[Kathy]

Hank, on 10 February 2013 - 01:42 PM, said:

^ good point. Perhaps it's more what has got you into gaming that will stick to you as the preferred 'way' ?!?

Pong got me into gaming.

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To stay within the topic, My first game I bought was ChessMaster, Steam sells a very fancy version of Check&Made , but you can play a less graphic version free online, 24/7, so, I'll stick with the free version.

[Tetsuo]

I can't say I share the negative assessment of these things that's being asserted here. Some of you are starting to sound like old men sitting on their porch talking about the good old days and how everything today is crap compared to it.

On the other hand it's true that when 3D games first started the models didn't look as well formed as stuff pre-rendered to 2D sprites or FMVs. Just look at Blood 2: The Chosen vs Blood. But to discount over a decades worth of massive rapid improvement is short sighted in my opinion. It may not be to your tastes but it's still an improvement. That being said.. whether or not any new media whether it be games, movies or whatever is to your tastes and worth your while is up to you to decide. It's unfair to tar all remotely recent games with the same mediocre brush. As for me I'm still getting much entertainment from newer games and enjoy seeing the improvements they bring to the table... especially in the graphics department.

I started gaming with CGA graphics games in the late 80s but even can appreciate new stuff for what it is.

You say a lot of people prefer antiquated pixelated 2D graphics but I'd say even more people prefer the latest graphics... and not because they are deluded into seeing something as better when it's really not. I mean, what for work on any improvements for any games whatsoever if what we started out with was perfect as it is? No, it's not just because of some money grubbing execs in some back room or some fans with some kind of stockholm syndrome to the gaming man.

Also, from the way some of you talk one'd think that Steam is the worst content delivery system out there full of inconvenience with nothing positive in return. Almost seems like some of you are confusing Steam for a cloud gaming service like Onlive. At least with steam you download the games locally to your hard drive and play them from there on or offline and you can crack them if you want to run without steam. Nothing about Steam has stopped "hackers from prevailing" as opposed to old DRM like simple disc checks. You can backup your local library cracked or not cracked. You should be backing up your files anyway whether or not you got them from a digital distribution service and are paranoid that they are going to yank the carpet from underneath your feet at any time. If you are really worried about losing your digitally purchased games there are things you can do about it. But, as long as Steam is still around you can redownload those games any time you want full updated. There's no subscription fees as in "pay up or lose access to your games at any time" such as with a cloud service or cable TV.

Sure I can understand preferring to go with other methods of procuring your games other than Steam due to ideological reasons. I've bought games from GoG too including some of the few new games they have on there. More power to them for their business model.... which by the way... it's probably best to backup your games downloaded from GoG as well just in case something happens there too. The games being DRM free aside one could view a GOG account as a subscription too. You have an account there in which you can download or redownload your games from a libary but what happens when you lose access to that account and you didn't back up your games to local media? Oh no, paranoia creeps in!

If there's a glut of anything on Kickstarter diluting it it's not big developers... it's all those fly by night projects that don't go anywhere from small people with more ideas than ambition. Big developers aren't going in there and brainwashing people to back stuff they don't want to in lieu of the saintly indie developer.

[Fox]

It is not because of the "good old days". Nobody is going to say that all old games are better, because that is not true.

I genuinely believe there is something wrong with the development of games today. The games lack creativity, and threat the players as milk cows to a ridiculous level. There is no way that is not leading to another big crash in the industry. What we are seeing today are high definition versions of ET.

MusicallyInspired, on 10 February 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

But a lot of people prefer even antiquated pixelated 2D graphics to any 3D period. Sometimes I wonder if 3D came first instead of 2D (regardless of much that does not make sense) if people would prefer that to 2D.

I completely disagree, I don't think it is because of nostalgia.

Maybe it is something similar of the uncanny valley, because 3D looks a lot more like real life, the flaws are much more noticeable. While pixels can have carisma, low-poly models will hardly find any love.

[Tetsuo]

Fox, on 10 February 2013 - 01:58 PM, said:

What we are seeing today are high definition versions of ET.

You can't be serious.. please tell me you are not serious! Modern games today are the equivalent of HD versions of ET? Right.........

My hyperbole sensor is vibrating faster than the springs on a spaniard's honeymoon bed!

[Fox]

"All"?

[Tetsuo]

Well you make no distinction either way. This seems to be an "all old games" vs "all new games" sort of thing going on here... or 80's and 90's vs 00's and 2010's with most if not all the downsides or limitations of old games either downplayed or treated as a positive thing and vice versa with recent games.

I wouldn't argue against some games today being labelled as bad.. just as many old games where just plain bad. To be honest with you however I have a larger percentage of games that I like how than in almost any time in the past. Especially when I was a SNES gamer. Back then I used to rent a lot of stuff and only played it for three levels because most of it was terrible and really only played one or two favorite games regularly. Not so today...

[Fox]

Do I need to?

If someone says that young drives are dangerous, there is no need to point out that not all of them are reckless.

[Tetsuo]

Well, if you are being unfair and tarring all of one thing with the same negative brush then someone very well should.

[Fox]

"You"? ALL users here are doing that??

[Tetsuo]

Well, like the idiom goes.. "If the shoe fits, wear it". If what I said there applies to you then so be it. If it doesn't then don't sweat it. I see what you where trying to do there though.

[Fox]

My point stands.

The worse part is that they have no concern in showing that they are trying to milk the consumer. They literally sell half of a game so you are forced to pay for a DLC.

[Kathy]

Tetsuo, on 10 February 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

Also, from the way some of you talk one'd think that Steam is the worst content delivery system out there full of inconvenience with nothing positive in return.

No one is talking about Steam in that way. If anything, Steam is fantastically convenient. The talk is about DRM in general with Steam being the most accepted and loved service with DRM thus making many people dependable on it.

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you can crack them if you want to run without steam.

Or I can download them via PirateBay. Yay Steam!

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But, as long as Steam is still around you can redownload those games any time you want full updated.

Especially when you decided not to accept newly written EULA or get banned for a vague reason you don't even know yourself.

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The games being DRM free aside one could view a GOG account as a subscription too. You have an account there in which you can download or redownload your games from a libary but what happens when you lose access to that account and you didn't back up your games to local media? Oh no, paranoia creeps in!

And on Steam it wouldn't matter whether you made backup or not since without your account you can't do shit anyway. I don't get why are you even debating drm-free vs online activation? It's obvious that the latter doesn't offer any advantages to the buyer, but adds dependency on an online service which is a disadvantage.

[Fox]

In other words, Steam is the lesser evil.

[Tetsuo]

The point is there's nothing about steam that's stopping anyone from cracking or pirating those games if they really wanted to. I mean, they try.. but at the end of the day the hackers still prevail. As opposed to say... Onlive where you truly are locked into their service and are beholden to their whims. How would one crack an Onlive game or backup their games from there? Simple... they don't! Cloud gaming is the ultimate DRM.

Sure you could say why not just pirate all your steam games and stick it to the man if you are going to crack them. But then again, what kind of message does it send if everyone just pirated all the steam games and never purchased any?

I'd go out on a limb to say that no one is dependent on Steam like a crack addict is addicted to crack. They just offered a great service and people bought into that service with their own free will. If someone else offered better with the same or better selection of games DRM free with no account required at the same or better price I'm sure Steam\Valve would be sweating right about now.

[Kathy]

Fox, on 10 February 2013 - 03:31 PM, said:

In other words, Steam is the lesser evil.

It is probably as best as DRM could get. Despite having this major(for some) disadvantage it certainly makes up for it by providing an awesome service and social community. And because of that people soften up a bit towards accepting DRM as normal. And my contemplation about this led to creation of the thread.

Tetsuo, on 10 February 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

I'd go out on a limb to say that no one is dependent on Steam like a crack addict is addicted to crack. They just offered a great service and people bought into that service with their own free will.

If you want to continue a crack analogy then many people also bought into drugs with their own free will. And of course I'm not comparing Steam to drugs. But people do depend on Steam. And many spent quite a lot of money through it.

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If someone else offered better with the same or better selection of games DRM free with no account required at the same or better price I'm sure Steam\Valve would be sweating right about now.

Then why the hell even have DRM in the first place?

So basically you're saying that if anything goes wrong with the Steam(or your account) then you can pirate it anyway? That's a failure then. To counter Steam's drm you would need to break the law. That is why I was asking about a legal solution to the problem. What if there weren't a possibility to pirate it? And what good is buying games through Steam when you could lose money when Steam decides you're a bad person?

[Hank]

Tetsuo, on 10 February 2013 - 01:57 PM, said:

Also, from the way some of you talk one'd think that Steam is the worst content delivery system out there full of inconvenience with nothing positive in return. Almost seems like some of you are confusing Steam for a cloud gaming service like Onlive. At least with steam you download the games locally to your hard drive and play them from there on or offline and you can crack them if you want to run without steam. Nothing about Steam has stopped "hackers from prevailing" as opposed to old DRM like simple disc checks.

I see Steam becoming a monopoly and making their own rules, last August/September was just a taster. The reason Steam grew in the first place, was because their system is very good. However, the majority of gamers play online, and you'll have a risky time playing with a cracked game.

Also, if hackers would actually prevail, Steam would be out of business.

Tetsuo, on 10 February 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

I'd go out on a limb to say that no one is dependent on Steam like a crack addict is addicted to crack. They just offered a great service and people bought into that service with their own free will. If someone else offered better with the same or better selection of games DRM free with no account required at the same or better price I'm sure Steam\Valve would be sweating right about now.

Steam changed the rules last summer. The games you had actually purchased before become nill if you do not accept the new rules. This has nothing to do with being addicted, rather then being forced into submission, to the new rules. That does not sit well with me.

@ Cathy, love that chess board.

[MusicallyInspired]

Cathy, on 10 February 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

It is probably as best as DRM could get. Despite having this major(for some) disadvantage it certainly makes up for it by providing an awesome service and social community. And because of that people soften up a bit towards accepting DRM as normal. And my contemplation about this led to creation of the thread.

It's definitely an interesting topic worth thinking about. And indeed it has gotten a lot of people here thinking...one way or the other.

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So basically you're saying that if anything goes wrong with the Steam(or your account) then you can pirate it anyway? That's a failure then. To counter Steam's drm you would need to break the law. That is why I was asking about a legal solution to the problem. What if there weren't a possibility to pirate it? And what good is buying games through Steam when you could lose money when Steam decides you're a bad person?

As an appeal to both sides of the argument, there are a lot of "what ifs" either way. This is a very conjectural debate. But that's what makes it so interesting.

[Kathy]

Since Origin became another service akin to Steam I saw many hostile reactions towards it precisely because it is another service to login to. Sure, there were lots of complains because it was shitty, but also because it was just not Steam, which is becoming de facto standard gaming store for all PC games. I wouldn't want it to have that kind of power.

But it is not simply a hypothetical discussion. And people are denied access to games after getting banned or because they didn't want to accept new EULA. Well, probably almost no one denied EULA, but many were banned. And that it besides the point whether there was a good reason for ban or not.

(I need to stop editing posts every minute...)

[Tetsuo]

Cathy, on 10 February 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

So basically you're saying that if anything goes wrong with the Steam(or your account) then you can pirate it anyway?

No, more like saying just as a person does with a copy they installed from a physical disc (which may have any kind of DRM on it under the sun) they can crack the game they already own and have downloaded to run without the disc or in this case without the Steam client. I'm not saying it's a pro-steam thing rather that at the end of the day at least it's an option for IF the chips are down... this is opposed to say.. again.. cloud gaming.

There's no guarantees your steam account will or will not go down. But with anything there's always something that can go wrong. Doesn't mean one has to avoid everything.

[Kathy]

Which means that because of DRM you need to crack it. Fucking awesome.

[Tetsuo]

No, there's no need to crack it currently. It was an example and It's all up to you.... just as your actions that may have gotten you banned where all up to you. Like, denying the new EULA which to be frank this is the first time I have heard of it.

You don't need to crack it more than you need the actual game itself. First world problems. Games are a luxury commodity not a necessity. Besides, it's not a "problem" unique to Steam like what if you have a game with a disc check on it installed and you lose the disc? Or what if you have a game with a cd key and you lose the pamphlet with the cd key on it? What do you do then?

BTW It's not like I'm pro-DRM.. far from it. It's just that in the grand scheme of things Steam has proven to me to be of little inconvenience or malevolence.

[Kathy]

Tetsuo, on 10 February 2013 - 04:24 PM, said:

It's all up to you.... just as your actions that may have gotten you banned where all up to you.

But why should my ban deny me access to legally bought games? Even if I was banned because I really violated EULA.

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You don't need to crack it more than you need the actual game itself. First world problems. Games are a luxury commodity not a necessity.

So what? By that logic only people in North Korea(or something similar) should discuss their problems. Hate "1st world problem" argument.

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Besides, it's not a "problem" unique to Steam like what if you have a game with a disc check on it installed and you lose the disc? Or what if you have a game with a cd key and you lose the pamphlet with the cd key on it?

These are physical items. What if you lose a sock? It is normal that if you break/lose them you won't be able to access them. But DRM doesn't solve this problem, digital distribution does. Besides, what you describe is also a DRM. But at least this DRM bound to a physical item and not an online account.

[Tetsuo]

The point is that neither solution you use to install your games is perfect. There's always something that can go wrong that gives the same end result. You don't have access to your game any more. It's true that DRM doesn't solve that problem but I never said it did. But I get it, you're anti-having your games in a central account that you can be denied access to thusly making it so you can't install games you have purchased. Fair enough.... except that can happen with just about any digital distribution in which you have an account which keeps your games in a library.

Sure, GOG may not have DRM on their games. But devil's advocate.. what if you purchased games there and then didn't download them before you somehow got yourself banned off of GOG or someone hacked your account and co-opted it so you can't access it any more? What happens to your investment then?

[Fox]

It depends on the consumer laws on your country.

[Kathy]

Tetsuo, on 10 February 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

The point is that neither solution you use to install your games is perfect.

Of course it isn't. As for GOG... it just removes another disadvantage.

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Sure, GOG may not have DRM on their games. But devil's advocate.. what if you purchased games there and then didn't download them before you somehow got yourself banned off of GOG or someone hacked your account and co-opted it so you can't access it any more? What happens to your investment then?

We can say that you forgot to take your game with you. Downloading is part of the buying in this case. Actually, some services don't offer a "download whenever you want" option. So, basically, you can view GOG as providing a service to backup your games. Once you're out, you can't access your backup.

Great, I haven't slept much. Now I'm gonna have a "wonderful" time at work.

[Kathy]

"This is a list of games available on Steam that do not use the Steamworks CEG component, making them effectively DRM-free once installed. This means that you can copy the game folder anywhere you want and launch the .exe directly without being online or having Steam running".
http://www.gog.com/f..._on_steam/post1

[Kristian Joensen]

That method doens't rule out hardware authentication based DRM.

[Kathy]

What do you mean? These games don't check anything.

Although, I might try it on another machine just to be sure.

[Kristian Joensen]

A game that uses hardware to authenticate it self would work even if copied out of the Steam folder and obviously they aren't online only. But they do limit activations and may well get issues upon upgrades etc.

[Kathy]

What makes you think any of those games have hardware auth?

Or do you mean that they're still needed to be installed on OS and you couldn't just copy folder from on PC to another? I copied 4 games that way and I believe they weren't installed in that sense. But some other games indeed could be installed that way and you'd need an installer to properly play them on another OS.