Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

[Shawn Zipay]

Thinking about picking up Batman: Arkham Asylum through some less than legal means? Well, you may want to think again. Pirates who have already tried to download and play Batman are finding that Batman himself is slightly retarded.

An official response to a forum inquiry on the Eidos forums shows that Eidos knows how to have a little fun with their DRM protections. A pirate attempted to seek support for Batman being unable to glide in his copy of the game. Here is the official response from Eidos.

The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free.

It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code.

According to The Escapist, Square-Enix plans to use similar DRM in Final Fantasy XIII, "where any attempt to use magic will always result in summoning a rampaging horde of Chocobos to crush the party, the player, and anyone they've ever loved." Fantastic.

If you feel like picking up the PC version of Batman: Arkham Asylum, do the right thing.

[Linux]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

LOL, just think if they did something like that in L4D or other games. Summon massive things that just wreck the heck out of you and you can't do anything lol.

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

I love it... this is how DRM should work, turning illegal games from fun into a nightmarish punishment of the unethical. Plus it still lets people find out if a game will run properly on their system without them getting the benefits of playing it... almost like a demo, but less fun, haha.

[snkcube]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

I hope this tactic will be used in many of the upcoming games. People should be supporting game developers.

[mifdeath]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

Yes lets cheer on the driving up of the price of gaming.
Throwing money at a problem that costs you no actual money and only is a means to get your poorly informed investors and management to shut up is a poor financial decision. Proper education and honesty on what actual damages from piracy are, would be a much wiser use of those funds if one had to spend them.
DRM and copy protection are like a gambler throwing out huge bets on a losing streak, because to him smaller bets would mean losing imagined money.
By cheering these devices on you are not cheering developers but ignorance.

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

Yes lets cheer on the driving up of the price of gaming.
Throwing money at a problem that costs you no actual money and only is a means to get your poorly informed investors and management to shut up is a poor financial decision. Proper education and honesty on what actual damages from piracy are, would be a much wiser use of those funds if one had to spend them.
DRM and copy protection are like a gambler throwing out huge bets on a losing streak, because to him smaller bets would mean losing imagined money.
By cheering these devices on you are not cheering developers but ignorance.

Lol, what?

[mifdeath]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

DRM and copy protection schemes cost money on their own, the fact that developers now feel pushed into developing copy protection and DRM schemes alongside actual game development further drives up the cost of games.
Piracy actually costs nothing but perceived 'not-sales', as a gambler on a losing streak would perceive winning on a smaller bet when he could have bet larger. 'I could have made that money' he/they think if only I had thrown more money at the problem.
Explain better?

*edited*
as a gambler would perceive winning
as a gambler on a losing streak would perceive winning
*to better coincide with initial post*

[Unregistered]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

i believe they've already come out with a workaround for batman. i couldn't tell you if it works or not.

[K-16]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

Thank you mifdeath for the clarification. I was rather lost in your previous post and had hoped somebody would interpret it with a reply. Looks like that is unnecessary now. I may still be lost in this, so help me out here. Are you claiming that those who pirate the game would've avoided purchasing the game if their protection was hypothetically impossible to crack? So instead of wasting money on DRM, there should be no protection as those people have no intentions of purchasing games since they would rather have no game to play, and therefore do not count towards potential sales? Interesting, I thought pirates are a segmented market within a market due to the various different reasons behind pirating. Some of which were mentioned by VALVe Software and Stardock. I suppose the group that pirates out of convenience rather than lacking intention to purchase the game due to working protection isn't large enough to count statistically.

[mifdeath]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

Are you claiming that those who pirate the game would've avoided purchasing the game if their protection was hypothetically impossible to crack? So instead of wasting money on DRM, there should be no protection as those people have no intentions of purchasing games since they would rather have no game to play, and therefore do not count towards potential sales?

I cannot answer that hypothetical question because its an extremely improbable situation. I dont believe there is encryption, copy-protection or DRM that is coming or has existed prior that is uncrackable.
I can point out however that these people have made it clear that their intention is to play the game for free. The crackers have made it clear that they enjoy cracking the game. Since both groups have made it clear they have no intention of putting money in your pocket, why are you throwing money at them?
In effect you only make the game harder to enjoy for legal purchasers, more expensive for them, and full of code which has nothing to do with the actual game. Driving up the cost, , the production time needed to complete, and number of companies involved in the production of said game. At the same time making it even more enjoyable for the crackers to crack.

So the real question here is what does copy-protection/DRM actually DO? Or rather, more in line with your question, Who does copy protection actually protect?
The end user?
No its a known fact that all copy protection and DRM schemes hinder usage of everything they have been attached to, since they initially came out. In fact in some cases the schemes used put the end user at even greater risk because the coding used in production of the schemes was dirty and root-kit oriented.
The game developer?
In my opinion, no. Asking the developer to spend any time on not developing the actual game is wasting their time. Any time they spend on not-game is time not spent making the game better so it will sell better.
You tell me who you think benefits?

[K-16]

Re: Batman: Arkham Asylum Features Creative DRM

Interesting. Looks like your viewpoint is very similar to Stardock's.