have control over your property. About the reality of a system in which the consumer is never truly allowed to “own” anything.
(2) About the wider cultural consequences of allowing corporations to not only control your access to new information, but to actually possess the retroactive ability to rewrite the information you already have in your possession. It’s a little funny to joke about a reality in which George Lucas has the power to rewrite every copy of Star Wars in existence so that Greedo always shot first. But once you start applying that technology to, say, the news. And history textbooks. Well, the stakes suddenly seem a little bit higher, don’t they?
But forget about the wider, long-term implications of all this and just exercise a little enlightened self-interest: Nobody likes the idea of the bank coming to repossess their home or the dealership coming to repossess their car. But they can only do those things if you stop paying the money that you owe them. Why would you ever buy anything while giving the guy you’re buying it from the power to repossess it without cause and at their whim?
Friday, October 01, 2010, 1:12:53 PM
Liked by ECOA
ECOA
I agree completely, both in the specific and the general case. Those who say “just update your OS” are missing the point.
I have a copy of Master of Magic, which I love to death. It becomes progressively harder to play every year, but I always find a way when the mood strikes. The onus is on me, the user, to find a way to use the thing that I own as technology passes it by. If I maintained a dos box (I do not) this would be no problem. But hey, no one is taking my disc away, of even directly targeting me. It is assumed that if I want to use it, I’ll find a way, and more power to me, the company that marketed the product could care less either way.
But Steam is an active intrusion into your life. they sell you the thing, and then they say, “Well, even though you bought this, if you want to play it, you’l do what we say when we say it, or we’ll shut it off.” That’s BS, pure and simple. If you want to run Windows 2000 until 3057 AD, that’s your right, and more power to you. This is why DRM is a scam, and is bad for everyone, and encourages piracy. I avoid games with DRM like the plague, and I have no compunctions about working around DRM to ensure that I have a working copy of what I paid for. I absolutely refuse to allow someone else to exercize arbitrary control over what is mine. I’m also opposed to the continuing efforts to extend the entrance of things into the public domain; AKA Mickey Mouse protection Act. But that is another story…
Friday, October 01, 2010, 2:02:10 PM
Starfox_sfx
The issue is you buy a game, a game that works perfectly fine on your current opperating system, then the company that sold you the game says that you are no longer allowed to play the game any more (the game that works just fine on your opperating system). They decided, *after* you bought the game that it would no longer be compatible with your system.
Its more than ‘just upgrade your OS’, you shouldn’t have to. The game can run on your OS, so that isn’t an issue. Its reasonable if the company that made the game stops supporting updates for older OS’, there isn’t a problem with that. But the only consequence should be that your game just doesn’t get updated any more, you should still be able to continue playing the game in its current state.
Anyway, I’ve despised the Steam DRM since I first encountered it in its full glory in Dawn of War II. It has no redeeming features for the consumer in my opinion. Its been quite a few years since I have perused cracks hax and warez sites, but now I find myself back in the shadier areas of the web looking for ways around Steam.
Friday, October 01, 2010, 9:40:08 AM
Liked by
Fenyx
Fenyx
@Predrag: I think “dvd’s will no longer be produced, and in order to buy new movies you will have to buy them on blu-ray” is a bit off. It’s more like “The store I bought DVDs from no longer carries them so my DVD player stopped working.”
Friday, October 01, 2010, 8:32:11 AM
Liked by
ECOA
Predrag
I think that you are overreacting a bit, plus, win 2k became outdated the moment winxp started being used…just upgrade to a newer windows and play all your games…and it isn’t DRM, new updates of steam will simply not work for win 2k because it is too much of a hassle to make it compatible with so many platforms. So in interest of the vast majority of people who use win xp and win 7, they made steam a smaller program who can now run faster. And, yes, eventualy, dvd’s will no longer be produced, and in order to buy new movies you will have to buy them on blu-ray and will have to buy a blu-ray player…capitalism is a bitch. Plus, why are you even using windows 2000 to play games? Does it even support directx 9? It’s like trying to play a cd on a record player.
Normaly i would understand what you say and sympathise with your anger, but i can’t this time since it makes no sense to use and outdated, no longer updated system, dude, just by a new windows.
Friday, October 01, 2010, 3:37:58 AM
Justin Alexander
Let’s make an analogy here: I put a DVD into my DVD player. Suddenly a message pops up: “As of August 31st, 2010 your media player will no longer play DVDs. Please upgrade to a Blu-Ray player.”
If you think that would be a reasonable “feature” for DVD player to have, then you can justify what Valve has done here. If you have an ounce of self-preservation as a consumer and realize that this would be a really assinine thing for a DVD player to do, then you cannot possibly attempt to justify Valve’s actions.
And, yeah, I get that keeping your software compatible with legacy hardware and operating systems is difficult and expensive. But this is precisely why DRM sucks and you should never accept it. The only thing that’s changed here is that nobody can pretend now that Steam is somehow “different” than all the other regressive, anti-consumer DRM schemes out there: It’s not. It’s every bit as bad. Valve is every bit as scummy as Microsoft was when they turned off the MSN Music validation servers. And Steam is a service that no intelligent, self-respecting consumer should ever use.
Thursday, September 30, 2010, 6:42:20 PM
Fenyx
Steam moving on to provide features that don’t work on an old OS is fine. But taking all the games that would work perfectly fine if it wasn’t for a DRM?
What happens when a game you like no longer works on a new OS and then Steam stops supporting the old OSes it did work on? Don’t worry I’m sure when you complain about it someone will just tell you to play newer games.
First they stopped supporting Win2k and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t use Win2k…
Anyways I’ma gonna go play a game from 1984 or maybe read a book from 1948.
Thursday, September 30, 2010, 5:39:15 PM
Brisbe
I agree that this is somewhat short-sighted, but at the same time, they don’t want to have to create some sort of ‘Steam Classic’ for outdated OSes, that might not have all the features they plan to have going forward. Removing support for your backwards OS means that all the people on less ancient OSes get better features that your antiquated system cannot handle.
In short: Yes, losing access to your stuff is bad. But it’s not a permanent ‘goodbye to all your stuff’, but a ‘please, please, please, change your OS’. XD
Thursday, September 30, 2010, 4:20:25 PM
I think the main issue is that – although I can see why steam is discontinuing its windows 2000 support – the lack of support is stopping a valid, bought game from being played.
This is a lot like only allowing people with Kindles to read books – other people can surely update, right? And we can take away their old books and replace them with the offer of Kindle versions, they either won’t need them any longer if they update, or they will be outdated and useless to the owner, surely.
The problem is that validation is needed at all. That you can buy a game, yet not actually _own_ it is a very strange one indeed, as you would realize if you tried explaining it to someone totally new to the concept. “Well, I bought it, and I own the disc, but it isn’t working because although it is physically possible to play as-is, I need an internet connection to be allowed to play it by the people I have already paid for the privilege of using it.”
The whole principle changes the concept of buying a game – it becomes a question of buying a temporary lease, with the time being ‘However long the producers want to make the product available to you and your techological limitations to maximise their profits’. I don’t see how this is supposed to encourage people to buy their products.
Whatever people say about how in such-and-such a case it really isn’t difficult to fix the problem and move on, the principle – and the general nature – of DRM.
I hope my long, mildly annoyed rant has helped clear the air a little 🙂
Althalus
“Piracy is not the answer, as game companies will respond as all companies will; they will lock down their games even more, promoting more piracy, and eventually the companies will simply shut down. No games for anyone.”
If the companies currently making games are forced to shut down because not enough people are willing to pay (and put up with DRM) to recoup the cost, do you think they’ll take the actual creative teams out back and shoot them? Or do you think it will be mostly the possessive bureaucrats who get left out in the cold, while the folks with the skills start recouping their (significantly lower) costs up front with Kickstarter?