DRM / Activation

With so much hay being made over the Mass Effect / Spore DRM system, can someone from Hothead please comment on the use of DRM with RSPD?

I noticed there was a screen while I was entering my key that said it was "authorizing".

Is that an online authorization, i.e. communicating with a hothead server in order to start the game? If that is the case, and the game does require online activation to run, will Hothead release a patch in the future should they ever close doors and turn off the auth servers to remove the online portion of the authentication process?

Once the game has been unlocked with your license key, it does not require any additional authorization. You can play it without an internet connection, and you won't need to hit our servers up again.

kristin wrote:and you won't need to hit our servers up again.

Oh I'd hit your servers again... and again... and again...

bowchicka wowa

HOT

DRM, DRM and DRM..

I can't activate the game, it gives me error 21, problem accessing the licence on the computer.
This is why I don't like DRM.

Quant, did you catch Joel's post about license error 21? Hopefully that helps.

But that still means that when I re-load my OS in 6 months, I'll have to authorize the key again, right? That doesn't really help me when 10 years from now I want to play the game again. Certainly I hope that Hothead is still around in 10 years, but I work in IT, and I know that it's a tough sell to justify the continued operation of an auth server that gets hit about once a week by some random guy wanting to play an old game that you've probably re-released a dozen times in different formats.

Is there some mechanism that I'm not seeing that prevents me from having to re-authorize again, even on a new PC or a different OS install?

Upgrade, don't reinstall!

I have question about DRM too. How many times/how often can I activate my game?

Quoting Hothead Vlad:

We don't anticipate having to limit the number of redownloads but remember that each new machine or major hardware change may trigger a new key to be issued against your license. Our plan is to allow multiple installs and to be generous in that regard to cover murdered systems, planned upgrades, people wanting to play it on their PC and their Mac or even Linux box etc. Even if the limit is reached--a limit that we have not determined yet--we will be flexible in resetting or increasing the limit for paying customers. If you are registered, we will keep your license keys stored for you in your profile and you will be able to see the number of times that license has been used for various systems so there will be no surprises.

My profile doesn't show me any stats like that. All it's giving me is my serial number.

I didn't mind the one-time internet check since it was distributed on the internet anyway so it made perfect sense. My only concern is, as factoid said, that if I want to play it when your servers are dead and gone then I'm stuck. (Yes, I tend to think long-term.) But you guys seem pretty reasonable so I'm sure you'll overcome that problem when/if it arrives.

I have to keep beating this drum, because I think it's important.

How is this DRM system any different or better than what has been so hated about Mass Effect / Spore / Bioshock?

EA relented on the 10-day re-checking of the activation, but they still limit the number of installations, which is exactly what you guys are doing. You're treating paying customers like pirates and it's unfair. The really aggravating part is that the pirates will NEVER have to endure this. They'll crack your EXE by next week, and bypass the authentication process entirely. 5 years from now the pirates will be able to play the game without hassle, but I'll have to wait for support just so that I can install the game that I bought.

Factiod,

So how would you propose that they solve this? They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. A one time key check is about as non-intrusive as it gets in terms of reasonable protection schemes. If people weren't assholes then there wouldn't need to be anything. But they are and this isn't bad at all. Or would you rather revert to distribution on shiny round things? My best friend, and serious PA fangirl, in Singapore who was playing the game at the same time and for the same price as I was yesterday would disagree with that, I think. Sure it's an imperfect scheme. But it's an imperfect world. And this isn't a bad trade off at all. Life simply ain't black and white.

factoid wrote:
How is this DRM system any different or better than what has been so hated about Mass Effect / Spore / Bioshock?

EA relented on the 10-day re-checking of the activation, but they still limit the number of installations, which is exactly what you guys are doing. You're treating paying customers like pirates and it's unfair. The really aggravating part is that the pirates will NEVER have to endure this. They'll crack your EXE by next week, and bypass the authentication process entirely. 5 years from now the pirates will be able to play the game without hassle, but I'll have to wait for support just so that I can install the game that I bought.

Wow. I'm not interpreting this as anything close to that. I think HotHead is actually being quite reasonable with the way this works. You buy it, you download it for whatever OS you want (or all three), and all you need to get it to run is a code, about ten seconds, and an internet connection. New install? Same procedure. You can even carry over your save files and activation key from one OS to the next and have multiple installs going at once. The issue of the limit of installs has already been addressed. There is no hard limit, and if one comes up they'll work with you. How is that "treating me like a pirate"?

I personally see videogames as a consumable good. Only rarely do I ever play 10+-year-old videogames, and when I do it's ones like Doom that have open-sourced clients and I can just pull the WAD file off my game CD. I'm sure that if at some point in the future HotHead goes under (heaven forbid) they'd have the decency to either open up the authentication or find some other mechanism to allow folks to still use the game.

HotHead is already leaps and bounds in my mind ahead of giants like EA simply because not only do they seem to be reasonable folks, they support my favorite operating system (Linux). Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. Mine's just quite different from yours apparently.