Digital Decay Of 2000's PC Game DRM

this is an original IBM PC and this is Microsoft Adventure both from 1981 Adventure was the first game for PC we can pop it in and see that it's not much but text Adventure Games were popular at the time this game also has digital copy protection by using a highly unusual floppy disc structure that was extremely difficult to duplicate but as long as you have the original disc it works just fine let's skip ahead some now this is my custommade Windows 98 computer I built using all period correct parts and this game is Sim theme park released on CD in 1999 like Microsoft Adventure this game also has a form of digital copy protection called safe dis designed to make it difficult to duplicate the game and checks that the original CD is in the computer to run it again though with the original disc this still works just fine let's jump forward once more this is my Windows XP computer built around parts from 2004 here's a game from 2009 Red Faction gorilla this game also has digital copy protection from stardock however unlike the other games we have looked at Red Faction gorilla's copy protection no longer works this copy protection also known more recently as DRM was designed around a central authentication server these servers no longer exist the original Red Faction was released released in 2001 still works fine on my Windows 98 computer it also has copy protection and asks for dis 2 when you attempt to run it the developers did something really awesome though and later released an official patch for the game that removed that check gorilla has no such patch as this package sits the person who originally bought this game has no way of using it oh yeah that's [Music] me hello this video is going to be about taking a look at the digital decay of physical games from the 2000s and how we are right now seeing the effects of the short-sighted anti-consumer practices but before we continue though I want to make sure that you have seen Ross Scott's video on a cursed Farms about this and been to the site stop killing games.com he is starting a campaign against this happening as I released this video with the game the crew and there is hope that we could drum enough legal action to stop this from happening in the future I'm a huge fan of Ross's work over there game dungeon is my favorite game video series and has introduced me to many interesting games I had to get myself the effort he is going through for this is nothing short of incredible and I'm just hoping today to draw more attention to what we can do to stop this right now but if you think that the death of these games is being overblown allow me to continue in this video to show you why the change to online DRM has been the single worst thing to happen to gaming ever I am a serious collector of PC games I have over 600 big box titles and including smaller box and jewel case I suspect my total number of physical PC games is over 1,000 being able to go back and experience these games as they originally released is not only fun but can be the only way to get the fully correct experience which is usually tied to the hardware of the time in the'80s that could be something like an adlib sound card in the 9s that might be a 3dfx voodoo GPU and in the 2000s that could be eax surround audio now keeping the original Hardware around an operational isn't for everyone but for a long time that was always considered the bulletproof option to be able to continue playing your games but when online DRM was introduced this option was broken and we are losing the ability to play these games as they were re-releases in remasters can keep these games around but like I said with my physical copy of Red Faction here the money I spent on this game has essentially gone to waste leaving me to have to buy the game again to be able to play it but even that is not always an option I want to expose how bad this really is over the last weekend I spent time going through my small box collection and found a number of titles with these issues I'm using a period correct computer running Windows XP that meets the minimum system requirements for every game I also have connected to the internet and have fully updated it using Legacy update this is the best case possible for the original experience now I'm going to put these games into four categories works as is can work with effort not fraud yet and completely dead let me give you some examples of each of these Microsoft Adventure from 1981 works as is I can take the game off the shelf put it in my computer and play it Red Alert three here can work with some effort there is an online activation but it was removed with an official patch that you could download not fraud yet may seem extreme but I agree with the sentiment that games as a service is fraud I'll cover this more in a moment but for now an example of this is halflife 2 it requires steam but valve drop support for Steam for every OS that halflife 2 was originally released for however ever you can still access it on Modern systems because steam still exists for now now for a completely dead game the original OverWatch this copy is useless because the game was always online and the servers are gone sure everyone was given OverWatch 2 but you will never be able to go back and play the original now I am in general not interested in multiplayer games but these players have absolutely been getting the worst of of this OverWatch is just one of many online only multiplayer games that have been pointlessly killed off Quake 3 Arena was a deathmatch multiplayer focused game from 1999 that still works just fine Unreal Tournament 3 is from 2007 and the same still works just fine but these games don't require a central server to work if developers and publish want to insist on Central servers there's a simple solution for this subscription cost World of Warcraft is still around after 20 years because its users knowingly paid to keep the servers online and the developers have a financial incentive to keep it going because it's profitable Wild Star as a counter example started out with a subscription and then dropped it for a free-to-play model to try and attract players this made it unsustainable and it was killed off in 2018 I mention WildStar in particular because it was also available in a iCal box that I saw for sale several times at retail years after the servers were shut down fraud this is the most obvious basic business concept you can't have recurring costs without recurring income so charge the players a recurring fee to keep the servers going and um if it turns out most players don't like subscriptions to every game they want to play and sales decline then maybe don't shoe horn server dependency into everything back to my main focus though single player games that cannot be played anymore there is absolutely no reason for this to be a problem but Publishers take the bait of the promise of better security of their games over and over again now they're spinning it with pointless social features and tying the games directly to servers but this has been a problem for longer than that has been going on every game I'm covering here has been cracked or for live service games has had server emulators in development the security measures used by these companies didn't stop those who wanted to violate the dmca but for me as a legitimate customer I am now unable to use the physical products I purchased without relying on legally questionable third-party tools that come from sketchy websites I mentioned earlier that I do consider games as a Service fraud but the games from this era barely considered the concept of online dependencies and did not treat it with sincerity here is BioShock 2 on the back of the box we can see two things one is that the game requires an online activation available only after February 9th 2010 and the other is that 2K May shut down online features after 30 days notice this online date check was part of secure ROM to prevent retailers breaking the sale date or leaks of the game from being playable but this is a particularly interesting case let's see which of my four categories this this game falls into unsurprisingly attempting to install the disc Now does not work the secure on date check servers are offline there was a key challenge system in place to work around it for a while but that's Now offline as well so it fails to work as is also to the best of my research abilities 2K did not give any notice that the online authentication servers were going offline in direct conflict with their Assurance made on the back of the box now there were patches for BioShock 2 but none of them removed this DRM check so it's not usable without work either 2K also does not have a current game launcher so you can't get it from them directly but in 2013 3 years after the release of the game their support page claimed you could register the game on Steam I gave this a shot now and it did actually work and Mike was recognized by steam the steam version now uses the Steamworks DRM though and requires being online after the initial install unlike the secure ROM check so it's still not usable on the original system but I could make use of my purchase on a newer computer for completeness we can technically still buy the original game but only as a bonus when you pay more to get the remastered version but you should know there was a period of time where the game was not being sold all while the securom DRM was broken so for a time it was completely dead this game is also a good example of why a remaster is not an acceptable replacement because this ones lacks the multiplayer features of the original so this game is kind of a mess for availability and the system requirements are now completely different from what was originally stated this just shows how these practices have removed your control over the things that you own I have another more egregious example of this though this is a sealed copy of Fable 3 for PC this is a Microsoft published game at the tail end of the games for Windows Live era today it is not possible to play this game at all I know this without even opening it because I also have Bullet Storm which has the exact same games for Windows Live Online authorization check you cannot launch the game after installing it because it can't check if you have any free authorization slots available you'll find methods online of supposedly getting these games to run but they either no longer work or they require Modified executables by Third parties no patches released that fix these issues and you cannot redeem these Keys elsewhere now the original Bullet Storm version is not for sale anymore but there is a remaster available for Fable 3 for PC though there is nothing games for Windows Live is gone and it was delisted from Steam rather than be fixed like BioShock 2 was the only saving grace is that it was also available on the Xbox 360 the PC version is gone these problems exist at varying levels for essentially every single online authorization service of the 2000s Far Cry 3 blood Dragon used uplate which doesn't exist anymore and Ubisoft connect doesn't work on XP Starcraft 2 uses Battle.net which doesn't work anymore from the dis and is no longer supported on XP Spore used offline custom servers to authenticate with a key you can no longer redeem through another service though I do know someone who contacted EA support and got them to give them a new key for it after proving that they owned it on an old account just last week and there are countless Steam games on physical media that can no longer be used on XP through Windows 8 every single one of these games would have worked on this computer when released but the world has changed around them and now what I have here are paper weights for their original machines I've been avoiding analogies for this video because it's easy to overdo that but imagine you have a bunch of PS4 games and after the PS5 comes out they all stopped working and you have to buy the next console to keep playing them that's what's literally going on here with the DRM requirements changing on these PC games and this isn't a problem for any of my older games because they use different kinds of copy protection that weren't user hostile now even if you are okay with these games only being playable on newer computers that's only a temporary solution that makes you to dependent on different online servers eventually the DRM will change the new servers will go offline the companies will merge or bankrupt something will happen to these games eventually and we cannot rely on the physical releases as a means of preservation either now in the case of games like Fable or in the future for all of them your only option as a user to be able to use the products you purchased is to violate the terms of service and while I person Al don't like to do that it's hard to feel bad about it when we can find examples like BioShock 2 where the Publishers have already done that themselves the damage has been done to the games that we're looking at so far we cannot go back and undo that but not only has the game industry not learned from these lessons but stepping forward even little it starts to make things far more Bleak digital only games permanently tied to servers die so much easier than these early online o games live games are shut down all the time and Publishers don't care I'm not really the one to talk about that though because I stopped being interested in most new games after getting collector's copies of Doom 2016 and Sonic Mania only to get steam keys in an empty box all I ended up collecting was painted plastic one of the few games I knowingly played that falls into the live service category was Need for Speed World which you've probably never heard about because it was shut down nearly a decade ago more recently though I bought a PlayStation 5 just to play Gran Turismo 7 only to find that that series is now a grindy loot Box Live service game that is a joke when you're offline they can't just give you an offline arcade mode with all the cars and tracks because then you won't spend real money to buy fake money to spend on fake cars so they can keep the modern unsustainable server life cycle going for a few more years before cutting everyone loose and moving on to the next grift as much as it pains me because loved the past games I'm never buying another Gran Turismo game again I now probably buy 10 to one old games to new ones because at least I know that when I want to play them 10 20 30 years from now that won't be an issue unlike Grand Turismo 7 and for no good reason if you want to learn more about the sad state of modern games go on over to a curs farms and watch all of the Dead games News videos to see how bad this really is and I'm going to plug stop killing games one more time here because we currently have a chance to make a difference I've done what I can over there and if you care about the future of saving games you should as well well that's it for my depressing look into the digital decay of the games of the late 2000s this was the start of the downfall of the games industry if you ask me and I'm going to keep looking backwards because there are already more than several lifetimes worth of games there to check out like did you know there was a 6° of freedom remake of Sinar I haven't tried it yet but there's tons of weird cool games like this out there waiting to be played and they don't require an internet connection I can't imagine you enjoyed this very depressing video but if you did you may want to subscribe to be notified when I release more of them if you want to help support the channel you can find me on patreon but for now that's it and I will see you next time

Channel: Tech Tangents

Views: 638,386

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Id: QZYy9KzFT2w

Length: 17min 14sec (1034 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2024