@ RavenX,
I'm not disagreeing with you. I do think some people resort to "methods" to play their purchased software. I guess I just felt your previous statement that most people complaining were doing so because they'd paid for their software and now because of living in the sticks couldn't use it was incorrect.
Further, I find it interesting that it seems with software people are ready to make a much bigger stink (than with any other product bought/sold on the planet) if they can't seem to use it in the manner they feel they should be able to use it in. Just entertain my thought-process here for a moment. You purchase anything else and logic (even if nothing else) promotes the ways/purposes one might use said product in. It seems that with software we have come to expect endless customization and use-options and because the new DRM-trends tend to limit "use-options" we are that much more likely to "get-up-in-arms"? Just a thought.
Agreed, and I think my statement was a little incorrect as well. I shouldn't have said "most of", I should have said "some of". The thread I saw over at the Ubi forums that was deleted was all mainly people who said they didn't have reliable Internet where they lived.
I also think you're right about the assessment of what people come to expect when buying software. This comes from us viewing our computers as separate entities that only allow us to run software. Once that software is on "our computers" we tend to view it as "ours", especially because of the format. For PC programs files have to be installed and left accessible to be able to work. These files are little "pieces" of the product. I think if they somehow changed the format, and that after a installation the user only saw a "disk" on their hard-drive that they couldn't access in any shape or form, this would change how people view software and even from a virtual standpoint it would be viewed as a "physical disk". People would view it as a "object they own" rather than a program made up of "a bunch of little pieces I own". Sadly our technology doesn't work that way and would need to be redesigned to do just that.
I also think Aractain's food analogy below is quite accurate except he forgot one thing. Someone might want to take the banana home and make "banana bread" or "banana pudding" etc etc as being "use options". This goes hand in hand with what I say about programs being viewed as a "bunch of little pieces we own" as people use them to make other things like Mods or to tweak them to work the way they want.
If someone buys a banana in real life they can eat it on the spot. They can eat it at home, on the street. They can have it in their car or they can use it as a slapstick prop, stick it in a bag and pretend its a gun to rob a bank or they can stick it in various orifices and enjoy it that way. Id say thats quite a lot of "use-options".
Excellent Analogy.
Raven, in the past you have argued that piracy can "help" a game for a variety of different reasons. If you believe that to be true, and there is some merit in what you have said, I suggest that you advocate that people "not" pirate a game, to deny companies that abuse paying customers even the satisfaction of having people enjoy their game. If a game is made unplayable by corporate policy, it should be consigned to the dustbin, relegated to the "not noteworthy" deletion section of wikipedia, and shunned.
I don't know, but this seems to be a pretty basic idea to me. If you want to win an argument with someone, you will not win it by being their enemy. If we the consumers want to "win" the argument about DRM, we will not win it by being pirates. We'll win it because we won't put up with this sort of garbage.
Did Vista get replaced by Windows 7 because a million people pirated it? No, it was replaced because the consumer hated it, the media hated it, the people who Microsoft wanted to sell it to outright refused to buy it.
This is true and well said. I think my argument to piracy being "helpful" though is rather limited to specific situations. Like I've said before, the first Stardock game I ever played was a pirated version of Gal Civ 1. Since then I've spent more money then I care to count up right now on Stardock games and programs. I'm not saying people Should pirate things or the new Ubisoft games though. You're quite right in saying we should speak with our wallets, as I have, and not purchase the new games with this particular DRM. For me it was all about the storyline for AC 2 anyway. Sooner or later someone will post all the in game cinematics on Youtube or somewhere else and I'll see what happened and Ubi won't get my money for me to find out. I'm not advocating piracy though.
Honestly though because Ubisoft does make quality games they are often targets for piracy. Now with this new DRM nonsense they're using they ARE going to push people who Would Have Paid for their game into downloading it online for free. Internet Piracy is the easiest crime on Earth to pull off and everyone knows it. Until it's harder for the general public to learn how to do it, or if some actual technical skill needed to be learned to pirate games, people are going to do it in droves because it's seen as a "faceless crime" that only hurts big business. In the cases of Ubisoft's new titles, for once, piracy will equal lost sales more closely because a lot of people who would have bought them are going to pirate them because they still want to play them. I'm not advocating it, but if it hurts Ubisoft financially, then maybe they'll wise up and go back to a better method of DRM. Everyone expects some kind of DRM, but NOT the Bullshit they have now.
When it comes to Vista, I have a funny story there....
I tried Vista and hated it just like everyone else. I tried it on my test system and got it off a disk a friend gave me. This is the same friend who gave me that copy of Gal Civ 1 back in the day btw... I didn't know if it was a cracked copy of Vista or if it was the Demo Edition put out. I was only using it on my test system to see if I liked it. I'd recommend even to the biggest thief on Earth who downloads and steals everything else to AT LEAST Pay for you're OS. Without a properly licensed OS it's real hard to get tech support.
Anyway, I tried Vista for about 3 days on my test system and thought "Yeap...this is crap. No thanks Microsploodge" and I stayed with XP until Win 7 came out. Even if I would of liked Vista though and decided to continue to use it, I would have bought it because a Legal OS isn't really one of things in my eyes any PC owner can do without.
I understand exactly where you're coming from though and I agree.
