What Video Games Have You Been Playing VII: The Real Ending is Locked Behind a Paywall

[Commodore]

2) I sometimes am in a non-connected environment (sometimes I'm moving and I have my laptop with no Internet around ; rather often these past years I've had to relocate and it takes one or two weeks to get Internet going). I refuse to be prevented to use my legally purchased games because of this (especially as it's precisely the moments I need the games most, as I can't pass time with InNternet surfing ).

I demonstrated years ago somewhere in the "Other Games" sub forum that this is not the case. Games purchased on Steam can be used when not connected to the internet.

 

[Akka]

I demonstrated years ago somewhere in the "Other Games" sub forum that this is not the case. Games purchased on Steam can be used when not connected to the internet.

No, you're wrong. You can't authenticate without an Internet connection (obviously), it then only depends on when the editor put the authentification checks.

Most put it as install. So once your game is installed, yes you can disconnect and still play (Paradox for example is especially lenient, you can even launch the game without Steam at all once it's installed). Still means you can't install without Internet (and when I have no Internet connection and think "well, I'm bored" and want to install one of those games in the backlog... I'm screwed).
And if the authentification is set at launch or constant (though it's pretty rare, hopefully), then obviously you won't be able to play without Internet.

 

[Senethro]

It does seem a marked disadvantage of an online content delivery service that it does not deliver content offline.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I demonstrated years ago somewhere in the "Other Games" sub forum that this is not the case. Games purchased on Steam can be used when not connected to the internet.

Years ago that was true. The current generation of Valve's DRM product includes checks that the Steam client is on the machine and running, so that the Steam client can provide licensing verification. You can go for a period of time without an internet connection, but the interval is limited. When that interval has passed the Steam client must be allowed to connect to the internet and renew the verification of the license or the application will stop.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It does seem a marked disadvantage of an online content delivery service that it does not deliver content offline.

Would you buy books if you were only allowed to read them in the bookstore?

 

[civvver]

Years ago that was true. The current generation of Valve's DRM product includes checks that the Steam client is on the machine and running, so that the Steam client can provide licensing verification. You can go for a period of time without an internet connection, but the interval is limited. When that interval has passed the Steam client must be allowed to connect to the internet and renew the verification of the license or the application will stop.

It's 2 weeks I think you can be in offline mode. Maybe not long enough if you're like hiking in the amazon, but otherwise not that bad.

Would you buy books if you were only allowed to read them in the bookstore?

Apples to oranges. You're talking about a physical placement requirement. If it was a digital store sure why not? I would buy ebooks under the same model sure, if they were heavily discounted and all managed in a nice library like steam. I don't really like ebooks though and don't have a good tablet to read them on.

 

[Commodore]

You can go for a period of time without an internet connection, but the interval is limited. When that interval has passed the Steam client must be allowed to connect to the internet and renew the verification of the license or the application will stop.

Yeah, that interval is like a week. When was the last time you were in a situation where you needed to both play your games and have been without an internet connection for a week?

Also, I've noted the interval seems to be on a game-by-game basis. When I'm playing games at work (yeah, I have a lot of free time at work), I'm doing it without internet and I've noticed that if it's a game that I haven't played in a long time I won't be able to play it in offline mode. However, if it's a game that I was playing yesterday at home while connected, then I'll be able to play it in offline mode just fine.

 

[Senethro]

Would you buy books if you were only allowed to read them in the bookstore?

We playing stupid analogies?

My turn: I don't use a hammer to split logs.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yeah, that interval is like a week. When was the last time you were in a situation where you needed to both play your games and have been without an internet connection for a week?

Also, I've noted the interval seems to be on a game-by-game basis. When I'm playing games at work (yeah, I have a lot of free time at work), I'm doing it without internet and I've noticed that if it's a game that I haven't played in a long time I won't be able to play it in offline mode. However, if it's a game that I was playing yesterday at home while connected, then I'll be able to play it in offline mode just fine.

Yeah, if you don't play the game then it doesn't recertify and expires, so when you go to play it it has to immediately recertify or it stops. The answer to the other question is not a clean yes or no. I am on line every day, almost without fail. However, the machine I use for gaming and design work is airgapped. If that machine had to go on-line to make money for Valve it would need network protocols, anti-virus software...a whole list of things that would slow it down that I do not need because it never connects to a network.

@Senethro...my turn...I don't use an idiot for a punching bag.

 

[Senethro]

@Senethro...my turn...I don't use an idiot for a punching bag.

I do!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I do!

Better go find one then, before you convince me to embrace your position.

 

[Syno]

I hope Senethro lives near a Wendy's.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yeah, that interval is like a week. When was the last time you were in a situation where you needed to both play your games and have been without an internet connection for a week?

Also, I've noted the interval seems to be on a game-by-game basis. When I'm playing games at work (yeah, I have a lot of free time at work), I'm doing it without internet and I've noticed that if it's a game that I haven't played in a long time I won't be able to play it in offline mode. However, if it's a game that I was playing yesterday at home while connected, then I'll be able to play it in offline mode just fine.

Your second paragraph is kind of the perfect retort to your first. Sounds like you don't have to have been without an internet connection for a whole week, you just have to not have an internet connection at that time and want to play a game you haven't played in over a week.

 

[Kozmos]

Got FF15 for PC. Have no idea when I'll find the time to play it tough.

 

[Kyriakos]

Is online drm actually reducing piracy?
Don't pirated copies come with removal of online drm?

If so, drm would seem to just be an inconvenience for the people who actually bought the game...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Is online drm actually reducing piracy?
Don't pirated copies come with removal of online drm?

If so, drm would seem to just be an inconvenience for the people who actually bought the game...

There is no evidence that DRM has had any impact on piracy, ever. There does not appear to be any way to gather such evidence. Even if there were a way to accurately count the number of pirated copies in existence for a given game that has DRM, there is no way to say how many copies there would have been if it had not, and vice versa. There's also no way to directly correlate the number of pirated copies in existence with lost sales, because some (probably large) portion of the people who have pirated copies have them "just because they were free" and would never have paid for the game anyway.

Since there is no evidence available, DRM companies like Valve routinely just make up claims that it seems should be just written off as preposterous but unfortunately are not. When they tell a publisher "you are so brilliant that you should be making ten times as much as you are, but piracy is costing you 90% of your business" publisher's eat it up, because ego. Then when Valve sells them their BS DRM and it has little to no effect on piracy they can't be convinced that they made a bad purchase, because ego.

I don't mind that part of the Valve manure delivery system. Lying to customers in pursuit of sales is just part of the deal, and publishers deserve no better. The part that bugs me is when a DRM company claims "by gamers, for gamers." Gamers aren't their customers, publishers are. That's who they need to be lying to, not us.

 

[civvver]

Is online drm actually reducing piracy?
Don't pirated copies come with removal of online drm?

If so, drm would seem to just be an inconvenience for the people who actually bought the game...

Well it depends. Valve's drm isn't persistent and is not built into the games themselves, afaik, it comes on top. Games that require a persistent internet connection like diablo 3, wow, dark spore as I mentioned earlier, those are pretty impossible to crack. You would need to emulate the server and depending on how much code happens on there it might not be feasible. Like people have launched private wow servers but they usually suck, and I believe the had the server code. If you were just trying to reverse engineer it on your own I'm not sure you could. I think you need the server code.

But the point isn't to make it impenetrable, it's to find a balance. You want it inconvenient enough that the average user who wants the game buys it. You also want your price low enough that the average user is willing to pay it rather than go fishing for hacked copies. There's some sort of sweet spot. It's like the old adage, you work just hard enough to not get fired and your boss pays you just enough to not quit. Like no one probably uses legit copies of winrar because it takes 5 seconds to google a license for it (I use a legit one btw but I didn't for a long time). But to get games you usually have to get a torrent going, find a stream, it's a lot more work.

Gog games are so easy to share, that's why many devs don't like it. You can literally put the installer exes on a thumb drive and give them to all your friends. I can understand benevolent devs who say hey if fans want to support me financially I trust them to do so, but I get other ones being irk'd that people steal their work.

But software publishers/developers sometimes have a misconception about drm. They will discover that like 1 million pirated copies exist for their game, which currently is priced at $39.99 and they'll bemoan losing 39 million in revenue. But that's simply not true. Most people who pirate software or do so because it's pirateable, not in lieu of actually buying it. Many do it just to try it out, others just cus they can. They were never potential sales.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well it depends. Valve's drm isn't persistent and is not built into the games themselves, afaik, it comes on top.

This is inaccurate. The checks built into the game are hooks to the Steam client, which can be described as 'on top,' but the hooks do have to be built into the software. Whether those hooks are the relatively benign 'Steam client present and acknowledges having installed the software' hook or the more current 'Steam client is present and running and has verified that the software is on the licensed list of the logged in individual within the designated interval' depends on how much the publisher was willing to fork over to Valve.

Your statement would have been accurate a few generations ago, when Valve's DRM was a simple "must be installed through Steam" 'protection' that had no lingering effects, but that's been obsolete for quite some time.

 

[Syno]

Darkspore. They should have patched it to support offline single-player instead of killing it entirely.

 

[cardgame]

Being without internet would be intolerable regardless of Steam, so it's not really a factor for me. Also because it is an incredibly rare occurrence. Also because I primarily buy multiplayer games on Steam, which would require internet by themselves. Also there are single player games on Steam that do not have DRM. Kerbal Space Program is one such game. It is distributed through Steam without any DRM, you can launch the .exe from /steamapps/common