Quoting: Seegras

Quoting: Mountain ManAt any rate, I'm pretty sure that reverse engineering software is illegal

Absolutely not! Stop sprouting other assholes propaganda!

Of course o load of bad companies would like it to be illegal, but it's not.

It's illegal to copy code verbatim, but "reverse engineering" implies this is not the case.

It depends on what is done and how it is done.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyEnding the statement with "sad"--I wonder if Atari have decided to go with the "Donald Trump" method of gaining publicity. Machiavelli: "Let them hate, so long as they fear". Trump: "Let them hate, so long as there is buzz".

If we want to continue the Trump analogy, the Atari VCS will have detractor after detractor come forward and tell them it can't be done only for Atari to pull off a brilliant success in the end.

And, no, I don't see that happening. This thing is sounding more and more like the Phantom from Infinium Labs which turned out to be a scam from the beginning. Has anybody looked at the names behind this Atari VCS? I wonder if the same folks are involved, because it all sounds suspiciously familiar.

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It's a shame, as I wanted it to be success considering it could have been an interesting Linux gaming device.

It's still interesting. Just in all the wrong ways.

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Quoting: NovenTheHeroYou can get a Steam Link for $2.50. Insane.

Plus $7.99 shipping. Still not a bad price, all things considered.

I would be more tempted if I wasn't currently saving up for a Nintendo Switch.

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Between the give-aways at GoG and Humble Bundle, winning contests at Gaming On Linux, and people giving keys away in forums, I've gotten so many free games in the past 12-months that I'm finding it difficult to justify spending money on new games.

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Quoting: WendigoIn D3 you can't even assign any skill points and the spell system is meaningless since about any distribution of spells works. And if not just reset everything on the fly and try something new.

That, I think, is one of Diablo 3's greatest strengths, the extreme number of viable (but not necessarily optimal) builds per character and the ease with which you can experiment. I've had so many times where my build would be OK, but with a little thought and reassigning of skills, paragon points, and gear would suddenly becomes a DPS beast. I love the fact that I don't need to grind out a new character whenever I want to try something a little different. Diablo 2 patch 1.13 did resolve this issue to some extent by allowing limited respecs.

Quoting: WendigoIn D3 I am forced to use pets as tanks and do the damage myself. Playing as WD it took 3 of my hounds about 3 seconds to kill a single zombie.

Sounds like a less than optimal build. A couple seasons ago, I had a Witch Doctor who could literally stand still, and his pets would destroy everything in sight within seconds, including elite mobs. Made clearing high level rifts a breeze.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThere is a Diablo 3, it just isn't good... like at all.

I disagree. Diablo 3 is an excellent game and very fun. It has so many gameplay and quality-of-life improvements that I have trouble going back to play the earlier games which feel so clunky in comparison.

At any rate, I'm pretty sure that reverse engineering software is illegal, or at least it violates license agreements (but could a pirate argue that he never agreed to any kind of license? Ha! Probably not.).

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Quoting: namikoPost-purchase authentication was the original purpose of DRM in its earliest forms. Fucking around with your game's digital access, gameplay capabilities, not to mention data scraping from your machine without telling you, the more egregious DRM stuff all came later. Even Wikipedia's definition of DRM is defined as "access control".

Apparently, even Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges would make you look up things in their manuals to prove you had bought a game; I remember DOS and Windows games did that too. It was all about access control. It's still about access control, authentication, today.

That was a common form of copy protection on Commodore 64 games, too. It was preferable to the other popular method that would intentionally write bad sectors to the floppy disk that would cause your drive head to rattle about which didn't prevent the software from eventually loading but was enough to stop most disk copy programs. Unfortunately, all that knocking about of the drive head could eventually cause misalignment which necessitated a trip to the local computer repair shop.

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Quoting: hummer010

Quoting: Mountain ManMost publishers only really care about hindering pirates for the first week or so since that's usually when a hot game will put up its best sales numbers, and people will be more likely to buy if they can't simply download for free.

This is the crux of the matter right here. Are the people who want to pirate a game really more likely to buy it if it's not available to pirate? Or are the people who buy the game in the first week or so the people who weren't going to pirate it anyways?

I don't know the answers, but my gut feeling says that the pirates don't readily become buyers just because it hasn't been pirated yet.

DRM rarely deters the hardcore warez crowd, but it does deter "casual" users, especially when services like Steam offer such an easy and convenient way to legally obtain software.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: Mountain ManThis is where I fall on this debate: If people are worried about game preservation then the warez community already has us covered.

So your suggestion to preserve it is to use pirated versions? Isn't it itself an admission how messed up DRM is?

This is not the first time in this thread that you have misunderstood or misrepresented someone's point. You either need to work on your reading comprehension, or be more honest with the way you frame other people's opinions.

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