81–90 of 796 posts
After weeks of discourse where the physical token of the Compact Disc had become the all-important object of the fight, it's reassuring to see that we're back at the beginning, where it was clearly understood that you don't meaningfully "own" a game if you need to be online to use any of it.
You need to be online to prove you own it, which now means you don’t?
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The same thing that happened with all the Denuvo games so far: some hackers remove the DRM.
That would be possibly illegal, requires someone highly specialized to care about each and every one of your games, and assumes there won’t be a crackdown on the openness and anonymity of the Internet that currently allows the distribution of pirate software. We need to have this right codified into law before we lose it.
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Steam for some reason gets a pass even though it normalized the use of DRM for PC games over 20 years ago.
It allows you to play your games offline though, so if Steam's servers go down you can still play your games. I'm not sure if that's permanent or if you need to reactivate your DRM / license every once in a while though.
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In twenty years it doesn’t matter if Rockstar delists GTA6. The DRM will be cracked. You will be able to play and you WILL have a better experience playing a cracked DRM free version than any official version. You can play an emulated Mario Kart Double Dash on a Steam Machine (or any PC) today and get a better experience than playing it on a Game Cube. Digital only games sounds bad at first but preservation of video…
This assumes a large portion of the game doesn’t rely on servers.
Recently got a big fancy TV with 4k + Dolby Vision It’s a lot of work figuring out what movies support the format. And all the premium upgrades to Netflix, etc get them to stream premium formats. Then it doesn’t work and you’re spending 30 minutes debugging your TV, wondering why you’re not getting the amazing new restoration of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I totally understand why people just buy physical media. Games may…
Gaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s…
But e-books? Holy crap the drm on those things is soooooo annoying to avoid.
Gaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s…
General principle: It is way easier to avoid lock in by not being locked in in the first place then to extricate yourself later. It's easy for me not to be locked in to a streaming video service because I had a DVD collection that predates them, and I maintained it instead of being on a streaming service, so I've got a personal collection. It's easy for me not to be locked in to a streaming music service because I ha…
How do you plan on maintaining your CD and DVD players when the new ones will be sold with a subscription plan like printers?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In twenty years it doesn’t matter if Rockstar delists GTA6. The DRM will be cracked. You will be able to play and you WILL have a better experience playing a cracked DRM free version than any official version. You can play an emulated Mario Kart Double Dash on a Steam Machine (or any PC) today and get a better experience than playing it on a Game Cube. Digital only games sounds bad at first but preservation of video…
This assumes a large portion of the game doesn’t rely on servers.
I started writing my own world of warcraft server about 20 years ago by disassembling the WoW binary. I got to the point that you could log in to the game and run around in a big empty world. I even found a couple mistakes in wow's in-game encryption in the process. Lots of teams have gotten much further than I did. There's whole communities who play wow on private servers.
If we can do that for MMOs, we can do that for just about anything. Especially with LLMs. LLMs are incredibly good at this sort of work.
Gaming is heading in the same direction that TV, movies and music are. It’s a shame. I can invite my friends over, boot up my GameCube to play some Mario Kart Double Dash. As long as the console and disc are okay, I can (hopefully) do that until I pass away. These days? Not so much. I’ll never be able to be sure I can play GTA VI in twenty years. It just sucks not owning anything anymore. I know why they do it, it’s…