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posted by on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-DRM dept.

In announcing its first major patch for Mass Effect: Andromeda last week, BioWare highlighted fixes to the game's much-maligned facial animations, as well as gameplay tweaks like larger inventories and skippable cutscenes. One thing BioWare forgot to mention in its patch notes, though, is an improved version of Denuvo DRM that is forcing pirates to use an outdated version of the game... at least for now.

[...] It's unclear why Mass Effect: Andromeda didn't feature the latest version of Denuvo in its initial release. In any case, the updated DRM leaves pirates stuck with a much less polished version of the game, and it could keep them away from months of further patches that are already in the works. It's a situation that reminds us a bit of Game Dev Tycoon and other games that intentionally make pirated versions inferior to legitimately purchased copies.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:32PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:32PM (#492711)

    A large number of people use pirated games as "try before you buy". While that's technically not legal, they are still customers, and you don't want to convince them that the game is broken / impossible to win.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:54PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @01:54PM (#492746)

    Is this some poor attempt at rationalizing or justifying CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR? Quit being a part of the problem.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:23PM

      by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:23PM (#492756) Journal

      It is behavior that should NOT BE CRIMINAL. Don't uncritically accept laws and unwarranted connections, don't let scheming slimebags invent unnecessary rules that they know will be broken so they can profit from the punishment. It is not stealing from restaurants to shop at grocery stores. There's too much cheating by the operators of red light cameras which actually makes driving less safe. Marijuana should never have been banned, nor should alcohol have been Prohibited. Treating drug addiction as a moral failing deserving of severe punishment instead of as an illness deserving treatment has itself been a massive policy failure.

      And copyright? There is no sane reason for copyright to last so incredibly long. Need a lot more reforming than just shortening it. We should be working on a replacement system, not trying to prop it up by criminalizing sharing and allowing them to demonize it by calling it piracy. Where is our digital public library? It doesn't exist, thanks to copyright. How about our publicly available, copylefted, free textbooks for primary school? There are some, but somehow most school systems keep forcing students and the public to pay for copyrighted books.

      Sharing is a natural right. The real crime is that so much sharing is still outlawed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:57PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 12 2017, @02:57PM (#492792)

      Is this some poor attempt at rationalizing or justifying CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR? Quit being a part of the problem.

      What problem? I can think of a few.

      Problem 1: region locking

      Something like two thirds of Japanese games that I would like to buy are region locked on Steam. Most of the other third I've already bought. The region lock is even weirder when you consider that I live in Japan. If I did not have enough western games to keep me occupied between the occasional non-blocked title, I'd pirate the shit out of the blocked ones, and wouldn't feel the slightest bit of guilt. Of course, I'd have to be very careful, as file sharing in Japan carries a two-year prison sentence...

      Problem 2: demos

      The games that offer demos today are few and far between. You have no legal way to try if you would like it or if it even works on your hardware. Recommended and minimum specs are not reliable, and reviews are not enough. Not everyone can throw away $60 on something that may not even work.

      Problem 3: DRM

      Often times pirated games are simply better. Dependance on central server which may not even exist a few years down the road, requiring an always-on internet connection, stability issues, system incompatibilities, lower performance, bricking the user's machine, installing rootkits (hi, Sony!), the list of DRM "improvements" goes on and on. Or you can pirate it and get rid of all that bullshit.

      Hmm, it doesn't seem like pirates are the ones being the problem here.

      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:17PM (5 children)

        by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @06:17PM (#492963)

        You are never entitled to a game, just because you want to try it.

        If you want to tell the publisher how much money they lose by being hard to buy from, or how their DRM scheme would brick your PC, go ahead.

        That still doesn't entitle you to the game, or give you the moral right to play it against the wishes and without rewarding the people who made it.

        • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:48PM (4 children)

          by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @07:48PM (#493008)

          While US copyright law (Section 107) may not have a specific exemption for that, the UN declaration of human rights [un.org] does:

          Article 27.

          1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
          2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

          "Moral ... interests" is subsection 2 probably refers to "moral rights": The right of the author to attribution, and to preserve the integrity of their work (including the right to refuse attribution).
          "Material ... interests" probably refers to royalties from copyright law. It appears that US copyright law takes the view that "fair use" should not impact the market for the original work. That brings us to the debate about whether unauthorized copies are "lost sales" or "free advertising".

          • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:38PM (3 children)

            by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @09:38PM (#493078)

            Playing a game without paying, when it's still actively sold, is not fair use. Period.
            Unauthorized copies are not all lost sales, but a variable fraction of them is, depending on the game.
            Unauthorized copies are only advertising to the extent that someone will eventually buy the game or its sequel ... which is an even smaller fraction.

            Is there really a debate, or are people just trying to rationalize the fact that they'd rather not pay for their entertainment?

            • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @10:47PM

              by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @10:47PM (#493119)

              I had actually checked. As I mentioned in my other comment, it would count as fair dealing, if not for the DRM.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @12:27AM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @12:27AM (#493161)

              Playing a game without paying, when it's still actively sold, is not fair use. Period.

              Does it count as "actively sold" if you can't buy it because you live in the wrong country (aka region blocking)?

              • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:11AM

                by bob_super (1357) on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:11AM (#493185)

                Legally, yes.
                "Fair use" has an actual definition. It's not just some kid looking at a toy they want, being told no, and claiming "It's not fair".

    • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:32PM

      by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Wednesday April 12 2017, @05:32PM (#492911)

      As least in Canuckistan, copies for personal study are legal.

      It only becomes CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR if you resell those unauthorized copies for a profit (commercial copyright infringement).

      For completeness, the DRM actually overrides your "fair dealing" rights. I am not happy about that.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:32AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:32AM (#493327) Homepage
      Having a pirate copy of a game is not criminal behaviour, you retard, it's nothing more than a violation of civil law.
      Unless you can see "posessing" in the list of things that are criminal copyright infringement here:
          https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506

      Ooops, I accidentally a fact into an argument with an idiot.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves