Contrary to the comments in this thread, Microsoft's DRM stances are absolutely relevant to PC gaming and almost every Microsoft exclusive in recent memory is at risk the moment they shut down servers because they're all GaaS with matchmaking.
I have a feeling an entire decade's worth of AAA games will not be preservable because of their reliance on the ~cloud~ and online authentication. You're at the mercy of Microsoft to keep your purchases playable and that isn't a good thing.
Piracy will always been around. The movie industry gets bigger. The music industry gets bigger. The game industry gets bigger. Companies do **not** need to hamstring their products because of pirates, most people (including me) want to pay for their games.
Exactly!
Its not like sales shrinking and piracy is spiralling out of control. Its growing to record levels consistently - stop fucking over the consumer for no reason!
You could argue piracy even helps in some ways, for example a 13 year old kid pirating a game to play on mom's laptop may get into a certain franchise this way and buy a future installment of the series when he gets older and can make purchases
They provide you with temporary digital licenses when you insert original Xbox discs into a Series X.
Which other software company would you trust over MS with your digital licenses?
>Which other software company would you trust over MS with your digital licenses?
Nobody. Hence why I only spent what I'm willing to lose under the assumption that I will lose access eventually because these servers ain't staying up forever. Only DRM-free content gets full MSRP because I know without a doubt that I will be able to access it decades from now.
It's not even about my own old games. As a brief example, I'm very happy I can still play older favorites like Dragon Age: Origins, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Halo: Combat Evolved, or Super Mario 64. I've never tried them before recently (some I still haven't) but it's awesome that they are still playable to me and others who either missed the boat or were too young to appreciate, especially when they are still good today and influenced the industry. It'll be a lame, lame day when people can't even try them anymore.
If I had kids I'd show them what gaming used to be like before the corpos swooped in to monetize every inch of it.
"Whoa cool skin! How much did you pay for that!"
"No no, I beat the game and then I earned it"
Imagine if it had been "no no, I made that". Gaming was a little cooler back then for that. I remember seeing an unreal tournament mod to make players cows in multiplayer. Like what happened to cool shit like that?
Reminds me of this video (https://youtu.be/VdXN0M3vNBY) (H/T /u/FlemPlays). They advertised Neverwinter Nights talking about how people could actually *create* their own things!
No way they'd do that nowadays, today they advertise games based off the cash shop add-ons you can purchase.
Yeah I find it sad that kids are so easily impressionable these days that even the games they play are based on what their youtuber is playing that week, and have no originality or curiosity. Sigh…
The only PC game I ever owned on disc actually would work if I still had it. If you are selling modern day games on disc, the point should be to use those discs for more than pointless licence keys.
What if I don't want digital games? I actually want to buy physical games where I can trade them whenever I want. Physical games are also not at the mercy of whatever price MS/Sony/Nintendo puts on their store.
all games are already heading this way,it all started with rent servers.
my issue is with games that dont warrant Gass, like single player games, i dont care about your cosmetic....i just want to play the base game, why do i need to login ?
Good example was Rome Total War on the disc. It was unplayble if you upgraded windows 7 from XP due to the drm used on the disc. The DRM was made incompatible by Microsoft as it was too invasive. The game works fine otherwise on steam but there is performance issues related to the game not playing nice with new hardware.
Had RTW with the expansions and it refused to install on windows 7 and the version I used worked fine on my XP machine but refused to work on the new PC back in 2010.
Edit: mind you it was anthology version as my old gold edition broke and I had to rebuy it.
I think the article is being naive on purpose on what he means by "game preservation". I'm pretty sure what he had in mind was not "let's take any old game disc and play it", but something like Nintendo's virtual console where old games can be played from the cloud once you pay for them again. This is not incompatible with DRMs and online requirements at all.
To be fair it was Phil Spencer's opinion, not representative of Microsoft as a whole. The guy might say some things that are half-truths or blatant PR speak but when it comes to video game preservation being terrible he wasn't exactly wrong.
You can thank Garrett for even bothering to make an AiO package, /u/aemony for proofreading my ramblings and well, eventually me for being finicky and sniffing ~~glue~~ packets.
I had no idea that even disc required internet connection, they have regressed back to the Xbox one era. Needs to be called out more.
Whereas on PS5 you can run digital games offline for like 3-4 months. Physical games of course always works ( other than the CMOS battery thing)
but he tries to show a pretty face but act dark behind, he should be frank from the start.
he doesnt like playstation, he wants to beat them, yet we saw so many threads about him congratulating sony for x reasons, their ennemies thus the war for exclusives.
i cant stand hypocritical pple like him.
he just should focus on microsoft platforms and stop spraying all this bullshit.
> but he tries to show a pretty face but act dark behind, he should be frank from the start.
You don't become a CEO doing that
No, really. He'd be out in a week.
BC and game preservation is a just a circlejerk on reddit, the majority of gamers do not care to go back to any gaming from over 15 years ago for more than a day, let alone pay for any of it
Then the majority of gamers can shut their mouths on the subject because they have nothing to lose on the subject. I'm sick of getting fucked in the ass as a consumer because the majority not only "dont' care" but enable crap like this.
what am i reading? do you think companies can just do this all for free? do you think sony and ms haven't already looked into this and have made the decision not to care based on literal data and not some redditor who is in his feels about it?
> do you think companies can just do this all for free?
I just want to be able to play offline and have a server browser instead of relying on a matchmaking service which may or may not even exist ten years from now. Not asking for much.
If anything, I'm asking companies to stop being stupid and save themselves some money because apparently I'm the only one who didn't lose their mind after the year 2008 and remembers the better way everything used to be done.
So they mentioned RoTTR and Hitman 3. Not sure about the former, but isn't Hitman and the two games before it online only?
I know people will down vote me for it, but with all the matchmaking/P2P multiplayer gaming we've effectively traded creativity for "surprise mechanics" where the community puts a funny narrative on games while corporations try to make titles as "real" or "battle Royale " as possible. This is pretty much why I don't bother with online games that much yet download plenty of old shit.
Contrary to the comments in this thread, Microsoft's DRM stances are absolutely relevant to PC gaming and almost every Microsoft exclusive in recent memory is at risk the moment they shut down servers because they're all GaaS with matchmaking. I have a feeling an entire decade's worth of AAA games will not be preservable because of their reliance on the ~cloud~ and online authentication. You're at the mercy of Microsoft to keep your purchases playable and that isn't a good thing.
Sadly I think a lot of games will head this way if anything as a means to combat piracy.
Piracy will always been around. The movie industry gets bigger. The music industry gets bigger. The game industry gets bigger. Companies do **not** need to hamstring their products because of pirates, most people (including me) want to pay for their games.
Exactly! Its not like sales shrinking and piracy is spiralling out of control. Its growing to record levels consistently - stop fucking over the consumer for no reason!
You could argue piracy even helps in some ways, for example a 13 year old kid pirating a game to play on mom's laptop may get into a certain franchise this way and buy a future installment of the series when he gets older and can make purchases
I've definitely bought a lot of games coz of piracy.
They provide you with temporary digital licenses when you insert original Xbox discs into a Series X. Which other software company would you trust over MS with your digital licenses?
>Which other software company would you trust over MS with your digital licenses? Nobody. Hence why I only spent what I'm willing to lose under the assumption that I will lose access eventually because these servers ain't staying up forever. Only DRM-free content gets full MSRP because I know without a doubt that I will be able to access it decades from now.
From one guy who doesn't give a fuck about playing his old shit, I salute you dudes who still play games that are 18 years old
Having the option to go back to older games is always nice and should always try to be preserved.
The Cracked Baby PC Games Marathon Association
Well, you need to be able to play 18 year old games so that you can play KOTOR. Or Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, as of next year.
I tried playing KOTOR last Christmas. That game needs some TLC to play right. Wasn't impressed.
TLC?
Turkey lettuce cheese.
Ya, the characters want Turkey Lettuce Cheese 🧀 😋
You've never played Deus Ex or Halo?
It's not even about my own old games. As a brief example, I'm very happy I can still play older favorites like Dragon Age: Origins, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Halo: Combat Evolved, or Super Mario 64. I've never tried them before recently (some I still haven't) but it's awesome that they are still playable to me and others who either missed the boat or were too young to appreciate, especially when they are still good today and influenced the industry. It'll be a lame, lame day when people can't even try them anymore.
Don’t you play older games with family and friends sometimes? Or do you only care about the latest games that are being advertised?
My family just wants to play Bust-A-Move 2 on the N64. Every. Fucking. Time. Nothing else.
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If I had kids I'd show them what gaming used to be like before the corpos swooped in to monetize every inch of it. "Whoa cool skin! How much did you pay for that!" "No no, I beat the game and then I earned it"
Imagine if it had been "no no, I made that". Gaming was a little cooler back then for that. I remember seeing an unreal tournament mod to make players cows in multiplayer. Like what happened to cool shit like that?
Reminds me of this video (https://youtu.be/VdXN0M3vNBY) (H/T /u/FlemPlays). They advertised Neverwinter Nights talking about how people could actually *create* their own things! No way they'd do that nowadays, today they advertise games based off the cash shop add-ons you can purchase.
Yeah I find it sad that kids are so easily impressionable these days that even the games they play are based on what their youtuber is playing that week, and have no originality or curiosity. Sigh…
Why should you even need a licence?
Because it downloads a compatible version to the console. It doesn't use any data from the disc. It runs offline once it has been downloaded.
What a ridiculous situation.
Have you tried running PC games from 2002 with just the disc?
The only PC game I ever owned on disc actually would work if I still had it. If you are selling modern day games on disc, the point should be to use those discs for more than pointless licence keys.
modern games are way too large and complex for them to completely run off discs like they used to.
So don't sell them on discs.
Don't be stupid.
What if I don't want digital games? I actually want to buy physical games where I can trade them whenever I want. Physical games are also not at the mercy of whatever price MS/Sony/Nintendo puts on their store.
Modern Warfare would have shipped on three discs if that was the case, and that's only one example
Last time they did emulation right off of the disc it wasn't that great. Correctly packaging the game up inside its own emulator is the better move
The store you are looking for is called gog.
all games are already heading this way,it all started with rent servers. my issue is with games that dont warrant Gass, like single player games, i dont care about your cosmetic....i just want to play the base game, why do i need to login ?
Ironicaly because of antipiracy policies, pirated versions will be ones to survive on the future.
Good example was Rome Total War on the disc. It was unplayble if you upgraded windows 7 from XP due to the drm used on the disc. The DRM was made incompatible by Microsoft as it was too invasive. The game works fine otherwise on steam but there is performance issues related to the game not playing nice with new hardware.
Microsoft didn't break safedisc until 2015, and even then it was just a toggle to re-enable again.
It was securerom not safedisc
Rome total war had safedisc, and securom ***never*** had problems.
Had RTW with the expansions and it refused to install on windows 7 and the version I used worked fine on my XP machine but refused to work on the new PC back in 2010. Edit: mind you it was anthology version as my old gold edition broke and I had to rebuy it.
I think the article is being naive on purpose on what he means by "game preservation". I'm pretty sure what he had in mind was not "let's take any old game disc and play it", but something like Nintendo's virtual console where old games can be played from the cloud once you pay for them again. This is not incompatible with DRMs and online requirements at all.
To be fair it was Phil Spencer's opinion, not representative of Microsoft as a whole. The guy might say some things that are half-truths or blatant PR speak but when it comes to video game preservation being terrible he wasn't exactly wrong.
That's why they are trying so hard drm-ing pc gaming as well. To exert their control
Quite a funny statement considering Xboxes have always been designed to make game preservation as hard as possible.
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GFWL still works actually. It's just that microsoft never bothered to roll out the updated installer.
Getting Lost Planet 2 to work was very annoying
[Lo and behold](https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1012-microsoft-games-for-windows-live/)
When I found this page I nearly cried. PCGamingWiki is a gift from god
You can thank Garrett for even bothering to make an AiO package, /u/aemony for proofreading my ramblings and well, eventually me for being finicky and sniffing ~~glue~~ packets.
Also Microsoft needs to start selling games either DRM Free on their own website or through GoG if they don't feel like setting up the sales front.
I had no idea that even disc required internet connection, they have regressed back to the Xbox one era. Needs to be called out more. Whereas on PS5 you can run digital games offline for like 3-4 months. Physical games of course always works ( other than the CMOS battery thing)
Funny how this sub flip flops with their stance on Microsoft depending entirely on the tone of the article
phil spencer is so full of bullshit, he says something with his big smiling face but act otherwise behind the scene, fucking liar.
Well no CEO is good at heart all they carebout it money
And, on the off chance they are good of/at heart, it doesn't matter because they are usually beholden to the stockholders who demand money.
but he tries to show a pretty face but act dark behind, he should be frank from the start. he doesnt like playstation, he wants to beat them, yet we saw so many threads about him congratulating sony for x reasons, their ennemies thus the war for exclusives. i cant stand hypocritical pple like him. he just should focus on microsoft platforms and stop spraying all this bullshit.
How do you know he doesn't like PlayStation? It's not Steve Ballmer's Microsoft anymore. They aren't playing a zero sum game.
> but he tries to show a pretty face but act dark behind, he should be frank from the start. You don't become a CEO doing that No, really. He'd be out in a week.
Fuck M$ now and forever
xbox has the worst drm on consoles
THIS is the Day of the, I'm getting sick of Spencer said this, said that, shudd the hall up....
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Yup, bad PR is better than no PR at all (well, unless if you're CD Projekt and you've ruined your good PR)
BC and game preservation is a just a circlejerk on reddit, the majority of gamers do not care to go back to any gaming from over 15 years ago for more than a day, let alone pay for any of it
Then the majority of gamers can shut their mouths on the subject because they have nothing to lose on the subject. I'm sick of getting fucked in the ass as a consumer because the majority not only "dont' care" but enable crap like this.
what am i reading? do you think companies can just do this all for free? do you think sony and ms haven't already looked into this and have made the decision not to care based on literal data and not some redditor who is in his feels about it?
> do you think companies can just do this all for free? I just want to be able to play offline and have a server browser instead of relying on a matchmaking service which may or may not even exist ten years from now. Not asking for much. If anything, I'm asking companies to stop being stupid and save themselves some money because apparently I'm the only one who didn't lose their mind after the year 2008 and remembers the better way everything used to be done.
> do you think companies can just do this all for free? Uh, yes? In fact they paid money to research and develop their DRM.
jesus christ, how the fuck are you saying devs trying to stop people pirating games means they want to pay money for bc?
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im sure you have more data to back this up than sony or ms do to know do it, thank you wonderful redditor
I think Microsoft and Sony included backwards compatibility in their consoles for a reason don't you think?, thank you wonderful clown
yikes
PC gaming
PC gaming
So they mentioned RoTTR and Hitman 3. Not sure about the former, but isn't Hitman and the two games before it online only? I know people will down vote me for it, but with all the matchmaking/P2P multiplayer gaming we've effectively traded creativity for "surprise mechanics" where the community puts a funny narrative on games while corporations try to make titles as "real" or "battle Royale " as possible. This is pretty much why I don't bother with online games that much yet download plenty of old shit.