Piracy sucks. I get it. It’s never cool when developers work hard to release games, only for them to be released on file sharing networks and downloaded en masse. This, according to publishers at least, is why we have to deal with things like DRM, servers that authenticate games and other bits of code that only really make it a hassle for legitimate, paying customers to play the games they’ve bought.
One of the scariest things about this is that in 5, 10, 15 years, many of the games we’re playing now will be rendered useless, as the servers required to get them working will have been long off-line. Of course, clever people could bypass these sorts of checks – but the ESA really, really doesn’t want you to do that. They equate it with piracy, and believe it’ll destroy the industry.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation – along with a myriad of game museums, internet archives and researchers – wants to preserve games, and to do that they’ll need to circumvent certain protections. They’re looking for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions – known as Section 1201 – for those who modify games to keep them working after the servers they need to run have gone dark.
The ESA, the body that represents platforms holders and publishers though, has opposed this exemption, saying that “modifying games to connect to a new server (or to avoid contacting a server at all) after publisher support ends—letting people continue to play the games they paid for—will destroy the video game industry.”
They assert that bypassing these protections, even after the games are no longer sold, would “undermine the fundamental copyright principles on which our copyright laws are based.”
I understand that people are afraid that if it becomes law that modifying game code to circumvent protections becomes legal in a small subset of games, the same could somehow be made true for all games, but this is, for lack of a better word, pathetic.
Games – digital works of art – deserve to be preserved, and this sort of fat-cat serving, draconian and frankly backwards attempt to stop that from legally happening is more likely to “destroy the video game industry.”
Last Updated: April 9, 2015
Hammersteyn
April 9, 2015 at 15:53
It’s called abandonware for a reason.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/tmhnks.gif
Skyblue
April 10, 2015 at 01:26
Nail on the head right there
Dutch Matrix
April 9, 2015 at 15:54
But here’s the catch. For as long as there’s video games, there will be some guys finding a way to circumvent copy protection.
In all my years, I only had one game that could not be cracked, and that was Splinter Cell (the second one) I think.
(Yes, I did pirate. But now have stopped. Please do not throw stones at me)
Captain JJ the flash noob
April 9, 2015 at 15:57
Throw stones at you? I’d rather throw you with Colonial Marines copies 😉
Side note: Splinter Cell rules.
Dutch Matrix
April 9, 2015 at 15:58
RATHER THROW THE STONES!!!
Captain JJ the flash noob
April 9, 2015 at 15:58
LOL
Blood Emperor Trevor
April 9, 2015 at 15:54
I don’t think they know what “fundamental” means and/or they don’t know what the original intent of copyright was. Hint: It’s not meant to be a legal extortion racket.
40 Insane Frogs
April 10, 2015 at 09:06
I couldn’t have said it better Trevor – give this alien a bells!
Captain JJ the flash noob
April 9, 2015 at 15:55
Remastering every piece of crap they can resell can’t be too good for the new games industry though. We need new stories and series of games.
Dutch Matrix
April 9, 2015 at 16:00
I kind of think that is what they want to protect. “Hey guys, didn’t we release Game X three years ago? Can it still run? No? Great! REMASTER IT!!!”
Captain JJ the flash noob
April 9, 2015 at 16:03
Except if you’re EA.
“Didn’t people have a really big thing for all the C&C games? Well, let’s put them ALL in a bundle on Origin but don’t bother patching them so they work on new systems, the community will figure that out.”
SargonTheBatpandaOfAkkad
April 9, 2015 at 16:20
Computer says no….
Kromas is drunk with power!
April 9, 2015 at 16:38
Not just EA. Early Access is a way to charge MORE for a game and have your gamers essentially do QA thus reducing your QA budget to 0.
Captain JJ the flash noob
April 9, 2015 at 16:58
With The Forest I’ve been enjoying being part of Early Access, but Planetary Annihilation…what a bloody waste of money to support that from Early Access. The difference was in the developer, where the guys from The Forest actually listen to their customers.
Kromas is drunk with power!
April 9, 2015 at 21:49
Fact remains .. listening to your customers and fixing the bugs in ea = QA and that is usually quite a pricey part of game development. Then they have the nerve to charge us for the privilege of doing their QA.
Captain JJ the flash noob
April 10, 2015 at 07:07
That’s quite true. Yes.
James Anderton
April 9, 2015 at 16:02
You what mate?
Matthew Holliday
April 9, 2015 at 16:19
such english feels like trollception
Hammersteyn
April 9, 2015 at 16:43
Proper grammar is “U wot m8”
James Anderton
April 9, 2015 at 16:53
That hurts my brain. No!
Robert van der Spuy
April 9, 2015 at 16:23
LAAAAAAAME
Ryanza
April 9, 2015 at 16:43
Ryanza
April 9, 2015 at 16:45
Ryanza
April 9, 2015 at 16:52
DRM is not about preventing piracy. Listen to what Neil Gaiman has to say and try to get the idea of what’s going on. It’s about control.
Piracy doesn’t take copyrights away and piracy is not a lost sale. But piracy is used to implement these DRM practices.
Don’t Support DRM.
Travi the Batman
April 9, 2015 at 20:17
Trying to stop piracy with DRM in a nutshell:https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-cz1qeb7Tg0s/TvwFqiYdCWI/AAAAAAAABoM/QqxWKZp9dYc/w426-h237/ZbOUZ.gif
Darren Peach
April 10, 2015 at 13:54
Brilliant .
Greylingad
April 9, 2015 at 17:09
It hurts thinking about it, but these morons are trying their best to destroy gaming, we all know that a project has a certain run time, where it starts and runs to its end of life, which is then the termination stage, but you still have a product in the field, sure you can’t support obsolete servers and services that don’t exist anymore, but barring gamers from getting these things to work? Absolute madness… The definition of idiocy…
Ryanza
April 9, 2015 at 17:11
15 years from next month, The Witcher 3 you have bought in retail will still be working and that is because there is no DRM attached to it.
Don’t Support DRM. The Witcher 3 is coming.
Travi the Batman
April 9, 2015 at 20:13
Do what you want, ‘cause a pirate is free,
YOU ARE A PIRATE!
Yar har, fiddle di dee,
Being a pirate is alright to be,
Do what you want ‘cause a pirate is free
Kensei Seraph
April 10, 2015 at 07:54
40 Insane Frogs
April 10, 2015 at 09:08
That’s my cellphone ringtone- Yaar!!
Skyblue
April 10, 2015 at 01:26
Fuck that. I support game preservation via 20k odd titles stored on my arcade which does all my 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit non-commercially viable games and arcade titles. This does not in ANY way affect my current gaming purchases, except the last Bionic Commando, coz fuck that game… no seriously, fuck that game…
Klipkop1980
April 10, 2015 at 08:42
Charging R800 per game (PS4) is also not helping…
Darren Peach
April 10, 2015 at 13:58
You are soooooo right. I still don’t get how gaming has become so expensive. Yeah, The price will go up but it has become prohibitively expensive. 12 games costing 9600 at a game a month is becoming hard to justify.