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DVD version
- Thread starter peterwhite
- Start date
cascaderailroad
New member
Here's a brilliant idear' that I know just everybody will love :hehe: … Require everyone to buy a one year FCT … Then there would be no piracy … as the FCT would be your ticket to shut off DRM … and then whole DRM idear' could be eliminated totally
It's not about the cost of Trainz: It's about losing hundreds or thousands of hours of work building your route, your sessions, and your content because N3V pulled the plug on the activation server.
Moreover, if you were to cost that out in terms of dollars per hour spent, many of us would be well into the 5- or 6-figures.
This. And in spite of this, the DRM system sooner or later, unfortunately will be "imposed".
cascaderailroad
New member
It's not about the cost of Trainz: It's about losing hundreds or thousands of hours of work building your route, your sessions, and your content because N3V pulled the plug on the activation server.
Question: When the N3V server is disconnected for more than 30 days, or your yearly subscription runs out, do you loose hundreds or thousands of hours of work building your route, your sessions, and your content ??? That too disappears ???
It's been said by an N3V person that in the unlikely event they shut down they would take steps to fix the activation problem.
The Doom and Gloom club have been predicting the end ever since N3V rose from the ashes of Auran, and what is it, 13 Years later? they are still here. More likely Microsoft making Windows unusable for anything that isn't online...... That's what I'd be bothered about.
As for cost per hour? unless you run a payware business, if you base what to most of us is a hobby on how much it costs you per hour then you are in it for the wrong reasons!
Anyway this DRM subject has been done to death and if people keep on moaning and forecasting the end is nigh, they will end up getting the thread locked yet again as all the previous ones were due to the bickering and predictions of doom made by certain people!
It should be sufficient for people to say they would prefer a DRM free version without inventing unlikely scenarios such as N3V going bust.
The Doom and Gloom club have been predicting the end ever since N3V rose from the ashes of Auran, and what is it, 13 Years later? they are still here. More likely Microsoft making Windows unusable for anything that isn't online...... That's what I'd be bothered about.
As for cost per hour? unless you run a payware business, if you base what to most of us is a hobby on how much it costs you per hour then you are in it for the wrong reasons!
Anyway this DRM subject has been done to death and if people keep on moaning and forecasting the end is nigh, they will end up getting the thread locked yet again as all the previous ones were due to the bickering and predictions of doom made by certain people!
It should be sufficient for people to say they would prefer a DRM free version without inventing unlikely scenarios such as N3V going bust.
There is a strong element of "Gloom and Doom" in the DRM debate over the "possibility" that N3V could fold making the software useless. But they could fold with and without DRM.
Even if they did fold and took the steps to remove the DRM feature of Trainz, within a few years with no updates, no DLS (N3V are paying for that so it would also go) and little new content, Trainz would become a "legacy" product fondly remembered by just a few (and strangely many of those would be its current ardent critics). Those who believe that Trainz would continue as a successful community supported GNU Open Licence or Freeware product (ignoring all the copyright issues) are going against history - successful community supported GNU/Freeware products are few on the ground and almost always have some form of corporate support. Nearly all current users would move on to another product - no matter how much time and effort they had invested. Model railroaders would be used to this - I know of modellers who have invested decades in building their basement railroads only to have to scrap or dispose of them when they downsized their home.
In any case, "DRM or no DRM" is N3V's decision which, I am certain/hope, will be made for economic and not emotional reasons.
Even if they did fold and took the steps to remove the DRM feature of Trainz, within a few years with no updates, no DLS (N3V are paying for that so it would also go) and little new content, Trainz would become a "legacy" product fondly remembered by just a few (and strangely many of those would be its current ardent critics). Those who believe that Trainz would continue as a successful community supported GNU Open Licence or Freeware product (ignoring all the copyright issues) are going against history - successful community supported GNU/Freeware products are few on the ground and almost always have some form of corporate support. Nearly all current users would move on to another product - no matter how much time and effort they had invested. Model railroaders would be used to this - I know of modellers who have invested decades in building their basement railroads only to have to scrap or dispose of them when they downsized their home.
In any case, "DRM or no DRM" is N3V's decision which, I am certain/hope, will be made for economic and not emotional reasons.
The fact, as Malc pointed out, that Auran already went out of business is enough reason for concern. It's happened once, it can happen again.
Were N3V to go out of business, there is virtually no chance that they would be ABLE to "fix the activation problem," assuming they even are willing to do so. Putting aside the obvious hurdles, such as 'how does a broke company pay to develop and distribute a deactivation patch', the bigger issue is a legal one. BK courts and and routinely do break any promises made by the defunct company. Familiarize yourself with existing case law, such as the totsmart.com bankruptcy and liquidation in 2000. toysmart.com was a typical dot-com that, among other things, promised its customers up and down that it would never sell or give away it's customer lists, for privacy reasons. But, once they entered bankruptcy, the court promptly auctioned off its customer list. The very same thing happened with Radio Shack's bankruptcy in 2015.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB964205196376235426
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...give-your-customer-data-to-the-highest-bidder
The point being, any promises made by an out-of-business company are worthless, and that's assuming the company had any intention of keeping them in the first place.
In fact, do you even have any proof that any company, ever, has de-activated their DRM systems before either going out of business or discontinuing a service? Adobe is the only one I know of. On the other, the list of companies who didn't is far, far longer. Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon are but a few examples, who discontinued services and left their customers with worthless purchases thanks to their DRM systems.
Again, however, the bigger issue is that software publishers routinely use DRM to deactivate otherwise perfectly-functional software. If you follow tech at all, or even if you bother to read the EULA/Help/FAQs of most software, you'd know that.
pware- FSX and MSTS/OR seem to be doing pretty well, despite being out of support for years.
Were N3V to go out of business, there is virtually no chance that they would be ABLE to "fix the activation problem," assuming they even are willing to do so. Putting aside the obvious hurdles, such as 'how does a broke company pay to develop and distribute a deactivation patch', the bigger issue is a legal one. BK courts and and routinely do break any promises made by the defunct company. Familiarize yourself with existing case law, such as the totsmart.com bankruptcy and liquidation in 2000. toysmart.com was a typical dot-com that, among other things, promised its customers up and down that it would never sell or give away it's customer lists, for privacy reasons. But, once they entered bankruptcy, the court promptly auctioned off its customer list. The very same thing happened with Radio Shack's bankruptcy in 2015.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB964205196376235426
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...give-your-customer-data-to-the-highest-bidder
The point being, any promises made by an out-of-business company are worthless, and that's assuming the company had any intention of keeping them in the first place.
In fact, do you even have any proof that any company, ever, has de-activated their DRM systems before either going out of business or discontinuing a service? Adobe is the only one I know of. On the other, the list of companies who didn't is far, far longer. Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon are but a few examples, who discontinued services and left their customers with worthless purchases thanks to their DRM systems.
Again, however, the bigger issue is that software publishers routinely use DRM to deactivate otherwise perfectly-functional software. If you follow tech at all, or even if you bother to read the EULA/Help/FAQs of most software, you'd know that.
pware- FSX and MSTS/OR seem to be doing pretty well, despite being out of support for years.
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Because it has happened to other companies in the past is no proof that it will happen to N3V or any other company. Heck you could claim that because Microsoft, Apple, Google etc could all go bust in the upcoming trade war between China and the USA, then we should immediately stop using all their products and services and seek freeware alternatives to avoid the coming apocalypse. That's paranoia!
If N3V goes out of business tomorrow with or without deactivating their DRM it will make little difference. The DLS will be gone, these forums will be gone, the help desk will be gone. Those of us who have a DRM free version would have to rely on third party sites for any new assets and these sites do not, in general, have a history of reliability. As I proposed in my last post, with or without DRM Trainz would be a fading memory within a few years.
Arguing against DRM, regardless of the merits of your arguments, is "blowing against the wind". It is commercial, not emotional, factors that will decide the issue. If the worst of the doomsayers predictions do come true then we all move on.
I started out using CP/M as my computer OS and it was a great system, I loved it. Even wrote machine code software for it - oh, the hours I put into that. When it "died" I moved to MS-DOS and invested a lot of time (and money) learning MS-DOS programming languages and systems. When Trainz dies (if I am still around and able to care) then I will simply move on.
As for FSX and MSTS/OR - I have heard of MSTS (it died some time ago) but not the others (is that how you measure success?).
If N3V goes out of business tomorrow with or without deactivating their DRM it will make little difference. The DLS will be gone, these forums will be gone, the help desk will be gone. Those of us who have a DRM free version would have to rely on third party sites for any new assets and these sites do not, in general, have a history of reliability. As I proposed in my last post, with or without DRM Trainz would be a fading memory within a few years.
Arguing against DRM, regardless of the merits of your arguments, is "blowing against the wind". It is commercial, not emotional, factors that will decide the issue. If the worst of the doomsayers predictions do come true then we all move on.
I started out using CP/M as my computer OS and it was a great system, I loved it. Even wrote machine code software for it - oh, the hours I put into that. When it "died" I moved to MS-DOS and invested a lot of time (and money) learning MS-DOS programming languages and systems. When Trainz dies (if I am still around and able to care) then I will simply move on.
As for FSX and MSTS/OR - I have heard of MSTS (it died some time ago) but not the others (is that how you measure success?).
Because it has happened to other companies in the past is no proof that it will happen to N3V or any other company. Heck you could claim that because Microsoft, Apple, Google etc could all go bust in the upcoming trade war between China and the USA, then we should immediately stop using all their products and services and seek freeware alternatives to avoid the coming apocalypse. That's paranoia!
If N3V goes out of business tomorrow with or without deactivating their DRM it will make little difference. The DLS will be gone, these forums will be gone, the help desk will be gone. Those of us who have a DRM free version would have to rely on third party sites for any new assets and these sites do not, in general, have a history of reliability. As I proposed in my last post, with or without DRM Trainz would be a fading memory within a few years.
Arguing against DRM, regardless of the merits of your arguments, is "blowing against the wind". It is commercial, not emotional, factors that will decide the issue. If the worst of the doomsayers predictions do come true then we all move on.
I started out using CP/M as my computer OS and it was a great system, I loved it. Even wrote machine code software for it - oh, the hours I put into that. When it "died" I moved to MS-DOS and invested a lot of time (and money) learning MS-DOS programming languages and systems. When Trainz dies (if I am still around and able to care) then I will simply move on.
As for FSX and MSTS/OR - I have heard of MSTS (it died some time ago) but not the others (is that how you measure success?).
Well... If those games still have an strong community, although this community is reduced to a regional zone, you can't say that those games are, not a fail, but obsolete (although graphically could be obsolete).
fant_autentico
Well-known member
I like the DVD, I'm old for that but I do not think that the DLS was lost because it is a database that can be sold and profitable. Before a closing I think that another company would have interest in it.
I do not understand enough about computer processes but money is money.
Regards
I do not understand enough about computer processes but money is money.
Regards
I've waited until the DRM issue is ventilated again, this time close to release date of the DVD version. My vote - for what it is worth - is for the availability of a non-DRM version for those who want it. Treat is as an act of goodwill, one that will not cost much.
I don't give a damn about the rights and wrongs of DRM: I simply value my privacy.
I don't give a damn about the rights and wrongs of DRM: I simply value my privacy.
Bottom line: No DRM-free version, no money from me to N3V. If this is okay with N3V, then it's okay with me as well. TANE SP3 is the first version I've used (and I've used Trainz since 2004 and still have an unused copy of the original Trainz) that I can honestly say I've had no problems with, except of course for those *Q@^$#@%^#(*^#Q&(QW^E^&8 red and green junction arrows that destroy any sense of realism when trainwatching at junctions, especially at night (but I haven't heard anything about them going away in TS2019 either).
I'm old enough to have been buying DVDs when the DIVX fiasco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX) occurred. I thought anyone taking it seriously was naive or worse, and sure enough it went belly up and left users with thousands of useless coasters. I have no intention of having the efforts of 15 years held hostage to N3V.
--Lamont
I'm old enough to have been buying DVDs when the DIVX fiasco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX) occurred. I thought anyone taking it seriously was naive or worse, and sure enough it went belly up and left users with thousands of useless coasters. I have no intention of having the efforts of 15 years held hostage to N3V.
--Lamont
I'm old enough to have been buying DVDs when the DIVX fiasco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX) occurred. I thought anyone taking it seriously was naive or worse, and sure enough it went belly up and left users with thousands of useless coasters. I have no intention of having the efforts of 15 years held hostage to N3V.
Interesting reading, that link about DIVX. I had never heard of it before as it never reached our shores here. But, from the article, it seems to have been a "cash grab" by one entertainment media distributor and a law firm so it lacked any industry support, and had much less consumer support. From my interpretation of the article, DIVX was for the sole benefit of the media content distributors/retailers and not for the media content creators.
DRM on the other hand, has much broader industry support even if it has little consumer support. There are claims that the industry support is declining. In N3Vs case, DRM is to protect the rights of the content creators (who these days are not N3V). As a past user of the DRM free version of Trainz I can attest that its greatest disadvantage was its insistence on checking that your installed DLC content (not the program itself) was legitimate everytime you reconnected Trainz to the Internet. As I was frequently on the DLS checking for new content and updates, this was such a major pain that I ended up switching off its DRM free option.
As has already been thrashed out in this and other similar threads, DRM is not perfect and can be a major pain in many ways. But until someone can come up with a better method that protects the rights of the payware content creators that contribute to the Trainz DLC and its built ins, then it is not going to go away.
If a few users choose to not purchase any versions of Trainz until it is totally DRM free then that is their choice and loss. I do not think N3V will lose any sleep or serious revenue over that stand.
As for the claim that DRM is a "violation of one's privacy", then stop using the Internet, all smart phone apps and virtually any modern OS.
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pware, in bringing up the fact that Trainz is largely useless with out the DLS, Helpdesk, etc. you unwittingly made the strongest possible case against DRM: It's unnecessary.
Without a First Class Ticket, you can't get reasonable access to the DLS. Without a supported version of Trainz, you cannot access the DLS at all. Without a registered version on your timeline, you're typically not going to get much help from the community and maybe not even from the Helpdesk, depending on current N3V policy. In a sense, Trainz has always required you to keep a legal, reasonably-current version, at least since 2009 days. So, there's really no reason to DRM the game itself.
Since you keep bringing up economics, why would N3V commit to such a controversial (as we've all witnessed) plan that they know angers customers? Let alone spend the money on the servers, infrastructure and software development, unless they think it will pay off? Well, it's because other software developers and publishers have successfully used DRM to disable their customer's perfectly-good software and content, and forced them to buy new stuff that they don't necessarily want to need, as Corel and Microsoft do.
Without a First Class Ticket, you can't get reasonable access to the DLS. Without a supported version of Trainz, you cannot access the DLS at all. Without a registered version on your timeline, you're typically not going to get much help from the community and maybe not even from the Helpdesk, depending on current N3V policy. In a sense, Trainz has always required you to keep a legal, reasonably-current version, at least since 2009 days. So, there's really no reason to DRM the game itself.
Since you keep bringing up economics, why would N3V commit to such a controversial (as we've all witnessed) plan that they know angers customers? Let alone spend the money on the servers, infrastructure and software development, unless they think it will pay off? Well, it's because other software developers and publishers have successfully used DRM to disable their customer's perfectly-good software and content, and forced them to buy new stuff that they don't necessarily want to need, as Corel and Microsoft do.
What you say makes sense. But, from what has been posted in these forums on this issue in the past, it seems that the people you need to convince are the content creators who provide the payware DLC and built in assets for Trainz, not N3V. If, as you say, it would be a pain in the butt for N3V as well, then I am sure that they would be happy to remove it if those content creators could also be kept happy.
DRM is not an issue that overly worries me (apart from the fact that it is a minor inconvenience), but it obviously worries some otherwise we would not have these endless threads on the subject. As to the question of whether or not there are enough people who dislike it enough to make a difference, who knows?
DRM is not an issue that overly worries me (apart from the fact that it is a minor inconvenience), but it obviously worries some otherwise we would not have these endless threads on the subject. As to the question of whether or not there are enough people who dislike it enough to make a difference, who knows?
peterwhite
Steam Rules OK
As to the question of whether or not there are enough people who dislike it enough to make a difference, who knows?
Perhaps if N3V did some research to find out and then published the findings this could be put to bed straight away. If there is not enough support to warrant it that would be the end of it.
All I'm interested in is will they produce a DRM free DVD. If not then I will stick with my DRM free copy of TANE. No skin off my nose, and my money will stay in my pocket.
Peter
Why would content creators who provide payware DLC care at all about whole-game DRM? It's the DLC DRM system is what would be relevant, the one that's been around since TS12 SP1. Despite generally being called "DRM", they are two very separate systems, serving separate purposes, with very different results when they fail to authorize, regardless of how that may happen. For any content creator, payware or freeware or even those who have no interest in sharing their work, there is nothing to be gained by the system currently in place because the whole-game DRM system will not just disable payware DLC, but shut down everything, including freeware, the user's own content, and the game itself.
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Perhaps if N3V did some research to find out and then published the findings this could be put to bed straight away. If there is not enough support to warrant it that would be the end of it.
I suspect that the vast majority of users do not care and I do not know how you could conduct an honest poll on the issue. Voluntary Internet opinion polls are notoriously unreliable as they are easily swamped by a vocal minority with strong opinions on the issue. But, again, I suspect that the final say may not be in the hands of N3V - just pointing out what I believe the situation to be.
Why would the content creators who provide payware DLC want whole-game DRM?
Only they could answer that question. If enough creators wanted DRM (or similar) then it would be a very brave (or even foolish) CEO who would go against them.
peterwhite
Steam Rules OK
I suspect that the vast majority of users do not care and I do not know how you could conduct an honest poll on the issue. Voluntary Internet opinion polls are notoriously unreliable as they are easily swamped by a vocal minority with strong opinions on the issue. But, again, I suspect that the final say may not be in the hands of N3V - just pointing out what I believe the situation to be.
A simple question ' would you prefer to purchase a DRM free DVD 'yes' or 'no'' in the weekly news letter. Two buttons for said yes and no that grey out once selected. They will then get a rough idea of how many they could sell.
The other two possibilities are: 1. This is a red herring, and no one else is confusing game-wide DRM with content protection DRM; or 2. payware content creators were given false info that the game-wide DRM system would protect their content, which is not its purpose.
Given the number of CCs who have publicly supported just a content-protection DRM system on these forums, which isn't very many, the former seems more likely.
Given the number of CCs who have publicly supported just a content-protection DRM system on these forums, which isn't very many, the former seems more likely.
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