Denuvo Games Once Again Broken For Paying Customers Thanks To DRM Mishap
from the whoopsie dept
It's been a while since we've mentioned Denuvo, the once-vaunted anti-piracy video game DRM that subsequently became an industry punchline. Once touted as "uncrackable", Denuvo went from there to becoming indeed crackable, then crackable shortly after release of games, to then being crackable the same day, to then being cracked in some cases hours after a game's release. As a result, plenty of publishers have taken to patching Denuvo out of their games, while Denuvo did a mini-pivot to create anti-cheat software for online games. While all that was going on, plenty of paying customers of games protected by Denuvo complained about various issues: authentication issues intermittently preventing the customer from playing the game they bought, performance issues that are linked back to how Denuvo runs and behaves, or Denuvo simply breaking games.
In other words, Denuvo is a case study in real world DRM: no real protection from piracy, but plenty of headaches for paying customers. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, well, yeah. But, it's an ongoing disaster, it appears. A whole bunch of PC video games suddenly became unplayable this past week, such as Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy.
The problem seemed to appear after players updated the game, leading some to believe that code may have broken the game. However, as more and more complaints came in, another potential problem was identified. It was so simple as to be almost unthinkable but so devastating that it rendered games completely useless.
Once the same reports of games failing to load came in about several other titles, Twitter lit up about the topic. From there, the internet did its sleuthing thing and the one commonality uncovered was Denuvo DRM software. One Twitter denizen poked around and appears to have figured it out: someone at Denuvo forgot to renew a domain.
“@PlanetZooGame @shadowofwargame your DRM provider has let their domain name lapse, and it’s killed your game startup… along with multiple other games I imagine,” he wrote.
Buckland identified the domain ‘codefusion.technology’ as the culprit and offered a screenshot of its WHOIS records, which clearly shows that the domain expired on September 24, 2021, and had not been renewed. Following the failure to renew, the domain then went into a grace period but when that expired too, it appears to have been removed from DNS records. This meant that the domain would not resolve to an IP address, effectively breaking the system.
Now, that domain has now been renewed, so the problem for those gamers and games is fixed. But that cannot be the end of the story. For starters, TorrentFreak reached out to its regular contacts at Denuvo to get their take on all of this, but got undeliverable bounceback messages. Why that would occur is not currently known, but it's all just messy. In addition, the lack of communication or accountability from Denuvo or its parent company, Irdeto, is infuriating.
In the meantime, someone has now renewed the codefusion.technology domain, which appears to have solved players’ problems. It’s now set to expire on September 24, 2022, meaning just a single year was added to the bank. Hopefully next year doesn’t bring similar problems.
And by problems we apparently mean paying customers unable to play the games for which they paid, all because someone on Denuvo's side couldn't be bothered to keep its own domain up and running.
And that's the story of DRM. Again, anyone who pirated these games is not having a single problem. Only those that forked over cash to play are impacted. How that isn't the end of DRM adoption by the gaming companies is completely beyond me.
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Filed Under: drm, video games
Companies: denuvo
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FTFY
should be
See, folks, this is why when I play games on PC, I go through GOG or itch.io first and Steam is dead last.
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Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
And that's the story of DRM. Again, anyone who pirated these games is not having a single problem. Only those that forked over cash to play are impacted. How that isn't the end of DRM adoption by the gaming companies is completely beyond me.
This really needs to be hammered home any time a story like this pops up: The only people DRM screws over are paying customers.
If you are infecting your product with DRM you are not only punishing your paying customers and telling them that you don't trust them but you are giving them plenty of reasons to stop paying you since the pirated version of your product is almost certainly one that works better.
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Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
But then they can show how many pirates there are & demand more laws allowing them to have you executes via jewish space laser & then piracy will end.
Who cares if we're fscking over the suckers who paid us, we need to waste more money chasing all the money we are losing as our stupid drm decisions give rise to more people unwilling keep paying to be treated like crap.
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Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
DRM's purpose is to put a locked door between you and the product you bought, and to force you to prove that you have the correct key to unlock it every time you use the product. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to keep the key with you after you first unlock the door, it needs to be sent to you every time, and if the key gets broken or lost in transit then you can't get in, even though you have bought the key and have entered the door 100 times without a problem before.
Pirates simply remove the door. So, they get quicker and easier access than the paying customer, even if that customer never has a problem getting the key sent to them. So, why is it shocking to some people that customers would rather than the version without a door? Some paying customers will even "pirate" a doorless copy of the software after they pay for it, so they don't have to deal with that door every time...
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Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
"Some paying customers will even "pirate" a doorless copy of the software after they pay for it, so they don't have to deal with that door every time..."
Quite a lot of people do that. But it's pretty telling that "Does this game have intrusive DRM?" is a very common aspect deciding whether or not a gamer purchases a given game.
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Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
Or an entire platform. I gave up on general PC gaming a long time ago, and DRM is the primary reason (along with preferring to use Mac/Linux desktops for general work purposes). I still buy the occasional piece of DRM-free software from GoG, but for the most part the rise of intrusive DRM is what made me completely switch to consoles. Some publishers have explicitly lost sales due to this practice (I just don't bother with games that don't have a console version, even if I would have bought them had I still gamed on a Windows PC).
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
Same here. Though originally I did move to consoles to avoid the DRM in PC games, I've found it so much cheaper not to have to constantly buy ever more overpriced hardware to keep up with new games that I probably wouldn't look back anymore even without it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffect
Quite frankly, my 2016 rig is holding up just fine (but then again, I bought a GPU before the prices spiraled out of control). Also, considering that the PS5 is also out of stock in many places, gaming is becoming an expensive habit to maintain…
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
The irony of you complaining about DRM in PC games while moving to a system that's entirely DRM based isn't lost on me.
Way to be a hypocrite by crusading against one form of DRM while supporting another.
The PS4/5 and XBox One/Series each require an internet connection just to use the console, let alone play on it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffect
"The irony of you complaining about DRM in PC games while moving to a system that's entirely DRM based isn't lost on me."
There's no irony. I specified intrusive DRM, which doesn't exist on a specialised system designed solely to play games in the way it does on a general purpose PC. In over a decade since I made the switch due to how DRM was screwing with my main PC, I haven't had a single DRM related issue.
"Way to be a hypocrite by crusading against one form of DRM while supporting another."
Way to be a moron by not understanding that it's possible to be opposed to one kind of DRM and not another.
"The PS4/5 and XBox One/Series each require an internet connection just to use the console, let alone play on it."
This is bullshit, at least with regard to the XBox (I don't own a PS newer than the PS3 so I can't confirm). They did announce that they were going to try and pull this shit, but quickly reversed due to the public backlash. I don't need to connect to the internet to play games I purchased (obviously, games rented through Game Pass require occasional connections, but again there's a big difference between the acceptability of DRM on purchased vs. rented content).
I suggest you tone down your impotent anger a bit and learn some basic reading comprehension and facts instead.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaf
No, but you do need to connect to the internet to let it download patches the first time, or you'll probably be playing a broken version of a game. Maybe not all games, but enough of them have serious bugs upon release that needing to go online and let them patch themselves could be considered equivalent to one-time activation.
It's not like you can get the patches any other way, other than connecting your specific console to the net and letting it download the patches. You can't download them with a computer and put them on a USB drive, or burn them to disc. Nobody is going to sell a patch disc that you can use.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely
"No, but you do need to connect to the internet to let it download patches the first time, or you'll probably be playing a broken version of a game"
But, you can still play it. Games being released incomplete is an issue, but it's not DRM. Also, I can download the patches and still play offline after that fact even if I later lose the ability to go online.
I know you have a weird obsession with patches and their availability in the modern era offline, but that's a totally separate discussion to DRM preventing you from playing something you own.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were complet
Many games have "game breaking" bugs upon release.
It ends up having much the same effect.
Yes, unless your console dies and you need to replace it. Then you're back to playing the unpatched version, minus any DLC you "bought".
As someone who still has an interest in older games, I worry about what's happening to game preservation.
Also, it's a personal issue for me. I rarely have the money to buy consoles or the games for them when they're new. Typically, I'm always way behind the curve. There are games for the original Xbox that I'm just now looking for. By the time I ever get a PS4 or an Xbox One, those systems will have long been relegated to the trash heap. Where does one find complete, fully patched copies of games and their DLC after the console has been abandoned?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were com
"Many games have "game breaking" bugs upon release."
Yes, and that's a completely different issue. The issue is whether you can play the game offline, and that's what you can do.
The point is, whether or not you think the game is complete, you misrespesented the facts when you claimed they could not be played offline.
"Yes, unless your console dies and you need to replace it"
Yes, and you'll lose your saves as well. The fact that I remember a time before save files existing or being required for most saves doesn't invalidate the way we play games today, so why should the fact that I can recall a time without post-release patches? Especially since not all such patches are there to fix problems that existed at the time of release?
"As someone who still has an interest in older games, I worry about what's happening to game preservation."
Yes. Lying about your ability to play games offline won't help that fight.
"There are games for the original Xbox that I'm just now looking for. By the time I ever get a PS4 or an Xbox One, those systems will have long been relegated to the trash heap"
Microsoft have just announced an additional 70+ games added to their backward compatibility service (many of them for the OG XBox). As in, literally 2 days ago, and covering the new generation consoles. Some of these games come with additional patches that improve them for the new hardware.
https://www.trueachievements.com/n47751/xbox-backwards-compatibility-70-new-games
I understand it's not perfect and there are issues with preservation to be resolved, but please stop misrepresenting what's actually happening. Your lies will not help the rest of these things get fixed. There's an issue with games being released in an incomplete state and needing ridiculous patches to make them usable. There's examples of 10+ year old games that have recently had new patches for various reasons. Quit pretending only one side of the argument exists.
"Where does one find complete, fully patched copies of games and their DLC after the console has been abandoned?"
Presumably in abandonware and other sites where you have to find 20 year old PC games that had the same problems. Legally, that is be something that needs to be sorted out, but please stop pretending that nothing is available and nobody's working on these things. Your ideal solutions aren't reality, but there's usually a very good reason why they're not available.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffect
No, they don't. I frequently play games without internet and it has absolutely no effect on anything except multiplayer.
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Re: Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
You're not wrong, at least in my anecdotal experience. I went to check out Destiny 2 again after a half-year's absence and was met with the Battleye installation popup. I decided to go play something else instead.
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Re: Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
DRM's purpose is to con money out of foolish game company executives that still believe in snake oil salesmen against all evidence to the contrary.
Anything else it does is coincidental.
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Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
So, once again, I have to ask why we're applying the term "pirate" to the people who refuse to be victimized, rather than those who are actually hostile to the public.
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Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
I used to pirate much, much more than nowadays because I had to choose between having money to buy the hardware to play the games or the games themselves. That said, my financial situation improved and I started buying a lot of games I once pirated. However, I favor GOG DRM free stuff and if I see DENUVO in the DRM disclaimer it doesn't matter how much I like or want the game - I simply don't buy. Ever. Actually the few titles I bought unaware of the presence of Denuvo run like crap compared to stuff released in the same year without this piece of garbage.
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Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
From a legal standpoint, if you’ve bought a license to operate one copy of something, and the company has made the official copy unusable without withdrawing the license, you’d have a pretty good case for using a cracked/pirated version since you DO have that license and need working software.
You might even have a case against the software licensor for breach of contract if they cut you off from the service for using the cracked version.
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Re: Pirates, as always, were completely unaffected
And yet - those paying customers have rewarded the company, that put the DRM in there, with their money - what did they expect? If someone gives me money for doing something, why would I stop?
To me this is shooting oneself in the foot; only the pain was delayed until now.
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A relevant bit of copypasta:
DRM (initialism for “Digital Rights Management”) — noun — closed-source black box code that acts as the digital equivalent of an ankle bracelet tracking device for paying customers but does nothing to prevent copyright infringement carried out by non-paying customers; colloquially known as “Digital Restrictions Management”; a stupid fucking idea
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That's not even the only time Denuvo has shit the bed this week.
Faulty DRM breaks dozens of games on Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs
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Re:
Ah Denuvo, driving people to visit and potentially keep visiting sites for 'unofficial' versions of games time and time again...
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Re:
Well, DRM has always been the business of a middleman industry with no real incentive to make their product actually work. Less so than the actual game developers who tend to be the ones blamed when their product fails.
I think it's one of those bizarro-land decisions where modern western corporate management, too scared and risk-averse to dare tell the board all DRM does is screw up the product, just keep quiet and keep allowing a horrible marketing decision to undercut their sales and market reputation...because the copyright cult hype of "the sky will fall if people can copy" is still seen as "real" and no one wants to be the first to go out on a limb and say that the emperor is naked.
Meanwhile game publications have started to include the type of DRM as a review aspect and on Steam there's a separate board which takes up every game to carry denuvo.
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Way to go Denuvo (tm)
Only 1 year? Maybe they're counting on being exorcised from the games they sabotaged by then anyway, since.. you know.. this colossally unnecessary screw-up probably sped that process up a bit.
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Re: Way to go Denuvo (tm)
Wouldn't be the first time. I can think of a couple examples of games that removed Denuvo following performance problems -- Sonic Mania and Mega Man 11, off the top of my head.
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DRM Mishap
Two great things that go great together.
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The game customers didn't pay enough...
Guess it's this "we must get everything with cheapest price" that causes this kind of mishaps. When customers don't bother to hand enough money to vendors, the vendors will not bother making DRM work properly, and when DRM do not work properly, paying customers will suffer.
The pirates will get another kind of problems -> legal paperwork is already being delivered...
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Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"Guess it's this "we must get everything with cheapest price" that causes this kind of mishaps."
Guess that as usual you look out the window at the falling rain and find it a convenient excuse to blame your favorite suspects for.
No, tp, free-market industries will always spring for the lowest bidder. The "cheapest price" was default from the start.
The real reason, as anyone who knows the basics of how a computer works, will tell you, is that DRM costs resources to run. The more secure it has to be the more load it brings to your cpu and any other piece of code trying to run on it.
"When customers don't bother to hand enough money to vendors, the vendors will not bother making DRM work properly, and when DRM do not work properly, paying customers will suffer."
Bullshit. You are frankly speaking blaming the paying customers for the game developer choosing to break their own game.
"The pirates will get another kind of problems -> legal paperwork is already being delivered..."
Last i checked the statistics, getting hit by "legal paperwork" - even in the land of the copyright troll - is still a bit less likely than being hit by stray lightning or having a meteorite land on you.
We all know you're only here to troll - and I have to at least thank you for admitting as much way back when - so enjoy your flag and the silence.
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Whether someone bought a game that comes with Denuvo DRM for $60 or $6 is irrelevant—the DRM doesn’t (and can’t) know how much the end user paid for the software to which the DRM is attached. And considering that game publishers expect Denuvo DRM to slow down piracy to a significant degree, I doubt they’re underpaying Denuvo for that service.
Any publisher that sabotages a customer’s software via DRM because that customer may not have paid full price for the software is a publisher that will soon have a poor reputation…and maybe a lawsuit or two landing on its doorstep.
That’s why some paying customers inevitably turn to piracy: At least the pirated product will work as the legit product would without DRM fucking things up. Anyone who buys a game for $60 wants their game to work right from the get-go. If piracy is the only way they can get the game they bought to work right, that says more about DRM than it says about piracy.
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Re:
"Whether someone bought a game that comes with Denuvo DRM for $60 or $6 is irrelevant—the DRM doesn’t (and can’t) know how much the end user paid for the software to which the DRM is attached"
Even if it did - if the software was legally purchased, that means it was offered for a price, and the payment made by the customer was accepted to complete the legal purchase process.
"Anyone who buys a game for $60 wants their game to work right from the get-go"
Anyone who pays 50c for a game wants the same thing, they might just be willing to put up with more problems if something goes wrong. The fun thing here is that when something is infected with faulty DRM, it drives the acceptable price lower. Meaning that tp's insanity is upside down as usual - if a company wants top dollar, they have to make the DRM work (or, preferably, get rid of it entirely). An infected, faulty piece of software is by nature worth less money on the free market.
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Fair points. 👍
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Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"When customers don't bother to hand enough money to vendors, the vendors will not bother making DRM work properly"
Well, that's a new line of bullshit. People paying for software are being screwed over because they didn't pay enough when they paid the advertised price requested by the publishers, now?
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Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"Well, that's a new line of bullshit. People paying for software are being screwed over because they didn't pay enough when they paid the advertised price requested by the publishers, now?"
Yep. tp's logic squarely states it's the wife's fault she's being beaten - because the man doing the beating can't help it if the kids, entirely due to the mother's lackadaisical fostering, are pushing him beyond the brink.
Copyright cult logic has always been about deflecting blame and projection.
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Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
Just FYI your anti-copyright cult is just as annoying and stupid.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
Weird, I've not seen anyone be anti-copyright here, just criticism of the people who worship copyright "protection" over and above the needs of paying customers who are blocked from using what they paid for.
Do you have any examples of people being anti-copyright in this article, or are you the smooth brained type who can only comprehend a maximum of 2 positions and assume anyone who isn't your kind of extremist must be a different type of extremist.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"Weird, I've not seen anyone be anti-copyright here"
To be completely fair, I am against copyright. I think information control is a piss-poor idea whether held by government or by private interests, to say nothing of Red Flag Acts of state-enforced monopolies in general.
The issue is that he appears to think being against copyright is "cult-like", which is exactly like claiming the one in opposition to, say, the Westboro Baptist Church must be a "cultist". Looking at the two comments under his current session in this thread, though, bad faith argumentation using false premise seems to be his thing.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"To be completely fair, I am against copyright"
I'm not against copyright as a concept, and in fact I'm very concerned about how much established corporations will be able to steal from independent artists and pass off as their own without a penny paid to the actual creators if it were not to exist. But, I'm firmly opposed both to the current terms of copyright and the ways it's being enforced.
Hey, look, immediately we have several nuanced positions that don't match AC's ravings. Strange, that.
"The issue is that he appears to think being against copyright is "cult-like""
Nah, the issue is that he's bought in to the idiotic binary representation of ideas, where you have to be totally for something or totally against it, there's no room for nuance or other positions, you have to be totally on one side or another. So, he thinks that daring to criticise people being blocked from accessing what they bought in the name of copyright must mean that the person saying it is anti-copyright.
"Looking at the two comments under his current session in this thread, though, bad faith argumentation using false premise seems to be his thing."
I can't think of a reasonable good faith argument, so I suppose that's all he's got.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough
"and in fact I'm very concerned about how much established corporations will be able to steal from independent artists and pass off as their own without a penny paid to the actual creators if it were not to exist."
Abolish copyright completely. Finagle artist 'paternity' right in under Trademark law instead, the work then being part of the artist's brand and protected as if it were their logotype.
This forces the artist to maintain their rights without bullshit life+70 year extensions, prevents commercial abuse of the work, moving the whole problem of plagiarism and illicit sales into a purely commercial venue rather than burden both consumers and courts with reversed burden of proof legislation.
And removes all of the bullshit lunacy about mere copies being made being considered grounds for litigation, instead focusing on the use to which such copies are put.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay en
I could live with that framework. In fact, every original or public domain piece of music I made is licensed with an Attribution-Noncommercial Creative Commons license, because
-trying to prevent copies on a copying machine is a fool's errand, and
-I actually want people to make adaptations of my work.
It's just that if people want to make commercial use of my work, I would like some compensation, and that can't be done without the noncommercial clause of the license.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay en
"Abolish copyright completely. Finagle artist 'paternity' right in under Trademark law instead, the work then being part of the artist's brand and protected as if it were their logotype."
So, establish copyright but call it something different?
"This forces the artist to maintain their rights without bullshit life+70 year extensions,"
You know what else would do that? Reversing Sonny Bono's bullshit and going back to the rules that boomers like him created their most successful works under.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pa
"So, establish copyright but call it something different?"
By no means. Trademark law treats the ip to be protected as part of an identity. The law will punish anyone abusing that identity fraudulently in a public and/or commercial aspect.
Copyright law is something else entirely; it legislates ideas and concepts into properties to be perpetually owned and sanctioned against whenever a copy of that information is made.
Under Trademark law I could use your name in private conversation or publicly to refer to you. If I tried to use it against your wishes in commercial ventures, you could sue.
Under copyright law you could sue me every time I mentioned your name, wrote it down, or typed it into an online textbox.
One of the above is reasonable, the other flagrant insanity. And the insanity persists as long as it pertains the right to make a copy of information. Hence "Copyright" is pure rot right from the name on.
"Reversing Sonny Bono's bullshit and going back to the rules that boomers like him created their most successful works under."
I'm sure that was what was said when they changed the first seven years of protection as well.
As long as Copyright pertains to the right to make copies at all then the slider will keep getting pushed. Historically this conversation has been had too many times before for it to be acceptable that just pulling the sled halfway back up the steep slope it's been sliding down all this time will cut it.
Trademark and brand legislation, however, has managed, in it's various iterations, to retain more or less the exact same type of protection for at least as long back as mid-13th century.
Trademark is rooted in the natural state of identity and origin. It's easily understood and accepted by almost everyone. Because associating a meme with a face is second nature to us.
Copyright means some unaffiliated third party you never heard of gets to determine what you can do with the physical property you own, assuming it has a structure decipherable in an arbitrary manner sufficiently similar to whatever some oik anywhere decided they were the first to write.
Under Trademark law two seconds worth of generic industrial noise in a 5 minute soundtrack won't be enough to send Kraftverk a phat check. Under copyright, that will depend entirely on how good your lawyers are.
Copyright is irredeemable. Starting with the name itself and going on from there. None of its principles are salvageable.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn'
[edit for clarification]
"Under Trademark law I could use your "name" or brand in private conversation or publicly to refer to you. If I tried to use it against your wishes in commercial ventures, you could sue."
"Under copyright law you could sue me every time I spoke your "name" or brand, wrote it down, or typed it into an online textbox."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay en
+1
And if there must be some kind of copyright, at least let the artists and their corporate masters pay for all the cost of administrating and enforcement of their rights. The artists and their corporate masters should stop burdening the taxpayer and Big Internet with the enforcement of their rights. Why do Big Internet have to be their law enforcement for free? Why do the rest of us have to pay for the rights of the artists and their corporate masters? Why should we subside them? End this corporate welfare. If they think their wares are worth it, let them pay for all of it and I mean ALL of it, whatever it costs the society: the bureaucrary and the litigation and judges and copyright police and copyright jail, etc. Make copyright registration mandatory and make copyright maintenance fees mandatory and large enough to cover all of that cost of administrating and enforcing of their rights. The artists and their corporate masters can pass on all that cost to their customers. No need for the rest of us to pay for it. Why should society pay for that anyways? Is taking our culture away and locking it up for 70+ years and taking away our free speech and actual property rights not enough for the artists and their corporate masters? Where's the actual evidence showing that the copyright regime promotes culture and science more than it hinders?
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To be fair, I think the concept of copyright is utterly broken and needs to be at least completely retooled for the digital age (if such a thing is even possible). I believe in the public domain—it should be grown at a much faster rate (e.g., add any work made more than 20 years ago to the public domain immediately) and protected from those who would abolish it out of a lust for money/power (e.g., copyright lawyers, the Meshpage guy). Long live culture; fuck copyright.
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"To be fair, I think the concept of copyright is utterly broken and needs to be at least completely retooled for the digital age (if such a thing is even possible)."
That's not anti-copyright, that's just being opposed to the mutated form it's taken in the last couple of decades.
"I believe in the public domain"
The public domain has a simple definition - that which is outside of the temporary additional licencing granted by copyright. Extending the public domain is as simple as correcting the overreach that the standard copyright rules insist exists.
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When I said “at least”, that was the nicest outcome I was thinking of. At most, copyright should be abolished completely. Like I said: Fuck copyright.
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"That's not anti-copyright, that's just being opposed to the mutated form it's taken in the last couple of decades."
The problem being that copyright keeps right on mutating - has from the start. The very second someone found there was money to be made, copyright started shifting. In the beginning, protection was seven years. Now it's life+70.
Get rid of it completely. Put the stuff an artist makes under trademark law instead, as part of their brand. The "right to copy" becomes irrelevant and is replaced by the "author's paternity", as it was once referred to in some european countries.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
I might fall into that category as I'm of the opinion that given the choice of 'copyright as it currently stands' and 'no copyright at all' I'd go with the latter every time, though as you noted in your other comments that would probably fall less under 'anti-copyright' and more 'anti-grossly inefficient and harmful execution of copyright'.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"Just FYI your anti-copyright cult is just as annoying and stupid."
I wish this was the first time I saw some moron trying to claim the stance "Government-sponsored monopoly of information control in private hands is a dumb and dangerous idea" was "cult-like".
Yet hands down it never fails that some asshat will show up and try to shill for the Red Flag Act of the middleman publishing industry.
But I ought to thank you for providing this excellent seague into my oft-repeated assertion that humanity and culture managed just fine and had some of their most productive periods without copyright at all. Shakespeare, Mozart and Beethoven send their regards on that score to begin with.
No, "annoying and stupid" belongs firmly with the copyright cult who keep having to use religious arguments contradicting observable fact and history to back their cause.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
Heck, we only know about the Trojan wars and Greek heroes because story tellers expected and encouraged others to repeat their stories, with iambic pentameter being a means of helping memorization. Homer wrote down that which had been passed to him by the aural tradition.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
True enough, if the copyright cult had their way Homer would have rewritten the iliad half a dozen times, demanding more money every time...and toured greece demanding every storyteller and bard to speak or sing about it cross his palm with silver.
We're talking about an industry which will suppress even its own older works just so they won't compete with newer offers for attention - for which the Disney Vault stands as a literal representation.
The irony is that some 99,99% of what we know as culture emerged completely without copyright yet the copyright cult preachers all keep trying to claim that if it didn't exist no one would ever write a good story ever again.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough
So right. The copyright cult certainly is not all about creating culture or enriching culture and are all bunch of pigs who worship the Almighty dollar and is a cult where greed is a virtue and sharing is a vice. Its all about objectification of people as merely resource to exploit for personal gain. "Copying is theft", huh? oh yeah right. Fuck their perverse morality and dogma. So disgusting. I prefer the "sharing is caring" morality. Let's end all that oinking. Let's free up culture. End digital copyright. Whats it good for? Culture thrived without copyright for millennium and will thrive without it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough
I'm not so sure. One of the points Techdirt regularly brings up is that more creative content is produced every day than was produced before the dawn of the printing press. And while sure, a lot of that content isn't going to hold a lot of cultural value, by sheer weight of mass I think we have produced more creative works and shared cultural experiences in the copyright era than the pitiful take of what has survived into the modern cultural consciousness.
That isn't down to copyright, and so that might still fulfill your condition as 'completely without copyright', but i'd highly dispute the 'completely'.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay en
The reason for that is not copyright, but rather because the Internet has given all creators a means of publication, and an ability to gain an audience. Before the Internet, most created works failed to gain a publisher, and sooner or later creators gave up trying.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pa
Context. Please factor in context. I was discussing pre-printing press, not pre-internet content. I should have said pre-copyright, but i was trying to make the point that to say more culture emerged completely without copyright is inaccurate, it suggests lots of these works aren’t influenced by the culture copyright produced in the decades before publishing gatekeepers started slipping away. Any work created after the dawn of copyright, using creative works as a proxy for culture vis a vis copyright, tropes, styles and genres are all influenced by what sells under copyright, which means even amateur and self published works are in some way influenced by copyright and it’s influence on creativity as a whole, and it would be decades before you could say otherwise. and, if created works are an effective proxy for popular culture, it’s quite possible more of our culture is influenced by copyright than not, and therefore inaccurate to say that “more of our culture was created without copyright” even when you just assume the poster was discussing influence rather than works literally created under copyright.
We’ve lost most of the culture that emerged before copyright.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn'
The critical change for the explosion of published works was the Internet. The printing press gave a few more people a voice, as did records, films, radio and television. But all technologies, including travelling bards, that existed prior to the Internet were limited resources with those carrying out the publishing function deciding what ideas got spread.
In many respects, the printing press was the previous technological
invention that had a huge impact on society, and the Internet will have a profound effect on society. From the printing press until the Internet, technological inventions increased the speed of one to one communication (the phone) or provided another one to many communications channel, radio, cinema, television. They did not provide a power shift like the printing press did, or the Internet is doing today.
Wrong, as we have lost a lot of culture that was not recorded or where the one or two recording have been lost. The printing press multiplied the number of copies made, and hence the chances of at least one copy surviving. Also note that the printing press was invented about 1440, and the Statute of Anne was enacted in 1710. There is a period of about 270 years where printing existed, but copyright as an author's right did not exist. Manuscripts, that is unpublished works, have a value, and so authors were able to sell their works to printers. At the same time Copyright was a state granted license for a printer to print copies with its roots in censorship. It has a secondary, and for printer more important function, a local monopoly on producing copies of a work, which when you are about to spend months producing as many copies as you think the market will buy, avoids ruin by somebody else stealing that market, and leaving the printer with a large number of unsold copies.
The statute of Anne was the printer regaining that control over their markets, with "authors rights" being the political spin needed to get the law enacted. The printer knew full well that the only thing an author could do back then with a copyright, was to sell it to a printer, giving them the control they gad pretended to give Authors.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn'
"Context. Please factor in context. "
I suggest googling "Falkvinge History of Copyright, part 1: Black Death"
It's from the Pirate Party founder some years back - a longer but very well and interestingly written read on early examples of copyright and similar information monopoly initiatives before, during and after Queen Anne's Statute.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay en
"I'm not so sure. One of the points Techdirt regularly brings up is that more creative content is produced every day than was produced before the dawn of the printing press."
Very, very little of was dependant on copyright to be made. I'm sure 17th century germany and france would surprise us all if they'd had the internet.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
Dawww, it thinks it's people.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
Log back in, Tero.
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Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"The pirates will get another kind of problems -> legal paperwork is already being delivered..."
Bring it on, cupcake. Or simply stop spreading fake news.
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Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
I remember when we used to have a nice simple word for "alternative facts" and "Fake news". But, for some reason the last US administration decided that "lies" wouldn't work so they invented their own vocabulary (yes, I know "fake news" existed before Trump but it had a different, more accurate definition).
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Re: Re: Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
There's probably some governmental regulation that says they're not allowed to use the word "bullshit"...
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Fuckin’ FCC assholes…
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Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
What a complete and utter load of cobblers.
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Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
When customers don't bother to hand enough money to vendors, the vendors will not bother making DRM work properly, and when DRM do not work properly, paying customers will suffer.
Yeah, that's the ticket - consumers should pay more to essentially be beta testers for their improperly engineered DRM.
Tell me, would you suggest paying more for a car that has improperly engineered brakes as well?
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Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
"When customers don't bother to hand enough money to vendors, the vendors will not bother making DRM work properly" - Fair enough, then I simply don't give them money and just pirate it. Or rather, as I have been doing for some years now, simply ignore the company releases altogether.
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Re: The game customers didn't pay enough...
Well at least you named yourself properly. Cause your opinion is worth about as much a cheap square of itchy single ply.
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Re: He was as full of shit then as you are now dot dot dot
" legal paperwork is already being delivered..."
Remember when Jhon Boi Smith used to talk that same trash?
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Re: Re: He was as full of shit then as you are now dot dot dot
"Remember when Jhon Boi Smith used to talk that same trash?"
Who can forget? I mean, Baghdad Bob in his self-cast role as "frothing maniac" delivering his trusty "The day will come when you filthy pirates are ALL paraded through the street in chains!! Gnrf!" monologue was memorable enough in all it's pants-shitting glory, but the same diatribe has been pushed hard by every copyright cult shill ever to disgrace the online forums.
Meanwhile what they have to show for that some thirty-odd years after they first started bringing out the tough talk is a long, long list of trying to sue innocent grandparents, laser printers and dead people. And their few public successes only ended up portraying the copyright adherents as the worst kind of scum no one would ever sympathize with, turning their would-be reign of "Shock and Awe" into a ridiculous "Flock and Squawk" dog and pony show only losing more credibility when the likes of Andrew Crossley/ACS:Law and Prenda saw fit to demonstrate in public just how low driven con men may sink when cornered by a sceptical judge.
tp at least once let slip that his participation around here was to troll - which is why he keeps right on cheerfully responding with one insanity after the other as saner commenters can't stop themselves from responding until the thread is pushing 300+ posts all iterated until they display as written a single character in width and scroll for a dozen pages on.
But whether he's a troll or not really doesn't matter. If he just brings what genuine copyright shills use to the table then Popehat's rule of goats applies.
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Meshpage is offered for free. Why is it my responsibility to pay you for more than your asking price, that you personally decided?
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No you brought it up pretty recently. I remember because multiple people pointed out a slew of games that have not been cracked that contradict your bullshit narrative. Now you're back trotting the same lie out.
I'm eager to hear your dumbass opinion on how Bethesda releasing yet another version of Skyrim is pro-consumer and pro-modding. Even if Bethesda sold mods and used denuvo you will find a way to shill for them.
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"I remember because multiple people pointed out a slew of games that have not been cracked that contradict your bullshit narrative."
The fact that games exist that haven't been cracked does not change any position stated in any article I can recall here. Do you have an example of what you're talking about? Bear in mind that this article is about people who paid for software being blocked from using it by DRM. Whether or not they have access to a cracked version to continue playing while their legal copy is broken does not affect this.
"how Bethesda releasing yet another version of Skyrim is pro-consumer and pro-modding."
Does another version being available stop the others from being modded? Are people being forced to buy another version? If not, there's no anti-consumer activity or anti-modder activity to be criticised.
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"I remember because multiple people pointed out a slew of games that have not been cracked that contradict your bullshit narrative."
It really doesn't. Outliers and exceptions are outliers and exceptions. They are quite specifically not the trend. How have you become learned enough to write without realizing how basic reality works along the way?
You could argue about those exceptions. Compare those games against indicators like popularity, exclusive platforms, console-only, fan base conviction etc, and on whether or not they are linked to separate launchers a la steam or origin.
But why employ nuance and bring up some specific grievance with a developer you dislike when you might instead bring an irrelevant example and an ad hom or two, eh?
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OH do show us on the doll where Bethesda touched you!
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It could just have easily been an honest mistake so let's not make assumptions. In general, Denuvo is not the issue here. The issue is that seemingly minor mistakes can inflict massive damage on paying customers when the mistake happens in a DRM environment. Not renewing a domain name, in this case, turned into a massive denial of service attack because of DRM.
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It is also a warning that if Denuvo goes away, Denuvo protected games will become unplayable until patched.
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uhhhhhh, what?
did anyone suggest that Denuvo let the registeation lapse on purpose or something?
that kind of honest mistake is part of a long track record of stupid by a stupid company. they deserve to be laughed at publicly, and prodded by everyone they inconvenience.
if some outside force had caused this to happen, you can bet your last dollar that Denuvo would be screaming about how many billions of dollars it cost them.
no one needs them.
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"In general, Denuvo is not the issue here"
Denuvo have built their entire business around DRM, built it in such a way that there was a single point of failure and failed to maintain that point for failure.
How are they not the issue here?
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I now wonder if anyone is now watching their domain registrations with the aim to squat on them for the lulz.
Or, if such a thing is even possible, grab the domain and set up a server that responds to incoming Denuvo traffic with some sort of kill signal or crack that disables the DRM on any game that connects to it, rendering it DRM-free.
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Unfortunately, there are still Denuvo infected games that haven't been cracked.
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If a game sells poorly, whether because of DRM or something else, it probably won't get cracked just because it has DRM. IOW, the popular games usually get the attention first.
Unless someone just wants to pants Denuvo for the grins. ;)
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