Dev thoughts on gog.com?

[Dizzard]

I made a post on gog.com a while ago about this. (Sorry if I represented the way AVWW does things poorly, I used some of what was said in this thread earlier)

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/will_gogcom_alienate_companies_who_use_drm_for_genuine_non_diabolical_reasons

The first response is interesting, I'm not sure how to respond to it though. So I probably won't...unless somebody can give me a hand. (or post themselves)

[keith.lamothe]

Indeed. One of my friends, being a cheap jerk, cracked AI War (this was back in the 1.0 days). However, the rest of our gaming group had bought the game. We kept up to date with the daily (or sometimes more often) patches, and he would have to crack the game each and every time. Cracking a game once is fun for him. Cracking a game four times in one day is not fun. He broke down and bought the game after a couple weeks. 

Haha, beaten into submission!

I don't suppose it occurred to him to just use someone else's key?

[x4000]

Regarding license keys, people legitimately do lose them: computers get stolen or lost, etc, and people don't have the proper backups.  My thought is that the photos and other literally-irreplaceable things they lost are way more valuable than the keys to some game, but still; it's a strong argument for backups in general.  When I get emails from folks who lost their license key, all they have to do is give me their email address (usually that's implicit in them emailing me, unless they got locked out of their other account), and then I can go back and re-send them the key.  Happens a couple of times a month; that whole "what if I lose it" argument really doesn't hold much water.

On the other hand, with true DRM there have been a number of pieces of software that I got locked out of legitimately using for no good reason other than the fact that I upgrade my hardware periodically.  You know... like people do.  That sort of DRM is what really pisses me off.  Even the Microsoft model of "call India and talk to someone for 5 minutes if you've activated windows more than a couple of times" isn't horrible, although having to read them a 25-character string and get one in response is pretty annoying.  I've had to do that 20+ times in my life, mostly due to my past as a sysadmin.

[Toll]

The worst example of a failed DRM I've yet to see happened to my brother. He bought a game (I think it was the newest Heroes of Might&Magic), and when he tried to start it, it had to activate itself first. Only... for some reason, it always failed to activate. So he phoned into the tech support, and they tried to help, failed, redirected, failed, said they'd work on it, hung up, emailed back and forth, and then started on square one again. I think it took him the better part of a month to actually start playing a game he legitimately bought.

[x4000]

Take a look at this thread.

Now imagine that the problem of not being able to find a game update is made even more horrible by the fact that some developer thought it was a good idea to distribute and update their game with proprietary nonsense that only wasted their time and money. You have a game that, at some point in the near or far future, becomes nearly unplayable, because you can't even install and update the damn thing.

Just one reason why the process you described probably shouldn't exist.

Not to be bothered to go over there to respond directly.  But this guy has it all backwards.  The reason we have a "proprietary" update process is so that it's freakin fast and works across all vendors.  We can push out an update in 5 minutes.  For a developer that updates nearly daily, this is essential.  With Steam, Desura, Impulse, etc, the best we can hope for is about 24 hour update turnarounds, and they'd all get pretty pissed at us if we tried to update every day with them.  Our sort of responsiveness just wouldn't be possible.

But that's also why we differentiate between official and beta versions.  Every time we do a new official version, we:
1. Give the updated version to all the distributors.
2. Make a new installer, which is then freely available across the Internet.

It's just about impossible to get into the situation the guy is describing from that other thread, with our titles.  And thanks to the license key model we use, and thus the full version and demo version being identical code, the full version is legitimately all over the Internet.  Talk about insurance for you as a customer!  You can't possibly expect that every site that has our stuff would all just disappear, even if we did.  The worst thing that could happen would be that you'd lose your license key and be unable to get another one.

The list of assumptions in that guy's response post is immense, but I'm not about to start debating someone on it.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, DRM debates are often a conflict between idealogies, where either two incompatible systems of reason are being used and thus cannot agree, or the same system of reason is being used but one or more parties are suppressing their reason in favor of an emotional reaction.

Some people find that kind of environment recreational, but I do not

[Dizzard]

Take a look at this thread.

Now imagine that the problem of not being able to find a game update is made even more horrible by the fact that some developer thought it was a good idea to distribute and update their game with proprietary nonsense that only wasted their time and money. You have a game that, at some point in the near or far future, becomes nearly unplayable, because you can't even install and update the damn thing.

Just one reason why the process you described probably shouldn't exist.

Not to be bothered to go over there to respond directly.  But this guy has it all backwards.  The reason we have a "proprietary" update process is so that it's freakin fast and works across all vendors.  We can push out an update in 5 minutes.  For a developer that updates nearly daily, this is essential.  With Steam, Desura, Impulse, etc, the best we can hope for is about 24 hour update turnarounds, and they'd all get pretty pissed at us if we tried to update every day with them.  Our sort of responsiveness just wouldn't be possible.

But that's also why we differentiate between official and beta versions.  Every time we do a new official version, we:
1. Give the updated version to all the distributors.
2. Make a new installer, which is then freely available across the Internet.

It's just about impossible to get into the situation the guy is describing from that other thread, with our titles.  And thanks to the license key model we use, and thus the full version and demo version being identical code, the full version is legitimately all over the Internet.  Talk about insurance for you as a customer!  You can't possibly expect that every site that has our stuff would all just disappear, even if we did.  The worst thing that could happen would be that you'd lose your license key and be unable to get another one.

The list of assumptions in that guy's response post is immense, but I'm not about to start debating someone on it.

Do you mind if I link to this post in the thread over at gog.com?

I was trying to get what you said across in a post but I feel like I'd probably just butcher it.

Edit: Although on second thought I probably don't really need to...since AVWW isn't really the topic of the thread.

[x4000]

It's fine to link to this thread -- I don't wish to get into a hostile argument with anyone over there, because like Keith said this can quickly become ideological.  So if they just hate what we're doing, then as far as I'm concerned they can do their thing and we'll do ours; everybody's happy.  But I think that our method of being no-DRM, while novel, is actually quite a bit more robust than they were understanding.

[Volatar]

Indeed. One of my friends, being a cheap jerk, cracked AI War (this was back in the 1.0 days). However, the rest of our gaming group had bought the game. We kept up to date with the daily (or sometimes more often) patches, and he would have to crack the game each and every time. Cracking a game once is fun for him. Cracking a game four times in one day is not fun. He broke down and bought the game after a couple weeks. 

Haha, beaten into submission!

I don't suppose it occurred to him to just use someone else's key?

We wouldn't share. We wanted him to buy it 

[tigersfan]

I'm not going to debate there either. I have a lot of respect for gog.com, and I've also bought a BUNCH of games there. But, to be frank, it's a debate I've had several times in the past at other places, and I'm kind of tired of it.

[x4000]

Ditto.  People on both of the extreme ends of this debate tend to not even listen to the other side, and just sit there responding to what they presume the other side is going to say.  And, sadly, they are usually right about what the other side will say.  But that creates problems for the folks that are really more moderate about it.

[tigersfan]

That said, it does sound like there are at least a couple other games sold there that have a similar set-up as ours (ie Neverwinter Nights). So, while I have no idea what would be involved in being carried by them, it might be possible.

Is it worth the time and effort to be carried by another digital distributor? I have no idea.

[x4000]

Yep, all true. Right now we have almost zero time, so it's just not going to happen. But if they are interested and support the style of releases we do, then it could be interesting for after 1.0. Right now it's just very bad timing either way.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

(in regards to GOG.com thread) Yikes, I have found the anti-DRM extreme end of the spectrum.  Guess I was bound to run into it sooner or later. 

GOG.com is the only other gaming website I have willingly gotten an account on besides Steam, but I hardly buy anything cause I'm so busy x_x with my current library.  Still, I do support what they do and think its great and if Arcen is on there, great.  If not, then *shrug*. 

King

[KDR_11k]

But what if a meteor hits my house, destroys everything in it and injures me so that I forget that I even owned the game???

Seriously, anything that was around before the term DRM was coined should not count as DRM. DRM is about activation servers and arbitrarily removing customer rights, not stuff like laser lock or other copy protection systems.

BTW, their worries about propriertary updaters seems to be that you can't recover the patches manually. I know for a fact that the Arcen updater's patches can be downloaded manually (had to do it when my anti-virus was interfering with that) since they're just a bunch of zip files hosted on the website and can be downloaded with a browser. Once you have the zips you may need to adjust an XML file and copy them to a certain path before running the installer but you will have permanent copies of the patch data and can get those patches from any source you want.