Mass Effect - Copy Protection Details

Well, it wasn't a tactic to ignore your bold point - I was thinking about a number of things and ended up addressing only some. Off to work, so I'll respond when I get the chance.
 
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Yeah, I know. I was joking on that point.
 
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It must be difficult to estimate with any amount of certainty how much impact piracy has on a game's sales. There's too much guesswork involved.

If someone were to steal 100 copies of Mass Effect and then stand out on a street corner and pass them out, one at a time, then how much would that impact Mass Effect's sales? It would mean a loss of 100 sales if every one who got the game for free would have otherwise bought it.

But what if none of them ever would have bought it? Then it would have had no impact on sales. The inventory would be lost, but that would be all (and the cost that would be insignificant).

So it's not a question of how many people play pirated games. It's a question of how many of those people would have otherwise bought those games.

How do you figure that out? Beats me.
 
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The PC game development industry, like every industry, has some companies that flourish, some that fail. Always has, always will. The difference with the PC gaming industry is that instead of attributing failure to stiff competition, poor product, poor marketing, changes in the market or any other of the very real reasons businesses fail, a large majority of them simply cry "piracy!". Now, for a very few select companies this might actually be the case, but everytime sales don't meet expectations? No.
So are you saying that actually the entire AAA PC industry, except Blizzard (which co-incidentally, happens to have a game mechanism that is pointless to pirate), is simultaneously suffering from over competition, poor product, poor marketing and other bad business situations?

(also remember that all the major source of units sold don't consider on-line distribution, such as Steam, which form a large part of PC gaming sales).
It's not the sales rankings that are complaining about the piracy problem, it's the developers/publishers themselves - they have the real sales figures, not the charts.

Furthermore, the US is on the brink of a recession - companies are struggling in all walks of business, and you'd be hard pushed to blame piracy there.
Then why are video games sales up so much as a whole?

But what if none of them ever would have bought it? Then it would have had no impact on sales. The inventory would be lost, but that would be all (and the cost that would be insignificant).

So it's not a question of how many people play pirated games. It's a question of how many of those people would have otherwise bought those games.

How do you figure that out? Beats me.
A good point, and perhaps it could be argued that where once PC gaming was the hobby on only a few geeks, piracy has enabled a wider audience to take part who wouldn't otherwise part with money for a game. But on the other hand, console sales just seem to fly in the face of that one - why should people prefer playing the game on a console so much more than on a PC? In fact, why are they willing to pay more to do so as well?
 
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Oh man, I'm going to love living in the brand new world some of you are trying to pass off as acceptable.

First I'll start this Friday evening off with going to the movies. I'll just go in watch the flick and then I'll decide if I feel like it is worth my money or not. Then I'll go to a great restaurant and when I'm full from a delicious dinner I'll call on the waiter and tell him I'm not going to pay for me meal, and it'll go something like this:

Me: I'm not going to pay. The meal didn't meet me expectations.
Waiter: Sir?
Me: Yes, I didn't get the "Steak Feel", you know?
Waiter: But you ordered Fish and Chips sir ...
Me: Yes, well I was EXPECTING a steak, so I'm not going to pay.

To round the evening off I'll go visit a fine prostitute and I'm sure that afterwards her "manager" will accept my argument that I was merely "trying before buying" and let me off scot-free.

Yes, that'll be a nice evening ... of course, by the same time next week the cinema and the restaurant will both have closed down due to unpaid bills and the lady of questionable ethics will be working at the local fish factory where she'll be paid for her services.

I'm sorry, but I just don't accept the "oh but I won't have bought it anyway" argument. You play it, you pay. End of story.

"Oh but I don't feel the price is right". Yes, well I don't feel the price on real estate is fair to a regular working Joe like me, but that doesn't make it alright for me to go "squatting" (is that the correct term for unlawful occupation of a building?) the house I want to live in now does it? Again: You play, you pay.

What I really don't understand in this particular case is that no matter how one feels towards piracy there is a general consensus that the CP scheme on Mass Effect will be broken within days or even hours, so even IF EA/Bioware should break their promise to disable the online check once/if the service shuts down, does anyone here honestly believe that a fix for this will NOT be available on the web? Seriously?!?

The whole "I want to be able to play the game whenever I want, even 10 years from now" argument is somewhat flawed because you can't do that with 10 year old games now, can you? In order to get most of your games from the 90'ies to run on your current XP or Vista PC's you have to install a third party program to make it work. So when push comes to shove: What is the difference between installing DOSBox and installing a "No Online Check" patch?
 
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face of that one - why should people prefer playing the game on a console so much more than on a PC? In fact, why are they willing to pay more to do so as well?

Best sports and driving games are only on the newest consoles. The prime genres for many pirates I know. Infact EA just recently ceased to make sports games for PC alltogether.

Today a person told me that there is an email campaign going on against mass effect due to its DRM and how he was joining it. He will propably just pirate the game now. I found it funny because he most likely would not have bought the game anyways DRM or not. Its just an extra excuse to pirate it - hypocritical at that.

This is a person who pirated games like witcher and more lately assasins creed. He has never owned any bioware games or rpgs. He owns like 5% of games (i.e multiplayer games to get to legal servers) he plays while spending hundreds of hours playing them.

So it's not a question of how many people play pirated games. It's a question of how many of those people would have otherwise bought those games.

Well most of the people I know spend huge amount of time playing the pirated games. They have gaming fridays with multiple people playing. Somtimes they have tournaments that are played every evening. Somtimes its all they do on their freetime.

I know a one fellow who bought like 40-50% of games he owned. He even liked to preach against piracy. He was kind of high moral person but still pirated half of his games (and played them a lot too).

Most people pirate like 95% of the games like there is som rule that if you buy one pc game you are entitled to download nine for free. I guess it can feel like the right thing to do if everyone does it.
 
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The whole "I want to be able to play the game whenever I want, even 10 years from now" argument is somewhat flawed because you can't do that with 10 year old games now, can you? In order to get most of your games from the 90'ies to run on your current XP or Vista PC's you have to install a third party program to make it work. So when push comes to shove: What is the difference between installing DOSBox and installing a "No Online Check" patch?

I was mostly agreeing until upto here. How is using OS/PC emulation or virtualisation in line with using a crack? This type of app (?) is becoming more common, and the crack on it's own is not going to get it to run on a non-supported system.

If the game works in this case, you will most likely need the cd-numbers or code-in-manuals.
 
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I was mostly agreeing until upto here. How is using OS/PC emulation or virtualisation in line with using a crack? This type of app (?) is becoming more common, and the crack on it's own is not going to get it to run on a non-supported system.

If the game works in this case, you will most likely need the cd-numbers or code-in-manuals.

If you, like me, own a legal copy of "Legend of Kyrandia 3: Malcolm's Revenge" but can not play the game without first installing DOSBox and we now pretend we're 10 years in the future and EA/BioWare have just discontinued the online service handling the activation of own legal Mass Effect for PC copies without releasing an official patch to remove the online check ... then my question was this: What is the difference between applying a third party software package (DOSBox) in order to get your legal LoK Malcolm's Revenge to work and applying a third party software package (No Online Check) in order to get your legal Mass Effect to? You say tomaatoes, I say TomAtoes?

Be it an emulation program or a crack/patch, you're still utilizing both in order to play your legal games. The problem with piracy is not what you do to your own legal copy (using it as a Frisbee or applying No-CD cracks). The problem is the parasites who won't pay for the games they play.
 
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I was mostly agreeing until upto here. How is using OS/PC emulation or virtualisation in line with using a crack? This type of app (?) is becoming more common, and the crack on it's own is not going to get it to run on a non-supported system.

If the game works in this case, you will most likely need the cd-numbers or code-in-manuals.

It's mostly rubbish anyway - nearly all of my 90's games still work just fine thankyou. If we're talking 80's games then yes, some hoops are required - but all you're doing is creating the appropriate environment for them to run normally... you're not hacking the game itself in any way, it's purely the operating system environment that's being manipulated to make it more like what the game expects... something we've done with games for many, many years (e.g. upgrading display drivers because the game won't run - is that a hack now too?).
 
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What game was it if I may ask? :) Some old ones are almost impossible to get.

It was "The Beauty and the Beast" by Disney. DOS version. I just couldn't find it anymore, and to my greatest delight someone I think mailed me a copy. :)

My, was I happy !!! :) Because the demo had been one of my very, very, very first games on the PC ever ! :)
 
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Amount of actual inconvenience posed to overwhelmingly vast percentage of customers?: minimal

Amount of drama surrounding discussion of said copy protection scheme?: maximal

The drama on this thread is frikkin unbelievable.
 
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The whole "I want to be able to play the game whenever I want, even 10 years from now" argument is somewhat flawed because you can't do that with 10 year old games now, can you? In order to get most of your games from the 90'ies to run on your current XP or Vista PC's you have to install a third party program to make it work. So when push comes to shove: What is the difference between installing DOSBox and installing a "No Online Check" patch?

You don't know that there are things like FreeDOS and PTSDOS out there ?

But on the other had: Windows has become so overly complex that we won't be able to to play our current games in 10 or 20 years. No way, because I don't see any way to build a thing like DOSBOX in the same manner to emulate current windows.

The only way, then, would be the use of an VM-environment, which would - in the case of windows xp - mean that the OS would like to contect Microsoft in order to let itself be activated. Which most probable won't be answered by *any* MS Server in 20 years or so.

So, you work around with a 30-days installation of windows xp, when you try to play games of today in 20 years.
 
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Absolutely great ! :D

The far best entry in this discussion this far ! :D ;)
 
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It was "The Beauty and the Beast" by Disney. DOS version. I just couldn't find it anymore, and to my greatest delight someone I think mailed me a copy. :)

My, was I happy !!! :) Because the demo had been one of my very, very, very first games on the PC ever ! :)

I did a quick lookup and didnt find any referance to it from mobygames, wikipedia or ebay. But it was in underdog games. Funnily though its not shared there: :)
Since this game is copyrighted by an ESA member (former the IDSA), or its subsidiary thereof, we are not permitted to distribute it due to the ESA notice. Please contact the company directly to either sell it to you, release it into the public domain, or give us the permission to distribute.

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=111

Usually they only protect games that are still sold (i.e eye of the beholder series in forgotten realms archives) but this one seems like an exception.
 
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I've been to the Bioware forums and RPGcodex and got to say this is the hottest topic around. A lot of people are screaming "Big Brother" and "What if they want to play it 50 years from now." 50 years!!! I can't even imagine what the world would be like or what computers would be. Hopefully I'll be dead and buried in 50 years time, if not I'll be one cranky old guy bitching about how games used to be good ;)

Anyways, I don't like the ET phone home thing but I'll deal with it at first if I want to play it when it is first released. Anyone who is concerned about the DRM protection do you seriously think that there won't be a crack. Especially now, I can just imagine all the hackers drooling over who will be first to crack this game. I don't support pirating in any form but cracking a game so you don't have to put in a cd everytime you want to play or "Phone home" I've no problems doing. I bought the dang thang, please just let me enjoy it without having to search my games for one DVD. So everyone with this concern just wait to buy it after the crack is released in a few weeks after the release.

For this game I don't think I'll need the crack since they got rid of my biggest pet peeve with being able to play it without needing a DVD in the drive. So what if it phones home every 5 days or so. My concern is that I don't always just play one game. I'm always bouncing around different games and sometimes will let one go for a month or two before revisiting it. What about then? My 10 day experation date will have expired, LMAO it has about the same shelf life of milk now. I guess I'll have to crack it once it has "expired" or deal with EA tech support *shiver*
 
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Amount of actual inconvenience posed to overwhelmingly vast percentage of customers?: minimal

Amount of drama surrounding discussion of said copy protection scheme?: maximal

The drama on this thread is frikkin unbelievable.

Hear hear.
 
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Amount of actual inconvenience posed to overwhelmingly vast percentage of customers?: minimal

Amount of drama surrounding discussion of said copy protection scheme?: maximal

The drama on this thread is frikkin unbelievable.

Really?.... unbelievable? Turn on the news and you'll see drama everywhere about non-issues. Not just this thread but everywhere you go there seems to be more drama about stupid innane stuff. I blame it on the election and Britney Spears :biggrin:
 
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What Bioware does is the next logical step to fight piracy - as sad as it is. Piracy alone is not the problem - the fast distribution of illegal copies over the internet is. Bioware are just using the medium for their own means - and personally, I cannot see how anything could be wrong with that, as long as Bioware makes clear on the box that you'll need an open internet connection to play the game.

It's of course not fair, because some people won't be able to play it, but then again - piracy isn't very fair either. It will be interesting to see how this will turn out for Bioware.

Thus said, I think we will see a pirated copy of the game anyway... it will just take a bit longer - or not, depending on when exactely a release group will get their hands on the game.

EDIT: What I find interesting is that hardly anyone complains about the fact that you can only activate the game on three different computers.
 
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It's mostly rubbish anyway - nearly all of my 90's games still work just fine thankyou. If we're talking 80's games then yes, some hoops are required - but all you're doing is creating the appropriate environment for them to run normally... you're not hacking the game itself in any way, it's purely the operating system environment that's being manipulated to make it more like what the game expects... something we've done with games for many, many years (e.g. upgrading display drivers because the game won't run - is that a hack now too?).

And mine do too which is why I specifically chose a 90'ies game that will NOT run on XP/Vista machines in my example. ;)

Does applying a crack physically hurt you? Do you have to click on the mouse in a certain way in order to install a No-CD fix? If not, then why should it matter to you what kind of software you install on your PC in order to get your legally purchased game to run? What we're talking about here (or at least what I was talking about) is what steps is necessary to circumvent a no longer existing support for your game. It doesn't matter how much you payed for Malcolm's Revenge, it just will not run on XP. However you CAN get it to run by installing DOSBox (or FreeDOS or PTSDOS or whatever the different third party alternatives are called). The same is hypothetically the case with Mass Effect in the future where the online service has been taken down, which makes it impossible to run the game unless you install a crack.

skavenhorde said:
My concern is that I don't always just play one game. I'm always bouncing around different games and sometimes will let one go for a month or two before revisiting it. What about then? My 10 day experation date will have expired, LMAO it has about the same shelf life of milk now. I guess I'll have to crack it once it has "expired" or deal with EA tech support *shiver*
All it means is that every 10 days it will do the check. If you play for 10 days straight it will only connect once but if you play 1 time every 10 days then it will connect every time you start the game. That's it. You're not locked out unless it can't connect after the 10 days or your key has been banned.
 
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