Spore Awarded Dubious Honour

I am sure EA will be squirming as they are given the dubious honour of having the most pirate game ever. According to torrentfreak, Spore has been pirated 17 million times since it’s release in September, that is a staggering amount of lost revenue. Spore is currently selling on Amazon for £29.99, that equates to nearly £51,000,0000 of lost revenue for the company. Now I am no huge fan of EA, but that amount has to hurt especially in the current financial climate.

One has to wonder however, what percentage of that 17 million were gamers who simply rebelled against Spore’s draconian DRM which I ranted about previously? Moreover, how many people just skipped buying Spore altogether? There will always be piracy, but by making it harder for ordinary users (and not affecting pirates at all) EA and other companies are merely shooting themselves in the foot. I don’t blame them for trying to protect their interests, however I think they have things sadly backwards.

I neither pirated nor bought the game out of protest and, a few months on, I don’t feel a need or desire to reverse my decision. Which is a shame and a lost opportunity for EA and a waste as I think I probably have enjoyed it.

Spore Spurrned

Way back in 2005, Will Wright got on a stage and proclaimed the future of gaming did not have to include ultra high resolution graphic, overly flashy animations and scripted environments. He described his vision of a game which was by its very nature, procedurally generated from the textures to the very mechanics themselves.

He got a standing ovation – not just from the crowd, but from me as well which probably looked a bit peculiar to those around me, seeing as I was watching this on youtube. As time went on, gamers were tantalised further and further from videos of Robin Williams creating his own creature to more recently the Spore Creature Creator. All was not well however, unknown to the larger gaming community, storm clouds were forming behind the scenes, the weather system was called EA.

Fast forward to today, the game has been released and for the most part it lives up to Will’s original promises. It is fun, imaginative, very configurable and different. So why have I and many others not bought it?! Why is the rating for the game on Amazon so low? DRM has hit land.

DRM, or digital rights management, is a mechanism or system by which control and access to something (MP3s, DVD / Blueray video, Games etc) is restricted to predefined parameters. Despite countless examples of DRM not working companies still convinced it is their only method of protecting their products press forward with more and more limiting restrictions. Whilst I can understand a system which stops someone buying a game and then installing on ten computers belonging to their friends DRM has gone a lot further. Depending on implementation, it can install hidden software on computer systems, deny owners of legally purchased content (e.g. music) to play it on all their devices and generally inconveniences loyal, legal customers.

But thats all well I good, I hear you say, these companies are stopping people from stealing their work which they are perfectly entitled to. If that were the case, I would agree (despite my reservations.) However such is not the case, you see DRM doesn’t work. Copy protections are circumvented typically quicker than they make it to market. With a bit of know-how, anyone with a reasonable internet connection can illegally download copyrighted music, videos or games which have this copy protection entirely removed. Even more absurdly, in some cases, at a better quality than could be purchased legally! I could go on and on for a while backing up my claims, presenting examples but I am getting off topic.

So why have I yet to buy Spore? Simple, its not that I don’t want it, the converse is true, Spore uses SecureRom coupled with an activation system that allows the game to be installed three times. No more. So if you need to rebuild / reinstall your system or you buy another computer, that’s another install gone. After three installs, the game will no longer work.. that is until you buy another copy. Ludicrous huh? And Spore is not the only game to have such a draconian system, Bioshock and Mass Effect had similar ‘controls’ bundled with them. I did not buy Mass Effect for that reason, luckily I managed to buy Bioshock on steam without such restrictions.

So what is the point of all of this, have EA saved money from people not pirating their game? Quite the contrary, you see, this copy protection system EA seem to be dry humping was cracked and a completely unprotected version of Spore was released to P2P sites before the game was officially released. Turning legitimate users who paid money to buy a game, only to find they were just leasing it, are being driven to piracy sites just to install a game they legally own and others are simply not bothering to buy it, or worst still for EA and Will Wright, pirating it. DRM does not work, certainly in this case EA have lost money than they would have had they released the game with no copy protection. In fact, it made me smile today to read on slashdot that they are being sued because of this tomfoolery.

EDIT: Just found an article with EA relaxing the restrictions slightly. Now you can install the game five times and ‘deactivate’ installed copies. I know someone who installed the game on three PCs when it came out. He is still waiting on EA to de-authorise two of the copies. I will buy the game but only if I can get it without SecureRom and this activation nonsense.

EDIT 2: Ars technica as a great article on this topic, claiming that, despite EA’s stupid DRM Spore has been downloaded more than half a million times. I wonder what percentage were protest downloads?

Vista SP1 – A reflection

It is interesting how perusing or glancing at the popular tech topic currently doing the rounds on wordpress can give an insight into the impact such announcements (or software/game/hardware/press releases etc) are having on the general public. Its all well and good reading about something (in this case Vista Service Pack 1) from recognised tech insiders such as Paul Thurrott, it is far more telling to read about the experiences everyone else is having.

Here are a selection of headlines from the last few days,

Vista wreaks havok on some PCs, users complain (anti Vista blog), My Nightmare trying to upgrade to SP1 (Insightful look into incompatible drivers), Vista SP1 update not showing up is for your own good (Reasons why SP1 may not be available yet for some people), SP1 Now available, Delayed, Delayed, Delayed, SP1 Day two (interesting positive feedback from a user), Hell has frozen over (overexcited user).

And guess what? Its not (entirely) the usual doom and gloom and has become almost ubiquitous when it comes to reports about Vista. Vista Service Pack 1 has come a long way since internal betas handed out to the Microsoft beta testers. These poor guys must have been feeling particularly abused this time round if the early write ups are anything to go by. With several restarts required to complete the process (and a few hours) these so-called tech elite reported back their thoughts on the process and as you can imagine, even the most staunchly pro-Microsoft of them has a few ‘choice’ comments to make.

But anyway, fast forward to now and you will see in your Windows Updates Vista Service Pack 1 waiting patiently for you to let it into your digital home. Software and hardware compatibility is good and the lengthy installation process has been slimmed down dramatically to a single reboot after completion. Inevitably it won’t go that way for everyone with some users reporting issues with certain drivers. To Microsoft’s credit, a fairly comprehensive list of drivers that have issues has been published and I have reproduced the list below.

Realtek AC’97

For x86-based computers: Alcxwdm.sys – version 6.0.1.6242 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Alcwdm64.sys – version 6.0.1.6242 or earlier
SigmaTel

For x86-based computers: Sthda.sys – version 5.10.5762.0 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Sthda64.sys – version 5.10.5762.0 or earlier
SigmaTel

For x86-based computers: Stwrt.sys – version 6.10.5511.0 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Stwrt64.sys – version 6.10.5511.0 or earlier
Creative Audigy

For x86-based and x64-based computers: Ctaud2k.sys – version 6.0.1.1242 or earlier
For x86-based computers: P17.sys – all versions (This was originally a Windows XP-based driver.)
Conexant HD Audio

For x86-based computers: Chdart.sys – version 4.32.0.0 or earlier
For x64-based computers: Chdart64.sys – version 4.32.0.0 or earlier
Display drivers

Intel Display

For x86-based computers: Igdkmd32.sys – versions between and including driver 7.14.10.1322 and 7.14.10.1403
For x64-based computers: Igdkmd64.sys – versions between and including driver 7.14.10.1322 and 7.14.10.1403

Unfortunately, I am the (not-so) proud owner of a Ac’97 soundcard in my primary laptop so it looks like I may have to fish around for drivers (AGAIN!!) to get my laptop to work properly with Redmond’s latest offering. The issues here are not Microsoft’s fault. Infact, as several tech insiders have noted, Microsoft was beating the drum about drivers to ODM/OEMs for months prior to Vista’s (and SP1’s) release but when the moment came to deliver, most manufacturers did not come to the party.

The reason is simply, it is not really cost effective. Take a computer you bought in the last few years (or Motherboard) and goto the manufacturer’s website and check the date of the ‘latest’ drivers (or BIOS.) Whilst these companies are fairly diligent during the product’s lifecycle, when they move onto something else, they stop putting out bugfixes or updates because it no longer makes commercial sense for them to pay their software engineers to do so. When Vista came out, many people had equipment (like me) that was designed for XP but could, with a fair amount of tweaking, run Vista very comfortably. The problem I (and many others) faced was a complete lack of native driver support for this hardware. I understand the problem, but I still think it is ridiculous. Microsoft did try to smooth this over by building in a compatibility layer into Vista to allow the loading of some XP drivers and while this helped a lot, there were performance penalties.

For now, I am not particularly fussed about SP1 so I will be sticking to vanilla Vista until either these driver issues are resolved (unlikely) or I get the time to find replacement drivers for my laptop.

WD debuts DRM’d Harddrive (*hiss*)

DRM seems to be the popular industry buzz acronym at present regardless whether it inflame users or not. This recent trend of pandering to content providers over end users is both reprehensible and irresponsible from a corporate and moral prospective. A few weeks ago, Western Digital released on the unsuspecting world an external harddrive with buit in DRM.

I am a huge fan of Western Digital HDDs, and have bought 5 hard drives from them recently, however in such a competitive market, smart consumers have plenty of choice and will simply turn their noses up at a product that restricts their abilities. Wired posted that the SAMBA mode works properly, its only the client software that provides restrictions of Media files.

UPDATE: A whole community hell bent on replacing the official firmware with a F/OSS linux version has sprung up. Whilst I dislike products that force DRM on the consumer, I do love it when F/OSS projects are created on the back of them (e.g. iPOD linux)

Free (legal) Vista? .. how can I loose?

Microsoft have (quietly) started up a Feedback Program supported free version of Windows Vista Ultimate as well as other ‘popular’ software including Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Money Premium, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008, or Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008. In order to qualify, you must agree to either one or both of the following programs:

“The survey feedback program. When you join the survey feedback program, you’ll be invited to take a survey on a regular schedule. If the survey arrives at a time where you are busy, you skip that one and take the next one instead. You will not receive more than a survey every two weeks.

The automated feedback program. When you choose to participate, most of the work is done behind the scenes, with no additional effort, time requirement, or inconvenience to you. Occasionally, we might send you an invitation to participate in a survey or another feedback program to get additional information about your use of computers but, in general, you only hear from us if we make significant changes to our data collection method or if we want to offer another feedback program to you that you might be interested in.”

Source

I have not had a chance to go through the program to see if there are any limitations other than periodic usage reports / surveys from Microsoft however if you are interested in upgrading to any other these pieces of software, it might be worth considering as a ‘demo.’ This idea is not a new one, versions of Microsoft Office have had voluntary opt-in usage statistics since Office 2000 as well as MSN Messenger. I don’t know about you, but the prospect of my operating system sending back ‘anonymous’ usage reports to a third party does not fill me with confidence.

MiniWin – A Windows Kernel in 4Mb

Whilst most of the details of the upcoming ‘Windows 7′ (or Blackcomb / Vienna depending on which codename MS are currently using) are still shrouded in Mystery. Microsoft recently revealed they intend to power Windows 7 with a brand new minimalistic core. At present Microsoft support a wide range of kernels across their products and it must be resource consuming maintaining all these codebases. After all, its not just desktop kernels but Mobile and PPC based systems as well:

‘Longhorn Based’ – Server 2008, Vista

‘Whistler Based’ – Server 2003, Windows XP, XP embedded, XP Media Center 2003/4/5, Tablet PC, XP Fundamentals, Windows Home Server

‘NT 5 / Asteroid Based’ – Windows 2000 Sever / Professional

‘Talisker Based’ – PPC OS, Smartphone OS

Magneto Based’ – Windows Mobile 5

‘Crossbow / Yamazaki Based’ – Windows Mobile 6

So the idea is to consolidate all supported architectures into one makes perfect sense in terms of longer term support. Of course, in order to be fit for purpose, the MiniKernel needs to be so flexible as to be used for embedded mobile applications as well as desktop AND enterprise grade server applications. The idea of a streamlined, optimised kernel is a welcome departing from Vista’s Bloat, I just hope Microsoft do not embed DRM into this mini kernel and bloat it unnecessarily.

The new kernel is purportedly to be 4Mb in size and uses only 100 files. Of course this precludes any GUI, however when run in a virtual machine with only 40Mb of RAM, the kernel (running a basic http server) used just 33 MB of the allocated RAM and booted in 20 seconds. This is a project fairly early in its life, and short-term will only make things worse (by adding yet another code-base) however it will be interesting to see what other optimisations can be made. Of course this kernel does not include all the parts needed for a fully fledged operations system like a graphical hardware layer and proper driver loading, however the implementation of a networking stack is promising. It shows what can be done when not implementing a broken IPv6 system that almost no-one presently uses..

It is one thing to show a prototype in an idealised virtual machine (ahem ReactOS :p) and quite another to provide an infrastructure that allows heterogeneous hardware support, however I am very interested in this new approach and like many others shall be watching this closely.

As a brief aside, I just want to say that my dig at ReactOS was precisely that, a playful dig. The project is one I have been following since 0.2.x and the work the guys are doing over there is extremely impressive, implementing an NT based F/OSS clone is alot of work (it too Microsoft ~15 years to get there after all!)