Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

I'm certainly speculating, but if you want a biased source:

90% of visual novel players don't buy the game (the game was bought 50,000 times, but the patch was downloaded 500,000 times)

Most visual novels today are released without DRM. I can think of only one visual novel localizer today that releases the game encumbered with DRM. MangaGamer previously used Soft-Denchi for its DL releases about a decade ago, but didn't include it in physical releases. Their audience helped change their mind, and many other localization companies also followed suit and now only release DRM-Free editions. Even in Japan, most physical releases are unencumbered by DRM today, with some exceptions.

Johren, on the other hand, also localizes games into English but only releases them with always-online DRM for which you only get 3 activations, after which they tell you to purchase another license. They haven't released any numbers, and I doubt they will, but they're a much larger company than most localizers as a DMM operation. Many people openly express distaste for Johren for how badly they feel they're treated as a customer, however. Limited activation, always-online DRM is something that will incense most-everyone, I suppose.

These sources are clearly biased, but do with this information what you will. I think the only thing you can conclude is that it depends on the game. I've always thought the games that don't end up having their DRM circumvented are games that few people are interested in playing.

For what it's worth, visual novels are mostly released on Windows, but there are some console and mobile releases, so PC sales make up most of the overall sales.

So 50k people bought the game and 450k pirated. Your example shows that piracy exists, ok.

But there is no data about what those numbers could have been with DRM; 100k sales and fewer pirates? 50k sales and fewer pirates? 40k sales and whatever pirates? Or did I misunderstand your comment?

Sorry; not sure how I misinterpreted your response like that initially or what point I was trying to argue. If there were any point of comparison I'd try to draw, it would probably be between Mangagamer before and after they dropped their DRM. I don't have the numbers from before, but I'd surmise that making all of their releases DRM-Free resulted in an insignificant difference in sales.

The reason I bought up Johren and every other English localizer is because it certainly illustrates the trend that you were talking about with larger publishers installing DRM (likely because it costs money, and they have more of it) and smaller publishers forgoing it.

I certainly have no idea how you would test the effects DRM versus DRM-Free, as it varies by industry and likely by game. I would speculate that for Visual Novels, DRM or DRM-Free makes very little impact on sales. But for popular AAA games, I would speculate that it makes a significant difference, at least for early sales.

You're right; I don't know. The publishers might know, but I'd guess they're using DRM because they instinctively want to protect their "intellectual property". The conversation shifted at some point from "protecting intellectual property" to "increasing early sales", at least for large publishers, but I wonder if that instinct ever went away.

At least a lot of smaller publishers no longer see much of a need for it anymore.

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Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I think we simply don't have data on this, so both of you are really just speculating. Unless some AAA publishers start publishing DRM-free and sales could be compared with those with DRM, and if enough of them do so to get statistical confidence in the results, best we can say is that we don't know if and how much DRM increases sales.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that AAA companies are also mostly speculating, since no one is releasing DRM free to compare, so this has merely become "standard practice" really rather than something that's properly evaluated.

For example, most AAA games make most of their money from console sales where piracy is not possible (right?), PC itself is a niche in gaming FYI. So that does hint that DRM cannot be *that* important.

Also, DRM-free _could_ theoretically increase sales too. If N% of people pirate the game, but recommend it to others and that leads to M% more sales, there is nothing forcing N>M. If nothing, at least word of mouth from pirates does mean that the actual loss is less than N%.

I'm certainly speculating, but if you want a biased source:

90% of visual novel players don't buy the game (the game was bought 50,000 times, but the patch was downloaded 500,000 times)

Most visual novels today are released without DRM. I can think of only one visual novel localizer today that releases the game encumbered with DRM. MangaGamer previously used Soft-Denchi for its DL releases about a decade ago, but didn't include it in physical releases. Their audience helped change their mind, and many other localization companies also followed suit and now only release DRM-Free editions. Even in Japan, most physical releases are unencumbered by DRM today, with some exceptions.

Johren, on the other hand, also localizes games into English but only releases them with always-online DRM for which you only get 3 activations, after which they tell you to purchase another license. They haven't released any numbers, and I doubt they will, but they're a much larger company than most localizers as a DMM operation. Many people openly express distaste for Johren for how badly they feel they're treated as a customer, however. Limited activation, always-online DRM is something that will incense most-everyone, I suppose.

These sources are clearly biased, but do with this information what you will. I think the only thing you can conclude is that it depends on the game. I've always thought the games that don't end up having their DRM circumvented are games that few people are interested in playing.

For what it's worth, visual novels are mostly released on Windows, but there are some console and mobile releases, so PC sales make up most of the overall sales.

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Quoting: areamanplaysgame

Quoting: Mountain ManThere's just too much pressure on the industry to keep games locked down despite the fact that DRM has done nothing to curb piracy in the slightest and only serves to inconvenience the honest paying customer.

I don't think the data actually bear this out, at least in absolute terms. I think there is *some* deterrent effect to DRM on games, if only for the very brief period before it gets cracked, and that might amount to a relatively small but nonzero number of additional sales. On the whole I still think it is philosophically a shitty way to treat customers, but there is almost certainly a marginally legitimate reason it exists.

The reason publishers pay top dollar for Denuvo is to increase their early sales, which tend to make up the most significant portion of their profits. Denuvo doesn't think that it's possible to prevent a game's copy prevention mechanisms from being circumvented forever, but that they can frustrate reverse engineers long enough to convince more people to buy the game.

It would certainly be effective at convincing people who don't buy because they can get it for free to buy the game, but as for people who want a game unencumbered by Denuvo's anti-tamper software or people who simply don't have the money, I don't think it would have much effect. Perhaps the truth is that the second and third groups of people make up such an insignificant portion of the publisher's target market that it isn't worth attempting to appeal to them. The question might be: "how do we convince more people to buy our game without noticeably degrading the experience for our current customers?"

I don't think most customers tend to worry that much about not being able to copy the game files to another computer. As long as they have another computer with Steam on it, they can still download and play the game. It's not as if you can only register/install a game on a maximum of three computers as it was ten or fifteen years ago; Steam instead prevents you from running it on more than one computer at a time. Most people probably think this is fair, as the only thing it really stops them from doing is sharing their account with a friend and both of them being able to play at the same time. The inconvenience for paying customers is non-existent.

As to whether Denuvo has an impact on resource usage, this is hard to prove if the only version of your game that you release is the one that uses Denuvo. Most people will assume it is the game and its lack of optimization, not the anti-tamper. And this still isn't an issue that will dissuade people from buying the game—they might be annoyed about it, sure, but they'll get over it.

The only area of concern is what will happen to the game if Steam disappears. I don't think anyone really believes this is going to happen, even if Valve files for bankruptcy. Of course, you could still be banned as you can with Amazon and lose everything you've spent thousands of dollars on for the past few years, but I don't know whether Steam does this right now.

Steam even has an offline mode that has attracted praise.

I've personally never had DRM preventing me from playing a game—assuming I was using Windows, of course. Singleplayer games that require an internet connection to play are something everyone is willing to raise their pitchforks over, but these are far and few between.

The problem is no longer that DRM is ineffective and inconveniences customers. The problem is that it works and most people don't even notice or care about it. There may no longer be an "until it's too late". This substitute for ownership is slowly becoming acceptable because the difference seems to be mostly semantics. At best, some will make a distinction between "acceptable" DRM and "unacceptable" DRM, which is usually always-online DRM for Singleplayer games.

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Quoting: F.UltraNo this is IMHO a misunderstanding of copyright. You can do all the transcription, translation and performance all day long without infringing copyright. It's when you distribute any of that to some one else that you violate the copyright, aka you can re-enact Harry Potter in your living room without an audience and not be infringing, but put it in front of an audience in any way and you are potentially in trouble (I say potentially since most courts would not see you performing this for your family or close friends as being infringing).

Well, I can't refute this, as my argument is just based on my impression of the law (which I haven't read). Initially I thought that copyright was only concerned with distribution, but through a lot of research, I came to change my mind recently. I'll have to read my country's Copyright Act (and its various amendments) some day. I will say that I live in Australia, but given that my country has agreed to various international treaties, it's likely the same overall.

Quoting: F.UltraPlease note that this article is a bit misleading, first they mention that RIAA have won in "in some cases" without further clarifying which or how many and later on they describe that they found the "pirates" by looking at BitTorrent data, so I would still say that the ones that they got damages from in court where the ones using BitTorrent since they could prove that they where distributing and not just downloading.

I read the later sections of this article after posting it and realized that I was undermining my own point, as it references BitTorrent in the edit, but ended up leaving it in as a counter-example, not being able to find any other sources to validate my argument.

Quoting: F.UltraAlso please note that many decided to settle out of court does not prove anything, it just shows that the defendants either used BitTorrent or that they didn't fully understood the law and was afraid (and didn't have access to legal counsel due to the costs involved in the US and Canada).

The RIAA is most likely who the average file sharer is going up against, because they're active and fanatical enough to go after everyone. My point is, even if they take you on for something they probably wouldn't win, they could still automatically win a settlement for a few thousand dollars because the alternative—paying for legal counsel for an unknown period of time—would be far more costly. It's not necessarily about what's judged to be legally correct, and instead more about what is practical.

Copyright infringement becomes a civil dispute in most cases, which means the copyright holder is the one who needs to bring the charge against an offender. Most independent creators don't have the capital for that sort of litigation—putting aside whether they would feel the need to pursue these matters—resulting in only large corporations and organizations such as the Author's Guild making regular appearances at the court. Practically, the only entities that are legally able to enforce their copyright are mostly large entities for whom copyright infringement isn't as potentially damaging. While I haven't looked into the details myself, it would not surprise me if this was simply another exercise in generating revenue for the plaintiff's company rather than an attempt to protect its commercial interests.

The average file sharer is in no position to defend themselves in court over sharing files, just as the average creator is in no position to be bringing these claims against the average file sharer.

Quoting: F.UltraAnd the RIAA are known for lying to their teeth in order to scare people into settle the cases. It's a known scare tactic from their part.

What people should think about is why the RIAA invented the term "piracy" if there had been an actual crime for the activity of just downloading, the way BitTorrent works gave them a massive foothold into suing people but they coined the term long before that.

Disclaimer, I have been active at the Swedish Pirate Party since inception.

I don't think they're a reliable source of information—and the footer on the page I linked says as much that this is just babble and not legally enforceable, but if the RIAA really believes these things, then they'd be willing to take people to court over it.

I don't respect the usage of the word "piracy" in relation to copyright infringement (and likely copy protection circumvention as well, though this is a separate issue) as it is hyperbolic and prone to causing misunderstandings, so I don't use it in most instances. It kind of shocks me how willing people are to accept the premise of the word, but I think this is helped by some copyright infringers finding it funny (The Pirate Bay, for example).

Evidently, at least one court also thinks that using this word and words like it unfairly biases a jury. But I don't think we're going to be purging "piracy" from the public's vocabulary any time soon.

How old is the Swedish Pirate Party, anyway?

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Quoting: RichardYao

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: F.UltraThose individuals where sued because they used software that uploaded the copyrighted material to other people while they where downloading it themselves. AFAIK no one have been sued for just downloading, it's distribution that is protected under copyright, for usage to be infringing you have to go to patents.

It's not just distribution that is protected under copyright, though I'm unsure if you're making this distinction. Unauthorized transcription, translation, performance, and of course, making an unauthorized copy of copyrighted content is copyright infringement. Though transcription sometimes falls under fair use. What do you do when you're downloading something? You're making a copy.

Putting aside whether seeding qualifies as distribution, there are plenty of instances of people being sued just for downloading content. Whether they would actually win that lawsuit, I don't know, but most defendants choose to settle before it reaches the court.

Here's the RIAA, a frequent customer of the court, on what they think:

Quoting: RIAAA long series of court rulings has made it very clear that uploading and downloading copyrighted music without permission on P2P networks constitutes infringement and could be a crime.

I'll have to read the Copyright Act for my country in full one day.

Edit: The article I referenced seems to also be related to seeding.

It is all a moot point given that the file has been restored to Apex Legends in the last update. It would be ridiculous to go after people for distributing backups of a file that they are distributing to everyone.

Also, the RIAA saying “could be a crime” is rather ridiculous. Copyright infringement is a civil issue, not a criminal issue. As much as their industry would like to see capital punishment for distributing music files, it is not happening. To be clear, that is not an exaggeration. One of them actually lamented that the government in some country was not executing people for pirating music:

https://boingboing.net/2010/06/14/music-industry-lobby.html

These people have been lobbying to criminalize anything that might hurt their bottom line for decades.

I'm already well aware of how the RIAA feels about copyright infringement. I used them as an example because they're well-known to go after everybody, alive or dead, 12 years old or 80 years old, for unauthorized downloading of copyrighted content. If anyone were to go after people for downloading content, it would be them. I did not know, however, that the RIAA wanted capital punishment for infringers, though somehow I'm not surprised.

QuoteIt would be ridiculous to go after people for distributing backups of a file that they are distributing to everyone.

Maybe so, but this is copyright infringement nonetheless. Copyright is about preserving the copyright holder's monopoly over their creation. Ultimately, of course, the only entities that have the capital to pursue lawsuits for copyright infringement are corporations. I'm looking at this from a purely academic perspective because I'm interested in copyright. I don't even play Apex Legends and I probably never will.

The popular view at least in response to my comments seems to be that distribution is copyright infringement, but downloading copyrighted content is perfectly legal in the United States and everywhere. This doesn't sound correct to me, though I'm willing to be proven wrong. I have at least one source in my favor - even if it's Wikipedia.

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Quoting: F.UltraThose individuals where sued because they used software that uploaded the copyrighted material to other people while they where downloading it themselves. AFAIK no one have been sued for just downloading, it's distribution that is protected under copyright, for usage to be infringing you have to go to patents.

It's not just distribution that is protected under copyright, though I'm unsure if you're making this distinction. Unauthorized transcription, translation, performance, and of course, making an unauthorized copy of copyrighted content is copyright infringement. Though transcription sometimes falls under fair use. What do you do when you're downloading something? You're making a copy.

Putting aside whether seeding qualifies as distribution, there are plenty of instances of people being sued just for downloading content. Whether they would actually win that lawsuit, I don't know, but most defendants choose to settle before it reaches the court.

Here's the RIAA, a frequent customer of the court, on what they think:

Quoting: RIAAA long series of court rulings has made it very clear that uploading and downloading copyrighted music without permission on P2P networks constitutes infringement and could be a crime.

I'll have to read the Copyright Act for my country in full one day.

Edit: The article I referenced seems to also be related to seeding.

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Quoting: RichardYao

Quoting: avivilloz

Quoting: Xpander

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: RichardYao

Quoting: quotI wonder if dropping in that missing `easyanticheat_x64.so` file would fix the issue. The removal seems accidental, so I'm assuming the main binary is still compatible. Of course, you're risking a ban if you try that, but I am curious.

It does fix the issue.

How did you get the correct file?

i backed up the file before the game updated :)

could you maybe share this file somehow?

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/te62pa/apex_legends_eac_file/

Keep in mind that this is technically copyright infringement on the part of the person distributing the file. It would avoid copyright infringement if we figured out how to download the old depot version from Valve to get it.

It should also be classified as copyright infringement for the person obtaining/making a copy of the file. Otherwise no one would be successfully prosecuted for downloading copyrighted content from anyone aside from the copyright holder or those they've authorized.

As most sources tend to focus on the legality of sharing the content rather than obtaining it, there's not a wealth of information about it, but here's a wikipedia article.

Legality appears to vary depending on the country.

Although, on another note, anyone can be prosecuted for anything regardless of whether they did it or not, so I'm not really making a good argument there. I couldn't find any cases where such a prosecution was successful; mostly cases where the defendant settled.

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Quoting: GuestWhat's Valve's endgame here?

Seems pretty obvious. Make the Steam Deck a more attractive device by improving the ability to play games on the device outside of Steam, of which Lutris is currently the best way to do so. Given Valve's comments about not wanting exclusives and the nannying behavior from Microsoft that urged them to invest in GNU/Linux in the first place, it seems they don't want to be hypocritical and instead make it easy for users to leave Valve's own service, Steam, if they need to. The hope, I'm sure, is that it will make the Steam Deck a more attractive device to continue using in the long run and users will opt to stay with it out of affection for the experience outside of Steam, too.

When Amazon manufacturers devices like the Amazon Swindle, Echo, Firestick, Astro, Ring and whatever else, their primary concern is also getting people hooked on the Amazon ecosystem. Ebooks aren't that different from games on Steam, as whether the book is DRM-encumbered is up to the individual publisher and no one else (and in fact Amazon recommends that you don't enable DRM in the KDP publishing screen). But where Amazon has made the decision to make their GNU/Linux devices limiting for end users to improve the customer's experience with Amazon products, Valve has decided to give users better options to explore what you can really do with the device, even if that means the customer leaves Steam for a time. It doesn't even have a locked bootloader. Helping to improve Lutris just means the user can have a better experience.

Either approach will work well for different people. iOS offers a stable and consistent experience because Apple controls everything, and I'm told that Android offers a more powerful and featureful experience because the user is provided more options.

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Quoting: CFWhitmanIt's generally seemed to me that the primary reason for the slowdown of Windows over time is registry cruft (at least since Windows 2000 and its automatic defragmentation).

Be that as it may, Windows 10 deals with low powered CPUs significantly better than Windows 7 does. However, for some reason it deals with limited memory worse than 7 (for example, 7 works significantly better with 2 GB of RAM than Windows 10) and it requires more disk space than 7.

This is probably more accurate. Though I still remember defragmentation improving speeds a few years ago.

I'd guess that Windows 10 wasn't targeting older hardware and was instead making allowances for budget processors like Celeron. I don't think any modern laptops ship with less than 4GB of RAM. Of course, it could be that because Windows doesn't work well with less than 4GB, laptops don't ship with less than that.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Cerberon

Quoting: spacemonkeyI am curious about the performance difference. But no matter the results, I will never ever install Windows.

Well a lot of games already run better on Linux, and given how vale should be able to optimize the OS specifically for the hardware and that windows will not be so optimized I would be surprised if windows is noticeably faster at anything.

I'm also wondering if Windows isn't a bit "heavy" for the hardware. It will be taking up space (memory, for eg) that the Deck wants for running the games.

The space issue is certainly an important one for a device with so little of it to go around, but I don't think overall speed and responsiveness will be much of an issue on Windows. I installed Windows 10 20H1 on a ~2009 laptop for testing purposes and was surprised by how well it worked. It wasn't a particularly high-powered laptop, either; only about $500 at the time. Not that I was doing much intensive work.

I didn't get far into it, as I only did it to test whether networking worked. I know Windows has a reputation for slowing down over time—primarily due to its dated filesystem—but I wonder if this is still true. Windows as of late seems to be more well-optimized for older hardware.

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