Submitted via IRC for chromas
Disney's Decision Not To Renew SecuROM License Bricks 'Tron: Evolution'
Show of hands: who remembers SecuROM? Alright, put your hands down, we can't see each other anyway. So, SecuROM was a really bad DRM used by several publishers to "protect" video games, by which I mean it mostly just annoyed legitimate buyers, got some of those publishers sued, and ultimately made the game unplayable on modern operating systems. The track record is enough to make you wonder why anyone would use DRM at all after this whole debacle.
But... it's still happening. Back in 2010, Disney released the game Tron: Evolution. The game was laced with SecuROM and suffered many of the same problems as previously described. As an example of how you don't really own what you buy anymore, the game simply bricked when Disney decided not to renew its SaaS subscription for SecuROM software.
Players trying to launch Tron: Evolution are now met with a message telling them that the 'serial key has expired'. This applies to the retail version as well as the Steam version which is delisted from the store. The cause of this problem appears to be Disney not renewing their 'subscription' to the SecuROM activation system for this game. This means that even existing owners of the delisted game cannot play it for the foreseeable future.
Fun! Notably, those that pirated the game aren't having this issue. Also notable is that when at least one person opened up a support ticket with SecuROM itself to fix the issue, the SecuROM folks told that person:
"You are right with your assumption, we can't run this service anymore for Disney titles, therefore all activations are denied.
Best would be to contact Disney to get a refund for your purchase or convince them to release an uprotected version of the game."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @12:45PM (21 children)
Remind me why we need it?
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Monday December 09 2019, @12:58PM (19 children)
For your protection.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Monday December 09 2019, @01:39PM (18 children)
I still think 20 years from now, mame and other emulators (or even hardware originally running the software) will still only be able to run games up to the late 90s with any degree of reliability that all titles from that time frame can be emulated--and run. Beyond 2003 or so, it seems that always-on subscription licensing is going to derail many attempts at preservation.
Running Windows 7 in a VM of Whatever as a Service won't run things after the DRM servers are off-line and no amount of clicking a 'compatbility mode' check box is going to fix it.
Then again, I've heard that the industry voices state that only pirates use game emulators, so maybe none of this will be a problem if tomorrow's generation of enthusiasts also include people capable of faking a network topology/server/crypto stuff. Given another 20 years, I am sure the encryption used for games from 2010 will be far easier to decrypt, but then again... someone's enduring SecureRom as a Service payments will have the legitimacy of why brought into question, and if profits are threatened, I am sure the DMCA laws of tomorrow will apply to the games that used to play yesterday.
That said, ever since Steam pushed that updated client that forces advertisements into the user library and made the options to be 'low bandwidth mode' if you didn't want to get quite as much noise in all the forced advertising content and 'user engagement'... (as opposed to menu choices that accurately reflect user preferences rather than phrasing that insinuates your computer and network suck) I'm more likely to join the next generation of people that want to play games that don't punish the user for making a purchase.
I used to contribute to the forums there on a regular basis, but I've only opened the steam client in 'online mode' a few times since then to 'reactivate a license' when offline mode doesn't let me launch something, and blocked their community and servers providing the library tile graphics in my host file. It is so much faster without all of those tiles being continuously refreshed... the chromium background tabs also no longer take up 2GB of ram and now is closer to 500MB or so (old client never really peaked over 350MB or so, which means its still not as slim as previously... even in offline mode...)
Anyway I hope when companies stop paying Steam or Epic or whatever for their DRM licensing subscription services, games unlock and that 'purchasers' don't have to rebel in order to regain access to what they paid for even if they technically don't "own" it (licensing never worked that way anyhow even with local non-online license keys, but that stuff feels like you own it since local authentication always seems to work...)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Monday December 09 2019, @02:18PM (11 children)
This was predictable and inevitable from the first. The entire point to the architecture was to do this. They just held off for a short while to get the naïve signups in before the abuse began.
One should never accept software that won't run properly on a machine that's air-gapped.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @04:18PM
Halle-fucking-lujah.
In a better world, everything would be open source / free software. But I've given up on that dream under a capitalist society. I'll settle for games that are DRM-free, even without the source. So GoG it is.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday December 09 2019, @04:36PM (4 children)
Steam is convenient. GOG is reliable.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 09 2019, @08:16PM (2 children)
GOG Galaxy appears to add the bells and whistles that Steam has. I have the beta installed.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Monday December 09 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)
The GOG client has similarities to the bells and whistles that Steam has. Couple of large differences, GOG's client isn't mandatory and the whole DRM free thing, where you don't need network access for installing, etc. Also, whereas you generally get paid content on Steam, a lot of times you get free additional content, whether it's artwork or the like on GOG. Steam doesn't really include separate downloads for Game Manuals, Wallpapers, Original Artwork, etc. At best, you might get a DLC Soundtrack on Steam for another $10.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday December 10 2019, @03:39PM
Interestingly enough, they just released Client 2.0 for Open Beta. You're able to import your steam library and launch steam games from within the GOG client.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @09:19PM
...And the last time I checked, Epic Games Store does not even support a shopping cart in its digital storefront.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @07:30PM (2 children)
Including games like MMO's which require a server to play them at all? Or did you mean that people shouldn't play those kinds of games at all?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday December 09 2019, @08:56PM (1 child)
You will eventually, not be able to play the MMO any longer. Sure, the granddaddy to them all Ultima Online is still in it's deathroes, but there will come a time. Unlike, most MMOs, though, you could fire up one of multiple different emulators and roll your own.
MMO == I want to play this random game and send someone a monthly bill for the rest of my life. I.E. at the low cost of $10/month you can support your favorite MMO for $1,200 over the course of 10 years. For that same cost you could have purchased one $60 game every 6 months and likely have more reliable access over the life of the product.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @03:59PM
Not all MMOs require you to pay every month. And many of those stayed around for more than 5 years. Which is plenty enough time to find other stuff to play/do. And not a huge loss if you enjoyed the game for those years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jasassin on Monday December 09 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)
What about games like Left 4 Dead 2 or any multi player games? It's not the Air-Gap that's the problem. It's connecting to a licensing server for authentication that's the problem. That also depends on the company that made the game.
Quake 3 Arena is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. None of the master servers are online anymore, but iD software wasn't a bunch of dickheads about it. They got their money, they knew no one else was was going to buy it, and let people connect to game servers without authenticating with the master server. iD is perhaps an exception, but I'm more than happy with the Steam games I've purchased (Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2) with a cheap $10 Key from eBay. I don't have to worry about damaged or lost install media. If I'm at a friends house I can install the game and we can play without needing to bring over install media.
I don't see Steam going bankrupt any time soon, so I can actually say I trust that I'll be able to play games purchased through Steam. Now here's the real question: If you bought a game like Tron: Evolution through Steam (which is really a huge DRM licensing business [Valve made games excepted]) would you want your money back from Steam, or is it still Disney's fault? I think Steam should be responsible for refunds and Steam should be the one suing for compensation from Disney.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:46AM
That's too much hassle.
I just don't play games anymore that I can't buy at the local store or online as a disc.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday December 09 2019, @05:46PM (2 children)
>so maybe none of this will be a problem if tomorrow's generation of enthusiasts also include people capable of faking a network topology/server/crypto stuff.
Why bother? Just crack the DRM before archiving the copy in the first place. As I understand it, it hasn't actually gotten significantly harder to crack the DRM - it's just that you can't play the cracked version in online multiplayer with non-cracked users, or get any of the other benefits of working with Steam. If you're doing retro gaming though that doesn't matter so much - you'll either be playing alone, or with other retro gamers using the same cracked version.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @07:21PM (1 child)
>>>> so maybe none of this will be a problem if tomorrow's
>>>> generation of enthusiasts also include people capable
>>>> of faking a network topology/server/crypto stuff.
>> Why bother? Just crack the DRM
From the point of view of documenting emulators like MAME, the goal is to reproduce the game's workings exactly--not to turn out a playable game at the cost of accuracy.
From https://docs.mamedev.org/whatis.html [mamedev.org]:
"MAME’s main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent historical software from disappearing forever once the hardware it runs on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the software and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, one must also be able to actually use the software. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME’s primary focus."
A game with working DRM that is serviced by an emulator properly documents the historical game; a game with DRM cracked (and therefore does something slightly different than the original game) doesn't.
This doesn't specifically apply to Tron: Evolution, as MAME confines itself to arcade machines, but it's a philosophy to consider.
(There are also, I believe, games with cracked DRM in MAME--because the machines being preserved are themselves bootlegs that originally had cracked DRM inside the arcade cabinet.)
(Score: 1) by ze on Monday December 09 2019, @10:20PM
Official drm-removal patches would as much deviate from the "original experience" as cracked versions.
But so does playing a game in the context of a world that's changed by 20+ years.
TBH, I don't think being blocked from play was anyone's intent for the game's experience, only an intent for the publisher's pocketbook.
(Score: 1) by ze on Monday December 09 2019, @10:38PM
I see this as tending toward one of two directions:
That free sharing of culture stops being persecuted in the name of avarice and dysfunctional social structures as 'piracy' (as though it were raping or robbing anyone!), and becomes legitimized to its rightful place as an essential function in a healthy society. (Thank you Pirate Parties, SciHub, etc!)
Or that corporate totalitarianism prevails to stamp out rights and freedoms and sends society into a downward spiral while the few live fat and buffered from the turmoils they impose on the subjugated many ...for a while, maybe, before reaching a breaking point and sparking either revolution or just a major burn down. Or maybe lasts into just a decaying stagnation, like a much slower burn down.
Not that it's an exclusive dichotomy, or that a trend towards one direction makes any particular outcome inevitable, just speaking in terms of the opposing tendencies.
Emulation is often pretty much already considered "piracy", or some other unauthorized use of imaginary property, in most cases afaik.
I think as far as preservation goes in general, only drm-stripped versions will ever be relevant to the long term. Or else that unofficial preservation efforts get cracked down on, and your choice is to continue perpetually licensing re-issues where available or doing without.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday December 09 2019, @11:48PM (1 child)
First off, I am not a Valve fanboi... (full disclosure: I am happy for many of the things that Valve has done to help gaming on linux... But I am surely not worshiping the ground that Gabe & Co. are walking on.)
However, your information on Valve/Steam seems misplaced.
I use the Steam Client (on linux) with the recent graphical changes.
The only forced advertisements on the library page that I ever see are news stories about the individual games on the titles you already have. This amounts to nothing more than information about updates and occasional announcements from the developers of their new titles. I hardly consider being told about an update to a game you already own a forced advertisement... Even if sometimes it is a paid DLC. While announcing the next game by the same developer is inexcusably a advertisement, I hardly consider it a lot.
e.g. If I bought the game "Ball Scratchers," I probably would want to know if/when the DLC pack "Hairy Crabs" is released. If I enjoyed the game, I would also like to know when "Ball Scratchers 2: The Burning Years" is going to be released.
In addition, This is not unlike the old client... The new graphical design shows the news of all your various games at the top of your home page... In the past, it was still there, the same exact "forced advertisments" were part of the news section on each single game's home screen.
I admit, the new graphical client is quite bloated. (just like every damn web page out there with few exceptions like SN.) However, you can "Create Desktop Shortcuts" for any/all the games in your library. This hardly requires having the full bloated client up and running at all times.
As for DRM... the Steam Client's DRM is pretty unobtrusive. You said it yourself, you can play a game for so long while offline. That allows people with crappy internet to not always need the connection to be working just so that they can play a single player game in offline mode. Before Steam, and heck, even now for those companies that require it, how many of those games (even ones that can be played single player offline,) allow you to play even one time without verification? Even when Steam pulls a title from its store, it will still continue to validate the pulled game so that you can continue to play it if you want to.
Ok, I understand the problem with DRM... I hate it too. I would rather it not exist at all. But Valve/Steam's type of DRM is far less draconian then anything the software makers would come up with on their own. And that is the other point I want to make... Valve does not impose any DRM at all that the publisher does not require. If a publisher wants SecureRom, it has SecurRom Installed when downloaded from Steam. But the opposite is true too... If the company does not care about DRM, it is not required, not even Valve's own licensing server. I do not need to run the steam client at all if I want to play Factorio, Or RimWorld, or a bounty of other games. Admittedly, indie publishers are more likely to not require DRM, as the big publishing houses are already sold on the idea of Draconian DRM requirements. But the point is, it is not Valve who decides the level of DRM, the publishers decide if to screw the customers and how badly to do it.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 10 2019, @09:58AM
This must suck for people who live in areas with unreliable internet.
"You must connect to the internet to continue playing this game"? Fuck off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @07:27PM
Because without it people who feel that the price being asked for is too steep (or think that all software should never cost anything) will simply not pay it and obtain the software unlawfully. Sorry, but there you go.
Counterquestion: Why did anybody feel like they needed to get this particular title? Why not simply boycott it?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Monday December 09 2019, @12:54PM
Not to worry. The horrible evil pirates (that may or may not be from the Caribbean) fixed this problem for Disney way back in 2010 as the game was unprotected by Deviance. Finding a nocd "crack" for this shouldn't take more then one googling. Why don't they just do what UBI-soft did previously when they had problems, steal a crack from Reloaded and claim it's an official patch and bugfix. After all it's not like they are going to sue ...
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/ubisoft-uses-reloaded-crack-as-patch/1/ [bit-tech.net]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 09 2019, @01:42PM (3 children)
> The track record is enough to make you wonder why anyone would use DRM at all
Because they haven't been sued and lost big enough yet. Nor have their customers meted out severe enough punishments to dissuade them forever more. Sure, debacles such as TurboTax messing with sector 0, and the infamous Sony DRM with the root kit blew up in their faces, but it wasn't enough to totally convince publishers that the concept of DRM itself was the problem. Those incidents could easily be excused as bad implementations of DRM. On the other hand, Windows Vista was so bad thanks to heavy handed DRM and more, that it perhaps did get through to a few that DRM is dumb.
It may well be that piracy is saving them from the massive class action lawsuits. I can imagine them in court, protesting that they shouldn't be sued because pirates showed that their DRM didn't work anyway, so what's the big deal?
Could ask much the same question of copyright. Strange how DRM is easily seen as bad, but the bad of copyright is much less obvious. Copying belongs to the masses now. Sadly, the concept really pushes the emotional buttons over fear of loss. Can't so much as have a rational talk with authors or other artists about copyright. Nearly all of them cling to the notion, and scream and cry that without copyright, they'd all be robbed. As if they weren't being routinely robbed with copyright, before they strengthened their position with publishers and got better deals.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Monday December 09 2019, @04:20PM
> Because they haven't been sued and lost big enough yet. Nor have their customers meted out severe enough punishments to dissuade them forever more.
Which is why this: "contact Disney to get a refund for your purchase" needs to happen, big time, from lots of customers. Even if they don't play it anymore. If it's refused - class action lawsuit.
If the accounting ends up showing the game made a loss because of the DRM things might start to change. It may show a loss either way now - clearly the ongoing cost of the DRM SAAS was getting to Disney which is why they pulled they plug, maybe after ten years it's eaten all of the game profits? Good, more proof DRM doesn't pay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @09:20PM (1 child)
This year, yes. Next decade? Maybe not so much.
Aka the actual creators of the work who feel like they deserve something for people taking and enjoying their creations? Yes, how silly of them.
Signing an unfavorable contract is just a bit different from outright theft. And I'm not sure what you mean by 'better deals', as the deals are still pretty much the same. Show you might be salable, get an advance, work, get published, and if you're successful you can get another advance or sign a package deal.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 09 2019, @11:44PM
> who feel like they deserve something
Of course. I totally agree that artists deserve reward for good work. Where I differ is the means. I don't agree with copyright as the means for determining how much compensation artists deserve. It's not working, and it never did work that well before copying became so easy. What I favor is vastly expanded and improved crowdfunding. Should be possible to make crowdfunding better than copyright ever was or could be.
> for people taking and enjoying their creations
You said "taking". Copying is not taking. Copying is copying. "Taking" is a pejorative way to put it. Pirates are not plagiarizing, not claiming authorship of works they did not create. They are only copying. To say "taking" poisons the debate and pushes people's buttons, gets their hackles raised over the thought that people are "stealing" from them. I don't know if you did that on purpose, or you were merely unthinkingly repeating the talking points of the entertainment industry. However, this point has been made over and over and over, and by now, everyone who cares about this controversy has heard it many times.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @02:39PM
N/T