Disney's Decision Not To Renew SecuROM License Bricks 'Tron: Evolution'
from the drm-muh-gurd dept
Show of hands: who remembers SecuROM? Alright, put your hands down, we can’t see each other anyway. So, SecuROM was a really bad DRM used by several publishers to “protect” video games, by which I mean it mostly just annoyed legitimate buyers, got some of those publishers sued, and ultimately made the game unplayable on modern operating systems. The track record is enough to make you wonder why anyone would use DRM at all after this whole debacle.
But… it’s still happening. Back in 2010, Disney released the game Tron: Evolution. The game was laced with SecuROM and suffered many of the same problems as previously described. As an example of how you don’t really own what you buy anymore, the game simply bricked when Disney decided not to renew its SaaS subscription for SecuROM software.
Players trying to launch Tron: Evolution are now met with a message telling them that the ‘serial key has expired’. This applies to the retail version as well as the Steam version which is delisted from the store. The cause of this problem appears to be Disney not renewing their ‘subscription’ to the SecuROM activation system for this game. This means that even existing owners of the delisted game cannot play it for the foreseeable future.
Fun! Notably, those that pirated the game aren’t having this issue. Also notable is that when at least one person opened up a support ticket with SecuROM itself to fix the issue, the SecuROM folks told that person:
“You are right with your assumption, we can’t run this service anymore for Disney titles, therefore all activations are denied.
Best would be to contact Disney to get a refund for your purchase or convince them to release an uprotected version of the game.”
So as not to lose sight of this, the DRM company told the legit purchaser of a game that they should try to get the publisher of the game to release a non-protected game so that it could once again be played. If that doesn’t highlight the absurdity of this particular story for you, nothing will.
It also would have been one thing if Disney had been the slightest bit proactive about all of this. After all, the company knew it wasn’t going to renew the SecuROM subscription and therefore knew that such a decision would brick a whole bunch of people’s purchased games. Why not proactively release the game without DRM? Or alert purchasers, or the media, of what was coming? Why is it okay for Disney to essentially take back a product bought by a customer with no recompense?
The only reported communication from Disney is something like, “Yeah, we know, we’ll do something about it someday.”
Originally posted by Disney Games & Apps Support:
Hello raidebaron,Our team is aware that the activation site for this game is no longer live and has since been shut down. At this time, if the game was not already previously installed it will no longer be able to be launched. We are looking into this hiccup and hoping to patch this in the future. However, at this time we do not have any current estimated time on when this will be.
Thank you for your patience.
No, thank you, Disney, for demonstrating that you don’t really care all that much about your own customers.
Filed Under: copyright, drm, ownership, piracy, securom, tron, tron: evolution, video games
Companies: disney, securom
Comments on “Disney's Decision Not To Renew SecuROM License Bricks 'Tron: Evolution'”
Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
People have been deprived of their ability to play a game through purposeful negligence on the part of Disney. It sounds like everyone who purchased the game could be part of it. Gee if only there were some kind of group type lawsuit that could be used…
Re: Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
Most likely there’s a clause in the EULA saying that they’re not responsible for you being able to play the game and that you agree to resolve any disputes over your use of the game through binding arbitration. This is all thanks to a SCOTUS decision a few years ago that pretty much gutted the whole concept of class action lawsuits.
Re: Re: Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
That’d be a good point. Does anyone have a copy of the EULA to check?
Re: Re: Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
"Most likely there’s a clause in the EULA saying that they’re not responsible for you being able to play the game and that you agree to resolve any disputes over your use of the game through binding arbitration."
Of course there is. And even if there weren’t, I’m sure copyright law has the developer covered.
DRM remains one of the main reasons as to why no one should be dumb enough to install anything other than the pirated version – whether you bought the game or not.
Re: Re: Re: Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
In more recent years, I’ve become more leery of installing pirated software. Pretty much every patch or keygen gets flagged as malicious by every anti-virus. I was once told to just use a group’s verification tool to ensure that the release comes from them, but where do you get a trusted copy of the tool itself when even the tool registers as a virus?
And even then, half the comments say it works great and the other half complain of problems. Some games have complicated instructions like "Disconnect your internet, install the game, delete mot.dll, edit the INI file, run the patch, install the fake activation server, choose manual activation, run the game, quit, copy the game loader to the directory, enjoy. Note that the game will crash after level 7, so you’ll need to use the included save to continue from level 8."
OK, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I know I’ve seen stuff like this in the comments for various games over the years. It used to be that you installed a game, copied a cracked EXE file to the game directory and either patched the game, or used the pre-patched one, which only had a few bytes different from the original. Now, the DRM has gotten so complex that you have to jump through all kinds hoops to get it working.
And for those who will interpret this to mean that I only used pirated software; I actually have a fairly sizable collection of original games. Most were either bought used or at closeout stores, but they’re genuine legitimate retail copies. I’d buy a copy of a game, install it, then use a crack so that I didn’t need the disc in the drive. I haven’t bought any games in a long time, partly because my system is outdated, but also because I refuse to buy anything that requires online activation. I would have bought a copy of Half-Life II long ago (I own the original games), if it wasn’t for the Steam requirement.
Re: Re: Re:2 Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
"Pretty much every patch or keygen gets flagged as malicious by every anti-virus."
To be expected. For a patch or keygen to work it has to write into RAM. The AV will flag this as a potential virus unless the write comes with a validation certificate or exists in the AV whitelist.
(Imho that provides only a false sense of security though. Any trojan written using a lifted certificate will go straight through your AV without getting checked).
Therefore ensure you only dl the crack which has a peer review, which most torrent index sites possess.
"And even then, half the comments say it works great and the other half complain of problems. "
Usually the games which, even when installed through legitimate means, have issues. The rube goldberg-esque workarounds are necessary because some DRM is so heavy that it actively multiplies the load on your CPU.
In such cases the "game" you run is about 50% game, 50% DRM. One of the reasons why the latest instances of SecuROM are under such heavy fire.
But i guess you can see the issue. When Sony first launched the precursor of SecuROM without telling it’s consumers (google sony rootkit scandal) it actually destroyed the computers of thousands of legitimate consumers. Contemporary DRM is less destructive, but certainly not less obstructive. When your game sends a hundred calls a second for gameplay and the DRM sends thousands you KNOW there is a problem.
Re: Re: Re:3 Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
How so? A patch just creates a new copy of the EXE with a few bytes changed, which is no different than a program that lets you change the tags in an MP3 file. A keygen doesn’t do anything to the original file, you run it, possibly enter the name you want to use, and it generates a serial number.
One of the games I remember looking for on Pirate Bay and giving up because none of the cracks seemed to be 100% was Alice: Madness Returns. I refuse to buy it (even used) because it needs online activation.
When Burnout Paradise Remastered came out for Windows, I was happy. Even though I have an older system that won’t run it, I figured that I can always pick up a copy in the future when I have a better system. Sadly it seems there was never a retail release, it’s digital download only and so far I haven’t seen any cracks for it. Apparently it’s infected with Denuvo. 🙁
Re: Re: Re:4 Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
"How so? A patch just creates a new copy of the EXE with a few bytes changed, which is no different than a program that lets you change the tags in an MP3 file."
Any executable loads a program. That, essentially, is why most AV’s scan them on startup and quarantine them on suspicion. "Suspicion" here means there’s no verified digital signature or hash sum of the .exe file in the AV’s whitelist.
One of the troubles with DRM is that in order for a cracked .exe to work it often has to include writing into RAM to head off or intercept a few hundred DRM validity checks.
A key generator is an executable and usually get hit by AV false positive identification because the packaging and it’s purpose closely mimics a virus file.
"Sadly it seems there was never a retail release, it’s digital download only and so far I haven’t seen any cracks for it. Apparently it’s infected with Denuvo."
Ouch. I can believe that, given that it’s on EA’s origin. I’d rather take my chances with unknown viruses in my sandbox rather than let that active malware on my PC.
Re: Re: Re:5 Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
Wouldn’t that result in most every program being flagged as a virus until someone takes an in-depth look at it and declares it safe? I usually check downloaded programs with the VirusTotal website. It first checks the hash of the file to see if it’s already been scanned. On a few occasions, it didn’t know the hash and actually uploaded the file to be scanned for the first time. Usually if I’ve downloaded it from a reputable source like Sourceforge or GitHub, the file scans as clean.
I assumed that removing the DRM validity checks was the whole point of the cracked EXE or patch. They don’t need to be headed off if they’re never made in the first place. Besides, wouldn’t leaving them in and adding more code to fool them increase the overhead of running a pirated copy, rather than decrease it?
Its purpose should only be to run a mathematical formula to generate a code. And have you noticed that they almost never include any pre-generated codes in the readme file so that you can avoid running the keygen?
I’ve never run any game that requires Origin or Steam. I think my GOTY edition of Half-Life insisted on installing an early version of Steam to handle online multiplayer, but I never used it. It wasn’t required for playing the single-player campaign.
Re: Re: Re:6 Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
"Wouldn’t that result in most every program being flagged as a virus until someone takes an in-depth look at it and declares it safe?"
Not rarely, it does exactly this.
There are a few reasons as to why security specialists like Bruce Schneier claim the average user is generally screwed.
An AV works in multiple ways;
1) Compares any executable and any script loaded to a blacklist containing known segments of virus code.
2) Compares any executable or script loaded to a whitelist of exceptions.
3) Applies heuristics – i.e. tries to "guess", based on various variables in the executable, whether it could be considered a virus program.
Depending on how this has been set up then yes, you’ll end up generating false positives all over the place. And this holds particularly true for executables so small their whole hash sum resembles one or several key pieces of known virus code.
I’d compare it to hearing a few bars of a song hummed which could be any of a thousand songs but which immediately gets recognized as that annoying earworm you just can’t get out of your head.
"Its purpose should only be to run a mathematical formula to generate a code."
True enough, but see above – enough viruses have been inserted in key generators that by now most key generators have hash sums close enough to previously identified viruses that they are now identified as "Generic 32 bit trojan" and similar.
This is why I use spybot and malwarebytes in passive modes as well – because if neither of those or my active AV can identify an executable older than a few weeks or so as a virus by name, then I usually assume we’re talking about a false positive.
"I’ve never run any game that requires Origin or Steam."
Steam, i can accept, as long as they have a page describing which of their games use Denuvo so i can avoid them. But i can heartily empathize with anyone who avoids them.
Re: Re: Re:7 Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
I thought hashes were supposed to be generated by an algorithm that generated a truly unique hash for each file? I just tried it myself by creating two small text text files of only 14 bytes and changing only one letter between them. Each had completely different hashes whether I used SFV, MD5 or SHA1.
I won’t even accept a modern console game that downloads patches and DLC from an online service because none of that stuff can’t be truly backed up. If I can’t buy it complete in a retail release, they can keep it.
Re: Re: Re:8 Sounds ripe for a lawsui
"I thought hashes were supposed to be generated by an algorithm that generated a truly unique hash for each file?"
Yep. My fault on the definition. All checksums are hashes but not all hashes are checksums.
Let me restate the above;
"..enough viruses have been inserted in key generators that by now most key generators have code sections and call commands close enough to previously identified viruses…"
An AV checks the blacklist and whitelist against a hash and comes up with a name of the running executable but for the heuristics it has to look at similarity to examples of known viruses.
So anything close enough to look like a virus or a bit of one but which doesn’t match the hash of a virus in the AV database will be identified as "generic" malware.
The key here is that if the bit of code you’re looking at is older than a few weeks and was indeed malware then it would have been identified as such and your AV would give it a name. If three different security suits either don’t peg it as malware or try to say it’s a "generic" then pot odds are it’s not malware.
Malwarebytes and spybot will almost always peg it as a "Potentially Unwanted Program" when they can’t identify it but are fairly sure it’s not actively harmful.
Re: Re: Re:9 Sounds ripe for a la
Thanks for the clarification. Even seeing false positives makes me nervous though. I guess it’s just a psychological thing.
It’s too bad that even legitimate game owners have to go through this crap if they want to avoid the effects of DRM. In the olden days, there were entire companies dedicated to removing this garbage from programs and it was all legal. Now the DMCA makes criminals out of people who dislike being treated like criminals.
Re: Re: Re:8 Sounds ripe for a lawsui
For hash n bits long, there are 2^n-1 unique hashes. For a file of length l, there are 2^l -1 unique files possible, and each set of files of different l can be considered a unique set. Therefore the are many more possible files that possible hashes, and hash collision are possible, and will occur.
A hash is useful for security purposes so long as deliberate collisions, that is two files with same has, cannot be realistically created with available computing power. MD5 hashes are deprecated for security purposes, as with modern computing power is is possible to create deliberate collisions.
Re: Re: Re:2 Sounds ripe for a lawsuit
Added to the above, these days if the game contains such heavy-handed DRM that the circumvention methods are too complex I simply choose to go without.
I’ll buy a good game, then install the cracked version.
If cracking it is too hard I choose to neither buy nor download.
The rare few games i get through steam? Only if they’re usable in full offline mode and I can verify they aren’t protected through SecuRom or Starforce.
Fortunately Fallout 3 and New vegas are on GOG – and notably far more stable without DRM.
Let's hear it for no-disc and fixed .exe's
I just wanted to play games without the CD/DVD in the drive to protect my investment in a shiny metallic disc. gamecopyworld has been my friend and savior since the mid-2000s. Just be careful about what buttons you click, so you get the actual files you need instead of an ad or necessary "installer."
More recently, I have used it to get these games to run at all on Windows 10.
Re: Let's hear it for no-disc and fixed .exe's
Discs in all the time also burn out your drive for no reason. Not as costly a problem to replace a drive this century, but still stupid and annoying.
Re: Re: Let's hear it for no-disc and fixed .exe's
Nonsense.
Re: Re: Re: Let's hear it for no-disc and fixed .exe's
Those internal cd/dvd drives die early, I never performed failure analysis on one but continual operation certainly could contribute towards a premature failure. Don’t some of them have auto shutdown after a period of time?
We already got paid. what makes you think you deserve anything else?
Re: Re:
Paid for what? You mean "we already got your money". To qualify as payment, there must be a delivery of agreed-upon goods.
If Disney can prove that the purchase was for the purpose of having a nice packaging and accompanying leaflet as well as an original CD rather than a playable game, they’d be off the hook. However, it is unlikely that the purchase occured through a channel advertising this kind of ware, like, say, an antiquity store.
And even then that does not stop Disney from having obligations it agreed to unless they are part of this antiquity scheme: I remotely remember someone buying up a bunch of antique war bonds on a hunch that happened later on (due to some comparatively unrelated bilateral settlements) to become cashable as a side effect, making a killing for him.
Re: Re: Re:
Most people consider it a payment even if the promised good(s)/service(s) is/are never delivered or fail to work upon delivery. In such a case, though, the payment is supposed to be refunded or substitute good(s)/service(s) of equal or similar value are to be provided. Otherwise, a lawsuit is feasible.
Basically, a payment is a transfer of money with the understanding that the recipient of the money will deliver (or has already delivered) some predetermined good(s) and/or service(s) (that is not directly related to the money) in exchange as part of a bilateral or multilateral agreement, or to pay off—in part or in whole—a debt. Even if the other side(s) fail to keep their end of the deal, it’s still a payment.
Re: Re: Re:
"If Disney can prove that the purchase was for the purpose of having a nice packaging and accompanying leaflet as well as an original CD rather than a playable game, they’d be off the hook."
Sadly that’s about the situation to which you agree when you click the "i accept" button on the EULA.
I could’ve sworn that this game used Games for Windows Live as well (which adds extra eww to this shit sandwich).
Class action?
Re: Class action?
Doubtful, not enough people and besides I’m pretty sure you can legally circumvent it for your own game since the DRM is broken.
Re: Re: Class action?
I’m pretty sure that the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM, even if you paid for the good/service containing DRM, and that the Librarian of Congress hasn’t made an exception for cases like this. So no, I don’t think you can legally circumvent the DRM for your own game.
Re: Re: Re:
Yep, circumventing DRM (regardless of context) is illegal. I don’t think there has ever been an exception for that since the DMCA became law.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
So DRM gives perpetual copyright by the back door, including over public domain works by adding DRM.
Re: Re: Re:3
Putting DRM on an ebook version of Jane Eyre does not put that novel back under copyright.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
"Putting DRM on an ebook version of Jane Eyre does not put that novel back under copyright."
Except in practice. Sure, the legal situation may be different but in reality the only way you own that book is if you circumvent the DRM. I think that remains illegal whether the data is covered by copyright or not.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
There are a bunch of exceptions, changed triennially. For example: "Video games in the form of computer programs embodied in physical or downloaded formats that have been lawfully acquired as complete games, when the copyright owner or its authorized representative has ceased to provide access to an external computer server necessary to facilitate an authentication process to enable local gameplay" (2015) and "Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsoleteness" (2000).
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Oh, good. I wasn’t sure about that.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Don’t be too relaxed.
None of these exemptions are permanent: they have to be re-affirmed every three years.
It would be easier for disney to give customers credit for the value of the game,buy any game or film on the disney store .
after 9 years who would be playing this game anyway.
it would be hard to release a patch to remove drm from the game .
It seems the only drm that works is steam amd games released by ea, blizzard and its not really practical or easy to copy games released for console,s ,when you can buy a preowned game for 10-20 dollars .
Re: Re:
As hard as…. adding a crack found with a minute of running a search for it to the steam download?
If nintendo are gonna sell ROMs of their games with the headers from the groups who ripped them left in, I don’t see it being too hard for Disney to roll an already available crack into an official update.
Re: Re:
Strange as it seems, many people don’t just play a game for a day or two and then never again… unless the game sucks bad. I still play many games from the 80s and 90s.
Sorry, but that’s super-easy, barely an inconvenience. GOG does it all the time, and they’re not even the developers of the games they remove DRM from. The actual developer can do this in less than an hour, depending on the complexity of the build system. Most games would take less than 5 minutes to rebuild without DRM.
Re:
Super Metroid was released in 1994. 25 years later, people still play that game — bolstered, in part, by the Super Metroid Randomizer.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was released in 1991. 28 years later, people still play that game — bolstered, in part, by the Zelda 3 Randomizer.
Final Fantasy (the first one) was released in 1987. 32 years later, people still play that game — bolstered, in part, by the Final Fantasy 1 Randomizer.
And I can think of dozens of older games, all from an era before CD-ROMs and polygons and whatnot, that people still play. Those games don’t need randomizers, either. Hell, you can still find people who say the best hockey game ever made (and maybe even the best sports game ever) was NHL ’94 for the Sega Genesis. And the annual Evolution Championship Series has side tournaments for fighting games that date back to the days of (and sometimes includes) Street Fighter II.
Games can have far more longevity than you think. When you want to ask “who would be playing this years-old game”, I can give you a simple answer: “Someone.” And that answer alone is enough.
Re: Re:
Who would read or watch the Iliad, after all it is nearly 3000 years old as a written work, and was centuries old when it was written iown,
Re: Re: Re:
"Who would read or watch the Iliad, after all it is nearly 3000 years old as a written work, and was centuries old when it was written iown,"
…and sadly our resident troll, the ever-present Bobmail/Blue/Jhon still insists that it is because the Iliad wasn’t copyrighted that homer isn’t writing much today…
Re: Re:
If I like a game, its age doesn’t matter to me. At some point, I plan to play TRON 2.0, which came out 16 years ago. I still occasionally play some C64 games from the 80s.
Frankly, TRON Evolution doesn’t appeal to me much, not because of its age, but because it looks like a typical console-style 3rd person game where even though you have a mouse on the computer, the game is designed to be played with two thumbsticks. Hordes of respawning enemies requiring tons of melee combat. Basically God or War inside a computer.
Until the day that Valve gets bought out and the new owners decide that they no longer want to support all their old releases any more.
What happens to all the Steam-crippled Star Wars games when Disney decides to create their own game distribution platform and revokes the license for Steam to sell them? Does Steam have some provision that anyone who paid for one of those games can continue to activate it and even download a new copy if necessary, even though they no longer have the license to "sell" it to new customers?
Re: Re:
A lot of people still play the original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, the original Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong Country 1, 2, and 3, Pac-Man, Galaga, the classic Mega Man games, the Mega Man X series, Street Fighter II (and its subsequent iterations), the first three Mortal Kombat games, the SNK fighting games, Final Fight, Mario Kart 64, Mario Party 2 and 3, Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, and 3, Sonic CD, Metroid, Super Metroid, Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, and Crystal, Earthbound, Final Fantasy I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and X, the Dragon Quest series, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and many other games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. People love to play games from their childhoods over and over again if they’re any good.
Also, the reason why we know about this is because there were a number of people who wanted to play Tron: Evolution and had purchased it but couldn’t play because they hadn’t previously installed it, while others could play because they had already installed it and hadn’t uninstalled it, thus allowing people to discover the issue didn’t affect anyone who had it installed by October 2019 but did affect everyone who didn’t but attempted to install it after that month.
I hate it when people (publishers, developers, gamers, critics, or outsiders) assume that a game stops having value just because it’s X years old, so no one plays it anymore. Sure, Tron: Evolution doesn’t have anywhere near the same active player base as, say, Super Mario 64 or the latest CoD game, but they’re far from nonexistent. I still play Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 1 and 2, a pair of B-grade platformers from the ’00s. They were games I grew up with, so I always feel nostalgic playing them.
Re: Re:
"It seems the only drm that works is steam amd games released by ea, blizzard…"
Because all of your stated examples are of DRM which is either less intrusive, easily cracked, or both.
Steam, Blizzard and EA sell because their brands are good. As Steam has repeatedly noted, they know their DRM is cracked by boilerplate template hacks these days and they don’t really care because people keep buying their stuff anyway.
Re: Re:
"after 9 years who would be playing this game anyway"
Raises hand
Although I’m on XBox rather than PC, this game has been in my endless backlog for a while. Thanks to my participation in community events and achievement hunting sites, I often dig into my backlog, and as it happens the current Christmas themed challenge I’m involved in includes this game as eligible.
You might personally be happy never to look backwards and only consume whatever’s being sold to you right now, but there’s still an audience – especially for things that a person has already bought.
"it would be hard to release a patch to remove drm from the game .
It really shouldn’t be any more difficult than patching any other kind of bug. The fact that this bug was deliberately introduced should make it easier to fix, unless their software development process is so broken that they made an optional 3rd party product a vital component of their builds.
"It seems the only drm that works "
No DRM "works". It only stops piracy for a matter of days or weeks (if at all), and once it’s cracked nothing is "protected". After that, it’s only people who legally ought the game who have problems.
That’s the problem – all DRM fails, and when it does the pirates have a better product than people who bought the thing.
Re: Re: Re:
"That’s the problem – all DRM fails, and when it does the pirates have a better product than people who bought the thing."
Except in those cases when the pirates have the better version from the get-go. Assassin’s Creed stands as sterling example on where when the certificate server went down, ONLY pirates had a working game at all…
GOG is a goldmine these days. FO3 and Oblivion are far more stable without any DRM at all, I’ve noticed.
Re: Re:
Tell that to the Skyrim modding community. Especially the Skyblivion Dev team…
Few games are bad enough to have no lasting playerbase.
Re: Re: Re:
"Tell that to the Skyrim modding community. Especially the Skyblivion Dev team…"
Or, looking through the nexusmods supported games section, a few dozen other old goodies, including most of the fallout and dragon age series as well.
Most games which were good enough to develop a following and can be changed to accept modded content will remain popular for decades.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
It doesn’t even have to be something like that. One guy I work with has recently decided to replay the Mass Effect series in the last week (the first being now 12 years old). I see people on Reddit getting excited over their retro console purchases all the time. I’ve personally been known to pick up games on GoG that are way older and decide to give them a shot, or replay something I haven’t played for years (one example from this year being Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders… from 1988!).
A person who accepts self-destructing cultural history because they don’t personally want to play anything that’s older than a few years is calling themselves out as an idiot on numerous fronts.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
"I’ve personally been known to pick up games on GoG that are way older and decide to give them a shot, or replay something I haven’t played for years (one example from this year being Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders… from 1988!)."
Hell, I’d make a guess that the old Sierra Games and Lucasarts stuff – King’s Quest, Monkey Island 1&2, Maniac mansion: Day of the tentacle 1&2, etc…still have followings.
Uh, damn, a quick google later and I see that a few of those even have fan-made sequels…and remastered versions issued in 2016.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Shocking, right? If you make something good, people remember it and try to reproduce it?
But not. according to this dick it was made older than X years ago therefore it should be erased from history.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
You want fanmade sequels and such for old games? Just look at the Mother/Earthbound series.
Jim Sterling did a video on this earlier in the week, and he said something that rang true with me: Publishers should call it “conditional access”. As in: “You’re not buying a copy of the game for yourself, you’re buying conditional access to the game.” He also said publishers should absolutely have to advertise the “conditional access” fact with every game they sell. I’ve had a hard time finding a flaw in that argument.
Re:
If you read the EULA, they usually do.
For example, here are some paragraphs from Minecraft’s EULA, one without too much legal jargon:
"When you buy our Game, you receive a license that gives you permission to install the Game on your own personal device and use and play it on that device as set out in this EULA. This permission is personal to you, so you are not allowed to distribute the Game (or any part of it) to anyone else. This also means you cannot sell or rent the Game, or make it available for access to other people and you cannot pass on or resell any license keys."
"Although we license you permission to install on your device and play our Game, we are still the owners of it. We are also the owners of our brands and any content contained in the Game. Therefore, when you pay for our Game, you are buying a license to play / use our Game in accordance with this EULA – you are not buying the Game itself. The only permissions you have in connection with the Game and your installation of it are the permissions set out in this EULA."
"We might make upgrades, updates or patches (we call them all "updates") available from time to time, but we don’t have to. We are also not obliged to provide ongoing support or maintenance of any Game."
"When you get a copy of our Game, we provide it "’as is"’. Updates are also provided "’as is"’. This means that we are not making any promises to you about the standard or quality of our Game, or that our Game will be uninterrupted or error free. We are not responsible for any loss or damage that it may cause. You bear the entire risk as to its quality and performance."
But of course, as the EULA also states:
"The terms of this EULA do not affect any legal (statutory) rights that you may have under the law that applies to you for the Game. You might have certain rights which the law that applies to you says cannot be excluded. Nothing we say in these terms will affect those legal rights, even if we say something which sounds like it contradicts your legal rights. That’s what we mean when we say “subject to applicable law”."
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Nobody reads the EULA. Not even people who make games for a living read the EULA. And Jim’s suggestion was that “conditional access” games advertise the fact up front, not in a legal document. The box cover or the Steam description or what have you would have “conditional access” on it. And, again, it’s hard to find a flaw with the proposition.
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It’d be like those games that say they are in “Early Access” or those that are “Free to Play” rather than just “free”. Something made clear on the main page.
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True, but a moot point until the courts start accepting that view and striking EULAs down. They’ve shown little willingness to do so. Until then, they (like other contracts of adhesion) should be treated as legally binding.
The FTC might have some leeway to call it false advertising, when the EULA and advertisements contradict each other. But they have little real power.
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That’s not really true. We don’t know what the courts would have done because the game publishers have all pulled out or settled out of court rather than risk their EULAs being killed completely. The courts have yet to have a chance to rule on them.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Any references here? Did people actually get decent results, e.g. refunds?
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I wish they would too, but it’s a lot harder marketing pitch.
"Buy" has so much more appeal than "use temporarily for a significant one-time fee". At the very least, the value proposition doesn’t seem the same.
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Probably part of the reason why Jim Sterling wants it put in: It decentiveses purchases and would force the game companies either being more honest or changing how they distribute games.
Shame
Regardless of it being a movie tie-in game, it was actually really good, made you feel like it was part of Tron Evolution and the awesome short lived Animated show. Good thing the Pirates are there to keep it archived for future generations.
Also I’ve noticed when talking about this almost anywhere, people justify it saying how it was an old game, so who cares. Are people this ignorant? Some of the top most played games are 10-20 years old. AoE2, Cs 1.6, Source, TF2, BroodWar the list goes on. Hell Pac-Man is still played competitive every year.
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I guess they’d be slightly unamused if they had some historic car in their garage and then a representative from the manufacturer came by to remove the wheels and motor.
"It was an old car, so who cares."
Saw this on youtube.
Jim sterling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yUmR6eQNrY
Yong Yea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir0sL-f-65c
This pretty much explains that video games are like food that have a shelf life. For games that don’t rely on a server (as in, don’t use always-online DRM or require periodic “authentication”), they are only (legally) available for a limited time (as long as it is being developed and sold), but once you bought it, you don’t have to worry about the company having the ability to essentially destroy the game you bought.
Not so with games that do require internet connection to the server. Only a few companies would patch out the DRM to make the game useable after the end-of-support of the DRM.
What cause games to no longer be available is because:
-Company goes out of business
-Company gives up support of their works, couldn’t upkeep the game.
-The license to use other IPs (movies, TV shows, comics, etc.) have expired. I can’t stress this enough that lots of old games end up biting the dust and people wanting to play these games are FORCED to pirate these games. This also includes region-exclusive games.
And companies wonder why people pirate. Copyright is portrayed as the problem, and piracy as the solution.
Re: Saw this on youtube.
Is it?
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In regards to game preservation? Yes, it is. The 1994 Alien vs. Predator arcade game never had a release outside of arcades for 25 years. Capcom could have lost the source code in the interim, or rights issues could have never allowed for the game’s re-release. People could only preserve the game through copyright infringement. I cannot fathom how many games might similarly be lost without (technically) illegal preservation efforts.
Copyright poses a problem. “Piracy” delivers a solution. Publishers should not act shocked when this kind of situation happens and people turn to illegal acts for the sake of playing a copy of a game they believed they owned.
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I argue that binary code shouldn’t receive direct copyright protection. Only source code, with the resulting binary covered as a derivative work.
The bargain with society is that you are given a limited government-enforced period where you have the exclusive rights to publish a work. If you aren’t revealing the complete work e.g. by registering the work with the Library of Congress, then you shouldn’t get the government benefit of copyright protection.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
That’s a complicated argument. A counter-point would be that the source code and the compiled binary are merely two different translations of the same work; one in Human-readable source code and one in Machine-readable binary code.
It’s not too different from two copies of the same book, but one is written in Japanese kanji and one is written in Latin letters.
It is true, most people who would run the Library of Congress cannot understand the Machine-readable code directly, and must rely on a translator to decompile it first.
But most people who would run the Library of Congress also cannot understand Japanese kanji directly, and must rely on a translator to convert it first.
Consider the ever-popular art of manga and anime, often created in Japan in Japanese, then occasionally translated to English by an American company.
Would it be fair to deny copyright to a work written in Japanese unless they provide an English copy?
Or, if what matters is what was the original written form, and not readability of the work: would it be fair to deny copyright to an English translation of a Japanese original, unless the Japanese original is first registered?
I feel as if the first argument is rather facetious, but there are good points on either side of the latter.
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*Disclaimer: Yes, I’m an otakku. Get over it.
Not entirely. If the country issuing the copyright receives no benefit from the work, it makes sense not to enforce it’s copyright. After all it’s the country that receives no benefit that must expend resources (police, judicial system time, legal filings, all funded by their taxpayers) to enforce the copyright within it’s jurisdiction. Not the holder of the copyright.
Now some may say that the issuing country gets a benefit in the enforcement of it’s copyrights in other countries / jurisdictions, and even that common enforcement bolsters the chances of a localization being produced, but that’s not a guarantee unlike the enforcement. There is no requirement here that a localization be made, nor even the requirement that the original (native) version be made available to the public of the enforcing country. Indeed, there are many works that remain unavailable short of importing them from other countries, yet we have a requirement to enforce their copyrights. In some cases, even importing is actively fought by the copyright holder. (See Lawsuits / VPN-Bans on Content Distribution Networks / DRM that refuses to allow access based on location / Customs confiscation / etc.) The only thing that is mandatory is our expenditure of our own resources to defend a work we may never have access to.
I would say yes. Translations are often not accurate to the original portrayals. In fact many translations (especially of the Japanese To English variety) tend to include censorship or complete re-works of intent to make the translation more appealing to the local audience. Sure some are not going to care that the latest loli manga’s MC gets a longer skirt, but just as many would be angry if something like an entire game were to be reworked to remove references to Christianity (The Legend of Zelda) or not be released outright (Terranigma). In fact there are many fan efforts to undo these kinds of alterations in works across the board. Indicating that it is indeed the original work in their eyes that is more valuable. That’s not to say that every translation is bad, but fundamentally all translations are derivative works. If the original work is what is truly important, then the translation shouldn’t really be getting it’s own protection independent of the original. Nor should the protection of a translation extend beyond the protection of the original.
As for the original issue, source code vs. machine language, format is irrelevant. In my personal opinion, a list of instructions shouldn’t be copyrightable. As it is, by definition, a set of specific actions that produce a specific result. Anyone replicating these actions as written with the same starting resources will produce the same result within a degree of error. A degree that computers reduce to near zero. Even in practice, it is not the novelty of the instructions that is protected, but rather the result of executing them. I.e. "The experience", the actual object made as a result, or the personal changes that the executor places on their interpretation of said instructions. Those are the "novel" part of copyrighting instructions. The actual copyright is just a means to an end, and only serves to inhibit rather than promote progress. (But that’s just my $0.02. I’m sure others will disagree.)
Re: Re: Re: It's not just game preservation.
There are other copyright departments that also have issues that forces you to join the pirate party. One good example is what farmers are experiencing with John Deere’s licensing scheme to monopolize repairs. Several of them, had to switch to Ukraine cracked software, and you guessed it, go to the high seas.
Re: Re: Re: Like seriously, abandonware is under threat
It makes no sense for when the copyright on a product continues to be in-copyright, when the holder neglects enforcing the product and therefore, in copyright, in-name only.
This means that copyright protection last far longer than the holder is willing to enforce them. 75+ years of protection, vs 5-20 years of enforcement.
Re: Re: Re:2
Imagine how much more of our culture would be available to everyone if copyright terms only lasted for 20 years. Then imagine how much money studios would lose if their precious back catalogs were available for free. Is it any wonder, then, that the movie industry will fiercely defend copyright even after the Internet fundamentally broke copyright?
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Also imagine how much more incentive there would be for them to create a well polished product rather than ignoring what their customers demand.
Another dark-side to copyright: "Customers? Our only customers are our shareholders. The public pays us regardless."
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How much of the studios back catalogue is available, and how much is left in warehouses to rot away? A lot of films, TV shows and music recordings are no longer available because there are no useable copies left.
The main benefit of long copyright is that the titles in circulation can be limited to maximise the profit of those that they choose to make available.
Re: Re: Re:3 not all copyright holders have the same enforcement lengths
While disney wanted to continue copyright enforcement, not all holders would do. But the law automatically enables all copyrights to last this ludicrous length, reguardless if they’re actually enforcing them or not.
Re: Re: Re:4
It’s almost as if greedy capitalist motherfuckers who want all the money all the time will do whatever they can to ensure they can make all the money — and that includes buying off politicians to change laws in ways that make the laws more favorable to corporations.
Corporations are, by their very nature, sociopathic. The people who run them? An argument could be made that they are, too.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
And our laws reward sociopaths.
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Well, the laws reward those who write them…
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Personally, I feel that copyright should have a 20-year term by default that could be extended up to some specified amount of time (maybe 75 years or the life of the author plus 10 years, whichever is smaller) so long as it keeps being produced and/or supported. I feel that that would be a reasonable compromise. After all, if you’re no longer maintaining it or making it available for new consumers, why shouldn’t others be able to use it in their works as part of the public domain?
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A 20-year term is more than enough time for someone to recoup the costs of production/distribution of a given work. Copyright does not need to last any longer than that.
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I’d support a five-year limit on copyright.
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
I feel like you’re ignoring derivative works. Any copyright on derivative works becomes more limited once the original goes into the public domain. At any rate, it’s meant to be a compromise and to further encourage devs/publishers to make their copyrighted works more available. Maybe the default term should be lesser, and the suggested maximum term was really just a shot in the dark. My point was that, if publishers and authors really want to maintain copyright beyond when it makes sense, they should have to keep making it available.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
"Personally, I feel that copyright should have a 20-year term by default that could be extended up to some specified amount of time (maybe 75 years or the life of the author plus 10 years, whichever is smaller) so long as it keeps being produced and/or supported."
The issue is that it’s just not possible to keep that restriction. Copyright is essentially an unholy hybrid of information control and monopoly. It’s one of those fundamental violations which in itself ensures ordinary market rules no longer apply.
Introducing copyright is, to the market, the equivalent of abolishing "innocent until proven guilty" in law. It’s a fundamental paradigm shift which can not be alleviated by mitigatory measures.
Case in point, look at any, even cursory and inefficient enforcement – which all assumes by necessity that freedom of speech, personal integrity, burden of proof, and actual ownership rights all go bye-bye.
Because of copyright we have entire industries dedicated to the destruction of all forms of mass communication.
I don’t care about the vestigial potential benefits of copyright. It’s pretty much given that the harm severely outweighs them.
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I was talking about the legal limits on the duration of copyright. DRM, DMCA notice-and-takedowns, and other methods of enforcement are separate issues.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
"I was talking about the legal limits on the duration of copyright."
If you have copyright AT ALL you already have an unacceptable deviation from common jurisprudens. The various methods of enforcement come with the package and WILL we malicious and unacceptably intrusive.
Far better to simply use trademark law and commercial restrictions to catch those trying to actively profit or plagiarize.
Most of what we have in the culture sector today was issued completely outside of copyright. And yet it works. Do we really need to cater to every crap artist who can’t obtain a fanbase of their own in favor of mass-produced hype only upheld by a dedicated marketing team for about six weeks?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
"Then imagine how much money studios would lose if their precious back catalogs were available for free."
It’s worse than that. Old games and movies are competitive threats to their future offers. That’s why Disney locks every old movie they make in the disney vault, to ensure that the purse and eyeball time of their customers will always be pointed to the next release.
If the movie and game industry could burn the originals of every offer they made older than a year, they would.
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Windows 10 doesn’t include a 16-bit emulator, I wonder if it’s because WordPerfect 5.1 and other DOS-based programs are also too easy to steal.
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I sense you’re joking, but the reason is really that a) it’s prohibitively expensive and restrictive to keep supporting a codebase very few people use and b) programs like DOSBox and VMs exist to allow people to run those programs equally as well as they could with native support.
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Virtual 8086 mode isn’t available when operating in 64-bit mode. It’s still around, and can be used by switching to a 32-bit mode or using certain Virtual Machine features, but that gives Microsoft the choice of dropping support or of essentially re-writing the 16-bit mode. They couldn’t choose to just not touch it.
It’s a no-brainer to remove it when DOSBOX can run Windows 3.1, and most old DOS games, usually much faster than the systems they originally ran on.
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There is always ReactOS, a free/opensource version of windows.
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I’m afraid the Disney Vault is a reality.
Microsoft not keeping legacy code around over anti-competitive measures is not.
Re: Re: Saw this on youtube.
"Is it?"
Yes.
Even when I buy the game what I install is the pirated version. DRM is THAT bad.
Why is it okay for Disney to essentially take back a product bought by a customer with no recompense?
It’s not, or it shouldn’t be. But Disney’s very big and it will be very hard for anyone to do anything about it. Having the most control in this case, Disney shows it cannot be trusted.
Once again, it is demonstrated the IP holders don’t have moral high ground over the pirates.
There’s barrels of fun enough for ev’ryone!
And you’ll get treasures by the ton
So come and sign the book
Join up with Captain Hook!
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I don’t see the difference to the self-shredding Banksy painting. Either case, you get to keep the pieces of what no longer has the originally advertised function.
For the game, you don’t even have to pay millions.
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I can tell you the difference. Banksy always intended to shred that painting at a certain point. Disney and the developers never intended to brick TRON: Evolution at any point.
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What difference does it make to the customer?
At any rate: it’s nonsensical to claim "Disney never intended to brick TRON: Evolution at any point" when they slap on DRM requiring a server. I mean, doh.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Just because it was foreseeable doesn’t mean it was intended.
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The word you are looking for is "inevitable".
SecuROM, eh?
[un]Jumble the letters a bit and get an "O[h], screw u." to all of those afflicted by it (as is typical of DRM).
Keep this episode in mind...
As the hype train for Disney+ streaming rolls on. Not saying "boycott Disney", altough that’s an option. But you do have to make a judgment of how much anti-consumer BS you’re willing to put up with as they start increasing the monthly rate and adding hidden fees. Preferably before you sign up.
Remember that this is a company that actively exploits the fantasies of pre-schoolers to make a profit.
Re:
Boycotting Disney is also a much more difficult option nowadays. Marvel, The Simpsons, Fox film franchises, Star Wars, the Muppets, and a sizeable portion of everyone’s childhood in the form of classic animated films and TV shows — all of it resides in the House of Mouse. Disney rules a big part of the pop culture landscape with an iron fist. Avoiding that fist becomes harder with each new acquisition.
Kill the Mouse, take his House.
Kill the Mouse, take his House.
Kill the Mouse, take his House.
Re: Keep this episode in mind...
Personally, I’m not too bothered by boycotting Disney products. I really only intend to use the stuff I already own outside of some LEGO Marvel and LEGO Star Wars games, and those aren’t actually published or developed by Disney.
Re: Re: Keep this episode in mind...
"those aren’t actually published or developed by Disney"
Yet, Disney will still get paid for them.
Re: Re: Re: Keep this episode in mind...
You would probably need a full time research team and lawyer to boycott Disney completely
Re: Re: Re: Keep this episode in mind...
Sure, but nowhere near as much as the stuff they have a more direct hand in.
"It also would have been one thing if Disney had been the slightest bit proactive about all of this. After all, the company knew it wasn’t going to renew the SecuROM subscription and therefore knew that such a decision would brick a whole bunch of people’s purchased games. Why not proactively release the game without DRM? Or alert purchasers, or the media, of what was coming? Why is it okay for Disney to essentially take back a product bought by a customer with no recompense?"
This is part of the reason it’s important to support DRM-free platforms such as GOG.com and itch.io that prove you can release quality, commercially successful games without needing to saddle them with DRM, whether it’s Steam’s own platform that mandates an internet connection every so often to authenticate, or software bundled with something like SecuROM.
Disney
As the hype train disney plus apk for streaming rolls on.