Xbox Series X DRM Makes It Near Impossible To Play Games Offline (ign.com) 54
It seems that Microsoft's digital rights management decisions for the Xbox Series X are a serious cause for concern. From a report: According to a video from YouTuber and game developer Modern Vintage Gamer, the Xbox Series X is unable to play games without connecting to Microsoft's servers. He tried games off a disc like Rise of the Tomb Raider as well as Hitman 3 and both refused to work offline. While Microsoft recommends keeping your Xbox Series X as your 'Home Console' in its settings, it's a solution that's described as a 'band-aid' as it doesn't seem to work with every game as it should.
Native Xbox Series X physical games like Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition work fine. It installed off the disc and ran as it should offline. This should in theory mean that games that are solely for the Xbox Series X should work both offline and online. However with Microsoft's focus on Smart Delivery, it means that the current crop of Xbox Series X discs that run on Xbox One as well are essentially coasters. All of this essentially means that you won't be able to play your Xbox games when Microsoft decides to take its servers offline.
Native Xbox Series X physical games like Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition work fine. It installed off the disc and ran as it should offline. This should in theory mean that games that are solely for the Xbox Series X should work both offline and online. However with Microsoft's focus on Smart Delivery, it means that the current crop of Xbox Series X discs that run on Xbox One as well are essentially coasters. All of this essentially means that you won't be able to play your Xbox games when Microsoft decides to take its servers offline.
Inevitable (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
Whew! Good thing we have piracy to save us from a future of our own making.
Re: Inevitable (Score:1)
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My take on this:
If the publishers and game stores insist on that sort of DRM, it is like renting the game for an unspecified time. Unspecified because you don't know when the servers go offline. So I'm only paying rental prices, similar to a cinema ticket. The most expensive game I bought in recent history was Avorion for 20 Euros. Otherwise I might get a Humble Bundle if there is at least one interesting title in it. The last one I bought had Elite Dangerous, paid 9 Euro for that.
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Some of those Windows-only games can be made to run on WINE or with Proton (the Linux compatibility tool built into Steam). You might want to check in advance for each title, before you buy the Humble Bundle.
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Well "just say no" no more addresses the bootleg problem than "just say no" addresses the drug problem. It pretends it doesn't exist. But for those who create they don't have the luxury of pretending it doesn't. It's real, it's not going away, and it's growing.
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Whew! Good thing we have piracy to save us from a future of our own making.
They've been winning the war on Piracy by client server back ending games by making them difficult to preserve. Entire games have had their multiplayer ripped out and disabled.
Unreal engine games like Fall of cybertrons multiplayer doesn't work:
https://support.activision.com... [activision.com]
Re:Inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
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Most don't require downloading to play.
Given a PS5 that has never been online, and still running the 1.0.0 firmware, as provided by the factory.
And running a disc game -- the game will install, and load, and play.
This will be true for the life of the console (it was for PS4)
Should the game be mastered with a later version of the SDK -- the disk itself will be able to install a system update from the disc itself.
The game may have bugs, performance issues, or be silently erroring in the background, trying to
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How much does it matter? Most people have their systems always connected. People want the online features, and the updates, and to play with friends. The people playing offline are really small niche cases. Most games are download only, and even among the big blockbluster games, more people download them than buy a disc.
The discs have to be sent off for mass production months before the launch date, so most games have tons of bugs on the disc. You wouldn't really want to play them unpatched. The discs are m
Viasat's monthly cap (Score:2)
How much does it matter? Most people have their systems always connected.
True, most people aren't stuck with Viasat or other ISPs using cellular or geostationary satellite last mile. These ISPs impose a data transfer allowance in the low double digit gigabytes per month, and their subscribers tend to leave consoles offline to compensate. See recent story ViaSat Asks FCC To Halt SpaceX Starlink Launches Because It Can't Compete [slashdot.org].
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They've lost ... well, my annual expenditure on games, which is about £3.25. Devastating.
demand an refund when the servers taken offline. (Score:3)
demand an refund when the servers taken offline.
Re: demand an refund when the servers taken offlin (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Demand a refund from who?
Back when we had retail stores and telephone numbers, you could walk up to someone and explain the problem. Today, corporations are these legal entities that create things that you digitally download. It is a rare thing to have an employee you can even complain to. Shouting at your web browser won't help.
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When we had retail stores: "You bought a media product and you broke the seal. This entitles you to an exchange of another copy of the same title."
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Better yet, call in needing tech support for the DRM. This is why software I sold didn't have any DRM, money spent troubleshooting licensing issues is just profit evaporating for as long as I support my users.
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demand an refund when the servers taken offline.
Good luck with that. No really. If you attempt to sue MS in 5 or 10 years or whatever they will simply argue you got full value out of the purchase and point to the obsolescence of hardware as an indication that software is never sold with a guarantee that it will run indefinitely.
For you to win you'll likely also need to provide evidence that you didn't actually manage to play the game through to completion, heck depending on MS's store policy (Steam's is two hours), you're probably going to have to prove
maybe the EU will force something (Score:2)
maybe the EU will force something
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Why? The EU is concerned with people getting screwed. It's hardly an argument that you're being screwed when a very cheap form of entertainment has worked for many years.
It's shitty I agree, but I simply see no legal basis nor a basis for actually amending laws for this. It would be quite different say for software you bought to suddenly stop working the same year, but even then nothing happens when a vendor abandons something.
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Then MS needs to put in writing how long the game will be supported. I have games from the 80s that still work, there's simply no need for this other than them gouging consumers.
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Then MS needs to put in writing how long the game will be supported. I have games from the 80s that still work, there's simply no need for this other than them gouging consumers.
They don't. Thing not in writing fall under a reasonable test in the legal world. And it's not reasonable to say you're gouging customers that your $60 piece of entertainment has worked for 10+ years, which is the time frame we're talking about.
Obsolescence is a thing, as is hardware failure. How's the old joke go? "Lifetime warranty? Whose lifetime, yours or the products?"
I'm actually genuinely impressed you have games from the 80s which work. I have no PCs with any OSes capable of executing code from that
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Before I retired a couple years ago, my old company had a 386 machine in a lab that I used, to log equipment coming in/out of the lab. It had no network connection, and had been running the same software it was when it was purchased.
I have a Mac 512ke with original floppies that still work just fine. It has no network connection so there's no need to update the software. I don't actually use it anymore, it's mostly just there with a bunch of my old toys (5 cartridge 8-track player, Texas Instruments TI-2
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The ability to keep something running does in no way create a legal expectation for something to run that long. Fit for service does not imply your PC will work for 30 years, it implies it will work for about 5 and be warrantied for less than that. The litmus test is what the general market considers a normal replacement time.
Microsoft actually found that out the hard way in Australia when someone took them to court over a reasonable expectation of life when the Xbox 360s red ringed. The reasonable expectat
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Or better, don't buy and play their games.
Rub it in! (Score:3, Insightful)
Xbox's competitors can use off-line usage as a bragging point in ads. MS would be forced to back track after they start losing sales.
In the ad a squirrel bites the line. In the Ybox house, they keep playing and don't know or care. In the Xbox house they are growing really bored and start making fun of each others' clothes and bodies by pointing out silly things, and all getting testy.
Re:Rub it in! (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, none of it is really true, or at least, not as sensational as the author is claiming.
The reason you have a Home Console on Xbox is because Xbox licenses can be consumed in two ways; either via a console license (assigned to your home console) or an account license, assigned to your account. This means you only have to buy a game once to play it on two consoles in a household even if bought digitally; i.e. it actually is more permissive than most DRM that only lets you run one copy at a time.
The author is having problems because he's not initially assigned the console he's testing on as his home console; with your home console the license is attached to the console, and downloaded to the console. With your account license it's assigned based on you being signed in (to prevent someone just signing in on tons of consoles and taking them offline to be able to sell many consoles with tons of preactivated games to be used offline). So in essence because he's offline he's trying to play games he's downloaded on a console without any kind of license available to do so - no shit, that describes all DRM. Try copying a game from your mates PC you don't own into Steam and watch Steam tell you to fuck off too. Try copying Playstation or Switch content onto a memory card and plugging it into your console when you don't own it and watch it tell you to fuck off also.
Xbox DRM hasn't changed since at least 2013, some idiot just doesn't understand how it works and has written a blog about how they don't understand how it works. They could of course change it to be more restrictive, so you have to buy one copy of a game for every console in the house if you want to play together, then it would be easier for idiots like this to understand, but it'd also be shit because we'd have to buy more duplicate games.
The fact is, this ability to play your content with two different people on two different consoles is much more permissive than the DRM on Playstation and Switch, and in fact, up until 2014 when family sharing was introduced to Steam, it was even more permissive than Steam. Steam works in a pretty similar way now and has largely followed the same model albeit with a few more restrictions.
Not that any of this matters because the dullards here will just enjoy yet another false chance to have a pop at Microsoft and will ignore the facts, taking this nonsense blog at face value because 1999 and IE6 or whatever decade they're still living in.
Re:Rub it in! (Score:4, Informative)
MVG isn't just some idiot with a blog, the dude actually does minor homebrew dev on multiple consoles and is a fairly prominent console gaming and console security historian. Be less dismissive.
Re: (Score:2)
> Xbox DRM hasn't changed since at least 2013
The fact that the author attempted to install games on the console, without online access, and the games failed to play correctly, I'll take your word on the rest of it.
But then, that's also why I don't own a console (playstation, xbox, or otherwise). I'm not much on the DRM-endowed games. On the other hand, I lose anyway (for the most part), playing multiplayer-online games.
And Minecraft.
And the DRM-free version of Civ IV.
Neither of which absolutely require
That's why I like (Score:2)
steam, I've not had problems like this.
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It lets you play offline? Last time I tried, I had to be connected online in order to switch it to "offline" mode and also still be able to play games. Has this changed? Can you enable offline mode without logging in, and will games still work? I'm thinking no, but I could be wrong here.
If you have to log in to turn on offline mode, then there isn't a difference between this and Steam. You still need a connection to log in which defeats the purpose. Even after you enable offline mode, you need to check-in a
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I think you missed the part where the gamer had the disc and the disc refused to work offline. Steam doesn't usually come with discs.
Also, the only time I log into steam is when I purchase and download a new game. I can't recall ever being required to log in outside that. In fact, it's kind of a pain because I log in so rarely, that I usually have to reset my password since the password is usually an old one not using whatever password trick I am currently utilizing.
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Needing to be online in Steam to go offline was a bug that was fixed before 2011 or so. Early versions of the Steam client weren't good at caching the "receipt" data that allows offline play. The remaining difference is you have to be online to install a new Steam game even if you have the disc.
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Yeah, Steam is great! You can install desktop applications like EVGA utilities. As soon as that's running on one PC, the "Steam DRM" thinks you're "playing a game" so locks out Steam on all other machines you have (in my case, a desktop, a laptop, and a HTPC). That's right, having the EVGA Fan Controller running on one computer literally prevents me from playing games on another. Steam is fucking GREAT!
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Yeah, its only some applications. Wallpaper Engine for instance doesn't trigger the DRM, but the EVGA Fan Controller does. Its fucking stupid.
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That's right, having the EVGA Fan Controller running on one computer literally prevents me from playing games on another. Steam is fucking GREAT!
It does no such thing. Running multiple games on the same steam account on different machines causes the Steam account to be logged out on whatever machine you're *NOT* using. At the very worst having EVGA Fan Controller running on one computer will cause that computer's Steam login page to appear when you start a game on another. At the best you may already be playing a game, and that game will continue to run providing it's not an online game, because logging out of steam while a game is running doesn't a
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Truth in advertising (Score:2)
I'd like to see some standardization by the industry that indicates which games can be played without constant access to the Internet and which games require it. It's kind of a pain to buy a game only to find out it's nearing its end-of-life and they're going to pull the plug on the servers.
Honestly they should never pull the plug on game servers, seems like running them on AWS, GCS, or Azure for the handful of remaining users would be relatively cheap. But of course that interferes with getting those users
Re: Truth in advertising (Score:1)
The test is to log onto GoG.com and see if they sell the game.
If they do, you can install an .exe installer that doesn't require a connection to anywhere to 'activate' or run.
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When there is a Steam sale I take a peek on GOG and see if I can get a good deal there instead or at least put interesting stuff on my wishlist hoping it goes on sale.
I do like that Steam pushes harder for Linux support, even if through wine/Proton. The offline mode of Steam is somewhat usable but not nearly as good as full DRM-free and simple installer options on GOG.
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Valve was the pioneer of this model. CS 1.5 was on WON for multiplayer backbone. Then Valve decided they wanted to create a store front called "steam".
When CS 1.6 came out, they shut down WON servers. If you wanted to continue playing CS, you were forced to update to CS 1.6 and migrate to steam. Which was a pile of shit at the time, crashing all the time, having a user interface that was utterly horrible and barely working much of the time. But if you wanted to continue playing Counter Strike, or Team Fortr
It's deinately WHEN not IF (Score:2, Troll)
>> you won't be able to play your Xbox games when Microsoft decides to take its servers offline.
Microsoft have already repeatedly demonstrated leaving their customers out to dry like this.
It boggles my mind how sheeple keep buying Microsoft products, knowing this will happen sooner or later. Not me.
"Needs eloboration" (Score:3)
So, if I am reading this correctly, the behavior is *reasonable*, but not communicated correctly.
The Xbox always needed online updates for back compat games (starting with 360 on Xbox One). Apparently, they recompile / optimize the binaries, so it works fine on the new system.
Tomb Raider, and others being back compat games, they would of course require an online update.
The questions are:
1- Could they have communicated better? Especially when the game cases that are sold advertises "Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S" on their packaging.
2- Could they have made a generic offline emulator, that did not require updates, but would work with "not so optimized" code from last gen?
I am not holding my breath for (2), but clearly (1) is a fault on their end.
And this is why... (Score:2)
Hardly matters (Score:2)
It's not like most games from the last 10 years have worked from disk, anyway. Most need a 20 gig day 1 patch to actually, yanno, function.
I'm exaggerating, but only just.
DRM? more like DRM! (Score:2)
I prefer to call them Digital Restrictions Management.