Battlefront.com DRM

[Tuna]

Clearly someone from Battlefront has hacked Michael's account. :P

Then the same must have happened with mine. ;) I pretty much agree with Michael, and Zulu1966, based on my own experience with Battlefront. I haven't found them being difficult at all, quite the opposite. When I've had a problem they've sorted it and pretty quickly too.

I think that everyone who has had issues has stated that their Customer Support is excellent. Still doesn't make the DRM excellent..

[Zulu1966]

Despite what someone said earlier - even if you are the most anti DRM person around - this IS the one game worth dropping your objection for.

These kinds of silly statements do nothing to advance the discussion. You can buy any game ever made one day and if the company goes out of business the next and you are unable to access your game the day after, you have wasted your money.

Everything is subjective, so telling someone what they should like is also equally pointless.

More to the point, I think, would be a company's track record of releasing information to the public. It may be worth noting that when Combat Mission: Campaigns was declared a no-go, BFC released the source code to the fan base. The point being that if the company was contemplating an end to their business for whatever reason, there is always a chance that they would eliminate the DRM requirement before doing so. I don't know how likely it is, but I've seen it discussed in the past. At any rate, there is nothing to suggest it would never happen, and the CM:C source code release may be a positive sign. I believe there have been discussions on that theme at BFC in the past though as someone who has had no problems with their DRM, I never really paid attention.

Yes, and its exactly these kind of derogatory posts that drag drm arguments into the dirt.
Of course it's subjective, that is what opinions are. Whether worrying about a company going out business should stop you buying a game from them is nothing more than an opinion, so therefore equally silly by your definition.

The guy asked for real world experience of their drm, not silly conjecture about what may or may not happen under a purely hypothetical set of circumstances. Perhaps if you want to help him you could answer his question instead of your own

[Gusington]

This thread is like a carousel without the fun.

[Zulu1966]

I originally made the thread to discuss real world experience with BF DRM and not about DRM in general. I did not intend for this to go any other way but i suppose it is inevitable.

Regards

Which was kind of my point - the real world experience is just fine - and should in no way stop you from buying their games. Of course if you want to listen to the imagined horror stories of others then don't buy the game or of course if you want to deny yourself the experience because of some deeply held principle around DRM (which I personally find a strange thing to hold a deeply held principal about) - then don't buy the game. All I can say is that you might walk under a bus tomorrow and you will be unable to play the game just as much as if BF went out of business and they didn't release a patch.

Despite what someone said earlier - even if you are the most anti DRM person around - this IS the one game worth dropping your objection for.

My posts are not imagined.  I still like CM and play it, but the OP asked about experiences with BFC DRM.  It only takes a quick look at the BFC tech forum to see that some people do have issues.  It's not huge, but it is there.  I also have the emails to prove it.

And I am not disputing that, just the extent to which some exaggaerate it. Again not you.

[Asid]

The guy asked for real world experience of their drm, not silly conjecture about what may or may not happen under a purely hypothetical set of circumstances. Perhaps if you want to help him you could answer his question instead of your own

Exactly. This is NOT meant to be an anti-DRM thread. Neither is it meant to be an attack on anyone and that includes BF. Please relate real world experience with BF DRM as this will be useful to me. Thank you

Regards

[Zulu1966]

The guy asked for real world experience of their drm, not silly conjecture about what may or may not happen under a purely hypothetical set of circumstances. Perhaps if you want to help him you could answer his question instead of your own

Exactly. This is NOT meant to be an anti-DRM thread. Neither is it meant to be an attack on anyone and that includes BF. Please relate real world experience with BF DRM as this will be useful to me. Thank you

Regards

Well, as I have said before, I have all of BF games under various forms of the drm. So that spans about 7 or 8 years and in all that time I have had one issue, which was sorted within an hour of me raising the support request at 1 am.

So for me at least it's a non issue and these games really are something special.

[Asid]

Well, as I have said before, I have all of BF games under various forms of the drm. So that spans about 7 or 8 years and in all that time I have had one issue, which was sorted within an hour of me raising the support request at 1 am.

So for me at least it's a non issue and these games really are something special.

Noted.

Thank you  :)

[Barthheart]

This thread is like a carousel without the fun.

... or bewbs....  :P

[Boggit]

Clearly someone from Battlefront has hacked Michael's account. :P

Then the same must have happened with mine. ;) I pretty much agree with Michael, and Zulu1966, based on my own experience with Battlefront. I haven't found them being difficult at all, quite the opposite. When I've had a problem they've sorted it and pretty quickly too.

I think that everyone who has had issues has stated that their Customer Support is excellent. Still doesn't make the DRM excellent..

Granted. But no one is going out of their way to praise the DRM. I really dislike DRM as a generality.Ultimately, I don't see the point of DRM.
I think it is a massive pain in the ars* for most legitimate users, whilst making a minute difference for the developers on the instance of piracy. I'm not condoning piracy, but as a matter of fact if you know where to look, it's relatively easy to obtain pirated copies of even newly released games - if you really wanted to get a cracked copy of a game you will.

Leaving aside the moral issues, the point for avoiding piracy also comes from a practical perspective. If you starve developers of their income for their effort, then you'll see less game development if development becomes financially unrewarding to the point that you can't make a decent living. That said there are many publishers doing well that don't use DRM, so draw your own conclusions about its efficacy. It's certainly clear from most forum posts on the subject that most gamers recognise the link between their gaming dollar, and the future wellbeing of our gaming, especially for Indie developers in a niche market, who are likely to be more sensitive to "lost" sales.

However, having already made the decision to apply DRM to their games, I will say that Battlefront support has so far been very accomodating to me as a customer - to the point that the fact that their game contains DRM is almost irrelevant to me. I say almost, because as Ryan said earlier the DRM might be left in place if they ever went into liquidation. I hope - in that worst case - the good folks over at Battlefront would have seen the writing on the wall in time to issue a DRM circumventing patch before they were prevented to, otherwise legitimate users might feel morally justified (having paid for a license) in obtaining their re-installs from a pirate site - if no other redress is available - which is something no developer really wants to encourage.

Personally, I'd prefer if there has to be a DRM, that the key provided could be embedded in the install software - like with Matrix/Slitherine, so that the survival of the ability to reinstall is not solely tied to the survival of the developer/publisher as a business entity.

[Boggit]

This thread is like a carousel without the fun.

... or bewbs....  :P

;D

[mirth]

To make it clear, I was simply teasing Michael a bit. He is often, unjustifiably in my opinion, accused of having an agenda against BFC.

[Nefaro]

Yes, and its exactly these kind of derogatory posts that drag drm arguments into the dirt.

Discussions about the desirability of draconian DRM will always end up in the dirt.  Because such DRM schemes are themselves dirt.

If there's enough bitching about them, some publishers ditch them.  So there is enough reason to keep the heat cranked up on such practices.

[Zonso]

To make it clear, I was simply teasing Michael a bit. He is often, unjustifiably in my opinion, accused of having an agenda against BFC.

Another opinion, if it looks, tastes and smells...it probably is.

[Michael Dorosh]

To make it clear, I was simply teasing Michael a bit. He is often, unjustifiably in my opinion, accused of having an agenda against BFC.

Another opinion, if it looks, tastes and smells...it probably is.

And Zonso's (sic) agenda is so painfully obvious in his small number of posts here that nothing more probably needs to be said. I'll say it anyway - in 35 posts he's spent about 20% of them attempting to twist my words, accuse me of things I haven't done, drag dirty laundry from other places (inaccurately) and generally troll this forum for reactions unsuccessfully. This is just another attempt.

Grow up already.

[Cyrano]

I have every CM game ever made, installed on multiple computers over the years, and have never once had a problem with its DRM. 

And, Gus, since when did carousels become fun?

Best,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)