[game_preservation] Problematic installation DRM; thoughts?

[Captain Commando]

This sounds like the dongle problem all over again. Unless companies like EA
wise up to archival (or we find out what they themselves will be doing to
preserve the game in their personal archive) we'll have to get permission to
DRM crack when the time comes. At least the console versions of the game are
likely to not have this sort of protection (just the PC).

Personally, I never liked the idea of only being able to install the game
three times. ESPECIALLY if you consider how many times Windoze crashes on
you. I don't think it's fair to ask someone to have an internet connection
to install a game, either. Why not just make it account-based rather than
instance-based?

The other thing we have to remember is that the developers and publishers
don't really care about long-term - nobody is thinking in that fashion as
far as I can tell (possible exception being Nintendo). The industry is very
much about what's hot now due to technological obsolescence (planned and
otherwise) and the blockbuster-of-the-now mentality (basically, that
something is only hot for a short period of time before somebody else makes
another hit - this and the fact that a game's aesthetics do not age well,
even if we can't imagine games looking much prettier than something like
Gears of War). As a result, the developer doesn't have to care about the
long tail because they don't expect the game to sell much outside six months
(unless it's a big title). Which makes it pretty darn impossible to find
something you're looking for sometimes even a few months after its release -
a dilemma you would rarely find in the film industry (it took them over 10
years to re-release Blues Brothers on DVD, for instance). This might change
with online distribution, but even then I think developers are going to be
stuck in the blockbuster-of-the-now paradigm that is yet another of the
industry's holdovers from the arcade era.

-DM

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>
wrote:


> So, I am sure most of us on this list know of EA's plans for DRM on Mass

> Effect and Spore. It's basically now (since it changed a bit) like this:

>

> * Installation requires an internet connection to validate the CD key (bad

> enough in itself)

> * Installation will work a maximum of 3 times, although I am unsure if

> uninstalling will allow it to "reuse" installations it won't help with

> people owning more then 3 computers/laptops/VM's, or if one fails with an

> installation on it

>

> Now there are some serious problems to archivists or historians with this,

> right? We have these problems I thought of, for a valid copy of the game:

>

> * What if the activation server goes down? (and frankly, EA isn't known

> for keeping up multiplayer servers after a time, or new game release...)

> * What if EA itself implodes? The servers will go down obviously, but more

> so there will be no support to then get it sorted (eg; via a patch...)

> * Since it does a internet check at installation time, no patch will be

> able to remove this requirement easily. I suppose a new installation exe

> would work, which didn't have the check in it. The question remains if there

> would ever be this kind of patch however, especially when it comes down to

> internal EA studios' work which in some cases are poorly patched (or not

> patched at all).

>

> This isn't including consumer rights, which are not really part of this

> groups aims :)

>

> So I at least wanted to have a record of this event, since once the first

> whitepaper is done, the second might well have to deal with DRM as part of

> it's "best practices" to archival work. The main question is "what if the

> ability to install the game is removed?", would it be actually a good idea

> to use the same methods the DRM-crackers do to retain access to the game for

> archival copies? Legally, I am sure it's a bit tough to answer.

>

> Anyone got any other forebodings over this kind of DRM? (I fully expect

> consoles will go a similar route over time, making them require internet

> connections and whatnot, and I don't see it helping anyone play games much).

>

> Andrew

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>




-- 
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

"Until next time..."
Captain Commando
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