You cannot play Diablo 2 resurrected after 30 days of being offline
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For the first few days people could hardly even start the game, I tried to return it right away, because it's basically a bricked game at this point, but Nintendo doesn't want to refund switch games unless you're in North America.
I had already forgotten about it, but I get angry just reminded of that. Yeah, it's just 50 bucks, but when you got cheated on those 50 bucks that leaves a bad taste in ones mouth.
no, it works just fine.
the issues the original poster highlighted had to do with launch problems.
The problem as I understand it was an architectural decision to remove the realms (regional groups of servers like USEast/West/EU/Asia) of Diablo 2 "Classic" so that everyone can play with each other. More fun that way, right? However, Diablo 2 has pretty lousy netcode (consider it's two decades old!) and turns out that one does not simply rewrite it to sync your heroes regularly to a centralized location as you played, turning out to cause a terrible bottleneck. Many such sync requests seem to have just straight out failed at peak hours, with characters losing hours of gameplay or even losing the characters altogether!
This is, again, much better now thanks to more or less emergency mitigations. But it took them a few months and it's of course a major goof up to not think this through better. By the time it was fixed, many had started losing interest in the game.
It's hard to extrapolate networking from testing to massive scales, I understand that, but these are network architects with years if not decades in the business of launching games and MMORPG's. _Someone_ should have been waving a little red flag here and told "hey, you do realize we're centralizing a core part of the game that was never planned to be centralized, and if these sync requests fail it's going to ruin their gameplay. So we're taking a risk and with very real fallout as well."
But maybe someone did... Maybe many in fact did. Such warnings may not be the end of the story unfortunately.
On Steam if you don't like a game, or if it doesn't work for you, you can get a full refund no questions asked as long as it's within 14 days and with less than 2 hours playtime. In certain circumstances they even give refunds after 2 hours playtime (e.g. you spend 2+ hours debugging the game and trying to get it to run)
This should be standard in games, including console games. It benefits the user AND the developer, as I've taken way more risks on games on Steam knowing if I don't like the game I can always return it, which leads to more devs getting my money and me playing games I otherwise wouldn't have.
Sony on the other hand void any refund once you _begin downloading the game_[1], which is ridiculous.
[0] https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/subscriptions-billing/bu...
[1] https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/support/store/ps-store-ref...
They've done themselves in, imho starting with their CD rootkit fiasco and, since then, they've time and again proven that Sony is a company that is not sincere, to say the least.
Sony TV? nope.. Sony camera? not for me... Sony whatever? yeah, no...
Notably it benefits good faith developers. I.e., the developers we actually want making games. The developers that lose under this model are the ones that make poor quality games.
Though I admit it does not solve every dark pattern.
Perhaps such a system could work if it were based on a percentage of time-to-complete, but I have no idea how one would objectively determine that, especially before sale.
Maybe they could not offer refunds after a significant percentage of the game has been played, regardless of time spent playing. Would be hard to determine how much of the game has been played though. The only way I could think of is to check achievements, but not all games have achievements.
Or maybe expected length could be part of the store metadata. If the developer estimates 1.5hr playtime Steam could use that when processing refunds.
Either way I'd consider this a corner case. To be solved sure, but not problem enough to disallow refund functionality for other games.
Is that really a big problem? Do you have actual numbers to that, and not just a hunch? I would actually guess that most people who can actually afford a game would pay for it. In my experience, most people who cheat in this way would not have bought the game anyway, so it’s not a lost sale.
> so it’s not a lost sale
Refunds probably count negatively to your rep. with a store.
Which devs and are they selling enough copies for 46% to be a meaningful amount?
How often does it happen, though? I mean if you refund a game after finishing it, it's the same as saying 'I'd rather have pirated that game', not a good sign it's 'good-faith' game either
Probably the most famous overtly fraudulent example seems to be "Summer of '58", a game developed by a Russian developer who claimed 30-50% of their players refunded. Here's an in-depth investigation of this claim that finds absolutely no evidence to support it: https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/steam-refund-worries-ki... -- it doesn't positively prove that there's no refund abuse, but it makes refund abuse incredibly unlikely. Basically, it's possible to tell if someone who reviews the game refunded the game or not. So for there to be systematic refund abuse, it needs to be people who play the game to completion, then refund the game, but don't leave a review: but this pattern is not seen in any other games where developers report far lower refund rates.
Gamediscover has also had a number of developers share refund data directly for this article and other articles, including developers of short games (some as short as 20 minutes long), and none have had anything in the ballpark of the studios who have made press cause celebre pushes claiming incredibly high refund rates.
One thing to consider about this entire claim: if someone intends to proxy-pirate the video game by buying it, playing it, refunding, and cackling off into the sunset... why wouldn't they just pirate the game, something that is absolutely trivial to do? It's not really coherent to say a huge swath of gamers are manipulative enough to refund, have no moral compunction about doing so, but are too technically stupid to pull it off.
Finally, think about this from Valve's side -- if a huge % of <2 hour games were being refunded, why wouldn't Valve adopt the apparently easy proposal of allowing short game developers to set a flag that alters their refund %age? Doesn't Valve's choice not to do this suggest that they don't really view it as a common thing?
There are plenty of ways to pad game length with minimal additional development. Grind is very much a thing for games that benefit from longer time to completion or where a certain length is expected.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
"If you purchase digital content - such as music or a video online - you cannot withdraw once downloading or streaming has started, if you previously agreed that you would lose your right of withdrawal by starting the performance."
That's how Nintendo of EU gets away with not refunding. You started downloading it so no returns.
Sony too.
https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/support/store/ps-store-ref...
If they don't want there is small claims court which is cheap and simple. I have used it in cases where some manufacturers would void warranty due to "water damage" after the product stopped working. In the end they paid: cost of purchase, cost to file, cost of my legal consultation, cost of expertise showing that there was no sign of water damage. Country - Poland.
Do you think that Steam is even failing that, with the extra requirement of maximum 2 hours of online play ?
(Compare with GoG, where there are no online play requirements, since you can just play and even install all games offline.)
>You may request a refund for a product up to 30 days after purchase, even if it was downloaded, launched, and played.
A lot of people definitely treat Steam's refund system this way, and Steam's automated refund process seems built to encourage it. You could also make a strong case that this is better for everyone, since consumers are more likely to take a chance on a game they're not sure about. On the other hand, it's a problem for games that are designed to be less than two hours—and it does basically require a DRM implementation.
Yes and no. They can track play time when you launch a game through the Steam client, and they can use DRM to enforce launching games through the Steam client. If you launch one of the few DRM-Free Steam games without using Steam, your play time won’t increase.
GOG also tracks play time if you launch a game via GOG Galaxy. The difference is, every single-player game in their catalog can also be played without GOG Galaxy (and indeed, this is explicitly why I buy games from GOG—I don’t like clients, I just want an executable).
From my (admittedly limited) experience with GOG games and Galaxy, only games downloaded via the GOG website (with 'offline backup game installers') can be launched without Galaxy; games installed with Galaxy will force Galaxy to be running alongside it
Steam is DRM
But is it just a rumour ? How many times is too many ?
Assuming that the games have progression achievements, GOG can easily see (a) how much time you spent in game, and (b) how far you got. If you choose to abuse the system, you're going to lose the privilege.
But I don't think that it will happen a lot because piracy is already incredibly easy with GOG. If you want a free game why bother with buying it at all?
Nope. Don't let them self-regulate. They had their chance, free market blah blah blah.
We need to demand legislators update consumer protection laws for all this "you don't own, you rent" crap, because it's become way more pervasive than just video games and movies.
Heated seats in BMWs are now a "service"; I wish I were joking. And Tesla full self driving and supercharging, even though they are purchased features, do not pass to a new owner if the car is sold.
There's a hole here: that 14 days is from time of _purchase_ not _access_.
I preordered _Humankind_ a month or two before launch, because it was listed as supporting MacOS. At launch, it didn't. It didn't get Mac support until 3 weeks later, even though that functionality was barely alpha quality with huge graphics and playability bugs. (Even today, months later, Mac support is barely at beta quality. And if you're on M1 you've got to manually configure the app for being run on Rosetta.)
I waited 12 days after launch before giving up and requesting a refund. That refund was denied, because they had taken my money months before. Steam support was unmoved by my assertion that the developer was flat out lying about Mac playability, and that I literally had no way of playing the game as advertised.
Be careful with your preorders, y'all.
tl;dr: Steam didn't know anything about the devs releasing the Mac version late, so the "14 days from release" didn't line up with my expectation of "14 days from access".
Details for posterity:
The game was set to launch on Aug 17. On Aug 3, the team included a footnote at the bottom of a news announcement which said Mac would be delayed by "about a month":
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1124300/announcements/detai...
(There was also a pinned discussion topic about this at the time, which has since been de-pinned. It didn't have any more details than "see the announcement".)
A month later, on Sep 15, a beta for Mac was announced:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1124300/announcements/detai...
Another month later, on Oct 21, Mac support was still in Beta, and M1 was still TBD:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1124300/announcements/detai...
If you want to see the dumpster fire of poor communication and frustrated customers at the time:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1124300/discussions/search/?q...
I asked for a refund on Sept 11, some 4 days before the beta announcement, and was denied the same day. I followed up via email for details, but was basically told the same "nope, it's been out too long" story in longer form. (At the time, there had been _zero_ word from the devs about Mac support, despite the initial "about a month" estimate, so I lost hope it would happen in anything like a timely manner.)
It looks like people were able to get refunds later that month specifically due to the lack of M1 support:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1124300/discussions/0/2963922...
I guess I happened to fall right into that dead zone between everyone wanting to believe the devs were running just a little behind, and people at Steam realizing there was a legitimate problem. I was cranky about it at the time, but months later I get that there was probably not going to be any other outcome. I certainly don't ascribe any malice, nefarious plotting, or ill intent on the part of Steam or the devs ... but nor would I say that I think either responded in the interests of the customers.
If I could get Steam to improve from this I'd love for them to track platform-specific release dates, and be more strict about developers claiming support for platforms which don't actually run the game ... but I'm not going to hold my breath.
As for myself ... as much as I believe in the idea that preorders can be used to help fund games, and help keep devs employed by not reinforcing the cycle of crunch-then-layoff, I admit this experience (and other preorders-go-sideways experiences like Homeworld 3, FF7R) has kindof soured me on it. It's fine as an abstract concept, but it's at odds with the reality of date-driven releases (as opposed to quality-driven). These days I'm more likely to just add something to my wishlist and check back some time after release day to see if there are any dumpster fires.
>When you pre-purchase a title on Steam (and have paid for the title in advance), you can request a refund at any time prior to release of that title. The standard 14-day/two-hour refund period also applies, starting on the game’s release date.[1]
I'm not going to debate you on the importance of being careful with preorders, especially outside of Steam, but this is the case as it stands right now.
I do however remember reading something like your scenario a long while ago, perhaps even so far back as to the beginning of Steam Refunds.
And Valve still punish Australia for that by refusing to sell hardware here directly. No Index or Steam Deck for us.
It's not rocket science, especially in the current golden age of gaming, where there's plenty of excellent choice on indie, AA and some AAA publishers portfolio.
Yet people keep complaining and then lining up to buy the latest Battlefield and CoD and shitty remaster.
i'm still in somewhat of a denial since i really like their IPs. and diablo 4 is still very much on my radar. if that one tanks then I hope something changes as their IPs are just too good...
To think that any future games will be better than what we’ve gotten over the last decade is just being in denial that they’re Activision now. They have continued to mine the nostalgia of the player base with mediocre remakes and retread content and, combined with the fact that it’s now public knowledge how toxic Blizzard culture was during the “golden era”, it has destroyed most of the cultural value that IP had.
Take all that along side all this sexual harassment and anti-worker BS they've been pulling for decades, and I just don't care enough anymore. I don't need anything Blizzard wants to sell any more. I don't need to buy something to tarnish my memories of fun games. I don't need to replay those games if they're made under atrocious conditions. I'm no longer willing to give my money to a company that is emblematic of everything wrong with video games.
Now with other companies pulling that same BS, and now some are coming out in favor of NFTs?
Fuck 'em. I don't need AAA games. Indie titles are just as good, and I've got a hundred other things vying for my free time.
But I actually welcome it. Kotick has run blizzard into the ground, on the formula 'maximize profits instead of player satisfaction', which is the opposite of the formula that made the blizzard name. At least MS will, presumably, milk the IP long-term-responsibly.
That's how franchises die, in my opinion. They leave a bad taste in the mouth of existing fans, and repel new fans. They can only get by on previously generated inertia for so long. (Star Wars is an outlier here, I suspect.)
I'd much, much rather see new IP be created than a bunch of underfunded, financially-motivated people try to recreate magic they didn't create and don't understand in the first place.
What often happens is these franchises end up in a sort-of zombie-like state like the faux Dune novels being pumped out by those two hacks who I can't even bother to name anymore.
The game industry is very diverse, you have obscure VNs that sell less than 100k to multi billion dollar franchises like Call of Duty.
What a crazy industry.
It does not have 60 million current players.
It has 60 million people who have played it since the open beta.
Activision does not release active player counts, but every secondary metric (OWL viewership, Twitch, subreddit participation, other sites that track this) show that it’s active player count has gone down. Likely by a lot.
The OW2 debacle has made it worse; no new content updates for fans who stuck it out? And for what, a PvE mode?
I was told, that my account had been deactivate due to inactivity and that it was against my agreement with Tencent not to use WeChat regularly. After that I had to check a checkbox promising to log in regularly.
Luckily I haven't paid for WeChat, and I don't need it anymore to keep in contact with friends, so I was far enough removed from the situation to laugh at it.
But it makes no sense at all for games.
i think this is the issue right here.
It's one thing (and annoying enough) if multiplayer servers are shut down after a couple years without opening the source of the server or at least distributing VMware images. But single-player functionality should always work, because why should I otherwise buy a game for 50+ €?!
Which were the main reasons why Diablo 2 classic was still played in the first place !
Cheating morons ruined the fun for everyone else.
On Open Battle.Net you could use your offline characters in online play, meaning you would run into a lot of hackers, but you could also play together with your friends online (there was also a LAN option). Closed Battle.Net meant your character was stored on Blizzard's servers, which prevented the most blatant cheating.
But starting with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 (and arguably WoW) Blizzard decided they could make more money by shitting their games up with always online DRM.
Please don't buy the "invasive DRM is good for you" corporate advertising - when (not if) the official servers shut down, these games will be crippled ! (We already had a taste of that with GameSpy, and it was only matchmaking servers !)
For the time in-between though... self-hosted servers are a niche market, and that is why companies don't care any more. Not enough players care to justify the expense, and ever since Hot Coffee and school shooters game companies have gotten pretty paranoid about moderation and fighting modders or bad press from raging cheaters. Again, there is no hope for the industry to fix that on their own, this is something that must be done by law.
And Factorio has people setting up (usually renting in data centers ?) dedicated servers too (which then are at least accessible to everyone, unlike non-dedicated server games hosted on home networks where people not even bother to properly set up port forwarding any more, forgetting that not everyone relies on Steam to do the job for them...)
I still very much do not like this, given that someday the server which affirms your ownership of the game will be taken offline.
For some official confirmation of the policy:
-- that they are mandating your machine to be online, and
-- that the working state of the product will depend on infrastructure outside your power
and possibly more.
Or to spend them elsewhere: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v12/. (No games there yet, but I hope they can be added.)
and according to your interpretation stealing a car seems "not a big deal" because it comes after a murder. (They are disconnected events, so to relate them is just a mental perspective - their gravity is independent. There is no «priority» forgiving your actions, it is no excuse).
In my above example I would be guilty of both murder AND stealing cars, so yeah, I think the murder part would be a much bigger deal.
Which is irrelevant, because it does not reduce the absolute value of the other crime.
"Y is a much bigger deal than X" cannot produce "X is not a big deal".
When you pay your devs 50k per year while requiring 60-80hr work weeks, experienced devs aren't going to apply. Young, inexperienced devs fill the roles instead and make junior dev mistakes all over the place.
Once you move to subscription models, you can update games rather than constantly hype the next version. You have more consistent revenue streams and can give incentives to your devs to stick around. Valve doesn't quite have a subscription model (they make their money from their store), but does show how long-term devs working on the same game for many years gives excellent results.
As much as I dislike the idea of not owning games, I suspect it is the future, but the overall quality will go up as a result.
> Doom cost $30 in 1993 ($60 today)
Again not my area. So these are observations:
> there is a way bigger market than 1993
> there are different business models now
> gaming engines are widely developed
> software tooling has vastly improved
Sure things like server/infrastructure cost now must be accounted for. I just dont think its that fair of a comparison. Doom was a packaged AAA title for $60. You can definitely produce a game for that price today and effectively the price is like $100 after online and dlc and all this other junk.
Except the number of people with the skills to make games has increased (which depresses gamedev salaries), the tooling to make and publish games has become cheaper (or outright free with tools and engines like Blender, Krita, and Godot), and the overhead costs of physically publishing and distributing a game have been largely eliminated by digital publishing. To top it all off, the amount of competition in gaming has increased, which drives down prices. If anything, games should be even cheaper. And in the indie scene they usually are
As they say: Cheap, fast, and good -- pick two.
With a larger talent pool and all the hard problems already solved, you'd expect games to INCREASE in quality with fewer bugs and issues. If they threw cheap out the window and were charging $200, they could hire and retain experienced talent who would make far fewer mistakes and the quality would increase dramatically.
EDIT: To address number of people further, lets say there are 100x more talent now than in 1993. If 5 people developed Doom and 500 people are needed for a modern AAA title, then the effective supply to demand ratio hasn't changed.
Speaking of markets, doom 1 sold 4M copies. The best selling hardcore gamer game is grand theft auto V with 155M copies sold.
That’s a bit less than 40x the number of sales for doom (next best is red dead redemption 2 at 39M or 10x). 9 people in total developed doom. 1,000 people worked in GTA-V. They also worked many more years.
That’s over 100x more people and probably 500x the total development time for just 40x the sales. If you look into red dead’s numbers, I’m positive they look far worse than that.
GTA-V would need to cost $300+ to match the profit margins of doom if people were getting paid the same. Of course, they get paid peanuts for the “privilege” of working on some megacorp’s game.
This is the differance. This is why so many companies pump games full of microtransactions. They don't care about the average player spending 60 dollars on the game. They want the 1 in 100 or 1000 or 10000 whales who spend 2500 to 50K on the game.
Very certainly not. Some people are probably perverts as you indicate. Others are just outraged legitimately, making it a statement and acting accordingly.
So, no, some people will not accept being part of it.
> People ... yet they will and do continue to buy
You are fighting a strawman if you focus on those few or many that pollute the market. And you seem to be supporting both a polluted market and its supporters.
And it's an easy sell for investors too: release in a couple more countries and 'hey, sales doubled, everyone loves it!!'
There's plenty of indie quality out there, but it's immensely drowned out by the top end in marketing, influencing and availability.
Once I run out of PS3 games I'll pick up a PS5 and work through the PS4 games that were actually worth it.
It's nice to see lately that Steam is providing more demos, which should have been a thing all along, but the logic that demos is bad (and how they disappeared largely some time ago) is only a benefit for those wanting to shovel crap out.
Blizzard used to make awesome games that were fun to play. They came up with some of the most enduring game franchises, and their games are still classics. Now, not so much. Actually, not at all. It's all just repetitive shite based on the same old tired universes.
It's almost certainly worth it to Blizzard to lose the tiny fraction of sales from people who care about this issue to prevent the buy-offline-return pattern that some folks might opt to use without this check in place. Yes, it won't prevent all piracy, but it's probably a net positive for revenue.
The problem is forcing people to be playing the game regularly or loose whatever they have "accomplished".
That problem isn't the one documented in the link we are discussing. Can you point me to some kind of citation that shows this is happening? I've not heard about it and a brief google search does not reveal anything.
I can still play Gameboy games I bought 20+ years ago with no problems besides maybe replacing the save battery and the occasional contact clean. Will I be able to do the same with Switch games I bought? For some titles that already seems to be a no.
> I can still play ...
But do you? I mean, perhaps you do, but most folks don't. That's why I emphasized the question of harm a gamer is likely to suffer.
At this point I think it's fair to say that games are cultural artifacts. We should be at least a token amount of interested in making it possible to preserve them.
To the extent that there is any value in the history of this game, I think most of it will be sufficiently captured in the large amount of video content being produced about it.
Indeed, DRM historically isn't noted for actually boosting revenue. Perhaps we are discussing a false belief here, similar to people who claim that end-to-end encryption enables drugs/guns/CSAM/money laundering. Both feel true and seem obviously true, but lots of truth-y and obvious things are false upon close examination. This does not diminish the sincerity of anyone's belief, only its factual basis.
It may also be worth considering that videos about games as a substitute for the actual artifacts might be like keeping reviews of plays instead of preserving the text. Useful and important cultural artifacts and context, but perhaps not the same as having the originals. Video game museums exist today, and I found it fascinating to be able to play games from decades past.
> Indeed, DRM historically isn't noted for actually boosting revenue.
By this are you referring to comments on sites like HN, by people who aren't in a position to know whether DRM is beneficial for the implementor? If you are I'd just encourage you to interrogate your sources a bit. It's entirely possible that game devs have been in the grips of a collective delusion for the last twenty-plus years that DRM is often profitable. But I would say that to me that doesn't seem to be the most likely explanation for why they keep using it.
> It may also be worth considering ...
Worth considering, perhaps. But, ultimately, not an idea that is all that compelling to me, and even less so (apparently) for the economic stakeholders in game development.
On the other hand other services have proven that piracy is most often a service issue. There will still be piracy, but it is questionable if those users were able or willing to spend anything in the first place.
Game devs believe that these measures benefit revenue enough that they keep on adding them, despite significant technical and reputational cost. So, absent evidence to the contrary, I suspect the answer is "yes."
If people do not note the reason for concern in being dependent from third party infrastructure for having a purchased good in working state, their societies have immense problems.
> valid concern ... vast majority of people
Absurd. The concern is valid irregardless of the individual.
We can run games from the 90s and 2000s, because there is no need for servers.
What's important to me, and to most gamers, is whether I can play a game for the duration of time that I desire to do so. So when I'm looking at D2 resurrected, I'm thinking something like this:
"If I buy this game, the longest I'd probably play it for is about a year. In future years I may return to it for briefer and briefer windows, asymptotically decreasing toward zero minutes per year as time approaches infinity. I think it's likely that Blizzard will keep the servers running for at least 20 years based on past performance. What is the area under the curve outside of twenty years proportional to the total value I intend to extract from the game?"
For me, I estimate the area at around 0. Even if I thought that a tenth of my total playtime would occur outside the initial 20 year window (extremely unlikely and generous estimate -- probably nobody exists like this), what is the present value of that future enjoyment? At a 4% discount rate and a fifty dollar initial purchase, the present value is $3. There's just not enough there for most people to be bothered about.
I would argue that many gamers are wrong if they think they're never going to want to revisit one of their favorite games. In fact the primary market for D2: Resurrected seems to be gamers who want to revisit one of their favorite games from 20 years ago.
1) you advertise in bold/black letters that internet service is required every X days. No bait and switch.
2) you are required to release an update disabling the call home feature if you plan to take down the activation server.
Regardless, I paid for my "license" to use the software on my personal machine, I shouldn't have to rely on someone else's machine to make that happen.
And? You remove the 'Z' key from the keyboard because it is the least used letter?
> we have access to the internet almost no matter where we are, or can easily get it
No, not everywhere - secondarily. Primarily, some people keep some devices airgapped, and only specialized ones online.
> Why should we care if a game needs to check in periodically?
Because it is absurd - the worst sin.
With regards to the whole "30 days offline" thing - this was well known way ahead of launch. This is how all Blizzard games have worked for many years now. When they cancelled TCP/IP local play support the community asked them about it and they put an questions and answers segment out that included information about how you would need to connect to servers every once in a while to unlock game files.
If that's not your thing then don't play or grab a crack. shrug
"The clause about the rights to dating your sister was well known way ahead of launch"
"But you will be required to return to the reseller with your purchased goods [shoes / book / trolley ...] periodically for a check"
The point is not that the clause exists, the point is that the clause is absurd and indefensible.
If this was true, wouldn’t it be listed on the sale page?
> Internet connection, Battle.net® desktop app and Battle.net® Account required to play.
Yes, there were some annoying server problems, but the game was great and still felt fresh even though it was a remake. I have stopped playing now (not trying to be on that eternal grind...) but overall thought it was pulled off MUCH better than the WC3 remaster.
It has little to do with DD or BD, but it's still a very fun game.
blizzard is dead, diablo is dead, it'll be very challenging for microsoft to make profits with that company
Even D3 on consoles had that.
Oh common. You may not like it, but DRM was invented for a reason.
Claiming DRM does nothing is a bit like anti-vaxers claiming the Covid vaccine “doesn’t work” because the virus can still spread…
If anything I think denuvo is just paving the way for a pretty gloomy future of "almost perfect" DRM. It might still be crackable, but the effort needed would be immense (or just downright impossible if you take into account the incredible resource discrepancy between the two sides). Even the mood in parts of the scene seems to have shifted towards resignation w.r.t to denuvo.
but do games where the denuvo isn't cracked early do get increased sales? I mean that's the (purported) claim that the various DRM schemes were to fight piracy, with the justification that piracy resulted in lost sales
In its current forms: to prevent secondary sales and lending, to increase primary sales.
Piracy is not the reason, at least not the main one, it is the excuse they give because people won't be happy with the actual reason. If stopping piracy is the goal then we can categorically call it an utterly failed experiment.
Are you sure about that? From what I’ve read, the studios are less concerned about stopping piracy forever than for the first few weeks when they get most of their full price sales. I’m sure shutting down secondary sales is a big benefit, too, but that’s balanced against the the fairly sharp discounts they usually start offering.
Which is the reason the games were funded.
I have disposable income now and buy games as its easier than pirate it from random source.
DRM is thinking of old people forced onto new world.
Moreover, DRM is literally designed to deny you the right to use your own property (i.e. the computer you bought and paid for), by extending the ludicrous concept of “intellectual” property, which is quite literally completely imagined “property”, to restricting your use of your actual property.
Why would anyone accept or agree to this kind of insane transitive ownership, where a corporation squatting on our culture can economically destroy the lives of ordinary citizens by suing them for engaging in culture?
No wonder the recording industry flocked to fascist Italy in the 1930s to establish their extremist anti-intellectual cartel.