I was about to buy this...but then saw SecuROM DRM BEWARE!

[SoupyFlow]

Just throwing this out there. I was about to buy this game seeing it on sale for Steam's summer sale, but then I saw it had SecuROM DRM crap. I don't care how relaxed the DRM might be, any game that has this crap is a game I WILL NOT buy.

Monte Cristo/Focus Home Interactive you have lost another sale. JUST USE STEAMWORKS!

[targetbsp]

/facepalm

[SoupyFlow]

/facepalm back...

[targetbsp]

If DRM is enough to prevent you buying a game thenn you didn't really want the game all that much so the DRM did you a favour. :)

[Exatrive]

no REP for you OP.. Every single time a game goes on sale, one of these pop up someone tries to scare people from a game.

oh well..

[OurSacrifice]

Nothing wrong with the DRM.

[cakefish]

You might as well not buy any game ever again. All modern games have DRM nowadays.

[SoupyFlow]

@Exatrive I could care less

@cakefish I don't mind the DRM infrastructure of Steamworks, but if a game is on Steam, no further DRM is needed. And no, most modern games DO NOT have a machine activation limit...

[cakefish]

But I can't see why you would want to install on more than 5 computers at a time anyways?

[WildBill]

If DRM is enough to prevent you buying a game thenn you didn't really want the game all that much so the DRM did you a favour. :)

It's not DRM in general that's the problem, it's two types in particular that cause people to get up-in-arms: activation limits and single player games that require a constant Internet connection. At this point, either of those types will stop me from buying a game no matter how badly I want it. I may begrudgingly put up with activation limits for Windows itself, and for expensive application software, since I only have a few of those types of things installed, and that makes it less troublesome to keep track of and deactivate them as needed, or deal with any necessary support calls.

Games are a different story. I have hundreds of games, mostly on Steam, and often have 50 or more installed at one time. I frequently add and remove particular games depending on what I'm in the mood to play, and to facilitate doing that quickly I have created a Steam backup archive of every game I own. I rarely complete one game and then go on to the next, but instead play a little of one, a little of another, etc. I'll sometimes reinstall a game years after I bought it, and finally complete it. Because of this, I don't feel like keeping track of the nuances of each game's activation scheme, remembering which ones I've ever had installed in the past and if I need to run a deactivation tool on before I upgrade my PC, even though they are not currently installed, etc. It doesn't really matter how easy it supposedly is to call the support line and get the activations reset, because if every game I had installed used activation limits, a hard drive crash could theoretically result in me having to make 50 of those phone calls.

Now, maybe if it wasn't for Steam and it's constant great sales I wouldn't have a backlog of hundreds of games, and in that case the need for that great new game with annoying DRM would be higher. Maybe then I'd buy it and deal with it. Unfortunately, for the company trying to sell the game with the annoying DRM, there are a lot of people besides myself who also have that huge backlog of games on Steam. Ironically, this results in the companies who use this type of DRM being unable to sell their games to the people who buy the most games.

[Sifer2]

Was slightly interested but there are other city builder games I can play without DRM so yeah i'll pass this one up. An if anything thinks Securom is harmless just recently the Witcher 2 had it for retail copies. An people found out it significantly reduced the games performance until it was patched out.

[chrisdglong]

Rep for you OP. My rep will count as much as everyone in this thread anyway. You are exactly correct, this game is not worth 7.99 and the DRM hassle.

[CenturyChild]

Although ID prefer no DRM at all, I dont mind SecuROM myself.

Its 5 activations true but ... thats 5 activations at once, on any 5 machines.

So, in a nutshell, you can install and play the game on 5 different machines.

Also, if you want a activation back, just un-install the game..
OR
run the Activation Revoke tool, and leave the game installed.

this frees up a slot to install on another machine.


Permanant Internet Connection Required for a single player game is far more of a issue to me.


And yes, some will say but what if my HardDrive crashes, or I have a PC problem, Then its a lost activation.

Well, for 1, you should ALWAYS have some form of backup in place. In this day in age with applications such as Acronis, and even free versions such as Macrium and paragon, this is no issue.
You can restore and revoke worst case scenario, then re-install clean.

Those who do not keep backups, well .. thats just reckless.


Secondly, if you do for some reason hit your limit, a simple request will reset them for you.

So I really do not see why its a huge problem.
I agree, with Steam, we shouldnt have anything extra. Dont get me wrong.
But at the same time, this type of DRM is not as bad as its made out to be. There are fgar. far, worse out there.
UBISOFT for example.

[Whiplashr]

I love all the pirates who think they fool anyone when they rant about SecuROM and other forms of DRM. Trying to act like they are just concerned citizens who don't like a particular type of DRM. He even closes with the whole big "YOU JUST LOST MY SALE!", like he really thinks that suddenly the developers are dropping everything and RUNNING to their desks to immediately remove this and make sure to get his sale.

Puh-lease. You aren't fooling anyone guys. Only yourselves. Everyone else sees right through it.

[wing40]

I love all the pirates who think they fool anyone when they rant about SecuROM and other forms of DRM. Trying to act like they are just concerned citizens who don't like a particular type of DRM. He even closes with the whole big "YOU JUST LOST MY SALE!", like he really thinks that suddenly the developers are dropping everything and RUNNING to their desks to immediately remove this and make sure to get his sale.

Puh-lease. You aren't fooling anyone guys. Only yourselves. Everyone else sees right through it.
So if a person complains about DRM, that makes them a pirate? What kind of logic is that? Pirates don't even have to deal with the DRM, pirated games remove the DRM. The only people DRM hurts is the paying customers, pirates aren't bothered in the least.

[cybertario]

If DRM is enough to prevent you buying a game thenn you didn't really want the game all that much so the DRM did you a favour. :)

Pre-assumption too much??

I really, really want AC2 but i wont tolerate Ubi´s DRM. I pass it in every sales they made, but i will buy it when and if they choose to remove it, and even at full price.

Same happens with X3TC, i love X3 and I wanted X3TC, they remove DRM at 2.0 patch (same they did in X3), at that very moment, I bought it.

So yes, for some people, like me, who concerns about DRM as a legitimate opinion (i respect yours), DRM can be a turn off, even when we really want the game...

:)

[Jimmy Damage]

Was going for a purchase, saw DRM, changed my mind.

[Dirtman73]

I love all the pirates who think they fool anyone when they rant about SecuROM and other forms of DRM. Trying to act like they are just concerned citizens who don't like a particular type of DRM. He even closes with the whole big "YOU JUST LOST MY SALE!", like he really thinks that suddenly the developers are dropping everything and RUNNING to their desks to immediately remove this and make sure to get his sale.

Puh-lease. You aren't fooling anyone guys. Only yourselves. Everyone else sees right through it.

What a stupid, ignorant rant.

[targetbsp]

Pre-assumption too much??

I really, really want AC2 but i wont tolerate Ubi´s DRM. I pass it in every sales they made, but i will buy it when and if they choose to remove it, and even at full price.



:)

I took the same view for ages but recently I bought Settlers 7, having forgotten about the online DRM and really it isn't the least bit intrusive. It's no different to being logged into Warcraft, or if you want to argue that you're not playing an online game, being logged into EA so you can continue playing your Mass Effect save with DLC.
In fact, it was so not a problem I went out and bought Splinter Cell Conviction the next week.

What follows is not a direct reply to the quote but a general reply to this thread.

I genuinely think rants about copy protection are started by pirates when I new one comes out and some non-pirates jump on the bandwagon. Then the pirates crack it - they're happy as anything but some people keep moaning about the copy protection. The mis-information about securom in particular is laughable. Some people still think it's a rootkit! That claim was taken back 3 years ago!

All the anti DRM people are doing is staging a moral crusade that prevents themselves from playing games they'd otherwise like. If they were sufficiently denting sales, the companies would have stopped with DRM a decade ago.

They haven't which leads me to one of 2 conclusions:
a) The anti-DRM people are an insignificantly small, admittedly vocal, minority
b) They buy games they really want, even if it has DRM which leads to my earlier conclusion of they probably didn't want the game if DRM stops me buying it

I think most people just don't care about DRM. You get your activations back if you uninstall it, you don't use an activation re-installing to the same PC, you sometimes get your activations back over time, you get your activations back by emailing the games support. It's pretty hard to legitimately fall foul of DRM. People just like something to take a stand against.

[Phoenix Rising]

This is a bit of an FYI to anyone who feels - seriously - that DRM is "OK".

First of all, whether or not some one is a software/media "pirate" (I always laugh at that term, I picture a dude with an eye patch, peg leg, bird on his shoulder and a hook typing on a computer with said hook and going, 'ARRRRG IT AINT WORK!"), doesn't mean their point is invalid. This kind of thinking is a clear fallacy of logic.

Digital Rights Management is a technology concept based on some VERY shaky ground from a logical standpoint. CEOs and bean counters basically have you fooled if you think, "oh pirates steal from media companies!"

Theft is defined by Merriam Webster's Dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft) as:

a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

In both cases, the property must be TAKEN from the victim, meaning they no longer have the property. So-called "pirates" duplicate the property digitally without causing any harm to the original owner.

Your corporate overlords likely have duped you into thinking, now, "but wait, you're stealing money they'd otherwise have if you hadn't copied it!" This is simply not true - theft, again, requires that the victim actually had, fully, undoubtedly IN THEIR POSSESSION ALREADY the money in question. They never had money from the so-called "pirate" in the first place, and therefore, lost absolutely nothing.

Your corporate overlords usually follow up with a rebuttal that says, essentially, "well if you couldn't have got it free, you would have bought it, and that's how you stole from us."

Allow me to introduce you to a nifty little newspaper called The Thrifty Nickel. When I was a kid growing up in West Texas, this little "newspaper" (as that's what it resembled) printed a local classified ads listing about the size of the "Living" section in your local newspaper, and distributed it all over town in restaurants, barber shops, etc. It contained classified ads from people, as well as advertisements, coupons and special deals from local businesses, and was usually picked up while some one waited on their table to be ready, or something similar.

Do you know what they charged consumers for this service? Nothing.

Would anyone have bought it even at $1.00? Nope. 25 cents? Not likely, but maybe. A nickel? Maybe a bit more likely, but once you consider that people nowadays use their debit card, it's kind of hard to do a transaction for 5 cents, considering the bank and merchant fees will be at least 10 times that for the smallest of transactions.

The Thrifty Nickel didn't charge for their publication, because they knew that no one would bother picking it up if they did.

The moral of this story is that just because something costs money doesn't mean some one is willing to pay for it. Just because a so-called "pirate" picked up something for free DOES NOT mean that they would have paid for it if they couldn't get it for free. Yet another fallacy of logic.

The truth about copyright and DRM is that it's an attempt by Big Media to use the government to artificially inflate their profit margins at the expense of our personal liberties.

DRM is a technology problem for several reasons. Back in the day, Sony, for example, introduced a DRM system for music CDs they had produced. The problem? It was secretly a rootkit, allowing Sony's employees - and by proxy, anyone with basic knowledge of the system - complete and total control of your computer from anywhere on the planet.

Other DRM issues include denial of service (intended to prevent people from using the game without paying for it, but it usually ends up squashing paying customer's ability to use the software instead), massive resource hogging (because they just toss this crap in there without really testing it, and it can lead to lots of memory leaks, race conditions, ridiculous loops, etc.), and dependence, such as that of being REQUIRED to be connected to the internet while playing a single-player, non-internet-based game. This is a problem if some one, for example, moves and hasn't had their internet access installed yet. Or maybe they're playing while on the plane or bus while using their laptop.

Additionally, I'd like to respond in part to the following quote:

I took the same view for ages but recently I bought Settlers 7, having forgotten about the online DRM and really it isn't the least bit intrusive. It's no different to being logged into Warcraft, or if you want to argue that you're not playing an online game, being logged into EA so you can continue playing your Mass Effect save with DLC.
In fact, it was so not a problem I went out and bought Splinter Cell Conviction the next week.

What follows is not a direct reply to the quote but a general reply to this thread.

I genuinely think rants about copy protection are started by pirates when I new one comes out and some non-pirates jump on the bandwagon. Then the pirates crack it - they're happy as anything but some people keep moaning about the copy protection. The mis-information about securom in particular is laughable. Some people still think it's a rootkit! That claim was taken back 3 years ago!

All the anti DRM people are doing is staging a moral crusade that prevents themselves from playing games they'd otherwise like. If they were sufficiently denting sales, the companies would have stopped with DRM a decade ago.

They haven't which leads me to one of 2 conclusions:
a) The anti-DRM people are an insignificantly small, admittedly vocal, minority
b) They buy games they really want, even if it has DRM which leads to my earlier conclusion of they probably didn't want the game if DRM stops me buying it

I think most people just don't care about DRM. You get your activations back if you uninstall it, you don't use an activation re-installing to the same PC, you sometimes get your activations back over time, you get your activations back by emailing the games support. It's pretty hard to legitimately fall foul of DRM. People just like something to take a stand against.

You, sir, though I disagree with some of your post, are going to be receiving rep (in addition to the OP) because you make a reasoned argument.

The point of "ranting" about DRM varies from person to person. Characterizing it as an emotional outburst or a "moral crusade" is both exactly right and a gross misstatement. Everyone has different reasons for being jarateed about DRM, and while I can only speak for myself, other so called "pirates" likely feel the same way. The point of warning people about DRM is to educate the teeming masses who know nothing about it, and are perfectly happy to have their corporate masters shove it up their rear end without any regard for their own personal liberties. DRM has been deployed as full rootkits in the past, and it will be again in the future. It's very easy to "go afoul" of DRM, as it is often implemented so badly that it makes it impossible to use the software in the first place.

You're right in that people who care about DRM aren't sufficiently denting sales. The reason is that the vast majority of people simply don't understand the problems surrounding the use of DRM.

Some companies, thank God, will implement DRM in a common-sense, non-intrusive and proper manner, where it won't really get in the way of individuals or provide some random hacker from god-knows-where full root control over your system. At least for a while. Don't forget what we're dealing with here - a for-profit corporation has ONE DUTY ALONE: make money hand-over-fist. Morality be damned. Consumer safety be damned. Common sense be damned. "They're just a bunch of cash cows," says the CEO from his 80th story, full-floor office overlooking a sprawling metropolis. "They exist only to make me money, and we're going to milk those cash cows for all they're worth."

If you honestly don't believe that corporations act in this manner, you really need to get out more. That's mild compared to some things I've seen.

And you can't count on the government (in the US anyway) to do anything about it - they're bending over backwards for Big Media out of either (a) ignorance of the situation, (b) desire for campaign contributions through "back channels", subsidiaries, and other means, or most of the time, (c) both.

DRM and copyright are a blight on the digital age and must be opposed with the utmost of vehemency.

[castun]

I love all the pirates who think they fool anyone when they rant about SecuROM and other forms of DRM. Trying to act like they are just concerned citizens who don't like a particular type of DRM. He even closes with the whole big "YOU JUST LOST MY SALE!", like he really thinks that suddenly the developers are dropping everything and RUNNING to their desks to immediately remove this and make sure to get his sale.

Puh-lease. You aren't fooling anyone guys. Only yourselves. Everyone else sees right through it.

Flawed logic is flawed. Here's a link (http://steamcommunity.com/id/castun) to my profile with my nearly 250 games that I've built up over the past 5 years or so ever since the release of HL2.

I dislike DRM in general, but when it comes to Steam, any included DRM in addition to Steam itself is redundant, and can cause problems (see StarForce, which older Cities titles used to use, IIRC.)

[jojimbo44]

great game bought it today, yeah seurom isnt the best, and as a steam game it dont really need it, but at least its not a ubisoft drm game.

[CenturyChild]

It's no different to being logged into Warcraft, or if you want to argue that you're not playing an online game, being logged into EA so you can continue playing your Mass Effect save with DLC.


I disgaree. Its not really the same thing.
With MMOs you have no choice but to be online all the time. And it makes sense.

Ubisofts requires you to be online always, No matter what.
No internet connection, or if you are having network issues, you can not play the game.
This just isn't acceptable IMHo for a single player game.

Mass Effect and Dragon Age on the other hand require you to be online the first time you launch the game, OR after you install new DLC.
The first time you launch the game, or after you install a DLC, you need to be online so it can verify.
And thats it. You no longer need to be online to play.

This is completely different.


I dunno, I know some say the Permanant Internet connection is not as bad as it seems, but personally I wont go that route.
Which is too bad, because Im really wanting to play Settlers7 but will not support this.

Asking me to go online 1 time only, the first time to activate, I can deal with.

Then again, I dont see a issue (nor have I had any regarding activations) with SecuRom either, and many disgaree with me so...

I guess its really all in what we choose to accept is OK or what is just overboard.

[hansamurai]

I literally had this in my cart, and removed it when I saw it had Securom (sorry I'm days late, actually registered for the forums to make this post and had to be approved).

I will not put up with DRM further than Steam. DRM means the publisher assumes the customer is going to do something malicious with the software THEY OWN. DRM also only ever inhibits paying customers from playing the games they rightfully bought and own. It's the wrong solution all around.

[bewilderedronin]

@ Phoenix: No, you are incorrect. Pirating software is the same as stealing. The very code itself, that they are copying and distributing, is owned by such companies. You don't have to physically deny someone ownership of a material good in order to steal something. ie: If I steal a song you wrote, it's not physically removed from you. It's not like I've taken away your ability to perform it or your memory of it, but I have still taken it and claimed it for my own. Now, if you ant to play semantics, we could, but most would call taking someone else's work as stealing. Besides, last time I checked, our legal statures aren't based on Mirriam-Webster.

As for SecuROM; it's most likely due to the fact that Focus Home sells CitiesXL on their own site and in retail, and they want to be able to maintain a form of DRM on those releases as well as on other distribution channels that do not have DRM schemes. Essentially, what you're asking is that they potentially run afoul of their contractual obligations and make a special version with a re-worked DRM scheme just for Steam. I doubt that's going to happen with the current title. A better approach would be to persuade Focus Home to go with Steamworks on future releases. Call it laziness or whatever, but I'm sure reworking DRM just for the Steam release isn't exactly their highest priority right now.

I'm not vehemently anti-DRM, I understand the desire and need to protect their games, but I'm also not going to support egregious steps like Ubi's always-online DRM for offline games. Personally, I think the best route is the way CDPrR handle Witcher 2. Use DRM to prevent early leaks and control the first week(s), then patch out the DRM and sue those pirating your game.

[Vithigar]

Bewildered, you do realise this thread is more than three months old, right?

[oldbrokenlink]

i upgrade my box about every 3 months!

and ive never found securom to be a problem.

if you uninstall you get your activation back

it's more a hassle than anything, one more thing to remember to do

but they even have a tool which lets you see which games are activated and need to be uninstalled.

plus many games also allow you additional install after a period of time.

finally, many games remove securom sometime after the game is out

so, it's a small pain.

it's only a problem is you are a dumb pirate

most pirates don't appear to be and they are able to get the un-securom versions games before us honest paying customers :(