Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

theinquirer.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#61

Post by oneweekwonder »

conanbatt wrote: post #41
eat_veggies wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pirated the Witcher 3 originally, but it was so good I ended up buying it just to support the company. Step one in stopping piracy is to make something actually worth paying for.

The thing is that what you believe is worth paying for is proportional to the ease to find pirated content. In argentina, people pay netflix and share accounts between friends, and some play hbo go for GoT, but thats it. In the U.S., its very rate to see pirated TV. A sandwich might be worth 5 dollars to you, but if there are free sandwiches next to it, you will think "I would pay it if it were worth it"

In Australia, certain content is banned, so pirating or acquiring it via other means is nececery.

I also want to point out another problem in a lot of countries is bandwidth. Limits of 20GB is not unheard-off. But GTA5, 65GB. So easier to copy a couple of rar files on usb and sneakernet it around.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#62

Post by proactivesvcs »

hashmal wrote: post #24
dkersten wrote: post #13

This is why I don't buy games with DRM other than steams default DRM (although I mostly play games on PS4 nowadays anyway) and why I generally tend to avoid Ubisoft games (amongst others). I might buy a second hand copy at some point, or if its very heavily discounted, but I'm certainly not pushed to get this game, especially with this news.

> This is why I don't buy games with DRM other than steams Valve did an amazing job at building their reputation (by doing things the right way.) Very few can do DRM without pissing off people.

They pissed me off by locking me out of my entire library for several weeks when their password changing mechanism was silently truncating passwords. Since then I haven't spent a single penny on Steam, or anything else with DRM.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#63

Post by whatyoucantsay »

glenndebacker wrote: post #25
keldaris wrote: post #4

Oh, so the cracked version that inevitably comes out will actually have decent performance? Adorable. Can't wait. It's often been the case that pirated versions are objectively superior to the crippled originals, but I don't think I've ever seen a case as blatant as this.

It's mostly the paying customer who ends up with the burden. I would really like to know the train of thought behind it because for me that is just plain weird. It's the same when you buy a movie or a television show on DVD/BR. You first get the traditional FBI warnings (that as a non US citizen doesn't apply to me) and if you are lucky you get a 3 minute unskippable scenes about how piracy is the equivalent of murde…

> "You first get the traditional FBI warnings (that as a non US citizen doesn't apply to me)"

Many have acted upon that belief and lived to regret it. The US has a surprisingly long reach when it comes to punishing what it considers illegal trafficking.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#64

Post by emsy »

wanderingbort wrote: post #56
emsy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This so much. Especially since we know from iTunes that people DO pay for content if the can. The burden of proof lies with the proponents of DRM!

> The burden of proof lies with the proponents of DRM! That seems like a just world fallacy. The decision is made based on the perceived risk/reward by the publisher before you the consumer ever have a role to play. If they have internally decided this is "worth it", then it is _to them_. If you want to correct their internal model of a customer, the one where it is worthwhile to use DRM, then the burden lies on you.…

That was not my point, and proponents of DRM are not necessarily only the people selling products.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#65

Post by morganvachon »

seer wrote: post #35
morganvachon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wait until big games like the Witcher series hit GoG.com. That means I miss out on a ton of AAA games, but I'm not a hardcore gamer so it's no big deal. Most of my time gaming right now is split between catching up on late 2000s titles like the Crysis and Saint's Row series, and on open world games like Rust.

The witcher is an exception though, as CDProject red are the creaters of both gog and the series, thus it was available from day 1 :)

Wow, I wasn't aware of that.

What cemented GoG for me was two events: One, they got the entire classic Thief series (my all time favorite game series which won't install on modern Windows from my game discs) and two, when a few games on Steam that I thought I owned were pulled or otherwise tampered with; something I paid for was suddenly gone or altered with no recourse. I still have my Steam account and I do play games on it, but going forward all of my game budget goes to GoG and thrift store finds.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#66

Post by conanbatt »

oneweekwonder wrote: post #61
conanbatt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that what you believe is worth paying for is proportional to the ease to find pirated content. In argentina, people pay netflix and share accounts between friends, and some play hbo go for GoT, but thats it. In the U.S., its very rate to see pirated TV. A sandwich might be worth 5 dollars to you, but if there are free sandwiches next to it, you will think "I would pay it if it were worth it"

In Australia, certain content is banned, so pirating or acquiring it via other means is nececery. I also want to point out another problem in a lot of countries is bandwidth. Limits of 20GB is not unheard-off. But GTA5, 65GB. So easier to copy a couple of rar files on usb and sneakernet it around.

I wouldn't call watching TV a necessity, but sure, no doubt that restricted access causes piracy.

Its fundamentally a problem of business model. You can't charge differential pricing based on what the customer is willing or able to do, so one way or another you compromise revenue, or content, or something else.

Naturally as this has progressed with time, the shows themselves started adding ads within the show to prevent things like this.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#67

Post by conanbatt »

ajuc wrote: post #59
conanbatt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that what you believe is worth paying for is proportional to the ease to find pirated content. In argentina, people pay netflix and share accounts between friends, and some play hbo go for GoT, but thats it. In the U.S., its very rate to see pirated TV. A sandwich might be worth 5 dollars to you, but if there are free sandwiches next to it, you will think "I would pay it if it were worth it"

I don't think it's that simple. In Poland in early 90s everybody pirated everything. I'm not overstating it. Only businesses bought legal software, everybody else pirated. Piracy was only a crime since 1992 IIRC. And it wasn't easy - you had to copy dozens of floppy disks, often people copied each disk 2 times, because out of 20 floppies one is bound to have read errors, if not more. It took ages. But the prices were…

Again, talking about piracy and fairness should be a moot argument. Something being expensive doesnt give you the right to consume something without the permission of the one who made it.

Think of this in terms of source code. If you wanted the source code for facebook, facebook might sell it to you (for billions ofc), but you cant pay for it. That doesnt give you the right to steal it.

Its just too easy to do. Its a basic microeconomics argument. But piracy has not only risks, but costs, and hence it does allow the product to be sold at a higher price. It constricts supply.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#68

Post by Osiris »

I've stopped gaming on PC and I only use Xbox One now.

First, I can buy all my games digitally through a single store. I don't have to install Steam, Origin, Blizzard, etc.

Second, I don't have to worry about installing DRM software that runs on my computer 24/7 even when I'm not gaming.

Third, I can play in my living room instead of hunkered down in a dark room while my wife complains that I'm hiding from the family.

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#69

Post by ajuc »

conanbatt wrote: post #67
ajuc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that simple. In Poland in early 90s everybody pirated everything. I'm not overstating it. Only businesses bought legal software, everybody else pirated. Piracy was only a crime since 1992 IIRC. And it wasn't easy - you had to copy dozens of floppy disks, often people copied each disk 2 times, because out of 20 floppies one is bound to have read errors, if not more. It took ages. But the prices were…

Again, talking about piracy and fairness should be a moot argument. Something being expensive doesnt give you the right to consume something without the permission of the one who made it. Think of this in terms of source code. If you wanted the source code for facebook, facebook might sell it to you (for billions ofc), but you cant pay for it. That doesnt give you the right to steal it. Its just too easy to do. Its a…

> Something being expensive doesnt give you the right to consume something without the permission of the one who made it.

Of course it doesn't (except in some special cases, but that's another debate, and doesn't concern games - see life saving drugs for example).

But the discussion was about DRM and whether they work - IMHO they don't, because the main reason behind piracy isn't accessibility, but too high (price/perceived value). So - limiting accessibility of piracy isn't going to stop it.

Also it would have worked by now if it worked at all.

Also also :) EU did a study in 2013 which found that piracy doesn't really hurt sales, because most people who pirated X and haven't bought it later - wouldn't have bought it anyway. https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_s...

Re: Assassin's Creed Origins is crippling gamers' CPUs due to anti-piracy DRM

#70

Post by mrguyorama »

gatmne wrote: post #39
glenndebacker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly the paying customer who ends up with the burden. I would really like to know the train of thought behind it because for me that is just plain weird. It's the same when you buy a movie or a television show on DVD/BR. You first get the traditional FBI warnings (that as a non US citizen doesn't apply to me) and if you are lucky you get a 3 minute unskippable scenes about how piracy is the equivalent of murde…

This is exactly why I pirate what I bought when I want to rewatch it. Torrents are superior in every way so those box sets usually sit on the shelves gathering dust. I don't know why media companies insist on punishing paying customers.

Investing in new infrastructure and a changing market is more expensive than talking to a few Senators and buying off the shelf DRM solutions
Post reply on HN