Anti-Cheat Software Continues To Be The New DRM In Pissing Off Legit Customers:
Long-time readers here will know that one of the consistent themes over the years when it comes to video game DRM has been the absolute plethora of anecdotal stories you get about how DRM screwed up the playing experience for legitimate customers. Performance issues, inability to play online or single-player campaigns due to DRM failures, intrusive kernel-level access issues; the list goes on and on.
Well, if you've been paying attention over the last couple of years, anti-cheat software is quickly becoming the new DRM. Access to root layers of the computer complaints, complaints about performance effects, complaints about how the software tracks customer behavior, and now finally we have the good old "software isn't letting me play my game" type of complaint. This revolves around Kotaku's Luke Plunkett, whose writing I've always found valuable, attempting to review EA's latest FIFA game.
I have reviewed FIFA in some capacity on this website for well over a decade, but regular readers who are also football fans may have noticed I haven't said a word about it this year. That's because, over a month after the PC version's release, I am still locked out of it thanks to a broken, over-zealous example of anti-cheat protection.
Publisher EA uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which has given me an error preventing me from even launching the game that every published workaround—from running the program as an administrator to disabling overlays (?) to editing my PC's bios (??!!)—hasn't solved. And so for one whole month, a game that I own and have never cheated at in my life, remains unplayable. I've never even made it to the main menu.
[...] And Plunkett isn't your average FIFA customer. He's a professional in the gaming journalism space and has reviewed a metric ton of games in the past. If he can't get into the game due to this anti-cheat software, what hope does the average gamer have?
He goes on to note that FIFA isn't the only game with this problem. EA also published Battlefield 2042, which Plunkett notes at least lets him boot into the game menu and allows him to play the game for a few minutes before it freezes up entirely. The same anti-cheat software appears to be the issue there as well.
[...] Everyone understands why publishers want to use anti-cheat software. Cheating in the online versions of these games takes away from the fun and experience from those who aren't cheating goons. But when the cure is worse than the disease, which obviously is the case when the anti-cheat software simply breaks the game for paying customers, then it should be obvious that this strategy isn't working.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Saturday November 12 2022, @12:12PM (1 child)
Speaking of DRM: A friend is coming over today to watch a couple of movies, one old and one new. He is bringing his laptop, with his streaming service on it, and is apparently worried about Netflix allowing him to play the movies here, into my equipment. I know nothing about his streaming service, but apparently it looks skeptically at HDMI connections, and sometimes blocks them. Anti-piracy measures. In the time it took him to describe the possible problems, I pirated both movies. He has legal access, but - just in case - I still want to have our movie evening.
The point being: DRM and similar measures are fundamentally stupid. They inconvenience legitimate customers, yet don´t piracy at all. In fact, they make piracy far more attractive, because it provides a superior customer experience.
Anti-cheat software is exactly the same. Maybe is stops some cheating, but probably not very much and probably not very effectively. Meanwhile, it pisses off the legitimate customers. If you are worried about cheating, be more choosy about who you play with
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Sunday November 13 2022, @01:01PM
It makes torrenting more convenient in comparison, but don't forget how many people aren't really capable of torrenting. It takes a certain level of knowledge, and people are scared of getting caught. Meanwhile, Netflix is trying to prevent people from doing the stupid thing and just recording their screen. I knew someone who made copies of Netflix DVDs for no good reason, and I can imagine that kind of thing scaling massively if the streaming client were wide open.
It's all cybersecurity in the end, and security is just a cat and mouse game with no absolute safety on any side. All anyone can do is shift the probabilities.
Maybe the real problem here is anonymous online play. It's kinda shitty to use your own players to substitute for a lack of good AI, and depressing to use randos as a substitute for friends. I don't have a better solution, though. I don't think anybody does.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?