Far Cry 2: DRM That Makes Sense

I think downloadable distribution is the future is the only way to fight against piracy, Steam is a prime example of how it can work.

The only ones that complain imo are the pirates.

Everyone surely has a broadband connection these days.

Broadband penetration in the UK is surprisingly low compared to the rest of the developed world. And even with Broadband, big downloads are incredibly slow. It's taken over a week to download the Mercenaries demo for my PS3 with my broadband. Imagine the next 50-60GB Metal Gear game being on download? With super-fast fibre optic broadband still at least 4 years off, there's no way I'm waiting all year for a game to download!

No game should be 50-60gb in fact MGS 4 being 30gb is an absolute joke. Look at all the PC games on the market none of them hit anywhere near that kind of space!!

The best speed I can get where I live is around 2mb and yes I see the fustration in slow downloads.

But things can only improve in the next few years, I am not talking about digital distribution anytime soon I am talking years.

Fibre optic broadband is already available at around 20mb with Virgin I hope other companies will start offering such a connection.

Brilliant we now have to call them up on a premium rate number to reactivate Kerching$$$. Damn that pesky hard drive rudely dying on me and not "Properly" uninstalling all my programs "Properly".

i hate downloaded games i mean i like the fact i have a disc a box if it f**kes up ( scratched disc) i can get it fixed
and the stopping the pirates not going to happen if its just data that is downloaded on a hdd it will get hacked/ can i use you account as i whant that game hay just look at ps3 titles from the store that you/ mates buy give the/you your account and bingo its yours to download and play as you like = loss of sale for sony it works for steam as well it work the only way to stop it is having like apple which is the s**ty way to do it as you down load the game it stays on that library the and can not work/ be able to download it unless it is that same libary but then hay if the hdd f**kes up ( mine did you lost all that money you payed for you lost all the stuff you downloaded and you out of pocket same with 360 you buy a new 360 as your old ond got the rrod and you sold the hdd to fund the new console and bingo all those lovly live arcade games which are cool are not yours any more you have to buy them again how s**ty is that well f**k em all i stick to my disc and the day thay stop sales on discs is the day i say f**k it to the games industry

I'm fairly certain that if you pay for a game on LIVE!, it gets registered as your LIVE! account having purchased that content and it will be availible for redownload on your new console.

As far as I remember, the download is tied to your 360's serial number as well as your LIVE! account. There was a lot of fuss about people moving their HDDs and having to be online to play Arcade titles. Offline the system authenticated against the 360's serial and that had changed.

I'm not sure how a re-download affected that, but I'm sure if it was as simple as a re-download, there wouldn't have been so much fuss about the whole thing.

Most LIVE! content, including videos, games, and game content, are only accessible offline on the console they were originally purchased on. The DRM tool reassigns all liscences under a particular Gamertag to the same console, but will only do this once a year.

If you only download content to your own console, this is never an issue. If you make sure you download all your purchased content to your console first, this isn't an issue. If you always play connected to LIVE! this isn't an issue.

However, if you're over at a mate's, and decide to download something onto your hdd, while its in his 360, then want to play it offline on yours...its an issue...fixable once a year with the DRM tool.

If you downloaded something to your hdd, on your console, and want to play it offline on your mate's console (with your hdd) you are S.O.L., you need a mate with broadband.

If your console that all of your content was registered to RRODs, and MS replaces it, they'll happily re-register your content to the new box so you can play offline.

In fact, in my experience, it is, without assistance from MS itself, IMPOSSIBLE to repurchase any content (with the exception of Rock Band songs, which can be purchased singly or part of a pack or album) once you have purchased it, which was phil's complaint.

So even if you wanted to purchase something twice, for your own selfish reasons, (you wanted to download the same Rock Band track onto your mate's console so you could play it offline there as well as on your own) you can't pay for it again on the same LIVE! account, without MS Customer Service getting directly involved, and even then, I'm not sure they'd allow it, even if you could explain to them what you wanted and why...easiest just to create a dummy free 3 month LIVE! account or 1 month or whatever and do it that way, if you must.

Why that isnt going to happen anytime soon.

Virgin only reaches to 4 million homes in the UK, No one else has a fibre optic network that big (yet small) ADSL/ADSL2 can reach everyone, but its estimated that only 20% of UK homes can get full speeds of upto 16mb, the other 80% are stuck with between 8Meg and as low as 128k, BT`s new fibre optic network is estimated to cost £20 Billion +!! to reach the whole UK, even with governemtn and major investment they wont reach that amount of money, and it wont happen over night,

so until at least 80% of the UK can download 1GB per minute, then it wont happen, and if you think 30GB downloads are high then what will happen in 10 years, if D/L are the common and HDD drives at 4-5TB are common why would Devs bother with compression why would devs bother restricting the amount of content, it would be common to see 100GB Downloads, even demos could come in at 20+GB

Basically Downloads arent happening naytime soon, Consoles and PC`s need a common massive storage devices, Delivery Needs to Be Very Very fast and easy to do as well as easy to access, and Pricing will define much of that, no one will buy if the price isnt right.

#You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs."

ok, 3 separate PC's.....go on.....

"# Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called “revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems."

They still say we can uninstall as many time on "3" systems, go on....


"# You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)"

HOLD ON....wait a sec. I thought they've just said "3 separate PC's" ??? Why tell us 3 PC's, then allow us the revoke anyway since now we can upgrade our PC's?? When you upgrade a PC, you are essentially getting a new PC. What constitutes a new PC? What if I upgrade my Mobo? Do I lose one of the PC's even if I revoke? What crosses the line between upgrading your PC and getting a new PC?

This is sounds like ****ing bullshit for the average hardcore PC gamer who doesn't hold on to their PC's like others do.

It means that paying customers have to plan and manage their installatons, whilst pirates have a better gaming experience. What a pain in the butt. SHame on Ubisoft for inflicting this on customers in a failed attempt to stop piracy. I was going to buy Farcry2 as a Christmas present, but not now I see it has online activation.

I was tempted to buy a copy for myself too, but the DRM put me off. Personally, I will wait for the budget version without DRM / activation pains.

<a href="http://talkjack.wordpress.com/drm">... Talkjack</a>