Personal computing discussed
TheEmrys wrote:NWN: Diamond had quite a few issues with the cd keys. Definately in a rough spot.
BTW, that game ages pretty well as far as plot goes.
just brew it! wrote:Given the large and ever-changing universe of Linux distros it is probably unreasonable to expect continued support for such an old game. You can't really expect them to have a team of developers working to make sure a years-old game continues to work properly on current Linux distros, especially if they are no longer advertising Linux compatibility.
And while I agree that DRM stinks, IMO it's rather disingenuous of you to turn a gripe about lack of Linux compatibility into a DRM rant...
Madman wrote:I don't expect team of developers writing new code for 10 year old titles. What I expect is to keep the support that was available in the same level as it was. If there were patches on the product site, they should keep the patches avilable. If there was an online server and users cannot create their own, they have to keep the server running.
Since we can see that access to support files can disappear because it's infeasible from business perspective, I don't think anyone will bother to keep something like servers online.
destroy.all.monsters wrote:http://icculus.org/~ravage/nwn/ Try that. Old games rarely get support.
I don't get how DRM comes into this. I'm vehemently anti-drm (buy more from DotEmu, Gog and Gamersgate than anywhere else) but lack of support != a drm issue.
Madman wrote:I don't expect team of developers writing new code for 10 year old titles. What I expect is to keep the support that was available in the same level as it was. If there were patches on the product site, they should keep the patches avilable. If there was an online server and users cannot create their own, they have to keep the server running.
Since we can see that access to support files can disappear because it's infeasible from business perspective, I don't think anyone will bother to keep something like servers online.
odizzido wrote:I do believe what he is saying is that bioware isn't hosting files for that game anymore because they don't care about people who purchased that game.
odizzido wrote:In ten years time, games which have phone home DRM will also find that their required servers don't exist, rendering those games unplayable.
I see the connection very clearly.
BobbinThreadbare wrote:The OP is very passionate about DRM and sees it wherever he looks.This problem doesn't have anything to do with DRM, I'm very confused.
Vrock wrote:Yeah, I really can't see a huge issue here.
I would speculate that in 10 years time, when publishers stop supporting games, they'll pull the DRM plug and allow the games to run without phoning home. But who knows.
SuperSpy wrote:I would nearly bet money the opposite is true, when a publisher stops supporting a specific game, they likely just want to pull the plug on it's activation servers and pretend it never existed, not spend time and resources developing a patch to remove the DRM checker.
SuperSpy wrote:The only reasonable example of an exception I can think of is Blizzard, who after ~12 years of StarCraft being on the market, patched out the disk checking code and published an update describing how to run the game diskless.
Glorious wrote:SuperSpy wrote:I would nearly bet money the opposite is true, when a publisher stops supporting a specific game, they likely just want to pull the plug on it's activation servers and pretend it never existed, not spend time and resources developing a patch to remove the DRM checker.
Except that sometimes they patch the DRM to make it less intrusive or even outright remove it altogether, while the game is still supported. It obviously doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened. Bioshock is the prime example, as everyone remembers how it helped pioneer the call-home install activation but not how a year after launched it was patched to remove all of its DRM!
Vrock wrote:BobbinThreadbare wrote:The OP is very passionate about DRM and sees it wherever he looks.This problem doesn't have anything to do with DRM, I'm very confused.
SuperSpy wrote:Vrock wrote:Yeah, I really can't see a huge issue here.
I would speculate that in 10 years time, when publishers stop supporting games, they'll pull the DRM plug and allow the games to run without phoning home. But who knows.
I would nearly bet money the opposite is true, when a publisher stops supporting a specific game, they likely just want to pull the plug on it's activation servers and pretend it never existed, not spend time and resources developing a patch to remove the DRM checker.
Madman wrote:Bioshock? ROFLMAO, it's the game that made me hostile against DRM. I brought the game, popped it into a drive, install... "Sorry server unavailable" and automatic uninstall, no options, nothing. Took a couple of days for servers to go back online to be able to extract the damn thing to disk.
Madman wrote:And what good does the patch do when you can't install it from the DVD in the first place? As far as I know we still don't have a technology to patch DVDs.
Glorious wrote:You know, EXACTLY LIKE HOW destroy.all.monsters pointed out a link where you could download the linux binaries and installers for NWN?
Of course, as JBI pointed out, this still doesn't exactly help you unless you plan on running a really old linux distro just to play the game.
But you were just here to advance your stupid and meaningless advocacy again, weren't you?
SuperSpy wrote:It could go either way, but I disagree that it would take alot of time and money to develop a patch to remove the DRM checker.would nearly bet money the opposite is true, when a publisher stops supporting a specific game, they likely just want to pull the plug on it's activation servers and pretend it never existed, not spend time and resources developing a patch to remove the DRM checker.
Vrock wrote:It could go either way, but I disagree that it would take alot of time and money to develop a patch to remove the DRM checker.
Madman wrote:It seems that soon we will see what happens in one instance - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Parago ... 17315.html
Of course, it seems to be a MMORPG game, with subscriptions or something, but the retail media or starter was not free as I understand.
One search comes up with ~70USD for the DVD - http://www.amazon.com/City-Heroes-Colle ... B00032IYIA
I very much doubt that offline servers will be released, or that code will be converted to opensource. But we will see.
destroy.all.monsters wrote:There's nothing regarding DRM.