Wednesday, December 18, 2013

UNCONFIRMED Xbone keeps draconian DRM for digital games. Disrupts private tournament.

Original Article on Cinemablend

So apparently, when Microjerks backtracked on their always on, then once per day, must connect to internet DRM they forgot to mention (or I didn't see mentioned) that it would still apply to digital (and perhaps other) titles.

Let me clear something up real quick. on the 360 I own multiple digital titles. Many of them XBLA games, a few of them "full" games I got on sale or for free (from MS' games with gold promotion). These games exist in the cloud and (wait for it) on my hard drive. If I disconnect my 360 from the net, I can play all of my games just fine. If I delete one, I need to re-download it from MS.

I mentioned that to prove that it's quite possible to have digital titles on an xbox that doesn't require random checking for DRM.

Apparently the Xbone requires random verification, requiring you to connect to the net to authenticate your content. The video below is from a local Killer Instinct tournament in New York. (at about 6:25 is when the issue happens)

(NOTE: For some reason the embed code from google's youtube is not properly queueing up the video on google's blogger. I'll try to fix it later.)

 As you can see, there's no warning, no chance to save, nothing. While this is likely a bug, the fact that MS thought this was an appropriate way to go is the issue. DRM does little, if anything to stop piracy. Pirates will work around copy protection and DRM.

DRM only hurts the legitimate consumer.


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