DRM News

Archive for April, 2010

Mac version of Steam launching May 12th Update : NOW LIVE

April 29th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

UPDATE : Well, it’s the 12th, and Steam is live for the Mac. Many games available use the SteamPlay service, a set up that allows PC and Mac gamers to inhabit the same servers. a full slate of non-Valve offerings are available for Mac users, with new Valve titles coming out every Wednesday. The first one up is Portal…as an added bonus, Portal is absolutely free for anyone on Mac or PC (or both) to add to their game library permanently, so long as you add it before May 24th.

With Counter Strike Source suddenly seeing a major influx of new material, I would guess that might be the next first party game Valve releases on SteamPlay.

ORIGINAL : The porting of Steam to the Mac platform had already been announced, but now the date of release is known…May 12th.

For anyone owning a PC who already has a Steam account, that account will be transferrable between the two platforms, as will all Valve developed titles (it’s expected that the Mac versions of those games will also be out on the 12th). All future Valve purchases will include PC and Mac versions of the game regardless of which platform you purchase it for.

As well, PC and Mac gamers will be able to play on the same servers, and in the same matches, in Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, or any of the other Valve multiplayer titles out there.

Good. That Heavy pictured above came to do two things…eat his sandvich and kick some ass. And he’s almost out of sandvich. More meat for the grinder!

(Thanks to Shacknews).

Posted in Games

Tags: Apple, Mac version of Steam launching May 12, Macintosh, Steam, Valve

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Canada again? Really USTR?

April 30th, 2010

Brad McGraw

Today the United States Trade Representative released its annual ‘Special 301’ report. This is a report that basically says how bad other countries are and how they are being mean to the United States. What makes the whole ‘Special 301’ report pretty meaningless is that for years the USTR has listened only to the industries who are complaining about how mean other countries are to the wholesome US media conglomerates. The USTR has finally opened the doors to allow more access to them, but then they pretty much ignored everybody but the industry anyway. This includes the CCIA, which sent in its own report to the USTR saying how Canada should not be on the list. The CCIA includes such companies as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, AMD, T-Mobile, ebay.

Canada, again, is on the ‘Priority Watch List’, which means that Canada has been a very bad boy indeed! Rampant piracy, loss of sales, children and dogs running amok! Oh the humanity!

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Posted in Games, Movies and TV, Music

Tags: Canada, ESA, Michael Geist, MPAA, RIAA, Special 301, USTR

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PopCap’s founders on DRM

April 29th, 2010

Brad McGraw

In a recent interview with cnet, CEO David Roberts and co-founder John Vechey of PopCap talked about DRM. PopCap is a developer and publisher of such games as Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies and many other excellent casual games. The article only asks one DRM related question, but its a doozy.

Some other publishers have had to resort to some pretty invasive DRM solutions in their titles. What kind of DRM do you employ in your PC and Mac games, and what are your thoughts on games that require an always-on connection to check in?

Roberts: We do have DRM on our games, but it’s pretty mild. Cracks for our DRM are everywhere. My philosophy is the same as what PopCap had when I got there, which is put it on there enough to protect us, but don’t inconvenience real, paying customers with it. And that’s a fine line.

I’ll date myself here. Back when I first took over Pagemaker [at the Aldus Corporation] a long time ago, we had DRM on the floppy disks, and you had to insert the floppy disks and do all this stuff. It was a horrible customer experience, and our customer service people were having to spend a lot of time on it. And when we took it out, sales went up. So it became pretty clear that the obtrusive DRM can be worse than what you’re protecting it from. And look, we sell $20 games. If people are determined to steal them, they’re going to steal them.

We do have DRM on our games, but it’s pretty mild. Cracks for our DRM are everywhere. My philosophy is the same as what PopCap had when I got there, which is put it on there enough to protect us, but don’t inconvenience real, paying customers with it. And that’s a fine line.

Vechey: It’s the same thing with [Ubisoft's] Assassin’s Creed 2. I mean I’m sorry, but if you want to steal it, you can steal it. You’re going to find a way to do it.

Roberts: Our customers are less likely to go steal it. Your grandma is not really going to go hop and search through BitTorrents to try and find it, whereas the target 15- to 25-year-old target of more of the hardcore games is more likely. I’m certainly not in the right position to make comparisons. I do also believe that if DRM or any of those sorts of protection technologies inconvenience paying customers, then the cost is a lot higher than you can know.

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Posted in Games

Tags: DRM, popcap

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The value of ‘Fair Use’

April 28th, 2010

Brad McGraw

Piracy ruins the economy! You’ve heard it from the RIAA, the MPAA, Senators, Congressmen and the news media. Industry funded studies claiming piracy impact numbers of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars lost every year. However, a report (PDF) released a few weeks ago by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has thrown those wild numbers out the door, basically saying that there is no real way to definitively quantify the impact of piracy. It has always been claimed by these industry reports that piracy has costs thousands of jobs every year, billions of dollars lost, and the economy gets damaged because of it. For example, if someone pirates a $60 video game or $20 CD or DVD, that doesn’t necessarily mean that money isn’t being spent elsewhere in the economy. It also calls out the previous ‘studies’ that the RIAA, MPAA, etc have been using saying that the model used to come up with industry supporting numbers has serious flaws. Something pretty much everybody else has known for awhile, but we don’t have lobbyists.

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Posted in Just my Opinion

Tags: CCIA, Fair Use, GAO, MPAA, piracy, RIAA

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DRM on Avatar Blu-Ray discs causing problems

April 27th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Avatar, the movie that made approximately 7 gazillion dollars at the box office, came out on DVD this past week. Unfortunately, it seems that the DRM used to keep the Blu-Ray DVD from being copied at all has also kept the movie from being playable at all for many buyers.

As with all movie studios, Fox is of the opinion that making a copy of your movie for yourself makes you a terrible human being. What’s next…you’ll want to rip that movie to your iPod?! Monstrous! Obviously, a person could become so addicted to easily copying their movie to various media that they’d just start making copies for everyone. Soon, nobody would buy movies because of that damned Bob Nabors from Wisconsin! No, we have to nuke it from orbit! It’s the only way to be sure…

So Fox throws a DRM system on to Avatar copies that keeps some Blu-Ray players from even reading it properly. In some cases, it can apparently be fixed by downloading a firmware update. In others…you’re hooped. And yet I’d be willing to put some money down on a bet that Avatar is available right now on movie download sites…

Way to go, Fox. Good job.

(Thanks to The Consumerist)

Posted in Movies and TV

Tags: 20th Century Fox, Avatar, Blu-Ray DRM

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Interview with Pete Smith (Antiqcool)

April 24th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Our site tries to cover topics across the entertainment spectrum, but every interview we’ve done thus far has been game centered. Hey, wouldn’t it be a great idea to try to talk to someone starting out in another part of the entertainment industry, see what they think of the way things are and what they plan to do? If only such a person would just appear…

He seemed pretty outspoken in his comments, and that always tends to make for a more interesting conversation than attempting to discuss issues with a mime-like introvert, so I sent an introductory email to Pete Smith of Antiqcool.

Our discussion follows.

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Posted in Interviews, Music

Tags: Antiqcool, Creative Commons, Pete Smith, Sicknote Publishing

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PS3 version of Final Fight : Double Impact requires net connection?

April 22nd, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Final Fight : Double Impact is a PlayStation Network/Xbox Live Arcade re-release of classic Capcom arcade titles Final Fight and Magic Sword. Reviews have been decent. It’s an explosion of nostalgia (come on…a game whose plot features the town mayor going vigilante to save his daughter??? That’s almost as good as the ‘story’ from Bad Dudes!). It also comes with the following message if you happen to unplug your PS3 from the Internet.

"Sign into PlayStation Network. (80029516)"

That error code does mean that the game in question has a PSN login requirement. The 360 version doesn’t appear to have any such need to have a connection.

Now certainly, it’s likely that anyone buying a game through an online store is going to have their console online. It’s also rather amusing that a remake of two games that are each 20+ years old has an online connection requirement, though.

(Thanks to Joystiq)

Posted in Games

Tags: Capcom, Final Fight Double Impact, Playstation 3, Playstation Network

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When does copyright protection go too far?

April 21st, 2010

Brad McGraw

Copyright:

The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work.

Ok, so we know that copyright comes into play so that artists are not ripped off and can be protected. I get that, and have no problems with it. It is important to have, and artists do need a protection. What goes a little too far is when going after copyright violators becomes a business for lawyers to make money.

The other aspect is if you look at ACTA, DMCA, Three Strikes rules, etc… its pretty much a blanket coverage and targets things that are not ‘piracy’ or ‘infringing’ at all. There is something called a ‘derivative work’ which means you can take original work, use it to create new work, and that is perfectly legal.

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Posted in Just my Opinion

Tags: ACTA, DMCA, Downfall, three strikes, Youtube

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Blizzard swings the ban hammer of +3 wallhack smiting

April 21st, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Blizzard has announced that the accounts of over 320,000 Battle.net users have been suspended. The crime? Use of third party programs that violate their user agreement.

From the forum announcement :

We’ve recently banned over 320,000 Warcraft III and Diablo II accounts that were found to be violating the Battle.net Terms of Use. If this is a first offense, the CD key associated with the banned account will be suspended for 30 days, while repeat offenders will see their keys banned permanently. All account ban decisions are final.

We would like all players to remember that abuse of unintended mechanics and/or use of third party programs is a violation of the agreement made when signing on to Battle.net, and can subject your account to disciplinary action up to and including a permanent ban of its access to the service. These types of activities can severely impact the stability of our servers, and we’ll continue to aggressively monitor Battle.net in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating.

They go on to mention that all closures have come about as a result of investigations based on tips emailed to their hacks team by other Battle.net users.

More than likely this big swing of the proverbial ban hammer comes from a desire to try to clean up as many cheat and hack issues as possible before the rollout of Starcraft II later this year.

Unfortunately, some innocent users were no doubt caught up in the net as well, and thanks to the ‘decisions are final’ policy of Blizzard, they’re now stuck without account access for a month.

Posted in Games

Tags: 000 accounts banned, 320, Battle.net, Blizzard

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UK game retailer Gamestation claims thousands of souls

April 17th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

How many of you buy games? Yow many of you actually read the fine print in those EULAs and other licensing agreements? Maybe you should start.

Gamestation recently claimed ownership over the souls of 7,500 buyers, with this clause in their terms and conditions agreement.

By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions. We reserve the right to serve such notice in 6 (six) foot high letters of fire, however we can accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by such an act.

If you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant Us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction.

(Thanks to Geek.com for the info)

Obviously, this isn’t actually a legally binding agreement (and was in fact an April Fools gag on the part of the store), but anyone who did click the link at the bottom was awarded with a free voucher to be used on a future purchase. So actually reading these things might not be THAT bad an idea.

Still, it’s probable that not everyone will be happy.