Games at Risk

I’ve always been a multi-platform gamer, but since the new generation of consoles I’ve really embraced the PC gaming side of life. Now with all platforms, especially recently, there has been a lot of talk and experimentation with DRM, methods games publishers use to protect their games against piracy, but what happens when these systems go wrong? Or are completely shut down?

Maybe I’ve done something wrong here, or something’s not right…

Steam is great for picking up games on the cheap, and since I’ve been playing more on the PC I’ve been buying some older games, some I’ve played before and just want to re-play with mods, some are games I’ve missed out on over the years. And when some of these games only cost a few quid, then it’s hard not to fight the temptation and just click ‘purchase’. Now maybe I’ve been a bit stupid and hasty with some of my purchases, I don’t really expect to have to investigate whether or not a game is even going to work at all before I take the plunge and spend two whole pounds, maybe publishers and distributors rely on that.

Recently I’ve bought a few games on Steam. The first was GTA 4, on sale and I got the whole lot with DLC, fantastic timing as the girlfriend was hooked on GTA V multiplayer and taking over my PlayStation, so a great purchase, or so I thought. GTA 4 relies or used to rely on the Games for Windows Live system. This is a DRM system that has been out of service for the best part of a year now. Of course I didn’t check this before I bought the game, I didn’t think anyone would be selling a broken game.

You do not want to see this screen.
You do not want to see this screen.

After the lengthy download and install I double clicked the game in my game library… then nothing happened. I tried a couple more times with the same result. Maybe I’ve done something wrong here, or something’s not right, so of course I look to the Steam forums, and yes loads of people are having similar issues. There is a work around, which involves placing a modified DLL file in the application directory, and it does work for this game. I had a similar experience with Red Faction Guerrilla, using the DLL replacement method got me into the game.

Not all games are proving to be as successful, and it seems to be happening more and more to me. Keep thinking surely online distributors can’t be selling games in this state. I recently bought the second Operation Flashpoint in a Codemasters sale and the game is unplayable, at least you can’t save anyway, which essentially makes it unplayable, unless I want to leave my machine on and in game for days at a time. Section 8 prejudice also suffers from the same lack of ability to save at all.

no.... I can't say I do.
no…. I can’t say I do.

Now there are many discussions about DRM and should games have it or not, that’s not what this is about. I’ve essentially been sold a product that doesn’t do what I expect it to. Who takes responsibility for a game that is essentially broken? In the case of Operation Flashpoint, the individual CodeMasters studio that developed the game has been shut down, so I’ve no doubt the game will never be patched, but should CodeMasters still be allowing the game to be sold? And surely it’s the responsibility of the distributor to not sell a game that can’t be played.

In the case of Steam in particular they make such an effort to inform you if a game is in early access and may not operate properly, but nothing is said about full games that may not have the entire product available to you. Ultimately it should be down to the distributor, in this case Steam, who should stop the game from sale until the publisher get a development team involved and patches out the shut down DRM. Publishers should not be making money out of older games that simply don’t work. I love gaming, purchasing games is my second favourite hobby (the first is playing them) and it shouldn’t be so stressful.

That’s my rant over, I’ll be checking games thoroughly before I buy any more.


Posted

in

,

by

Tags:

Comments

One response to “Games at Risk”

  1. Julian Anderson avatar
    Julian Anderson

    Nice piece, and surely if your not selling something which is “fit for purpose” ie, doesnt fully function (like save), then its not fit to be sold. I guess this is one of the rights, services like steam get us to sign away with every update of their service agreement.

Leave a Reply