The point I made was that companies going out of business will generally lead to the rapid death of their games, DRM'ed or not. Nothing you've said here really contradicts that- the supposed examples you gave are still in business.
Ahem, I mentioned Atari, Midway games, as well as Starcraft, SimCity (which is no longer Maxis, BTW), etc. No, those makers are not in business. I'll repeat my statement from post #87, "Don't tell that to those of us who still play Starcraft, SimCity 2000/3000, and all the great MAME, INTV, Atari 2600 and Nintendo stuff, to name a few. Almost everything I own besides Trainz and FS is over 15-20 years old."
If you would like me to, I'd be more than happy to go through a list of games made by manufacturers and software companies no longer in business that I still play. I'll be a pretty long list, and compose nearly all I play besides Trainz, MSFS and Starcraft.
For the "emulators" examples, I'll take that as another point on my side- significant technical effort was necessary to make it possible for those games to be playable, probably quite in excess of what it would take to make a DRM'ed game play after the death of the owning company.
An 8-bit emulator isn't too difficult to write. Writing your own version of XP, probably a bit harder...just a guess...
In any case, if these technical abilities concern you, then why bother with the DRM in the first place, since it'll just be beaten?
Please don't try to put words into my mouth, especially when they're clearly not true.
Again, then why bother with the DRM if this isn't at least part of the reason? Save some development time, money, and customer anger and put that effort towards something that'll actually improve the game.
Disagree.
Disagree all you want, but that's what will happen and you know it. Also, I've advised you of that, not that the ongoing controversy of DRM over the last several years did not serve as adequate notice.
It's a reasonable assumption, if we're talking about emulators. Not true in all cases, but certainly true in most. The whole concept of "format shifting" is questionable at best.
No, it's not. Format shifting is quite legitimate. The specifics are what have not been fully-developed, but it's a perfectly legal tenet, at least in the U.S.
Do too much of that here and you will be on the receiving end of a ban. We're all for free discussion, but we're not at all for people deliberately attacking our customer-base for the sole purpose of hurting us or our customers.
Great! I suggest you do just that. That'll help raise awareness about this issue and to irritate your customers further. Thanks in advance for the publicity, and also for showing N3V's true colors!
No, I'm demonstrating that the same effect will happen with or without DRM. You can't argue "DRM leads to evil" and then ignore that the same evil exists in the complete absence of DRM.
Um, no, we're still discussing DRM, not other marketing strategies. Besides, your argument is effectively, "Microsoft screwed Apple so why shouldn't we be able to screw you?" Good luck with that.
And for that reason (among many others) I am glad that Apple embraced DRM.
I'm sure you are. It allows companies like yours to do well at the expense of your customers. Great business model, in all seriousness. Not so great for customers, though...
Firstly, I don't think that Apple's DRM has much to do with the ability to move devices. You could perhaps argue this with their music (although that's available DRM-free these days) but the Apps would not be portable even if they were completely DRM-free.
Secondly, I disagree that it was all expense and no benefit. If it was purely at the consumer's expense, consumers would go elsewhere. Instead, a vast number of consumers have voted with their wallets to accept the DRM. There are clearly some benefits here to the users.
Unfortunately, the DRM makes porting to another platform pointless, assuming it can be done legally at all. That's a large part of what makes it so wonderful for providers like Apple, and so awful for their customers. Putting aside that some music is now available DRM-free, once you buy the DRMed music, you're often locked into the platform, UNLESS you're willing to lose your investment thus far, or unless the manufacturer was gracious enough to permit software on another one to play their content. That's the POINT of DRM.
If you can tell me what the benefit is to the end-user - if you can tell me why it's such a problem that people be allowed to take their purchased content to another platform, I'd be interested to hear it.
Uh.. no, not really. I can't agree with this. To demonstrate this point, you would have to show:
1. That it was possible for customers to move platforms in the absence of DRM;
2. That the addition of DRM specifically prohibited this capability.
1. Sure. Do you want to talk about Trainz or do you want to talk about other platforms? Let's talk about both:
a. Trainz - Non-authorized installers won't work post-SP1 e.g. Maria's Pass-X (just tested this.) It did pre-SP1.
b. non-Trainz - MP3, WAV, FLAC etc. are but a few examples of non-DRMed formats that can be played on any platform for which decoders exist.
2. I'd be glad to:
a. Trainz - Current DLC system locks out other installers.
b. non-Trainz - Microsoft PlaysForSure is only usable on Microsoft-approved platforms.
I'm have no need to justify DRM. I'm just pointing out that your anti-DRM argument is flawed.
Yet you've been doing just that for the last 5 posts.
Disagree.
You think there's a chance that Apple will relinquish their DRM controls to others? Uh, alrighty then...
I'm not "starting to understand" anything here. This is a very well-understood concept. Apple's walled garden approach does this very deliberately, and in many ways it's a good thing, and in some ways it's a bad thing. We all know this. It's up to personal opinion as whether you'd like to be inside of outside that garden. None of this is directly relevant to DRM. Case in point: Trainz does not implement a walled garden.
There is nothing good about Apple's approach as far as the consumer goes.
As for Trainz & N3V, and I choose not to be inside that garden. Which is why I never bought Railworks. And why I choose to nip in the bud the walls that N3V is building, by no longer supporting the product financially or and why I'm winding down making of new content for the DLS.
Nope. If we were in Apple's position, we might adopt their strategies. Maybe. I can certainly sympathise with why they do. But we're not in Apple's position, so to imply that N3V will act the way they do is disingenuous.
Perhaps you shouldn't have brought up the comparisons with Apple, let alone continued them over several posts. You pointed to Apple glowingly as to how effective DRM is as a component of marketing.
To backpedal now after making these glowing comparisons is what is disingenuous.
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