Is Starbound going to have an always active DRM?

Is Starbound going to have an always active DRM? I hope not.


*For those who don't know, always active DRM means you need to be connected to the internet to play even singleplayer.= No offline mode, for example sim city or diablo 3.

 

Oh good lord I hope not. I bought the newest SimCity, and have been bashing my head against my computer desk ever since. Origin is such a horrible ... client thing ... whatever it is.

Anyway I very much doubt it because of Steam?

 

I have ONLY mmo games on steam, is steam always on DRM on it's own?

 

No you can definitely play games offline on Steam, but I just think the platform and distribution offers some piracy protection for developers.

I really don't know though, you're better off talking to someone who actually knows anything about this sort of thing. I should probably back out of the topic slowly...

 

In my opinion DRM encourages piracy, starbound for example, I'm 100% going to buy it legaly, but if it has always on DRM I'm 100% going to pirate it.

 

I'm... pretty sure there ain't gonna be any Always on DRM.

 

I already made my thoughts on this topic clear back in this topic a week or two ago.

In case you don't feel like reading my big spiel about it though, a summary is that with Chucklefish being an indie studio they can't really afford complex forms of DRM - they don't have time or effort to expend on coding it, they probably don't have the funds to license a third party DRM engine, and with them being an indie studio their user base is smaller than a large studio, so any negative backlash resulting in lost sales will hit them far harder than the likes of EA, Ubisoft, and so forth.

Also that DRM cracking teams have been doing what they do since the 80s at the very least and are very well accomplished programmers who could smash open any DRM like a rotten egg within a day of release, so there's really no point.

 

Is this thread for holywar? Of course Starbound will not have DRM

 

Always on DRM is always bad. Making things short, TotalBiscuit said in his take on DRM along the lines of: "If you have always on DRM, you do not trust your customers, so why should they trust you."

DRM is seriously dumb, heck piracy actually promotes the game. Sure you can get the pirated version, but you'd pretty much be a cheapo for not paying $15.
Everyone has their reasons, and 40% of those guys actually buy the game for real.
Piracy is honestly for those who REALLY can't afford the game, those who don't have a credit card, those who are too young to play a certain title or they simple just want to try the game.
Don't get me wrong, the above reasons does not mean you pardoned, those are just the reasons WHY people pirate.

 

P.S. I read your post.

 

Pretty sure they said that the only kind of DRM will be Steam, if you get the game from there.

 

Game works completely without steam, and on steam as well.
Depends where you get it.
Pre-order gives you both.
So no, no DRM at all.

 

Yes also real cash auction shop and always online. Also no character customization.

 

Everyone I know who pirates stuff, only pirates DRMed things... And then they actually buy things like humblebundles, without pirating it. So, the world is a strange place.

Perhaps human nature is to see the protection as a challenge, and defeating the challenge is part of our nature.

 

Actually steam is the only DRM that probably doesn't encourage piracy but on the contrary gets people to buy on it. It'll be a steam game like Terraria and I'm sure it can also be downloaded off their webpage for whoever bought it there without steam, now the game could have its own log in system within it (For multiplayer etc) idk about that, otherwise the steam version could also run steamless, some games support being ran by just finding the exe. in the /common folder, while some don't as in if you run the exe from the folder it'll still launch through steam, otherwise it'd work with steam offline anyway.

 

Steam technically is a form of DRM in it's own way, but the general thing is Valve have shown themselves to be a very trustworthy and consumer satisfaction oriented company as opposed to the likes of EA. That's most likely why they're so popular.

The hell kind of boobs you been looking at? It's a martian!

 

To clear up any potential misdirection here, Steam does not mean the game is playable offline. Even though the Steam platform supports offline play (kind of, it's a pain in the ass and you have to set it up ahead of time with an internet connection) that doesn't mean the game will. AC2 had always-online DRM even though it was based on Steam--a mandatory in-game check in with the servers periodically, and if it couldn't be maintained, it would stop working. So the game can pile up extra requirements for its piracy protection program on top of Steam's security...which is a little ridiculous, but still happens often.

FrozenFlame, you in particular misunderstand, and are seriously misusing that quote. TB would agree that DRM, when handled correctly, is a necessary evil in many cases. A game does what it can to protect itself from piracy, and if the protection does more damage exclusively to the pirates than the legitimate customers, than it is arguably successful. When a game interferes with the legitimate customer more than the pirate, like always-online does, it's very wrong--but that doesn't mean that those kinds of DRM, the horrible kind, are synonymous with any and all past and future kinds of DRM.

Piracy of games is a sign that there are flaws in the market infrastructure right now for the distribution of games, but poor DRM practices and pricing are less and less often a legitimate reason for piracy, and just an excuse to thinly veil laziness. For god's sake, people still pirate the games in the Humble Indie Bundles--they won't even spare a penny for charity.

Yes, there will always be pirates, and yes, they will usually be able to circumvent DRM implementations, but as long as it can be done correctly and effectively for some time, without harming the actual consumers, than there is absolutely no reason to stop trying to counter it at all. Don't hate DRM--hate the publishers that give it a bad name.

 

I believe the Chucklefish staff said a while back there would be no DRM. There would be an authentication server, I believe, but that is apparently optional.

 

Chuclefish is the kind of dev team that listens to its fans. If everyone and their mother says drm is the worst thing created by mankind to be in any kind of software, they will probably not include drm. In a very old interview with Tiy and Matthew Griffin of the Wanderlust: Rebirth team, I vaguely remember hearing Tiy say the will do something like Minecraft (if you sign in with your account, you get full in-game capabilities; if you don't, you play in offline and don't get certain elements such as updates and online multiplayer.).​

 

DRM is kinda pointless. Those people that pirate will do it regardless, and you loss the Anti-DRM and Offline-only fans, as well as alienate anyone that buys a game only for their internet to go out for a day (or lose power if they are on a laptop). It has been all but proven that forced DRM (by always being connected to a server) is a waste of time and money for developers.

For example I bought Diablo 3, and so too did three of my friends. One lost internet due to being unemployed and couldn't play a game he paid full price for (BOOO!!!) and the other lost his internet due to a hurricane and couldn't play for months.
Even I was angry as I couldn't play with those friends, or even play offline on my Asus Laptop whenever the power went out on me. (EDIT: At least you can stop paying for MMOs, which are much cheaper in the short run than games like Diablo 3 that started at like 50 or 60$ not including the ingame cash auction house)

But that's my rant. As it is, I don't see Starbound being DRM'd to an online server, and steam allows offline play until a few days (or a day? I'm not sure, it has to reconnect sometime).