"Give me convenience, or give me death."
Someone made the point about cartridge systems in the past. I have no problems with that - Take cartridge off shelf, put the cartridge in console, switch on the VCS (or whatever), play the game. No problem. Your game system is static, and your game library is beside it, all pretty logical.
However, when it's a portable system, that sucks big, hairy balls. I don't want to have to carry around multiple SD cards. In fact, because they're so small, every additional one increases the risk that I'll lose or misplace one. If I have on SD card, and it's plugged into the GP2X it's not going to fall anywhere.
While I have a Nintendo DS, and plenty of commercial, legitimate ROMs, I still download the ROM images and copy them onto SD-card, because I don't want to cart around a load of little bits of plastic, when I should just be able to carry the console and that's it (especially when you need the storage space for batteries!) I don't mind buying ROMs for the DS, because that's the native format, and from a loading-time point of view, it's a big plus. Plus, it's Nintendo, and historically-speaking, you expect a ROM-based system.
Another case in point: The only reason I bought Half-Life 2 was not because it's a great game (which it is), but because I could download the cracked version from the newsgroups and not have to worry about whether the steam server was going to be working today or whatever, which was a big problem at the time.
When I got my Darwinia CD last year, I was absolutely delighted to find that it had no copy-protection. That means I can have it on my PC at home and my machine in work, without carting a CD around, just waiting for something to happen to it, or to be forgotten and left in the wrong drive. Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, I'm physically unable to use both machines at the same time. I respect what they did, and I try to spread the word about Darwinia to gamer friends and point them towards the demo, available on PC, Mac and Linux. It is a fantastic game, I urge you all to try it!
The whole point of doing good business should be to provide added value to the customer. Someone laughed at the point being made that DRM-users are treating customers like criminals. What's so laughable about that? Just the simple fact that DRM exists means that the vendors are assuming that we will pirate the game. How would you like if it, next time you went into a shop, a security guard followed you around, and everytime you picked something off a shelf to look at it, asked you, "Are you going to buy that?" Actually, no, he'd probably ask "Are you going to buy that, Sir?", with the extra level of obsequiousness adding insult to injury, as intended.
DRM is just a way of making things look good on paper for shareholder meetings, and it provides the circular argument of piracy vs sales that idiot Sales Directors and CEOs need to take the attention off their incompetence.
Basically, the whole idea of using DRM and locking software to physical media invalidates all the advances that shareware made in terms of respecting the customer.
If I have to swap an SD card through the machine just to play a game, I know there's going to be a time when I'm at home and I want to either play the game, or watch some video, and I find that the wrong card is in the machine, and the one I want is somewhere else!
If a vendor tries to sell me software with DRM, they're basically saying, "We'll sell you this, but you can only play it from the CD or SD card it's on, because we don't trust you to keep it to yourself. In fact, we're pretty sure that you'd upload copies all over the place." I'm sure as hell not going to have anything but contempt in response to that kind of attitude. That's how I feel about it, and I'm not sorry - I do have some self-respect, and it looks like roughly 30% of the (highly accurate, I'm sure) poll voters feel that way too.
Granted, serial numbers are a form of DRM, but they're pretty non-intrusive, and enable the developer to provide added value in terms of extra downloads (e.g. Nintendo DS VIP titles have a serial number which unlocks downloads on Nintendo's web site.)
Anyway, I find it somewhat hypocritical for them (GBAX) to be selling DRMed software, and then Craig goes and writes up a (damned fine) article about the GP2X, with a major part being about emulators, which is copyright and IP infringement (no matter how nicely any of us would like to spin it), and then we find this gem: " tried episodes of Lost straight from Bit Torrent and also some movies and the GP2X handled them without any fuss at all:". That really says it all, I think. If he's reading this and not blushing, then he has no shame. I will, of course, happily offer an apology if he can produce proof that he owns the originals of the games in the pictures of the emulators, and I presume he owns an Amiga from which he obtained the Kickstart image for UAE? I would assume he must have the DVDs of "Lost" and "The Warriors", at least.
That doesn't make much sense.
