I'm this guy living just outside of Augusta, GA. If you know just a little bit about golf, you've probably heard of the place.
Aside from the vidya, my other favorite things include anime, giant robots, progressive metal, rum, and programming. My day job is software developer.
I've been actively lurking and posting on Destructoid's front page since about the summer of 2010 and started trying to get active in the community a year later.
I'm also Destructoid's self-proclaimed Guild Wars 2 expert. Ask me anything.
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But the answer isn't to try and make the DRM even stricter and more invasive (it used to be nothing more than a CD key, remember those days?) and inconvenient. The answer is to show your legit customers some goodwill. Release a game that isn't crippled. Don't treat customers like criminals. Accept that some people will always pirate, and just encourage more people to invest in your product rather than alienating them further.
NOPE! :-(
Short but sweet blog nonetheless.
PC gamers need to man the fuck up and stop pirating a title with shit DRM as a form of protest every time a studio publishes a game they want with DRM they don't. Or hell, responding to any negative point in a game at all by saying "FAIL! I'm not buying this, because the color of the main character's eyes is a shade away from what it should be! TORRENTED!" A boycott doesn't work as a form of protest if you just go ahead and steal the item anyway - You're still demonstrating demand.
Publishers need to man the fuck up and just stop trying to find the magic DRM fairy which will actually block the pirates from accessing their products. It's not going to happen. Just settle for a CD key encoded to the disc (so it doesn't need to verify with a server elsewhere) and, if the PC is online, have it verify that the CD key hasn't been used a million times. Reward paying customers with DLC and have a fast, effective customer service system in place in case the CD key someone got in their game is being used by pirates.
I'm not saying that they should create a special version for PC users, though. The amount of nerd rage about Bioshock's view is precisely an example of why PC gamers need to shut the fuck up a bit with their complaints. Mods exist, you will apply them to your game anyway, so stop bitching about every single thing about the game which doesn't fit to your exacting standards. Publishers should reciprocate by ensuring that modding the game, one of the key attractions of PC gaming, is not any harder than it has to be.
I'm not saying that they should give players a level editor and everything, but basically just let gamers play the game the way they want to play it. Make sure the anti-mod code is there for online play, sure, but if someone wants to modify the single player mode so he can walk through the game with an infinite ammo rocket launcher, I say let him go nuts. He'll find a game that'll let him do it anyway, and trying to stop him just loses you a customer and gains you a pirate.
Mainly, what publishers need to do is make the effort which goes into pirating a game, downloading the game, entering the crack, and patching their Host file, etc... They need to make that look like a larger effort for PC gamers than buying the product legitimately. They need to throw their DRM people into an anti-piracy team which floods the net with false cracks, bad torrents, and otherwise makes actually downloading a cracked version of the game a bigger pain in the ass than actually buying a legitimate copy.
You're taking the cosmetic arguments of a few and applying it to the many, same can be had for console gamers if you felt like seeing through such narrow eyes, not like it's hard to find a few threads bitching about something stupid.
The things that will make most internet-sperging pc users stand up and bitch and moan is stuff like DRM, Bad ports, and options that SHOULD be there and would be there had they not been concerned mainly with the console version. IMO this is legitmate and even if it's "modded" in afterwards it's pretty sad when people have to finish a developers game for them.
Also you seem to be putting developers and publishers in the same basket. Publishers don't really hand out the modding tools, the devs do. Publishers do stuff like publish, include DRM.
Also I haven't had to modify my host file in forever and the last time I did it was for legimate reasons (netextender). Fake copies/cracks already are all over but they quickly get no seeds and many negative comments/thumbs down so that's not exactly the best strategy.
Publishers are the ones who call the shots and are often the ones who insist that DRM be in the PC version of a game. This mainly applies to big publishers who have a lot of studios under their blanket: Activision, EA, Ubisoft, etc.
And you've just proven my point about how infantile PC gamers can be. Your first two points, DRM and Bad Ports, are worth bitching about. There is no such thing as an Option that SHOULD be there, unless the game is actually full-up broken and the option would fix it. There are options that you, the game player, wish were in the final product that, for whatever reason, the developers chose not to put in the game. The Bioshock field of view debacle is a perfect example of how self-entitled PC gamers can be.
The field of view was chosen specifically because it helps create an atmosphere of tension by limiting the player's field of vision, allowing the fine audio work to build up suspense in the player and make them paranoid. Then PC gamers got ahold of it and basically said "But this isn't the way widescreen should work! Why can't I make it work the way I want! I'm going to make it work the way I want!"
As for anti-piracy torrents... Just follow the fine example Arkham Asylum set and make the game work up until a certain point. Most pirates aren't going to play through six to eight hours of a game just to make sure the copy is good, so the copy gets forwarded to a lot more people. Boom.
I know that publishers are the ones who insist on putting in DRM, I said that. What I said is that they are not the ones who provide modding tools and you don't ever hear about asking for them, that's a developer position.
So having 1 bad point makes em infantile? And being entitled is infantile? Just so you know, adults are plenty as entitled or even more so in many cases than infants. A widescreen option should have been there but I personally didn't care, but what I was speaking of lack of graphical options in a lot of games (crysis 2) and complete lack, no vsync and a lock at 30 fps (from dust) is unfinished and laziness, and is worth bitching about.
I don't get your point? Pirates don't download games and not play them, maybe you mean the people that crack them? And so what? They hear of the issue and then they go about getting past that too. It won't last long and that didn't (that was before a real PC release anyway, I didn't torrent arkham so I can't say for certain but I'd wager that a full working copy was put up upon release or shortly after.)
@ Kyle
Not really, most people spend a grand or less on a PC and keep it for the next 3 years and it'll run everything you can throw at it better than consoles. And console games don't run perfectly, in plenty of cases they have graphical issues that their computer counterparts are able to power through.
Maybe you've taken Jim's video too seriously as most PC gamers aren't complete graphics whores, evidenced by the fact that the games he lauded sell well on the PC. My experience with gamer friends and other gamers in real life tell me that console gamers are usually more concerned with graphics then PC gamers are. Usually the one's that came in the PS2 and later era (which is a much higher ratio then PC gamers) bulk whenever I suggest older superior games because they "look like shit".
I do think that DRM is simply a necessity... like having doors on your store. However, I also think that they need to come up with a non-intrusive DRM system. PC gamers also have to get their heads out of their asses and realize that it's not a big deal if they need to have an online connection to do an authorization handshake with the game... but the handshake should last 48 hours or something... so people can still play their game on a plane. Again, new DRM is needed.. and gamers have to get over the whole DRM issue and realize that they are protecting their own future by using it.
I built my PC in 2007. It's got a GeForce 8800GT. The only "upgrade" I've done to it since is added more hard drive space. My graphics card still works with like 99% of new games today. I'm in the middle of playing Deus Ex. It runs extremely smooth, with the graphics settings set fairly high across the board. The only game recently which I probably wouldn't be able to play (that I'd want to) is The Witcher 2.
Your argument would have been true about 6 or 7 years ago, when the advancements of game graphics were still on a rapid incline. But recently the push for prettier and prettier graphics has leveled off. The games industry in general, even among console games, is no longer engaged in the heated graphics race like it was for so long. Sure, there are still traces of it, but I assure you the the Playstation 4 and the Xbox720 won't look *that much* nicer than the PS3 and 360, if they ever come to exist.
My point is even a modest PC nowadays will last you 2-3 times longer than you might think in terms of being able to run new games.
@Elsa, @DrButler
Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the reasoning behind DRM, and I'm not totally opposed to the idea of it. The problem is companies are making DRM that would have been considered spyware 5 years ago, handcuffing their legitimate consumers while they play a game, while not reducing piracy at all. Clearly DRM, no matter how absurdly convoluted, will stop someone who is determined to pirate, and making the DRM worse will only hurt the people actually willing to buy the game.
I don't necessarily condone pirating a game just because you can. But often people will download a cracked version of a game they were originally going to buy in the first place (perhaps they already did) because the cracked version removes the obnoxious DRM and makes the experience of playing the game much smoother and nicer.
A $1000 dedicated gaming rig has never been in the cards from a financial standpoint. My PCs has always been for work first, gaming second. While you might say my view is is representative of something 7 years aog, this actually wasn't a problem for me until 2009. I formerly did the majority of my gaming on PC, but my current laptop won't run anything you'd see on a current gen console aside from budget titles, downloadables, indies, etc, despite almost being new. So while you can easily build something up to spec, or buy a higher end model, the majority of factory-built PCs sold won't necessarily be able to play the latest and greatest thing nowadays. Owning a laptop is a work necessity, and upgrading isn't really a viable option. So a couple hundred bucks for an every-man's console is a more attractive option than putting down more considerable time and money to join the relatively more exclusive club of PC gamers.