Well, you have to remember that for the "efficient business" companies (hello EA!) bringing out games that people keep playing for years is actually counterproductive. What you're supposed to do is: buy a game, play it for about a month, get tired of it, chuck it in a corner and buy a new game. Playing a game for years on end (or at least spending part of your gaming time on it) means you're not buying a new game to fill that that "slot" in your gaming time. 

You can easily see this kind of philosophy in the amount of time companies like EA support a product with patches after publishing it. If there's no expansion pack in the works (or similar) you get one or two patches, and that's it. (regardless of the final state of the game)

Personally, (being a naturally cynical and untrusting person, at least as far as big companies are concerned) I believe the publisher also makes the more pliable programming teams (ie. not the famous/bestseller guys) design their games to keep your attention for only a limitid amount of time. Infinite replayability means no need to pay more money to the publisher, after all.

You won't get a good reputation as a publisher for these kinds of "meh" games and "RAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!" DDRM tactics, but their reputation is already in the pits, so they may as well roll with it.

As a side note: the actual case of self-terminating licences here is more likely a sin of incompetence and uncaring laxity than actual malitious intent though. I guess it was only a matter of time till a critical bug turned up in the ever more complex DRM programming. Make it more and more complex to make things a bit harder for the pirates (And, incidentally, more fun and interesting for real hackers. Remember folks, it only takes one successful attempt at breaking the DRM to plaster it all over the internet) and the more complex things get the bigger the chance of something getting messed up in the mass of programming.

Of course, regardless wether the intent was good or bad, the customer pays the programmer's food, car & house is hurt by the programmer that is scared, not of his customer, but of people that will never be his customer. Quod erat demonstrandum?

Actually, the customer does not pay the programmer's wages. The development company does and by extension the publisher, in most developer/publisher relationships. It is the policy of publisher that sets the programmers priorities. And since policy decisions are made by management rather than technical people, "good enough for now" tends to outweigh perfectionism by a rather significant margin.

I once read a rather interesting booklet for head maintenance technicians, designed to aid them in dealing with corporate management. Management has a tendency to want to cut back on costs, they see this hugely expensive entry on the balance sheet (the maintainance budget) that does not immediately contribute to making a profit. They will then try to axe that budget as much as possible in order to make gains in the short term. The maintainance directors normally warn them that there will problems in the long run, and management ignores them because money now is worth more than money later. This is a technically sound accounting principle based, for instance, on the fact that making lots of money on a large investment in a few years time is irrelevant if the company goes bust six months from now, never getting to the profits. (the solution suggested for the maintanance heads is making an accounting calculation using the standard multipliers used by accountants showing that the costs of repairs/back maintenance later do, in fact, outweigh the immediate gains even if taking into account the now/later multiplier)

The above "quality control investment costs" problem would be even worse in the gaming industry, with the big publishers simply liquidating subordinate development studios when their reputation/profitabilty is irretrievably damaged. All the publisher has to do is reassign the development staff and resources to other teams and the bad reputation problem is "solved".

My only hope in this is that publishers like EA will eventually find out that "goodwill" is also a very real and very valuable entry on the balance sheet. (and thus a gain for the top guy's bonus arrangements and the shareholders stock listings) Even for publishers. Perhaps Brad Wardell can introduce some management teams to his accounting priciples? (He seems to have a commendably high regard for customer goodwill)

Whats interesting is that they put a timebomb in an original retail copy of the game.  Apparently microsoft thought no one was gonna keep playing gow1 after jan. 2009?

I loved the last comment though. If this whole shebang does not show the DRMing game developers/publishers that their so beleoved DRM only hinders their paying customers, then nothing will.

To me, this is the best argument as to why DRM encourages piracy, not prevents it.

It appears that the issue was some anticheat system cert and not DRM according to some posts regarding Epic's comments.

That doesn't sound plausible, since anti-cheat systems should prevent people logging in on-line, not prevent startup of a game. That said, both anti-cheat & DRM require trusted executables, so some of the technology is shared.

Hehe... Silly MS... don't they know the world doesn't end until 2012?

I hope GalCiv 3 comes out before then...

I was thinking the same thing but I'm not a programmer so my consideration is meaningless.

Shh let use spread are propaganda for the revolution.

The end result is that the anticheat system manages the right of the user to use the digital product, therefore it is DRM.

Society would be an acceptable alternative.

For a lot of my legal game, i use crack... not very different that a fully pirated version... not that the game become better but it spare my original DVD... these game, where the original need to be in the drive are a plague... after a year of so, it become impossible to read them...

By using crack, i am allow to keep my game a very long time... i have several game who are more that 10 year old...

In case of sins, not problem at all... don't need the original in the drive...

You can do better than that, in Stardock's case no-one need have the original, at all.

This is why regarldess of faults, i will look to buy from Impulse first.

I just read on the Epic forums, that there are people whom bought the game on the day of expirations, and he can't play the game.  i am not sure if he can even return the game now that he has opened it. 

One other guy is deciding to sell it instead of going through all the fuss of clock changing business.  Because he is from South Africa and games there are not cheap.

Soo here is an ethical question..., if i or someone else want to play GOW1 on the PC and have no console, should i pirate the game, BUT I CAN AFFORD TO BUY THE GAME.  however, knowing that the game will not work at the moment, what should or anyone else do in such a circumstance????

This question boils down to:

Should I buy a product which is broken or get a working product for free?

It really depends on whether or not and how soon they plan on patching it. If it is within a couple weeks, I would say just wait til they fix it. There is nothing inherintly wrong about pirating as long as you pay for the product at some point. What I would suggest is that you get a pirated version while you wait for them to fix the real version, then buy it when it works.

You could buy the game and play apirated version. This is not legal, but ethically correct towards paying programmers for their work.

However:

Digital restrictions management is not more unethical than piracy, and buying such a game is a reward for the developer for its digital restrictions management. Therefore, buying such a game is a bad idea. Voting with your wallet is very important.

I would not blame people playing a pirated version without buying a legal version, if the DRM is their reason for pirating. Of course, the most ethical would be not to play such a game at all.

I think it's very important to take into consideration, that even the hardest protections will be cracked very fast, so it's just hurting the buying customers, not the one who crack the game to get rid of the annoying copy-protection.

So in the end copy-protection mostly harms buying customers, not the pirating.

It is not better... if tomorrow, Stardock dissappear, your online version dissappear too... i need a hard copy from what i buy...

And now, it is a pain in the a$$ for create a update package after a impulse update... each time, i need to seek what file what changed from one version to the other and create myself a little archive... backup all the directory is not a option since Stardock have a very high upgrade rate ( for our benefice ) and it will take a lot of place...

Since entrenchment will not be in boxed version until the 3 expension are released ( in 2030 maybe !!! ), my copy will be a illegal one until these boxed version appear and i can buy it in a physical form... i don't pay and will never pay for some wind... Stardock seem to be the best in the game business but it don't mean that they are perfect...

Nothing could be further from the truth, and if you haven't noticed, GPG and Stardock also limit installs. Does that make them 'greedy *******?'

I'm not sure about Gears of War, but with Grand Theft Auto IV it explicitly states in the EULA that the license is valid until such time that the owner (publisher) decides it is no longer valid. So any time they decide that you do no longer own the licence it is gone. It may seem odd, but that is what you sign up for/pay for, you 'rent for and undefined period'.

That's a fair enough consideration. But, how long do you expect to still be able to get hard copies? 10 years? 15? Eventually we will all be buying from digital distribution platforms.

We can always back up our downloaded content to disc.

Drifitng OT now though.....

Really, i never knew that. Is that all platforms? That being the case, and this is a wish that i doubt will ever come to light, but, i think it's high time that the software companies made the EULA availbale to be read before purchase of any game/product.

Given prior knowledge to purchase, i will still clear of such limited titles just out of general principle. Again, another case of DRM encouraging piracy, not preventing it.

I think GC2/SINS has proven that.

Yes it does, but is that a bad thing? I have no problem with a company trying to make money, after all that is why they are in business. Brad has stated on these forums that he intends to make money with Stardock, and I'm sure he'll do what is needed to achieve that goal.

This has been discussed to death so many times on this forum, but its good to say it anyway... its too bad that the people who should be reading this don't...

at the end of the day, DRM only penalizes legit customers.... *sigh* ...

That is hilarious! Not sure if I believe the bit about it being linked to the anti-cheat system, but as noted above, only an actual programmer could really be an authority on the matter. I'm still slightly stunned that the gaming industry is coming to this - you have people who actually own a legitimate version of the game resorting to using cracks because of the mind-bogglingly oppressive security checks... and we're told this is apparently the new 'best business model'.