Sins and STEAM + duplicate DRM/Activations

Yeah speaking as a new player they should consider dropping this. Simply because that big orange notice bar on the Steam store page is probably costing them impulse buy sales. A lot of people had bad experiences with other third party DRM's or account registrations such as Games for Windows Live or Bioware account, and so forth. So now they just avoid a game if it has any additional requirement on the store page. If the game already needs Steam to play then they should make it as simple as possible, and just require Steam only. I have heard this game uses the Stardock account for the ingame friends list though. Since people were complaining on Steam forum the overlay friends list invite to game does not work.

I'm going to just second the sentiment here. I re-bought the games on steam, since I'd prefer to keep my games in one place. However, after completely reinstalling the machine after I replaced/upgraded all the hardware, starting up both galciv2 and soase requires me to find the old stardock account.

This annoys me, since last I checked the deal with registering the game was for when you wanted to update the game itself, back when the game was bought retail. When it's bought on f.ex steam, I expect that the problem of proving ownership has already been proven by the built-in authentication through steam. However, apparently the move to steam (or the act of stardock selling impulse to gamestop, whichever, it seems to have the same issue on impulse now that I check) has ramped up the strictness of the account requirement.

I am categorically against having to register a game with the developer or publisher to play the game (I wasn't overly fond of requiring it to update the game, but I could live with it as a compromise), and I seem to remember Stardock being against DRM which hinders gamers from playing a game if they don't activate the game. What changed?

Anyhow, I'd also just like to point out that because of the problems with starting both galciv2 and soase:trinity etc without unfurling the stardock account, I've decided to give Rebellion a pass.

 

Indeed, but I have NO problem to have a requirement to have a Stardock account when to play multi-player games on servers on the Internet, but for single-player and LAN game, it shouldn't require such. It's not necessary for many reasons, and is totally an annoyance. 

Due to privacy concerns, Steam cannot share customer information with its partners. We, however, need to know who you guys are when you come looking for support, if you really bought the game, etc. Our product registration system is our way of doing this.

Yeah, while that's all well and good and not something I'm against, this could've been done without requiring the game have the registration to even start up. I'd be more than happy to register somewhere to get support if the steam patches etc weren't fixing whatever bugs had crept in, but I do not want to have to do that for just starting the game.

*Removed*

STEAM can provide you with 3. party serials, they often do. 

Take for instance Egosoft and the X series, there you had to register your game/serial on your forum account to get  support, patches (before they went 100% STEAM), and you were clearly tagged in the forum with which products you own. Originally, you couldn't even post on the technical forums, if you didn't have a product registered in the FORUM.

Having  to rely on TWO in-game activations, don't really stop the pirates at all, everyone knows that, it's just over-complexing everything with a ridiculous extra layer, that WILL cause more potential problems for a valid customer.

Sir, what you say here don't make any sense.

In the old times, when Impulse was owned by StarDock, and it was a complete standalone DRM/installer, it was just one activation through that system, and that's fine of course.

After Impulse was bought by Gamestop, even Impulse redirect customers to install and verify through STEAM, independent on how you bought it (Impulse or directly through STEAM). For validating the product, it is not required for the game to have an additional DRM activation/mandatory account to StarDock, as ALL customers have already been verified and activated by STEAM. 

Impulse: " IMPORTANT: This game requires the Steam client to install & play" 

To verify non-impulse buyers to give them support, it can easily be done with other schemes, as I mentioned in my previous post.

Because it's clunky, annoying, oldfashioned and unnecessary.


No, they really don't. There are literally tons of games which sold on steam which doesn't have 2 DRM activations. I, myself, have 382 of them on steam, most of them don't need to connect to another server to activate itself (there's been a few times I've bought games which didn't tell us they had a secondary DRM system, which is why I'm always waiting a while after launch to buy games now, to allow others to fall into that particular trap). And, shockingly, it doesn't matter to most developers whether or not I've activated the game with them for just playing it, since steam takes care of making sure I've bought the game or not.


Stardock most likely has an agreement with Steam, so they both have a large pool of product IDs to take from to ensure that all purchases have a unique product key, regardless of the origin of purchase.

There's been a few games which I've bought on Impulse because they're cheaper there, and they've had steamworks protection. If buying it on impulse meant installing and launching it from impulse, then typing in my steam account information, every time I reinstalled my machine, then that would be a bad system. As it is, what I use impulse for is to get the same game on steam, for cheaper, as impulse tends to be cheaper, and you get the game added to my already existing steam account anyways. Afterwards, I get automatic updates, I get the ability to download and install the game anywhere from steam, I get stuff in return for doing things. With stardock's system, I get to start the game up. :golfclap:


They'll do that regardless of which protection scheme you add. The protection system hasn't been invented yet which can't be undone.

In fact, it probably already has.


It really isn't. Again, the protection system hasn't been made which can't be undone. The best one I've heard about was probably starforce's system, and that was much, much harder to crack than whatever stardock can think up.


I'm pretty certain each sold install, regardless of whether or not it's sold through steam or stardock, has a unique product ID. If I just want to play the game, I get it through steam, and it takes care of all authentication of whether or not I've purchased the game (you know, by letting me even download in the first place). Then, if the patches which are automatically pushed through by steam don't solve the problems I'm experiencing, then I'd register with stardock and give them my product key and describing the problems I might have.

This means that for as long as I have no problems with the game, I don't ever have to activate anything, I've already authenticated myself by logging into the steam client, and I only have to tell stardock I have game x when I need additional support, which I'm fairly certain was the old style (i.e. pre-impulse sale) of working.

Actually, I just read the wiki page to galaxy civilization 2 while researching stardock's old style of operating, where their philosophy were that "people who install the game illegally were unlikely to purchase it anyway", and I came across an interesting blurb:

"Copies of the game purchased from Stardock's online store use product activation before the game can be played. The game can only be installed and activated a limited number of times before needing to contact support. Installing on a computer without an internet connection require the files to be downloaded into an archive on another computer, and an activation data blob emailed to Stardock; a signature file is returned to be used on the activated computer."

It strikes me as interesting how similar this system seems to operate in comparison to EA, Activision, Focus Home Intractive etc, and how neatly the gamer's bill of rights was formulated to diss on what was then the popular copy protection schemes, while neatly sidestepping how the act of requiring that a game be activated is also a copy protection scheme.

You know, unlike what they sold themselves as a long time ago, when registering the game's product key with stardock was mainly to get updates and additional support, but not start it.

*sigh* It's no use. People will always complain about DRM. Bug Stardock. I'm not going to look at this thread anymore.

As I said, I guessed how the system works. I'm no developer.

They won't complain about DRM if it's nonintrusive.

 

Without a system like this we would have no way to provide discounts to people who bought in a certain time frame.

Let me give you an example:

People who bought Elemental: War of Magic, in 2010 get Fallen Enchantress for free.  But if you bought War of Magic in 2011, the price goes up to something like $20.

How are we able to do that given all the different places people have bought the game? The answer is the system you're talking about above.

It's how we were able to provide a $10 upgrade discount to people who bought say Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment back in 2009.

Because, you "lost" impulse, that's why now things got "complicated". I really wanted to use that original platform for my game portfolio, I really preferred it from STEAM, in those days, but I guess you went (was forced by many factors), now, to a compromised portal, as Impulse is "lost", and I assume that it won't work in its current state for a very long time. I'm sad to say it.

That's easy to turn on its head, and instead of saying "bought", say "registered". That way you can argue that registering your game gives you an actual benefit beyond just getting access to support. As to getting discounts, I'd assume that's easy enough to get worked out in conjunction with, say, steam, so that they give people who bought their game in a certain timeframe (and they would have a more accurate picture of who bought what, when) a different price from those who bought the game outside of that timeframe.

Take me, for example. I bought the sins trilogy and galciv2 on steam the 03.12.2011, but I didn't try to fire it up until a week ago or so at the most. That's a 6 months gap in your data of my "purchase date", whereas steam has the date and the time. And, of course, my first impression of the game was that I had to register, which I'd never have to do before, so I tried the Impulse version, and it demanded exactly the same thing.

I've absolutely no problem with paying for good games, I only really care if it's a good game, if it's infested with consoleitis, or if it's got some activation or (even worse) always-on DRM. I've gotten burnt on buying games with activation a few times, so I've changed my purchasing habits to the point where I'll wait for a few weeks to see what people say about a game, and to allow for Valve to update their steam page with any additional DRM the publisher/developer deems to put on their game. This has probably saved me more money than goodwill discounts from publishers/developers, as a good amount of games fall off on "is it a good game", even more fall off on "is it infested with consoleitis", and a few actual good games seem to fall off due to activation or always-on DRM as well. vOv

PS: I can prove that I've repurchased the sins/galciv2 games on steam for the convenience of having them there instead of in impulse if need be. I'm not joking.

 

Frogboy to the rescue!

I see how the DRM system allowed me to get the 10 dollar disount on Rebellion, it makes sense.

BTW, thanks for the discount!

Well, I've had enough DRM complaining threads for me. I'm outta this thread.

So, I guess I'll just take this as a confirmation that stardock isn't planning on moving away from requiring that games be activated before you can play them, then, and I'll keep that in mind when deciding on my purchases going forward.

Indeed. as long as they have this, I'm not going support Stardock and their products anymore. I'll put them on the shelf with other publishers, doing the same annoying thing towards their consumers.