DRM

[Justin]

How are people feeling about DRM these days?

[Tampa Bay Lightning GM]

Useless. Only encourages piracy as people go download the pirated product over the actual one in-store. Not really working either as hackers bypass that shit and put it on Piratebay for the millions of people to download.

[Justin]

I could not agree more.

I was thinking about buying Sim City, then read that you had to be connected to the internet to play it, and that people were losing their cities, and i said FUCK THAT SHIT. I usually buy Sim games to support the product and the company, but I will never EVER buy an offline game that requires you to have an internet connection to play it. Companies that hurt the legit consumer with all their DRM make me insane, so I boycott them!

[Tampa Bay Lightning GM]

Yup. I still don't get why they are implementing this DRM bullshit, it's only dropping actual sales and increasing piracy. I've considered buying many albums from real artists I feel deserve my money but what is one to do when they got this shit going on. They just put these ridiculous restrictions on it so you might as well go get the pirated product that you can use freely.

[Justin]

Exactly. I'm lucky because my favourite band has actually gone in another direction (to get you to buy their CDs, they increase the value by adding bonus CDs/DVDs collector's editions, etc). I don't buy much music, but that helps ease the pain of paying $20-$30 for something I know I can get for free online.

But games are getting dumb. Something like Arkham City also did okay, because if you bought the game new, you basically got extra context. But my friend was living with me when Diablo 3 came out, which is another always-online game, and it drove him nuts because of stuff like lag due to a shared internet connection. I mean, the guy buys a $150 collector's edition of a single player campaign game and has to deal with internet lag? I was furious on his behalf.

Games like that are basically worthless. Like, I play games for a LONG time. Especially Sim games. Like, if the servers for the games are no longer supported, the game is garbage. Literally. And that is why it bugs me, because EA is saying, "Hey, we got your money. That's all that matters".

Something else, a bit unrelated but kind of not. If you have a legal, store-bought DVD of Clone High, it makes you sit through about 7 mins of ads by disabling your skip and menu buttons. If you burn the same DVD, you can skip that crap.