Given how DRM has tanked the performance of many games or has rendered them unplayable at some point after release and in some notable cases even after release for a while… I was never entitled to being able to play a game with DRM anyway.
Yes, not even the games i bought. The Need for Speed copy i got which uses SafeDisc which has been unsupported since Vista? Nope! The copy of Colin McRae Rally 2005 which uses StarForce DRM which can mess with my drive as a whole? Nope! SimCity 2013 which i didn’t buy but read the news that the EA servers couldn’t handle the influx of gamers? Nope! Gran Turismo 7 which i also didn’t buy but read the news of where Sony couldn’t handle the influx of gamers almost as if they didn’t learn a single goddamn thing from SimCity 2013? Nooooooooooope!
DRMs would be less contentious if they didn’t somehow mess with the experience of the honest paying users. The worst thing that could happen back in the 80’s and 90’s was perhaps LensLok which didn’t work too well with some CRT screens but also was rarely used. In other cases you had to have the game manual or the funny looking Dial-A-Pirate disc from Monkey Island which could be at worst mildly annoying.
However in the pursuit of profit companies started to really fuck shit up for paying users. Back in early 2000’s it was StarForce “just” making your drive not work anymore or, say, your SPORE key “just” not installing anymore after the third install. But nowadays you need a spare NASA computer for a game that without Denuvo could be working fine on a regular old gaming pc. And there’s not even a guarantee that you can keep ANYTHING in perpetuity that you bought digitally, which is what OP initially complained about. If users don’t get custom servers up quickly, all users can do with their copy of The Crew is to screenshot the Steam page, print it and wipe their ass with it. Same with all those Warner shows on Playstation Video and some shows and ebooks from Amazon IIRC. And remember how i mentioned that SafeDisc stopped working? Without No-CD cracks i couldn’t even play those games even though i have bought them. We don’t have that problem nowadays thanks to discs not necessarily having any game files anymore. Just an installer for the digital storefront and the code, that’s it. Except Garfield - Lasagna Kart for the Nintendo Switch… IT DOESN’T HAVE A FUCKING CARTRIDGE AT ALL! JUST AN EMPTY GAME COVER! AND NOT EVEN AN ESHOP-CODE! YOU HAVE TO REDEEM A CODE ON MICROIDS.NET TO GET AN ESHOP-CODE! IF OR RATHER WHEN THAT SITE GOES DOWN AND YOU WANT TO BUY A COPY IN A STORE, PERHAPS WITH A GARFIELD CASE FOR THE SWITCH LIKE I DID, YOU’LL HAVE ONLY A CASE FOR A SWITCH AND ENOUGH SLOTS TO NOT PUT IN THE GAME YOU SPENT MONEY FOR!
If i buy a game legally and in turn am not entitled to keep a physical copy, create a digital backup copy or even to having that copy work (not necessarily working fine, compatibility issues are bound to happen)… I don’t feel like game companies are entitled to my money. Piracy is less convenient than buying a game but the value proposition of actually keeping a game… i have a hard time to truly denounce it. Especially when i think about switching to Linux and know that many digital storefronts make trouble on Linux in one way or another.
I have been thinking about a possible solution a few years ago: Selling full game copies via NFTs. A token that contains all the game files. The token would be created on demand when a user wants to buy the game. The DRM would only have to check whether the token was present in the wallet and that’s Too bad that NFTs are computationally quite expensive and whatever blockchain i would store the copy on, they want their miners to be paid. That’s by the way the reason NFTs only hold links to whatever you buy. Also if digital store owners actually wanted to allow users to resell games, sites such as G2A wouldn’t probably be seen as dubious. Finally my solution wouldn’t stop the arms race between crack groups and game companies. It would lessen the incentive a bit, but at an insanely high ecological and monetary price point.
If you can’t buy it DRM free and don’t want to buy it with DRM then you’re not entitled to being able to play it.
Given how DRM has tanked the performance of many games or has rendered them unplayable at some point after release and in some notable cases even after release for a while… I was never entitled to being able to play a game with DRM anyway.
Yes, not even the games i bought. The Need for Speed copy i got which uses SafeDisc which has been unsupported since Vista? Nope! The copy of Colin McRae Rally 2005 which uses StarForce DRM which can mess with my drive as a whole? Nope! SimCity 2013 which i didn’t buy but read the news that the EA servers couldn’t handle the influx of gamers? Nope! Gran Turismo 7 which i also didn’t buy but read the news of where Sony couldn’t handle the influx of gamers almost as if they didn’t learn a single goddamn thing from SimCity 2013? Nooooooooooope!
DRMs would be less contentious if they didn’t somehow mess with the experience of the honest paying users. The worst thing that could happen back in the 80’s and 90’s was perhaps LensLok which didn’t work too well with some CRT screens but also was rarely used. In other cases you had to have the game manual or the funny looking Dial-A-Pirate disc from Monkey Island which could be at worst mildly annoying.
However in the pursuit of profit companies started to really fuck shit up for paying users. Back in early 2000’s it was StarForce “just” making your drive not work anymore or, say, your SPORE key “just” not installing anymore after the third install. But nowadays you need a spare NASA computer for a game that without Denuvo could be working fine on a regular old gaming pc. And there’s not even a guarantee that you can keep ANYTHING in perpetuity that you bought digitally, which is what OP initially complained about. If users don’t get custom servers up quickly, all users can do with their copy of The Crew is to screenshot the Steam page, print it and wipe their ass with it. Same with all those Warner shows on Playstation Video and some shows and ebooks from Amazon IIRC. And remember how i mentioned that SafeDisc stopped working? Without No-CD cracks i couldn’t even play those games even though i have bought them. We don’t have that problem nowadays thanks to discs not necessarily having any game files anymore. Just an installer for the digital storefront and the code, that’s it. Except Garfield - Lasagna Kart for the Nintendo Switch… IT DOESN’T HAVE A FUCKING CARTRIDGE AT ALL! JUST AN EMPTY GAME COVER! AND NOT EVEN AN ESHOP-CODE! YOU HAVE TO REDEEM A CODE ON MICROIDS.NET TO GET AN ESHOP-CODE! IF OR RATHER WHEN THAT SITE GOES DOWN AND YOU WANT TO BUY A COPY IN A STORE, PERHAPS WITH A GARFIELD CASE FOR THE SWITCH LIKE I DID, YOU’LL HAVE ONLY A CASE FOR A SWITCH AND ENOUGH SLOTS TO NOT PUT IN THE GAME YOU SPENT MONEY FOR!
If i buy a game legally and in turn am not entitled to keep a physical copy, create a digital backup copy or even to having that copy work (not necessarily working fine, compatibility issues are bound to happen)… I don’t feel like game companies are entitled to my money. Piracy is less convenient than buying a game but the value proposition of actually keeping a game… i have a hard time to truly denounce it. Especially when i think about switching to Linux and know that many digital storefronts make trouble on Linux in one way or another.
I have been thinking about a possible solution a few years ago: Selling full game copies via NFTs. A token that contains all the game files. The token would be created on demand when a user wants to buy the game. The DRM would only have to check whether the token was present in the wallet and that’s Too bad that NFTs are computationally quite expensive and whatever blockchain i would store the copy on, they want their miners to be paid. That’s by the way the reason NFTs only hold links to whatever you buy. Also if digital store owners actually wanted to allow users to resell games, sites such as G2A wouldn’t probably be seen as dubious. Finally my solution wouldn’t stop the arms race between crack groups and game companies. It would lessen the incentive a bit, but at an insanely high ecological and monetary price point.