DRM News

Archive for March, 2010

Ubisoft’s DRM has issues, again.

March 30th, 2010

Brad McGraw

If you’re in Australia, it appears that there are issues with Ubisofts new account based ‘always on’ DRM for Settlers 7. There is a forum post asking people for information as to location, ISP, Account name (as entered in the UGL), and where you bought the game. While it seems people from all over are having issues the majority of the people with issues are coming from Australia. Apparently the issue has been found.

We have tracked down the issue – it’s a problem that occurs when linking your keys to the multiplayer profile.
Ubisoft GNS and TG-OPS are currently working on a solution – I’ll keep you updated.

Since the game was released on Thursday, and its now Tuesday, this is a long time to wait to play the game you bought. And since it seems that its an Ubisoft issue, far too long to wait for a fix. I wonder if Ubisoft is going to give out another round of free games to compensate players for this?

Posted in Games

Tags: DRM, Settlers 7, Ubisoft

1 Comment »

Green Man Gaming will use SecuROM on distributed games

March 30th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

I wrote an article about Green Man Gaming, a new digital retailer of both new and pre-owned games, last year. The service sounded promising, but I noted that a lot of the details still weren’t known. Today, Green Man made an announcement that answers one of the remaining questions.

Today, they have announced an agreement with Sony DADC that will see that firm’s SecuROM DRM system used on the distribution of titles sold on Green Man when it launches next month.

"This partnership dramatically accelerates our initial offer to include the majority of AAA PC titles that are currently available," added Green Man’s CEO Paul Sulyok.

That quote makes me suspect that the big publishers were reluctant to sign on unless some sort of DRM protection was in place.

Green Man is also planning to allow used sales of digital purchases from their store, with the customer selling it back to them for discounts and that key being offered for less to other gamers. Since SecuROM tends to work in part by tying a specific serial key to a user’s computer, I’m interested to see how that system will prove workable with second hand sales.

Posted in Games

Tags: Green Man, SecuROM

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Amazon to challenge Steam, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, etc?

March 29th, 2010

Brad McGraw

Gamasutra reports that Amazon may be moving beyond its casual game downloads to something larger.

The expectation that the company will be expanding its game offerings was triggered by job postings on Amazon, which were confirmed by Gamasutra. These include new positions such as "Designer, Digital Software and Video Games" and "Software Development Engineer, Digital Software and Video Games," among others.

So this is quite interesting. Amazon is already providing DRM free music downloads, they’ve got good customer service, and a well established position in the online marketplace. So there is a lot of room for them to move beyond their casual games section into mainstream games. The main question is what form this expanded service, if it becomes a reality, would take. Something like Steam’s client system? A more account-based approach, similar to what GamersGate uses? Or something entirely different.

Another question is how will they handle DRM? They’ve shown, with their music downloads, to be DRM wary, or at least listening to their customers who are DRM wary. They already have a huge market presence and they could possibly change the landscape as it stands currently depending on how they go.

However this is still a rumour, Amazon hasn’t released anything to clarify yet, so this is still supposition. Although it would be quite interesting if it is true. I am a firm believer in competition and having Amazon enter this marketplace may be what is needed to help lower the cost of games as Steam and GamersGate have been advocating.

Posted in Games

Tags: Amazon, Digital download, Gamersgate, Steam

1 Comment »

Beyonce’s Youtube channel videos taken down by Sony for copyright infringement.

March 29th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Beyonce Knowles…go to her Youtube channel, and you’ll see a big label slapped across the top of it congratulating her for winning 6 Grammies with songs that she wrote. Most of those songs have associated videos. Those videos have been pulled from her channel. Why? They infringed upon copyright. Whose copyright?

That of Sony. Her record label.

Yes indeed, restricted from sharing the video for the song you wrote by your label because they own it. THAT’S how you know you’ve hit the big time, baby!

I’m going to include a screen shot of what is currently displayed when you try to view the video for her song ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)’ in case Sony gains a clue in short order and allows access to return. Probably not necessary…we ARE talking about the music industry here…but I want to make sure that this ridiculousness is shared for group mockery.

And the music industry wonders why it’s falling hard. Why so many of the artists are turning their backs on the big labels and walking away, middle finger proudly raised in to the air. Why they are increasingly the butt of jokes everywhere.

Good show, music business…good show.

(Thanks to Motherboard for bringing this hilarity to my attention).

Posted in Music

Tags: Beyonce Knowles, copyright infringement, Sony, Youtube channel pulled

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James Cameron posits that innovation should be the focus, not piracy

March 27th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Want to cut down on the impact of movie piracy? James Cameron suggests that making the theatre experience something that people are interested in paying for is the answer.

That was one of the points made during a roundtable discussion at the 2010 CTIA trade show.

"In film we have definitely felt threatened by piracy," he said. "We saw the music industry crash and burn in its efforts to stop it. But with G4 (I think he meant 4G wireless) and Moore’s Law, you can’t fight it."

He said the music industry made a critical mistake by trying to stop piracy instead of innovating to give consumers new experiences that the industry could use to generate more money.

"The music industry saw it coming, they tried to stop it, and they got rolled over," he said. "Then they started suing everybody. And now it is what it is."

And while the chair of the discussion made the claim that the National Broadband Plan’s attempts to push higher bandwidth Internet access to more homes could possibly lead to more piracy, Cameron responded that he felt more high-speed bandwidth could help during the creative process.

Cameron’s latest movie, Avatar, has topped $2.6 Billion in worldwide revenue, helping to offset the fact that it is also the single most pirated movie of the past year. A lot of that revenue came from the fact that people were willing to shell out the money for the full theatre experience, including more expensive 3D showings.

Of course, 3D has to be attractive to consumers to really make an impact. This week’s news that the average charge for a 3D movie showing will be going up by as much as $3-$3.50 per ticket could sour the public’s interest in paying extra to see the 3D version.

Posted in Movies and TV

Tags: Avatar, innovation, James Cameron

1 Comment »

Michael Atkinson’s replacement open to 18+ game ratings

March 26th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

For some time now, Michael Atkinson has served as a one man roadblock against admitting the simple truth that the average gamer is a 35 year old adult. After all, why admit such things when you can pull out the ‘Think of the children!” bogeyman for cheap camera time whenever you need it.

Anyway, thanks to Atkinson’s consistent denial to the idea of adding an 18+ bracket for game ratings, the entire process has been held up for over a year. Well, the long national nightmare (Engage in hyperbole? Me? Never!) of scapegoating and ridiculousness has stepped aside now, and his replacement seems to be much more in tune with reality. He’s also probably more in tune with the fact that the lack of an 18+ rating has meant many games have been squeezed in to MA15+ ratings despite featuring adult levels of violence, and total inconsistency with what was allowed and what wasn’t from game to game.

John Rau reportedly wants to see an 18+ rating introduced, at least according to Gamers4Croydon party president Chris Prior :

Gamers4Croydon party president Chris Prior told news.com.au he had met with Mr Rau and the MP was open to the introduction of an adult rating.

"Just over a week ago, I had the pleasure of meeting him personally when I attended an election forum in his electorate," he said.

"He indicated to me that the lack of an R18+ for games seemed absurd, and that it was really just common sense to introduce it, considering the vast majority of adult content is already available under the MA15+ classification."

All of Australia’s attorneys-general will be meeting in about a month, and the addition of an R18+ rating is on the agenda. It requires a unanimous vote to be passed, but considering that the only nay vote had previously been from Atkinson, that seems likely.

Posted in Games

Tags: 18+ rating, Australia, John Rau, Michael Atkinson

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Ubisoft offering compensation to those affected by server problems

March 25th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Admitting that you’ve erred is hard to do. Ubisoft has sort of done that. This was posted by UK Forum Manager ms-kleaneasy :

Earlier this week we advised members of the forums that Ubisoft was working on a plan to compensate those affected by the recent OSP server downtime.

Ubisoft have started sending out emails to those affected by the downtime so we would ask affected players to keep an eye on your email, not forgetting your spam folders etc.

I would also suggest double checking your profile settings on Ubi.com to ensure your listed email address is up to date and where this is not the case you update your profiles a.s.a.p.

We hope to have more specific information on the exact form the compensation will take soon and will update you all as soon as we have the information

The compensation offered is reported to consist of another game (H.A.W.X., EndWar & Prince of Persia have been named on other sites…amusingly, all of those titles shipped completely DRM free), or perhaps the extra content from the Special Edition of AC2 for owners of the standard version of the game. Blue’s News has posted that, according to an email passed on to them by an affected Silent Hunter 5 player, Shaun White Snowboarding and Prince of Persia are the games he was offered.

Of course, the server DRM system remains in place, so it isn’t as though they are completely stepping away from the ledge here. Also left unclear is exactly how Ubisoft is determining who was affected by the server problems.

Posted in Games

Tags: Assassin's Creed 2, compensation, Silent Hunter 5, Ubisoft

1 Comment »

Atari & Anuman Interactive coming to Good Old Games

March 25th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Good Old Games has announced two new publisher deals today, bringing both Atari and Anuman Interactive in to their DRM free fold.

Anuman seems to be the first up, with their title Syberia being released today, and Syberia 2 and Amerzone : the Explorer Legacy both listed as Coming Soon.

Atari will presumably be appearing next. Master of Orion, Master of Magic and Outcast were three games specifically mentioned as on their way. Good Old Games & CD Projekt Co-founder Marcin Iwinski also had the following to say during the company’s Spring Conference (site of the announcement) :

“This deal is really just the first step in what we expect will be a long and fruitful relationship. Atari has a tremendous number of cult classics within their grasp, and we hope to sign these in a near future!“.

Atari currently has the exclusive rights to the D&D license in games, so this might help titles in that universe from them and other publishers GOG has on board appear. They also own the rights to the old MicroProse catalogue (Master of Orion & Master of Magic are both MicroProse releases). Those of you who knows that name are now drooling. For those of you who don’t recognize that name immediately (damn punk kids…), here’s a link to everything they ever developed. Some of these individual games have come under the stewardship of a different publisher than Atari, but this gives a rough idea of the potential awesome.

Posted in Games

Tags: Anuman Interactive, Atari, CD Projekt, Good Old Games, new publishers

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Wait for the sunset.

March 24th, 2010

Brad McGraw

No I’m not talking about taking a romantic walk on the beach with your significant other, which can be a very nice thing to do. I am talking about a term called ‘sun setting’. What that means is that the DRM on the game gets removed, its served its purpose, its run its course, and the publishers have decided to release a patch that completely removes the DRM from the game. Its happened before, and it will continue to happen on future games.

The point? If you don’t like DRM, just wait. In fact Josh Lowensohn recently wrote an article titled ‘How to get DRM-free PC games: Just wait’.

Gamers have long known that patience is rewarded with cheaper, less-buggy games. But does that adage hold true for the inclusion of digital rights management as well? Not always, but history does show us that time makes even the strictest of DRM less sucky.

And he’s right. Not all publishers will do this for all games, but it has been done for a number of games already. World in Conflict, which patched out its DRM completely, is one quick example. Some times only parts of a DRM is removed. For example, the removal of the activation limits from BioShock while the general SecuROM remains.

Because there are two ways to purchase games now, retail and digital download, DRM removal may happen on retail, but not digital (such as Dawn of Discovery, which had Tages removed from its retail version, but not its digital one). So you do need to keep an eye out on what is removed.

The problem is not all gamers like to wait, we are a particularly impatient bunch. The reason games sell so well in the first month or two, no matter the DRM on the game, is because we ‘just have to play the game’. Its tough to stand your ground when all your friends are raving about the game, yet you say your waiting till the DRM is removed. Fingers get pointed, names get called, laughing commences, its not a pretty site. However if you can live through the shame of it all, wait. Its not going to kill you and your computer will thank you.

Posted in Games

Tags: DRM free, SecuROM, Sun Setting, Tages

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Switch Games – Buy, sell and trade used console games online

March 24th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Ever tried selling a game at Gamestop or EB Games? Ever been disgusted to see them take the game they just gave you $15 for and put it up on the shelf for triple that? Well, there is an alternative now (in the US market, anyway).

SwitchGames is a site built around buying, selling and trading used titles for the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, DS and PSP. All that you need to do is create a free account, and peruse what’s available. Or, put something up for sale or trade. You set the price and you say what you’re interested in getting in return.

Now, we’ve all seen and heard the criticisms that the big game publishers level at places like Gamestop over used sales. SwitchGames is being proactive about that as well. The seller can choose to donate anywhere from 1% to 90% of the money received from the buyer to the game publisher (though doing so is purely optional). SwitchGames doesn’t yet have any sort of agreement in place with publishers, but they’re planning to send quarterly checks out to companies when they have something for them.

There are a few caveats to using the service.

-You must print out SwitchGames mailing labels and use the US Postal Service to ship items.

-That label will cost the seller $2.95 at the time of the sale (with that money going to SwitchGames for serving as the transaction middleman).

-The money from the buyer is held until SwitchGames determines that the shipment has arrived (via the tracking number on the label), then is entered in to the seller’s account.

All in all it’s a promising service, albeit one currently geographically limited.

Posted in Games

Tags: online console game trading, SwitchGames, used game sales

1 Comment »