Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Want a PC DVD version without Steam, or won't buy.

Huh? What are you talking about? Larian does offer the game on GOG DRM free, and they said so from the beginning. Which is why I bought it during the kickstarter when it wasn't more than a dream (also because they have a good track record of course). So no, i'm not hurting Larian, i helped them and will continue to do so. So i don't know what you are talking about. But i guess its a sensitive topic, considering another poster was so angry he had to register just to vent a bit...

Edit: Maybe you read only my last post without the context of the previous ones. To be perfectly clear, i buy and kickstart any game i like as long there is a DRM-free option. I bought The witcher 3 the day the the preorder was aviable, i kickstarted Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Torment:Tides of Numenera, The Mandate, Satellite Reign, Dreamfall Chapters, Dex, Liege, Unrest, Battle Worlds:Kronos, World of Magic and Divinity:Original Sin. I really do care about the devs. I don't care about DRM.

So many clueless sheeple.

Well, either I don't know what planet you are living on kind sir, or you aren't aware of the fact of existence of p2p protocols nor steam cracks. In best case (from this point of view) DRM just blocks some part of content available for logged in players. Otherwise DRM is nothing more than uncomfortable idea that hurts sales and profits for the devs. I haven't heard about ppl buying a game because it has DRM in it, while I have heard many ppl not buying some games because they are only available with DRM. Some pirates wouldn't buy specific games anyway, while others just because it incorporates DRM.



I wouldn't say we're pointing out an excuse for pirates, rather a cause of such behaviour. Simple as that.
And as for the thievery:




And that I stick to.

While it's true that people have found ways around every DRM around it's not true that it doesn't somewhat serve its purpose. There's DRM where the workaround is inconvenient in a way that stops certain lazy people from ever using the work around and thus pirating. There's the fact that for every DRM some guy has to find and apply the workaround. One would hope it's at least an inconvenience or bother to them.



See: a ton of players in basically any P2P MMO.

Mind you explain this? I don't think I actually understand your point. Maybe some examples? To me it seems that if just one guy defies his laziness and puts his sollution on the web, then anyone can lazily download and use it thus pirating on a mass scale.



That's obviously not the main point of MMOs - it's to compete, play with others or any other kind of enjoyment anyone can get out of it. DRM happen by the way in such a case. I meant games having single player and bought with the primary goal of playing them in this mode.

The main culprit is the need to use isos. You might not think it, but there are people who won't bother with pirating if they have to do that.



Most P2P MMOs have private servers, some even with as many players as an official server has. An interesting sentiment among many (certainly not all) players who do pay for MMOs is that they would refuse to play the game if it was free. The reason for that is usually because they don't want to deal with the "free to play players." Thus they are choosing to play this game because it has "DRM."

That's an interesting one, didn't really know that Do you think they (and them alike) are that numerous to make a difference? Most certainly they are far less compared to the pirates tbh ;P



Didn't think about it that way, even tho I myself had quit playing LotRo because it became f2p x) Yet I can still see a difference here: people choose to play p2p mmos due to in a certain sense indirect effects of this DRM (namely selection of players and high ql customer service [as DRM doesn't have to necessarily come with this]) as opposed to players not willing to play (a legal copy of) a game directly on grounds of it incorporating a (form of) DRM.

Ditto - when I started gaming (back in the 1980s), swapping games with friends was ubiquitous and every computer-owning adult I knew back then did the same.

Of course, once you have your own income things can change and I purchased from then on. And like others here, my make-or-break criteria is DRM and I have boycotted a few dozen AAA-titles for that, choosing instead to support studios that treat their customers with more respect.

And Larian have, with D:OS, largely done that. Their reliance on Steam for the physical DVDs was an unfortunate decision, which they've agreed to fix for KS backers (and I hope they consider a patch for DVD owners generally to remove the Steam requirement) but they're offering a version on GOG which is fully DRM-free whichever way you look at it.

Given their past history (Starforce on Beyond Divinity, SecuROM Online on Flames of Vengeance) that's progress to be welcomed.

Why do you guys respond to trolls like NoDRMforMe?

Just let the thread die, seriously. The guy has a serious brain fart, responding to him won't change that either. Don't waste your time by responding, just ignore him and this ridiculous thread. Or better yet, just lock it.

I used to hate steam, it just seemed so pointless I didn't see why I needed a platform to download and play PC games, and I still don't really. I decided however to go with the flow and get with the times, I actually feel that steam is pretty convenient now, and it's growing on me. That being said, OP has a hard life ahead of him, I see lots of hard learned life lessons coming his way lol.

People like you are why the internet has become ground for little more than bad English, vacuous content and meaningless discussions.

Anything which does not suit your views simply "has to be eliminated" or it has to be deleted because, in your petty well-ordered mind, it only contributes to something negatively.

This is why any meaningful discussion is instantly deleted on any forum now. Politics, human rights and the current world climate are not discussed anymore because of bland, dull-eyed people who'd rather not think.

"No negativity please." "Lock this thread" "Ban this person" are effectively ways of exercising a clamp on freedom of speech.

All parts of the all-new, regulated technocracies I guess, of which DRM is fully a part of.

It always seems that the majority of people crying "free speech" don't actually have a clue what that means.

Case in point.

Thank you for voicing exactly what I was thinking. I'd love to go and pirate his car since he doesn't offer a permanently unlocked version.

You logic is flawed. I understand the desire to do this, and some companies allow this through demos, but you are still breaking the law, and still pirating. It would be awesome if all devs had demos, or try before buy, but it's a lot of work to build a demo, and not all devs have the resources to do so. Just like you can't go to Best Buy and grab a TV, bring it home without paying for it and then decide you like it or don't, you can't do this with games without breaking the law. It's flat out stealing. It does hurt devs. While you may feel like it is justified, it isn't.

Stores tend to accept returns. Sure, it'll probably help if you make sure the store you're buying it from has a good return policy beforehand. If you can return it then you essentially do get to take it home and try it out in a sense.

For games this is not quite the same. PC games with DRM usually do so via a CD-key. If it's a CD-key that's verified online then you cannot return the game. If it's through steam then you cannot return the game (except through special exceptions). You can't make a demo of a TV for people to take home, but you can make a demo of a game. Game demos should be the standard and every game should have one. If the devs don't have time then all they have to do is find a way to cut off content past x and ship that. It's better than no demo.

It's not that simple to make a demo. Many people assume game development is a linear a-z process. Don't make Z and you can make a demo right? Not quite. Demo's require a massive amount of effort especially for a large RPG like this. First comes the design problem: How do I take a player driven slice of the game that encompasses all of the different player types, player progression, and enough story to hook them? Next comes all of the engineering and QA support that is required to ship a full project. Demos need their own branch of code with their own bug databases and their own testing. You make a core engine fix in the main game, you need to then try and merge that code into the demo branch. Easy for one fix, but insane for the run up to shipping a game and the thousands of fixes that go into that. Usually you need a large amount of special gating code and level work so that you aren't just giving the whole game away as well. There are also narrative issues and quest issues galore that you have to conquer, and it costs a ton of time and therefore a ton of money. Studios can't afford to throw money and time away like that. If you aren't sure about a game, wait. Read reviews. Ask friends.

Don't steal. Piracy is stealing. The damage from piracy to studios is real. It is getting harder and harder to make large PC games that are worth playing. Keep pirating games and watch as you assist the industry into becoming a free to play turd fest of coin collecting and bubble bursting. Pirate games and watch the single player content get smaller and smaller. You cannot justify theft.

A few corrections:

• "Piracy" (aka unauthorised copying) is not theft legally or ethically. Theft means either permanently depriving someone of an item or otherwise claiming ownership of it (see section 1 of the Theft Act 1968 for one example). As such, it is publishers that are more likely to commit theft when they appropriate or incorporate content produced by others and claim it as their own (e.g. with some of the older games offered by GOG like Arcanum or Flatout, the publisher has supplied a cracked version without giving credit to the groups concerned).
• The "damage" from piracy is a questionable topic - copying has been around since the earliest days of computing and it hasn't stopped certain companies from becoming multi-billion dollar behemoths. Also see the links posted above regarding surveys showing no relation between P2P traffic and music sales.
• The only sense in which PC games are getting "harder" to make is that the budgets for AAA titles have ballooned (mainly to cover graphics) and that publishers have in turn aimed for the lowest common denominator. The fact that several Kickstarter games have achieved critical and commercial success (e.g. D:OS, FTL, Xenonauts, Shadowrun Returns) shows that the market for good single-player games is healthy and simply suffering from neglect by big-name fashion-blinkered publishers whose idea of customer service is trying to nickel and dime the general public for all they're worth.

Rant over (I hope)...

I'm not a lawyer...so there's no way I can argue what the legal definition of piracy is.

However...I think it should be abundantly clear that piracy is morally wrong.

Just imagine this scenario...

Jim spends 3 years working and living on little money to create his dream game, with the hopes that he will be able to support himself one day. He finally releases his game, selling it for $10 on his site.

But what happens is that one person buys the game, and then posts it on a popular site where everyone else downloads it for free. Everyone is playing Jim's game, but Jim is still destitute...despite having worked so hard to make his game.

So...I have to ask, has something wrong happened here? And if so, who is at fault? I think it should be fairly obvious, that it's not Jim.

We already had this debate, and I had made the point that it was legally not theft, but I would argue that ethically, it is. Both morally and ethically, pirating a game is stealing, even if it doesn't fall under the technical/legal definition as such.

This thread is still going? Wow...


Physical discs on PC are just dead. DEAD. Sooner or later they will go the way of the dodo bird. The sooner you accept that the better. Deal with it or do something else with your leisure time.