How a Nephew's CD Burner Inspired Early Valve To Embrace DRM (arstechnica.com) 34
Valve's early anti-piracy efforts, which eventually led to the Steam platform, were sparked by co-founder Monica Harrington's nephew using her money to buy a CD burner for copying games, she revealed at last week's Game Developers Conference. Harrington said her nephew's "lovely thank you note" about sharing games with friends represented a "generational shift" in piracy attitudes that could "put our entire business model at risk."
Half-Life subsequently launched with CD key verification in 1998. When players complained about authentication failures, co-founder Mike Harrington discovered "none of them had actually bought the game," confirming the system worked. Although easily bypassed, this early protection influenced Steam's more robust DRM implemented with Half-Life 2 in 2004, which became the industry standard for PC game distribution.
Half-Life subsequently launched with CD key verification in 1998. When players complained about authentication failures, co-founder Mike Harrington discovered "none of them had actually bought the game," confirming the system worked. Although easily bypassed, this early protection influenced Steam's more robust DRM implemented with Half-Life 2 in 2004, which became the industry standard for PC game distribution.
The first rule (Score:5, Funny)
The first rule about burning copies of game CDs for friends, is you don't talk about burning copies of game CDs for friends. Noob.
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The first rule about burning copies of game CDs for friends, is you don't talk about burning copies of game CDs for friends. Noob.
Also, a bit short-sighted on Valve's part.
Getting all worked up about DRM and not really examining if piracy among twelve year old kids actually equates to lost sales, which I doubt.
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Re:The first rule (Score:4, Insightful)
I definitely pirated some games I would have purchased between 12 and 23 or so when earnings made it not worth the effort.
Certainly not every pirated game was a last sale, but something approaching 1/4 of them was.
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I still occasionally download the game first, play with it for a few hours, days, then buy the original / DLCs, etc as I wanted.
Very rarely do I buy a game untested, unless am very sure about it.
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But how many people have bought the game ten years later in steam because of the memories they made? Sometimes one need to think longterm.
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If Metallica was smart they would have started their own steam store but for music. Pre empt apple and do it for artists by artists. But turns out Metal assholes are assholes unlik
Re: The first rule (Score:2)
Sorry, this is slashdot - if you are portraying those times; you forgot the obligatory "but information wants to be free" rationalization and a three paragraph rant about how artists in the Renaissance didn't need copyrights because they did it for the art and the fact half their work were portraits of the Pope was totally a coincidence.
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Those fans bought a ticket to the concert. Maybe a T-shirt too. Don't the artist make real money from those and only peanuts from CD sales?
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Those fans bought a ticket to the concert. Maybe a T-shirt too. Don't the artist make real money from those and only peanuts from CD sales?
Not really. They make less than peanuts from anything, really. Several of the nationally recognized metal bands back in the 80s would talk about doing an album, doing a tour, then coming home and working for a year or more at some warehouse job or something, saving every penny they could, just so they could afford to do it again. And they'd always come home broke from those one year tours. It's always a very few that make money from album sales or touring. Not to say they don't appreciate the folks coming o
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"... and we'd have gotten away with it..." (Score:5, Funny)
"... if it wasn't for that kid's meddling aunt!"
Thanks for the reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I buy my games on gog whenever possible.
Just pay for it. (Score:1, Troll)
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If you you want something, pay for it.
Happy to, and have.
Bought a LP. Listened to it.
Then bought a cassette. Had to buy the music again.
Then bought a DAT. Had to buy the music again.
Then got a computer. Had to buy the music again.
Then got a MP3 player. Had to buy the music again.
Bought a dead tree book.
Then, bought it again when moving to e-reader.
Then bought it again because the e-reader was wiped clean.
Then bought it again when the next e-reader was wiped clean.
Then I got internet for my home.
Then I got internet for my Phone.
Then I got intern
Re:Just pay for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post is disingenuous. No one is forcing you to buy content over and over again, and content shifting has been declared perfectly legal. Bonus points for buying a separate MP3 for your computer and your MP3 player.
Same with your book. Just how many times are you reading a book and how desperately do you need it at your fingerprints to buy it on multiple platforms multiple times? As for the "wiped clean" argument, that's just bullshit. I switched e-readers completely, forget about wiping it, it was dead, and yet all my books were on the new one.
For the internet you're not paying for the internet, you're paying for access. You don't need to pay for those pieces of access either, the devices you list share your internet. And no TV has it's own internet subscription. Why your car doesn't get internet from your phone's wifi isn't about charging you for internet, it's about charging you for being stupid.
And then the BMW... I like it when people bring up this one because it shows how incredibly ignorant they can be. Subscription heating seats is optional for a BMW. If you want to pay for it outright you can. The subscription is only for those people who didn't do that up front and who want to add the feature to the car. You know how you did that the old way? Either through aftermarket modifications (which you still can do to your BMW), or by buying a whole new car. Do you think you as a consumer would be better off just to keep your silly arse warm?
The DRM world is full of many legitimate concerns and criticisms and I find it genuinely impressive that you've managed to somehow list none of them.
Re:Just pay for it. (Score:4, Informative)
Your post is disingenuous.
Generally, I'd simply ignore an arrogantly ignorant assertion, but I'll simply bookmark it to deal with later. It gets good.
No one is forcing you to buy content over and over again
Correct - it's only if I wish to keep using what I already paid for that I have to keep paying for it. It's like having an HOA, one pays danegled, one never gets rid of the dane. For those that seem to be slower than others, the key concept is called "The principal of First Sale" - which DRM helps to abrogate.
Just how many times are you reading a book
Copyright does not come with a limit on how many times I enjoy a work. I take it you're not a theist, and therefore do not study the Bible or other religious work, or one to contemplate the subtle interplay of a particularly loquacious turn of phase. That's fine. Some appreciate subtly, wit and intelligence. Some don't.
forget about wiping it, it was dead, and yet all my books were on the new one.
I'm deliriously happy for you. That wasn't my experience though, and with DRM, my ability to object was limited and circumscribed by my unwillingness to pay dane gled. I imagine that incensed someone that I was unwilling to pay for something I already paid for. Twice before, in this case.
For the internet you're not paying for the internet, you're paying for access.
In my own driveway, I can access it just fine - if it would let me. Don't look now, but some vehicles are not allowing that, ensuring that if I want to start it later, it will need a cell modem, a subscription, and a signal. Ever hear of a nice little machine called a John Deere combine? Yeah, even with a mifi private mesh, still have to use a carrier of their choice. We don't care, never did, because we don't buy equipment that is lobotomized into trapping people into a forever landlord situation. Which is what copyright maximalists as you seem to be are advocating for. It strikes me as hiring an architect to design my home, then they demand a 3% premium forever anytime the home changes owners. They did nothing more for their work for hire yet feel vastly entitled to a forever pay check.
And then the BMW... I like it when people bring up this one because it shows how incredibly ignorant they can be. Subscription heating seats is optional for a BMW.
Ah, now we return to our mutton. No, sir, for the first two years, it wasn't "optional". "By my mother's frozen Buttocks!" as Chris Bunch and Alan Cole once wrote. Oops, do I need to put a nickle in the slot for using their IP? No, I do not. Not now. Not as long as my memory holds up. But you know the real reason the rental of heated seats stopped? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't out of the kindness of their hearts. It has to do with something technical that was end o life and BMW could no longer control WHAT it did. Do you know what that might possibly be? We already talked about exactly that here.
Do you think you as a consumer would be better off just to keep your silly arse warm?
And this is the point addressed above about subtly, wit, and intelligence; those well able to enjoy it, and those that find it tiresome.
Nonsense (Score:3)
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True that. I remember there being dozens of "backup utilities" ;-) for the Commodore 64 which boasted the ability to copy copy-protected disks, for personal backup purposes only of course.
They were called "nibblers" or "nibble copiers" because they bypassed most of the drive firmware and made raw calls to copy the disk in very small increments. Some of them sounded like they were shredding your floppy drive, and I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them did some hardware damage.
Of course there was an arms ra
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British Gen X here. Everyone loved the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 when I was at school. You made sure to get one of those computers even if your parents were loaded enough to be able to get you a BBC Micro. People who got an Atari games console soon regretted it.
Why? Because it was easy to copy the games. A dual tape tape recorder or two tape recorders did the job. And as a result there was a thriving "market" (no money changed hands) in the playground with kids copying their games for each other.
Now did
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Everyone loved the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 when I was at school. You made sure to get one of those computers even if your parents were loaded enough to be able to get you a BBC Micro. People who got an Atari games console soon regretted it.
Why? Because it was easy to copy the games. A dual tape tape recorder or two tape recorders did the job. And as a result there was a thriving "market" (no money changed hands) in the playground with kids copying their games for each other.
Dual tape recorders? We in the Eastern Europe didn't have that luxury, just single tape recorders and some software to copy games, you loaded the game from cassette to RAM and then write it to another cassette.
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Quite a few people did that too - but TBF that technique was less reliable - a lot of software looked for any evidence any hardware other than (in the Spectrum's case) one of the standard joystick interfaces were plugged in, and refused to run. Additionally some games actually put some of their stages on tape so merely loading the main game and doing a dump wasn't enough to play it. And the memory dumping hardware was often more expensive than a second, 15GBP, tape recorder...
The only real problem with tape
Re: Nonsense (Score:2)
No, it was mainly there was more money in play and worth the technological and bureaucratic battle. CDs and Multimedia PCs brought a larger mainstream market ("look mom, its not for games, I really need this video card and soundblaster 32 to use Encarta for my homework"). Suddenly a smaller percentage of customers engaging "piracy" was a much larger loss of estimated revenue - made it worth industrial investment.
Many older consoles had their own nefarious DRM for the same reason, and they did not even have
Steamless (Score:3)
And that's why, since it was originally developed first and foremost as a copy protection enforcement mechanism, I have never infected any of my machines with Steam.
I remember passing many enjoyable hours playing Team Fortress Classic -- the Half-Life port of Team Fortress written for the original Quake engine. And then, one day, all those servers vanished. WON [wikipedia.org] had been shut off, and I was told to download all my games again, despite the fact that I had legit, paid-for copies of Half-Life, HL: Opposing Force, HL: Blue Shift, and probably one or two others I've forgotten. And, in addition to that, I had to saddle my machine with Steam.
"No," I said. "No I will not."
These days, I buy all my games from GOG.com [gog.com], completely free of copy protection. Yes, I had to wait ten years for Skyrim to become available, but at least I didn't have to cope with all those early bugs.
Re: Steamless (Score:2)
We forced pre 1.6 counterstrike at our lan parties specifically as that was the last version before it required steam.
So much so that people with legit copies were in the minority and if they wanted to play they would need to find an older copy.
All it did was make everyone not want to spend money.
And now we don't have cd media anymore (Score:2)
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drm is a joke (Score:3, Insightful)