27th March 2009, 10:27 PM
ABF that digital imaging etoven mentioned should handle a lot of the bandwidth problems, but I agree about actually being able to own a copy of a game.
Steam has online verification, but after it's verified it's basically your's and you don't need to get online again. As long as you keep that hard drive around, you have that game. It's certainly more owned than this would be. I think it's possible they would allow you to download your saved games to your own data storage though. That shouldn't be a problem.
I'll add that Steam is working on a brand new DRM solution that really shifts the focus on how it should be handled, and would actually remove even online verification. The idea is "signituring" each executable with the full details of the owner, and that's it. No background monitering tools, no limits on which machines it can be installed on or how many times, no online verification, heck it's less intrusive than old security methods like needing a disk in the drive, inputting a serial code, or... I dunno looking up keywords in an instruction manual.
The way it's supposed to work is since every game executable is uniquelly tagged with this information, if anyone dares upload this to some site for download, it'll be instantly trackable to that person and they'll get arrested pretty dang quick. (Side note: While I get the downloading part on the part of pirates, I'll never get what that first legitimate customer's goals are in that initial upload, what they intend to get out of it, I mean I'd think it was good will except for the part that they are thieves. Honor among thieves? I dunno...) While it is true that the game is still out there on the dark waters of the interseas (and getting information out of the internet is like getting pee out of a pool), with a prosecution rate of nearly 100%, I doubt many will continue to do this. It's certainly far more effective to go after the ones distributing than nailing a few random confirmed downloaders here and there. Really though I want this to succeed so hard so every other company stops loading up their games with awkward annoying system resource hogging DRM solutions and I can just stick my game in and play.
Steam has online verification, but after it's verified it's basically your's and you don't need to get online again. As long as you keep that hard drive around, you have that game. It's certainly more owned than this would be. I think it's possible they would allow you to download your saved games to your own data storage though. That shouldn't be a problem.
I'll add that Steam is working on a brand new DRM solution that really shifts the focus on how it should be handled, and would actually remove even online verification. The idea is "signituring" each executable with the full details of the owner, and that's it. No background monitering tools, no limits on which machines it can be installed on or how many times, no online verification, heck it's less intrusive than old security methods like needing a disk in the drive, inputting a serial code, or... I dunno looking up keywords in an instruction manual.
The way it's supposed to work is since every game executable is uniquelly tagged with this information, if anyone dares upload this to some site for download, it'll be instantly trackable to that person and they'll get arrested pretty dang quick. (Side note: While I get the downloading part on the part of pirates, I'll never get what that first legitimate customer's goals are in that initial upload, what they intend to get out of it, I mean I'd think it was good will except for the part that they are thieves. Honor among thieves? I dunno...) While it is true that the game is still out there on the dark waters of the interseas (and getting information out of the internet is like getting pee out of a pool), with a prosecution rate of nearly 100%, I doubt many will continue to do this. It's certainly far more effective to go after the ones distributing than nailing a few random confirmed downloaders here and there. Really though I want this to succeed so hard so every other company stops loading up their games with awkward annoying system resource hogging DRM solutions and I can just stick my game in and play.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)