The Worst DRM Systems in Modern Times

In this video I discuss some of the worst DRM systems in modern times, this is just off the top of my head and not a "top 10 worst DRM" or anything like that, but if you'd like a video like that tell me about some more examples in the comments section that I can research into to cover.
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[@DarkVeghetta]

DRM: When legally purchased games have a better chance to have malware than the pirated version.

[@kcio3erene307]

frs

[@JeSt4m]

U mean 100% chance to come with a malware?

[@SanekGamer007]

starforce moment

[@DarkVeghetta]

@@JeSt4m Not all legal games have DRM and some storefronts actively strip it out of the games that do (GOG did this).

[@frankrizzo7663]

umm gog galaxy now is there drm just like steam ;) there jsut a wrapper tho and ez to auto crack....

[@fluxie31_old]

UPDATE 8/4/2023: I have found out that the information below is a rumor and may not be accurate. It is still included below for posterity. Do what you want (lol) with the info. Fun fact: The band OK Go, in their album "Oh No," included a 36-minute long track of the lead singer's girlfriend sleeping just to fill up the CD space so DRM software couldn't be included by the record label.

[@jasonvoorhees5640]

proof?

[@fluxie31_old]

@@jasonvoorhees5640 Ok so I guess it was a rumor, but if it is true then good on OK Go.

[@MatthewCobalt]

While I have several disagreement what you say (within this or other videos), I appreciate the perspective you have on the these topics. I especially appreciate it when it comes to advocating for users.

[@TorstenLif]

A few examples after many years as a relatively early adopter in the home computer scene: In the early 2000's, an easy way to work around the slow startup of DVD-based games was to use a disk virtualization utility that would load an image from your hard drive and view it as an additional drive. So some games DRM would check if you had that utility installed and refuse to run. Although in all fairness, they did explicitly say why and uninstalling it worked, but it was still annoying. About 10-15 years ago I visited the USA and spotted a multi-pack of ink for my printer. All legit, original by the printer's manufacturer. A little cheaper than at home and convenient since I knew the printer at home was running low. Well, despite the packaging listing my printer model exactly, it wouldn't work. "Not compatible". Region coding in the cartridges. Really annoying. And a final example of failed DRM: On the Sinclair QL (yes, I'm showing my age and level of geekiness here) one piece of software that I bought came with a plastic prism of Fresnel squares that you were supposed to bend and hold in front of a scrambled 2-character code to unscramble the code and type it in every time you wanted to run. But what their programmers had failed to understand was that the QL had one of the first affordable true multitasking OS's, so a very small utility to install a "virtual prism" appeared almost immediately. It would just sit there quietly until that scrambled code appeared and then it would show the unscrambled characters in a separate window off to the side. Since holding the "real" prism exactly the right way, especially if your screen wasn't the regular size, was a hassle, using the software bypass was easier even though I still owned the "legit" plastic key. And one disclaimer: I'm now retired but the final 20+ years of my working life, I earned my salary selling and supporting professional software development tools for companies wanting to develop their own software, mostly for embedded systems. Professional programmers need to eat too! Not all have the luxury to be able to develop free software for others to use. It's similar to the "amateurs vs pros" debate of the Olympic Games. Kudos to Torvalds, Stallman and the rest, but if you have a new idea that hasn't yet captured the minds of the public, how do you finance man-years of development time to even get it to the point where enthusiasts start making imitations of it? If launching a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter isn't realistic? As a former software development professional, I hate bad software as much as anyone (and probably more than most) and as this discussion has shown, many attempts at DRM have been really, really bad. But the softwares mentioned have all been coded by people who wrote them as a way to make a living. I don't see anyone here advocating a return to voluntary "honor models" which is what feeds the Linux and Gnu movements.

[@dumdum7786]

worst DRM I can think of off the top of my head is the xbox 360 and how microsoft will permanently ban your xbox 360 console from xbox live if it detects that its modified in ANY WAY WHATESOEVER, software or hardware modded. Only way to prevent microsoft from banning your xbox live account is 100% disconnecting it from the internet before you mod it and reverting it 100% back to normal before you connect again

[@33up24]

Best anti-piracy measure it's not to be a predatory piece of shit of a company, as Gabe prolly said one time.

[@fluttzkrieg4392]

The least effective "DRM" I've witnessed was the blue FBI warning before every pirated DVD copy of an American movie I've watched. Good luck trying to track down some random Brazilian guy selling cheap DVDs from a makeshift tent. Not even the local police cared since everyone including them bought those DVDs. That practice obviously barely even exists anymore, since most people now simply opt for Netflix.

[@KeinNiemand]

That's why GOG is the best place to buy games since they sell games without DRM, unfortunatly most games aren't on GOG

[@maraheters]

"crappy center start menu" It really really hurts

[@nhansgoofyvideos7581]

Obligatory reminder that Pirated Adobe software is 100% ethical

[@tomaszmiler3163]

My school had an agreement with Adobe and they gave us their software for free, and to this day I don't understand why does it have to start 5 different processes when launching the system, even after removing them from autostart. Nowadays I use gimp on my Linux Mint (had Debian testing but I couldn't install experimental Nvidia drivers on it) and I'm glad I'm not using Adobe anymore

[@gogiy]

i get bullied for having legit adobe, the only reason i pay for adobe is because i managed to get it to 8 dollars per month by reigonal pricing and student discount, might upgrade to pirated soon tho

[@tomaszmiler3163]

@@gogiy switch to open source, some stuff might be missing but it's much lighter

[@daedalus6433]

@@tomaszmiler3163 GIMP is at least 70% as powerful, and isn't bloat, so yeah.

[@pulkitsukhija]

@@daedalus6433 +1

[@zoneanomaly4780]

Modern Triple A pirates are heroes of the technology age

[@Norbert011]

Legends among men.

[@AkinaJVS]

yeah but please do not shed too much light on them ;)

[@joe_mama__]

Why would you play modern western AAA games?

[@ogAdoptedfatty]

@@joe_mama__ elden ring

[@adityairawan1843]

Let the heroes be known only among the trusted ones (you know who I mean).

[@incompetencelogistics8924]

Reminds me of Gabe Newell's interview from a long time ago. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” When your DRM is so aggressive people will crack your content just to not deal with your bullshit. I think what the Factorio developers have done is interesting. They let you download the full game from the website provided you have purchased the game, and it comes with no DRM IIRC, meaning it's easily shared around. However, buying the game gives you access to the massive library of mods that people make for it, which is another reason why people who pirate factorio still buy the full game afterwards.

[@supercool_saiyan5670]

yup its all about convince and a lot of time piracy is significantly more convenient

[@alexstone691]

Although i havent bought the game myself, a friend bought it for me but i was thinking about it after playing pirate And i was amazed at the drm free download and gave my friend the game and coaxed him to buy it but sadly he didnt do it and stopped playing altogether

[@isaacshultz8128]

Factorio os a great example

[@humbertoseghetto5218]

I remember having trouble to activate my steam copy of DS1 because of the DRM, spent legit 40 minutes dealing with that bullshit. And i had paid for it mind you.

[@Nicolas_GE]

i bought all TBOI:AB dlc after pirating it just to have access to the workshop mods

[@WeegeeCool1]

Reminds me of when a company implemented DRM so harshly, that the devs had to put a cracked version of the game on Steam because the version they had still had a disc check and they couldn't figure out how to remove it. Edit: Looking into it, they actually were lazy and forgot to remove the cracking teams credits in the code. So, instead of just removing the credits or keeping on the cracked version...they just dug up what was left of the source code. It's more buggy than even the original release, ala Silent Hill 2 HD.

[@Legenducky]

Which game is that?

[@WeegeeCool1]

@@Legenducky Max Payne 2

[@RedBoyforCE]

Or splinter cell chaos theory

[@baseddepartment7679]

Adobe software works better when pirated because you can use it when you're offline.

[@henrikpersson5420]

My girlfriend (at the time, now fiancee) bought a photshop license for a course in uni that she took. When the internet went out she couldn't use photshop, and since the cellular is so-so here she was locked out. I was shook, as my pirated copy didn't need internet connection. Needless to say, she let me crack Photoshop for her shortly after. Ethically she was paying for it still due to subscription bullshit, but now she could work offline.

[@clementtompel21]

@@henrikpersson5420 pirating adobe software is morally correct

[@VeyronBD]

Adobe are scumbags. They recently bought Substance Painter (3d model texturing program) then right after they cut off all updates for existing customers that bought the full version and made it into a monthly subscription.

[@unfunf22]

@مسؤول داعش kdenlive is a linux/unix only software you cant install it on windows.

[@dustinm2717]

@@unfunf22 no it's not, kdenlive is available for Windows, i have it on Windows

[@arashitempesta]

DRM are just another reason that makes piracy the superior choice for consumers.

[@ejajafrozarb]

Support DRM-free programs

[@yrm1594]

@@ejajafrozarb Buy from GOG lol

[@PvblivsAelivs]

@@ejajafrozarb But that's just it. People like the original poster here _don't_ support DRM-free programs. That's why companies turned to DRM to begin with.

[@darkushippotoxotai9536]

You bet ! I've spent 89 dollars on GoG(Me an my cousins pooled our money, Actually) To get Horizon Zero Dawn, Alan Wake 1,2, Control, every Tombraider on GoG and ofcourse, Witcher 1,2,3. It's a Blast. We all got our games, And life's great, I just got them on a USB and just us it to play games on my college computers. Those steam plebs must be damn jealous, happy to give Sugar Baby Gabe all their money....

[@iHawke]

@@PvblivsAelivs yeah I bet that bill gates' children will go hungry tonight lol

[@halcyonacoustic7366]

Shoutouts to Keurig for being diabolical enough to put DRM on goddamned coffee. No, I'm not joking.

[@Tysdizzy]

I just read about that lol that sucks.

[@Lostcontroller]

I remember reading about that. I started laughing when I finished. Best solution to that, buy bagged coffee and a French press and say bye bye to DRM riddled electric coffee maker.

[@hipnog8002]

@مسؤول داعش Because it's the cool and trendy thing now to put computers in literally everything, from refrigerators to god damn toasters

[@halcyonacoustic7366]

@مسؤول داعش The only benefit is that the coffee comes in a single serving, it's fresh, and it is brewed in about 20 seconds. In my opinion that doesn't outweigh the negatives you listed, though.

[@Chris47368]

@@halcyonacoustic7366 I see what you did there, i fell for it - well done! 😂 Edit: After coming back and reloading this comment section, seems you did not pull any trickery in terms of formatting your comment 🤔 I must have had a glitch on my yt client end - when i initially saw and clicked 'Read more' on your comment, 'Read more' was moved to the right of its usual position in the mobile app but otherwise looked normal in terms of font/colour. Clicking the text itself also did not expand your comment - only allowed me to reply, hence why I assumed you did some formatting trickery for your comment. Going off the fact that as of typing this that 2 other people have liked my original(pre-edit) comment - I assume other people probably encountered the same glitch as me and thought the same, so maybe you actually did do something to your comment to glitch youtube out or something is/was going on within youtube in terms of your comment. Just thought I'd offer some explanation to avoid confusing you and/or other people who are reading this comment thread to the reason for my original comment now that this glitch within your comment has seemingly disappeared.

[@Cline3911]

One of my worst experiences with DRM. One that comes to my mind quickly is the bullshit with the NFL. Was a paying customer for the Red Zone app. For several years I was paying like $10 to view the Red Zone channel on my phone, which was being mirrored to a HDTV. In 2017-18 or so the NFL stopped that practice of allowing screen mirroring. End result? I now pay them nothing, pirate their shit, and use my computer to mirror the Red Zone channel as well as 4-5 other games to a 72" HDTV. I know I am not the only one. The Sony rootkit fiasco was funny, but I managed to avoid it. Give me time, I'm sure I can come up with some others.

[@Wahba.]

It's always the companies who shoot themselves in the foot lol

[@shrysm]

Netflix too,region locking content and limiting resolution to 540p for devices which do not have L1 certificate, alternative download from torrent with 4k res for free

[@rolanddeschain9587]

@@shrysm I use Seren on the Kodi app on all my devices. It searches the popular torrent sites for links automatically and lets you stream them in up to 4k. For $30 a year it keeps track of the things you've watched.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

That is the thing. DRM basically protects the monetary interests of the publisher for a couple days or weeks. That's it. Someone who doesn't want or can't pay for a game doesn't care about DRM, they pirate it anyway. And someone who has the money, buys the game anyway. It is only the middle people who suffer. Those who like to give the devs their earned money, but ends of pirating if the DRM hinders their ability to play it.

[@Slashx92]

Just last week I was on vacation with my family. My youngest brother wanted to see all the harry potter movies bc young and have never seen them. We got HBO max and my syster downloaded the movies on her phone and guess what. Downloaded media cannot be streamed to the tv. WHAT? We downloaded to have it avaiable. Why. Just why Next day we phoned my mom that was in her house, and she downloaded every harry potter movie thought torrents, uploaded to drive, and shared it to us. Never again. Fuck streaming services

[@DahColorzHorse]

Sony DRM on their music cd’s. At one point whenever you inserted a Sony music disc it would use a windows exploit to install a malicious root kit which would prevent users from copying data off the disc. They also got in a lot of trouble for it when caught.

[@nathanedmond8312]

This was one of the things I expected to hear about in the video. absolutely wild

[@Roxor128]

Obviously not enough trouble, given they're still in business!

[@Monstrick1]

I love the settlers franchize. When i was 8, settlers 3 came out. I got the game going, but when you were smelting iron ore into ingots, said ingot would turn into a pig, completely blocking you from producing metal goods. I thought it was a bad disk or something, but after buying 3 copies, i got the idea that they were all the same, i was heartbroken. Only after 15 years after remembering that story and reading about it online, i found out it was DRM installed by the developer. I bought these copies from our probably semi-illigal stores, there were no others anyway. It was in late 90's in russia. The whole thing is sad and hilarious at the same time.

[@larry_the]

I grew up playing settlers and heroes of might and magic 3

[@richardeadon6396]

Hehe pig iron

[@youdonegoofed]

@@larry_the I grew up on HoMM3 too!

[@bonchachan6061]

Same thing with Spyro on playstation. For some reason the game won't save the progress and you would have to start from the beggining every time you start the game. As a kid I used to get up very early just to play as much Spyro as I could in one day trying to finish the game (and I did). Recently I saw a video that told saving feature not working was a counter-piracy measure. Great idea - doesn't prevent piracy at all and only serves to make game worse for players outside first world.

[@fishinghobo]

He’s here to do some business with a pig iron on his hip

[@Kali_Krause]

I watched the video on Cannon being forced to make their cartridges without the DRM chip. The irony here is that DRM sucks in general even on printer ink

[@talkysassis]

Here where I live, DRM is kind a grey area, so there's some people specialized in replacing the ink INSIDE the cartridge

[@Pabliell]

Funniest thing is they had to sell no-DRM cartridges because of the chip shortage and then tell customers how to bypass the "not genuine cartridge" messages. So their own ink became a knockoff. Hilarious.

[@spaghettiking653]

I always buy knockoff versions of Canon ink anyway, somehow my printer is so shite that it can't even recognise them as such anyway lmfao

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

I'm running 3rd party cartridges in my HP basically since I bought it. And they even have removable chips that I can simply put onto other 3rd party cartridges. Okay, they don't report how full they are, but that is obviously a pain to implement, especially with refills.

[@cid3384]

The fact Canon had to release an official 0day on thir consumer grade inkjets is further proof we are living in 🤡🌍

[@acottontailnightfang584]

I remember getting the complete season box for Digimon data squad. My PS2(main DVD player) refused to play them because they were region locked to Austria. Now I'm looking into how to install a modchip into my PS2 so it can play the DVDs. And if I'm going through the effort of installing a modchip why stop there? I never had an interest in trying out PS2 homebrew and out of print games before, but hey look hardware perfectly suited to play them. Congratulations Sony. Through your anti-piracy measures you just encouraged more piracy.

[@xiiaohao3871]

i wonder if they were on drugs while implementing this anti-piracy system lol

[@night_fiend6]

If you have a Fat PS2 you don't need a modchip for game backups. You can get a hard drive adaptor and use a had drive and PC to install HD-McBoot then use various tools to put the games on the hard drive. Not sure about playing DVD there might be a payload to get past that.

[@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece]

My experience with DVD in general in a nutshell. Had to look into bypassing the DRM anyways to play the thing i bought.

[@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece]

@@night_fiend6 There is a version that uses a modified memory card too. But I only saw that at a friends house so I don't know the specifics of the compatibility. As at that time I already had near to no interest in the PS2 anymore. But given how old the system is I would assume there is one for every hardware revision. Also I think disc swapping still works. But that's bad for the drive so I can't really recommend that for anything resembling regular use.

[@jh29a]

*modding is not strictly piracy but whatever

[@CoolSs]

"Piracy is the result of bad service on the part of game companies" -Gabe newell. This is the direct quote of "Piracy is a service problem"

[@jasonvoorhees5640]

Gaben just says whatever though.

[@joeycook6526]

The guy that brought the 5 million dollar lawsuit against Star Force (causing Ubisoft to immediately dump them) was a total hero.

[@LilacMonarch]

if I had that kind of money I'd love to serve up some justice to scummy corporations tbh

[@brpadington]

When I used to review games starforce caused me to almost miss my deadlines. It killed my DVD drive and I had to refresh it to fix it. Had to pirate the game to finish my review.

[@joe--cool]

@@brpadington You were doing it wrong. Game doesn't work and destroys hardware shouldn't have resulted in a review. It should have been an automatic 0% 0/10 score.

[@brpadington]

@@joe--cool I gave it a 0 overall. The DVD drive was repaired after a firmware flash but most people wouldn't know that was the issue. I talked about what I liked about the game and that it was a shame they ruined it.

[@joe--cool]

@@brpadington Haha, you are a hero.

[@panqueque445]

Another type of, I think, DRM was region locking on DVDs. I remember buying movies from other countries (Japanese movies for example) because they weren't available here. A 100% legal and original copy of that movie, but I couldn't watch it because of region locking. Thank god multi region DVD players came out because having to import a Japanese DVD player just to watch one movie would've sucked.

[@OddWoz]

It DID suck. lol trust me.

[@xxdarkzon3xx]

i always think that was more a decoding, screen format and other things.

[@gaijinkuri684]

Did you know that buying a DVD from outside your distributors region is also considered piracy? Shits insane.

[@NateROCKS112]

@@gaijinkuri684 do other jurisdictions not have the exhaustion doctrine? I know the U.S. does. See 17 U.S. Code § 109(a). I'd recommend fact-checking this. Edit: Add U.S. Code citation. Edit 2: Fix citation. It's § 109(a), not § 202. Edit 3: Well, the practice is actually called parallel importation. I believe it's legal in the U.S. with respect to copyright law. On the other hand, the U.S. government bullied other countries into not accepting parallel importation for patented drugs, thus further driving up costs.

[@funkymonk255]

@@xxdarkzon3xx ye, PAL and NTSC have slightly different formats attached to them so other players would be considered incompatible

[@5izzy557]

This video couldn't have come out at a better time, I literally just uninstalled(like 5mins ago) Far Cry 3 (legit version) because it asks me to enter my PW on EVERY launch and takes like 6 secs every so often to "connect to server" so I'm downloading the cracked version right this moment lol

[@opfax163]

I was playing LA noir and the game was buggy , I finally installed a pirated version and surprise , it's not buggy .

[@ejajafrozarb]

Steam, Ubisoft and EA are destroying free pc gaming

[@azzzertyy]

@@ejajafrozarb dont diss steam? steam do nothing bad with DRM, their drm is legitemately the only bearable one, because it just relies on authenticating one time and then as long as steam is installed you can run it offline and itl be fine and let you play the games fine, you just need a linked steam account. this is legitemately a very good example of drm done right which does not hamper anyones experience of playing the game, because it just works without any caviats side note, they also sell TONS of drm free games, its the developers choice to use DRM, i have tons of games that still work with steam completely uninstalled, hell with the original 2 fallout games you can buy them, install them, refund them, and still play them.

[@ejajafrozarb]

@@azzzertyy You talk exactly like a Valve employee, looks like their brainwashing worked. DRM is always wrong, there are no good examples of drm, buy on GOG and become the owner of your games instead of the renter.

[@Norbert011]

@@ejajafrozarb based.

[@WelcomeToDERPLAND]

I heard that Lords of the Fallen used a DRM system that would constantly copy itself over and over again everytime you played the game, eventually completely filling up a person's drives after awhile lmao.

[@totallynotbluu]

As bad as DRM is, this is actually kind of funny.

[@Kali_Krause]

Now that's actually kind of funny. Imagine the pranks pulled lol

[@dontdex8221]

why torrent offer download but not payed site? grug confused

[@justsomegarage]

Was it filling it or was it the one that was killing ssds as it was constantly rewriting the same sector and wore it out prematurely? I feel like i heard the ssd thing somewhere a few years back

[@SergioLeonardoCornejo]

DRM always behaves as malware. Some are just more overt than others.

[@Sting_ray]

This is why I buy my games from GOG when I can. They have a zero DRM policy. If you want to sell your game on GOG, then you have to remove any and all DRM from the game files. It’s the closest thing to actually “owning” a game anymore.

[@sebay4654]

Personally I agree on the no DRM approach(indie developer working on big projects out of pure Passion with the goal to tell stories where the player effectively becomes the main character (I use the story to develop mechanics and I believe that striping mechanics for narrative isn't a cost I'm willing to take

[@polocatfan]

they actually do not have a 0 drm policy. You're allowed to have drm on your gog game.

[@Foil09]

There's exactly one game on the GOG store that isn't drm free, "gothic fleet armada 2" which according to the reviews uses the well known drm easy anti cheat. Shame that even the GOG version is infected in this case, I don't mind giving up online features in favour of buying a drm free copy of the game.

[@grandstarstudiosFORMER-YT]

Good ol games are amazing I recently signed up for GOG

[@Masonicon]

@@Foil09 easy anti cheat makes Battlefleet gothic armada 2 unplayable without crashing the whole OS of mine

[@sergeybitkov8294]

I live in Russia, so back in a day I had all sorts of trouble with starforce, however the worst case of drm that I encountered was battle net application from blizzard somewhere in 2015 or 2016. It had ability to somehow scan your memory, and if you had something undesirable (from the perspective of the blizzard app) running on your computer (like programming IDE), it prevented games from launch. Creepy. They were forced to abandon this practice, when government issued some kind of law that prevented them to scan memory of their client's computers.

[@sundavrastaton2300]

Not too long ago League of Legends would crash if the computer had any tab with the string "cheat engine" on it, even if it was just a text file or a browser tab

[@unfunf22]

@@sundavrastaton2300 the string "cheat engine" was enough to trigger the Crash thats all.

[@jojivlogs_4255]

@@unfunf22 yeah which is an extremely brute force, janky way to check if someone has cheat engine open. just speaks to how broken DRM is

[@realEchoz]

@@jojivlogs_4255 the whole idea of checking if a specific application is running by name is pretty laughable anyway if renaming and recompiling bypasses the check the check might as well not be there at all

[@jojivlogs_4255]

@@realEchoz yes thats what im getting at. doing it by name at all is stupid

[@fishypugbruh]

So gaming DRM is actually good because it promotes piracy and raises awareness of the problem?

[@DePhoegonIsle]

the awareness that it was the immoral consumers whom wouldn't buy anything unless you had agun to their head?

[@mythosinfinite6736]

@@DePhoegonIsle Leather is my favourite flavour, too.

[@dakota9821]

@@DePhoegonIsle Stop equating piracy to a lost sale; Only morons do that.

[@AkinaJVS]

i grew up pirating stuff, i was always more scared of getting starforce than any actual virus

[@dinamyter2860]

Digital Rights Management? More like Digital Restrictions Management huh

[@wilh3lmmusic]

Accurate

[@WolfbytesIT]

Kind of in the same vein but kernel-level anticheat is some nasty stuff. Easy-anticheat, denuvo, vanguard, all make your computer potentially vulnerable to kernel-level attacks if it is ever compromised all in the name of making the game "fair" even though people bypass it all the time, another downside being that it makes the games completely unplayable on linux systems.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

Correct, kernel level anticheat and drms should be legally banned for even existing, anticheat should be on the serverside, always on the serverside never on the client, and DRM should just not exist at all.

[@Chkoupinator]

@@diablo.the.cheater tell me Mr Genius, how do you guess server side if a split second mouse flick to a visible enemy is the result of an aimbot or years of training your aim? I'm waiting also nice name

[@itsCcallahan]

While you have a point with regards to the kernel level attacks, most of the games that use these kinds of anti cheat have a complete esports ecosystem with thousands of players and millions of dollars on the line. So, a robust anti cheat becomes a necessary evil. Cheaters can ruin a game's popularity too. I guess the best compromise would be to allow the user to disable the anti-cheat or revoke its kernel level permissions when the game is not running

[@TheExileFox]

@@itsCcallahan uh no. A proper solution would be to sandbox the game instance.

[@miklov]

@@Chkoupinator How would kernel level anticheat software be able to distinguish between a highly skilled person or an external video capture system that recognizes enemies and controls a USB HID connected to the gameputer? Cheaters will find a way, we shouldn't all have to suffer for it.

[@Aranimda]

When I download a pirated blu-ray film, it just plays fine. When I buy a blu-ray in the shop, I first need to hack the AACS keys otherwise I can't play it. DRM harms paying customers and does not harm pirates.

[@grandstarstudiosFORMER-YT]

LOL ironic huh!

[@PhantomFist37]

DRM essentially means that you literally do not own something if you do not pirate it.

[@anormalladd]

I think you're thinking of "intrusive DRM", normal drm shouldn't even be noticeable if you payed for the software.

[@dakota9821]

@@anormalladd There is no difference. DRM has to be intrusive by nature; There's no such thing as "normal" DRM. It's all just about anti-consumer control.

[@grandstarstudiosFORMER-YT]

@@dakota9821 YOU NAILED IT, ALL THESE GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATIONS CARE ABOUT IS POWER AND CONTROL! AND PIRATES TAKE THAT AWAY AND GIVES THE POWER TO THE PEOPLE

[@NotAdachiPeople]

That’s something, they made DRM to combat piracy and people pirate to combat DRM.

[@Anonymouzor]

The worst DRM i can remember from the top of my head might have been the original one for Spore when it was first released. If i am not misremembering you only had 3 installations you could do with your CD key before you had to go buy a new one, all in the name of anti-piracy i think the backlash they got both from the community and legally made them remove this feature

[@ttheno1]

btw spore ended up as one of the most pirated games in video game history bc of this

[@azzzertyy]

and then they made darkspore, which, also had online-only drm which has meant that when they shut the game down likefew years after releasing it it was completely unplayable forever. its only now starting to be finally playable again, albeit with tons of limitations 6 years later

[@notafbihoneypot8487]

Fuck I remember spor. I thought it was gonna be legendary.

[@Monstrick1]

@@notafbihoneypot8487 Everyone thought that, it was overhiped like crazy. I think it's letdown overshadowed Peter Molyneux's legacy.

[@AbdulBido]

Not before making it 5 installs first.. Lol

[@brentsnocomgaming7813]

I remember a DRM called something like Blueshell that was added to Kerbal Space Program (then soon removed due to sever backlash.) It also had ring 0 kernel access, but even worse, the privacy policy basically said that the DRM had access rights to ALL DATA ON YOUR COMPUTER and reserved the right TO SELL SAID DATA TO THIRD PARTIES OF ANY TYPE.

[@grandstarstudiosFORMER-YT]

Thats lawsuit territory

[@piotrgrochowski3423]

It makes sense to gain more money, as then they can launch ransomware to unauthorized users so that the only legal way for them to obtain their data is to buy decryption.

[@TijjerGamepark]

Was called redshell. And yes looking at 2k nothing says how much of a complete shady bastard you are by spying on people just to see how successful your game's ad campaign was. Tons of companies need to be sued for practices similar to this, but yet they never do.

[@Knyaz22]

@@TijjerGamepark 2k is one of the worst publishers in that regard. They ruin otherwise perfectly good games with their EULAs and Privacy Policies.

[@davidg4288]

Not really DRM, but I remember having to sit through the anti-piracy advertisement in the movie theater and without thinking saying out loud "Didn't I just buy a ticket, why do I have to sit through a piracy lecture? Maybe next time I'll just sneak in!" That did get a lot of laughs and agreement, luckily there was no usher nearby to throw me out.

[@LilacMonarch]

maybe there was an usher, but they just couldn't argue with your point

[@davidg4288]

@@LilacMonarch Yes, that. It was just the ads and trailers I wouldn't disrupt the actual movie.

[@andr0f]

Anyone remember the DRM fiasco where anyone who purchased Doom Eternal couldn't play for like a week? and anyone who played it without buying (cough) could still play perfectly fine.

[@namelastname6884]

LMAO pirate the game or no play

[@mountainymaple]

i "knew a guy", if you know what i mean, who did just that and multiplayer even worked

[@alexander1989x]

The same happened to SPORE

[@GruntKF]

Yea it was a day 1 "crack" as well I'm pretty sure they accidentally released the game without the drm at the very start

[@GruntKF]

@Blyad the height of comedy

[@OnE61811301]

The funniest thing is, I literally cannot think of a game, or movie, or a piece of software that isn't already cracked and available in torrent sites. So the only thing DRM does is bother the actual paying customers. Just compare it - a kiddie just opens the torrent site, downloads, applies the crack and starts playing. While me, a paying customer - I need to register to the site, make sure when I launch the app I have internet connection... oh no, I bought a new mouse so now my license is complaining. Oh no, the license server is down so I can't play my game today. And we've not even mentioned the "dongle" idiocy...

[@username-du2er]

handball 17 ;)

[@scrittle]

DRM is designed to protect the initial sales right after the game is made, it isn't made to last because it'll always inevitably fail.

[@OnE61811301]

@@scrittle interesting point. Which again proves the uselessness of it - if you're a passionate gamer, you'd buy the new release as soon as possible either way even if you know it's gonna get cracked a month later(assuming easy protection and no nagging DRM crap). If you're not a passionate gamer, or simply don't have the money, you won't buy it either way so you'll wait several months.

[@ano_nym]

@@username-du2er probably not cracked (if that was the point?) because no one have even played it XD

[@username-du2er]

@@ano_nym yeah that's the point, it's such a shit game that nobody cracked it even though they could

[@rustymustard7798]

Annoying DRM? Paperboy back in '86 made you install rather than run from floppy, and the DRM would only allow one install and had to be uninstalled back to the original floppy. It was a PITA when i only had a 2 floppy system with no HDD. Had to boot to dos, remove dos disk, install the game to a blank disk using both drives, and uninstall before i shut down. That, and having to solder 28 pin chips by hand into NES carts to do homebrew or mod games. Bar Games had you identify a certain type of bar glass printed in the manual, i memorized it all (and as a result knew what pints quarts, highballs, snifters, and other glassware was at like 12 lol). California Games did a similar thing, and it was a PITA. What i learned from all of this is to just pirate the damned thing, or crack it if i was stupid enough to buy it, hey i fell for game scams when i was like 10 too but i learned quick how to compare hex files and spot the DRM, and find what i wanted on underground BBS. We had 'internet' back then where some BBSs could use T1 lines and link users on multiple BBSs together for text based RTS gaming and chat, and that's how a lot of pirated games spread. Outlaw pirate BBSs were badass lol! And with how bad things are, i don't buy shit from any publisher that's not indie or grassroots, they don't deserve it and they legitimately owe me (and you if you're in 'murica and paid taxes) back the money they stole offshoring IP in Denmark and Ireland and shit. I paid taxes so the government will fix the potholes, but every year my money goes to kickbacks (negative tax credit) to EA, Activision, and several other huge publishers running this scam. There's a LOT of companies that do this outside of gaming to the point that it's like trillions that huge multinationals GET PAID instead of paying taxes like us suckers getting robbed at theoretical gunpoint considering they can kick your doors down, abduct you and possibly 'accidentally' off you in the process. Meanwhile over 20 years nothing gets fixed, the road to my place looks like a clusterbombed Iraqi airfield and keeps breaking my vehicles. Think about that the next time your head hits the roof of your car because you bounced though a foot deep pothole or when a bridge collapses, they could have fixed that shit with the billions they kick back to these criminals annually. I wish there were any games even worth pirating from them these days, i'd pirate them on principle that they owe you, me and society a lot more than just a broken copy of a stale COD franchise or whatever IP they use to rob taxpayers.

[@nelisezpasce]

You seem to have a soul, I hope you meet more people like you.

[@aravindkm2012]

10/10 rant

[@GazpaNova]

An absolute idol

[@ano_nym]

"i'd pirate them on principle that they owe you" That last part reminds me of a quote regarding Mass Effect: Andromeda "I set the download location to the garbage bin"

[@Jimmy9298]

Based.

[@elcanaldeldime]

Metal Gear Rising on Mac used to ping a server among other stuff for its DRM. Server went offline when the company that made the DRM went bankrupt. And now no one that had bought the game on Mac could play it. Period You should do a follow-up video on anticheats. Most of the popular current anticheats are rootkits,with just the tiniest layer of trust preventing a disaster from happening (See Artifact or EasyAntiCheat)

[@GazpaNova]

STANDING HERE I REALIZE

[@Wazoru]

Damn

[@SurmenianSoldier]

@@GazpaNova that i can't play metal gear rising on mac.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

One of the worst modern examples has to be the Adobe CC suite, but not because it's a subscription service tied to the cloud. Adobe changes the file format *every single version update* so you can't open projects unless they're either created with the version you currently have or convert to the latest version. Once you convert, you can no longer open it on the last version of the software before that. A similar practice is done by Autodesk with its FBX file format.

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

Adobe GG suite. As in Greedy, Greedy.

[@xcat4775]

Trying to get video games to run without the cd was basically my first DRM encounter back in the 90's.

[@Zephyr-tg9hu]

Ahh... the memories

[@heret1c385]

I pretty much always installed a no cd crack, because I was just lazy lol

[@WKPlugins]

Torrenting ps2 games and wondering why I can't just burn to a disk and play

[@depth386]

Once hard drives got bigger, disc images and virtual cd/dvd drives :-)

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

@@depth386 no! Strweth! Just get the nocd or nodvd patch instead of wasting space 😁

[@BlueSatoshi]

I'm sure if corpos had their way, the D in DRM would mean "dildonics-based", just to remove any subtlety.

[@Horaheehoo]

KZbin loaded the video slowly, hoping I wouldnt watch. Might be a drm, idk. Good video though.

[@tux_the_astronaut]

KZbin docent really have DRM if ot dose its very basic most sites with user uploaded content tend to have little to no DRM. They only drm i can think of that KZbin has is preventing u from downloading a KZbin video but it’s easily bypassed

[@Horaheehoo]

Dude, the joke was that youtube wasnt loading because of my wifi. Not drm.

[@SpnKO]

The worst thing about these DRM schemes is that once they're obsolete, or the company who bundled the DRM with the game don't even know how much damage they're causing. IIRC, one of the Trackmania games couldn't be installed on modern PCs because the StarForce DRM would brick your system, forcing you to reinstall due to driver incapability.

[@dave7244]

This happened with Age of Mythology. I had to crack the game to play it on my computer and I have a legit dick copy.

[@Juttutin]

I just realised that printing yellow dots may be a significant part of why modern printers won't even print in black ink if the colour ink is empty.

[@kvdrr]

How does one protect themselves from yellow dots?

[@hyperdoge3908]

@@kvdrr a typewriter

[@lazekarazas]

Nah it’s so they can waste blue ink little by little so you’ll eventually have to spend money on colors other than black

[@LilacMonarch]

my old broken printer that can't even print yellow and magenta correctly:

[@chasemartin4450]

@@kvdrr Printing press :)

[@tablettablete186]

Do you know Linux has DRM!? Yeah, it is called Direct Rendering Manager! Got you!

[@FluffyBucketSnake]

The good DRM

[@regularname1825]

Good ending

[@microassaultrifle1280]

Damn, almost got me lol

[@adityairawan1843]

The first half totally got me, not gonna lie.

[@JCO2002]

What is this thing called Windows? Is it some sort of application? I've never seen it in the Linux repositories. Haven't run into that DRM thing either, but maybe it doesn't affect the torrents I download.

[@Lostcontroller]

Windows? A horrible OS that you need to stay away from.

[@RinLovesYou]

Discord killing Spotify playback while you're talking is some of the most petty DRM. I'm thankful for betterdiscord

[@Jaws1375]

I kept getting that "this song cannot be played right now" error when that was implemented and was confused as all heck as to why. Finding out why it was happening made me so mad at this crap

[@LilacMonarch]

spotify is trash

[@jojivlogs_4255]

@ZaHandle mp3s are trash

[@realEchoz]

@@jojivlogs_4255 vorbis only provides marginally higher fidelity at 320 kbps

[@user2C47]

@@realEchoz Which is completely overkill. The $18,000 audio mixer that I use at work only does 192.

[@rallen7660]

I USED to work for John Deere, and built several test stands for remanufacturing the electronics used in their million dollar tractors. Farmers aren't even allowed to look up error codes for their equipment. They'll cancel the farmers' warranty and service contract immediately if detected. Unfortunately for JD, it recently came out in court that they built a lot of their equipment with embedded linux, and totally violated their license by not allowing anyone to see what changes they made to the code. More and more people are learning what kind of bastards and running the company. The only people they hate more than their customers, is their employees.

[@NVProlog]

Yeah didn’t they fuck up your ignition if you fixed it yourself?

[@TheNefastor]

From the moment DRM became a thing I have pirated everything that doesn't have an open-source equivalent. I have never looked back. But to answer your question, the DRM that shocked me the most was the SCMS which appeared with DAT (yeah, I super old). Basically, as soon as it became possible to copy digital music losslessly, the "power that be" made sure to put a serious brake on that possibility. On that day, they made me a "criminal". Their choice, not mine, I have all the money I need to buy music. I just can't, out of principle. Let's also mention DVD's unskippable FBI warning about copying movies : if you pay for the DVD, you get that threatening message any time you play your legal copy that you paid for. If you pirate the same movie, that warning isn't included in the video file. I don't know about you, but I prefer when *guilty* people get threatened, not innocent ones.

[@cid3384]

I always pirate first purchase later. Morally it is the superior method. I only support developers and filmmakers that have a quality product, except I sample the full product first. Consider this method the Costco Way. Buy it, use it, return it if it sucks. Since software or media across the board doesn't offer outright refunds, f'em until they fix it.

[@jay-d8g3v]

Exactly. Well said.

[@adity.atiwari]

überbased

[@username-du2er]

especially have to try out games on linux... never sure if it works with wine/wine-ge/etc. as intended or if it runs well unless there is a protondb entry, and even then it's sometimes a dice roll

[@Jimmy9298]

100 percent agree with this method. I've been doing the same with music for a decade and change. Currently sitting at 400 physical albums I purchased legally because I believed their product to genuinely be worth it. Piracy is great at connecting quality products and people. In the information age, there is no room for blind trust unless you want to be stupid with your money.

[@cid3384]

@@Jimmy9298 This is the way

[@user-lt2rw5nr9s]

HDMI has DRM that prevented me from mirroring my phone to my TV to watch Hulu. Solution? Switch to my home media server app and mirror that instead. Who ever coded HDCP and other DRM, please seppuku. Developers need to take a stand and have morals. Developers are the only ones who would automate their own job with AI without realizing they are making a mistake.

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

You know call centers and outsourcing? This is what happens when developers or employees refuse. Someone else will. This is what also helped a certain WW2 leader stay in power for so long. Why throw away my own life to not kill people and in turn get killed for it... when some other person will do it and live? Why throw your life away if nothing will change?

[@bitelaserkhalif]

Your comment got copied by bot

[@yourma-uh5um]

Automate own job, have software run from USB, plug it in when no-one's looking, sit back and relax for 8 hours

[@user-lt2rw5nr9s]

@@bitelaserkhalif That bot is annoying. There's no way YT doesn't pick up on all the abuse from that single channel. They just don't care.

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

Once tried to split the audio off my Xbox. Same thing happened. PC master race

[@Josec-dd1qu]

DRM for some audio production software is pretty bad too. Worst thing about some of them (iLok, I believe) is that if you lose access to the OS without deactivating the license first, you have to purchase the software again. That's just evil. =(

[@sullivan912]

That is evil, but thankfully only applies to licences stored on the system, not on the iLok dongle.

[@ericdavidson9974]

I haven’t gotten into piracy until recently, so the only times in my life where DRM was an inconvenience was with printer ink. I tried to get a third-party ink cartridge to work with an old printer. It worked very inconsistently before I just decided to throw out the printer. I got it for $10 from a yard sale

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

DRM is more of an inconvenience to consumers than pirates. that's the entire point of the video.

[@Zullfix]

About a decade ago, a friend of mine purchased Dead Space 2 on steam and enjoyed playing it. Fast forward to a few months ago when he decides to revisit the game, yet the EA DRM tells him his copy is illegitimate and he has to purchase a new key. Apparently this is an extremely common occurrence with the steam version of dead space 2. Contacting EA support gets you the finger because "it's steam and not origin so we cannot help" and contacting steam obviously doesn't help because the issue is EAs activation service.

[@Roxor128]

I really wish Valve would just ban DRM from Steam. It's their platform. They could have said "Steam provides all the DRM you will ever need. We're not allowing anything else." years ago back when Steam was basically the only option for buying games digitally. And they could have done the same with anti-cheat, too. Then we wouldn't have to worry about Linux incompatibility with anti-cheat systems in the run-up to the Steam Deck now.

[@polocatfan]

that's weird because nowadays it's super easy to fix that.

[@jfwfreo]

@@Roxor128 If Valve did that many developers (including probably EA) would stop releasing games (or stop releasing some of their games) on Steam at all.

[@Roxor128]

@@jfwfreo If they did it now, sure. But 10-15 years ago when Steam was the only game in town for selling PC games digitally? EA would have been as helpless in the PC space as they were in the console space. You want to sell on a console, you do things the manufacturer's way or not at all.

[@jasonvoorhees5640]

@@jfwfreo imagine actually believing EA are in any kind of position to bully Valve lmao

[@fricstix7072]

I had this happen with my lenovo x230 battery. Their batteries are unavailable and cost $230 for a 4 hour battery. They made my laptop unable to use the non genuine battery and it has to be plugged in all the time.

[@remke5137]

look into bios mods. there's tons of threads out there that explain how to remove the whitelist for batteries

[@BBWahoo]

There's battery DRM? 🤮

[@Aranimda]

@@BBWahoo And charger DRM exists as well.

[@DoubleOhSilver]

@@BBWahoo that might explain why an old Razer laptop i have won't turn on after the original one expanded (probably would've exploded if I left it)

[@dalsegno7001]

@@Aranimda it’s not the first time I heard this!!!!

[@ManinTidyWhities]

Not even home kitchen appliances are safe from that kind of practice either. That "juicer" called the juicero, made from the bowels of silicon valley, is one of many examples

[@alex15095]

Some cheap 3D printers (xyzprinting) have filament DRM as well. I think they work the same way Juicero did, just with filament instead of juice. I almost bought into xyzprinting until I heard about this horror. Had I bought their printers, I wouldn't even be able to print much because their proprietary DRM'd filament isn't even easily available in my country. Thankfully, unlike the inkjet printer market, there are open-source printers in the 3D printing market.

[@username-du2er]

calling the juicero an appliance is an insult to all appliances

[@dinamyter2860]

At least the Juice production method was open source and would work with non-juicero packages (squeezing by hand)

[@realEchoz]

imagine buying a $300 machine to empty overpriced capri-sun bags into a cup

[@user2C47]

Also, look at a teardown of a Juicero machine. Those engineers were completely out of their minds.

[@Chrischi3TutorialLPs]

This part about pirated content being more convenient reminded me of Sims 3. Sims 3 was one of these games that didn't have the bane of existance that is always online DRM yet, but you did need the disk, either of the base game, or the most recent DLC you got installed. The only problem with that was that my sister and i shared our disk, and she would usually hoard them in her room and play A LOT of Sims, such that i never got to play. She would even borrow the disk to friends for them to install the game on their PC, so that i once even had to call support when i got a new computer for them to restore my allowed 6 copies. One day, this pissed me off so much, i just downloaded a crack and never had that problem again.

[@annihilator247x]

One mistake here. The publishers more often are the ones that decide to add nasty DRM, not the studios. It often can piss of the devs to boot. Reminds me of the non-Denuvo Doom Eternal.exe that magically somehow managed to be released on launch from a very competent dev team.

[@jasonvoorhees5640]

Not always..

[@TheGuyWhoIsSitting]

DRM is the worst. Legitimate customers get screwed over while pirates get the better experience. It doesn’t even have to just be the DRM I remember buying a Sony movie on Blu-ray when that technology was becoming more affordable and it wouldn’t let you skip straight to the menu. You had to at best fast forward through the trailers. DVDs were the peak of digital movies. Really sad. Why are you going to force people to watch trailers for films that are no longer for sale? No longer in theatres? At least on VHS it made sense because you physically had to store those at the start of the tape if you were a scumbag company. Should have put the trailers at the end so people could actually just watch the damn movie… I can’t stand DRM but it’s just baked into everything. And with EULAs also being garbage… I don’t believe they are legally binding. I don’t even know why they bother to ask you on company work computers as well. You have to use that software or you can’t do your damn job. I should probably figure out which flavor of Linux I like best before Microsoft decides to install some software that prevents you from installing another OS. 🙄 wouldn’t put it past them. Doesn’t really even matter. VHS tapes and DVDs also had anti copying measures but at least you could usually skip to the menus on DVDs without having to be forced to sit through the trailers. All this stuff just exists to waste your time. Pirate the movie? Click and watch immediately. Closest thing to that we have now and even then it isn’t great is on demand streaming. Which is also filled with DRM.

[@eloskowy4954]

Yeah, Windows deleting Grub out of nowhere is worst crap. You need to pay for blurays, but you get ads (trailers) anyway. Duck those companies, let's use torrents. Also, don't forget to seed some ;D

[@DoubleOhSilver]

Pretty sure Windows already does this. I had grub set up and after updating Windows, I no longer get the prompt, it just boots windows now. I also tried dual booting my laptop but something similar happened there, so I just deleted the cancer/windows.

[@valletas]

Shin megami tensei 3 nocturne A really good ps2 rpg It had a rerelease relatively recentely... With drm... Why would i buy it if i can download a ps2 iso to run on a emulator and i will objectively have the better experience?

[@jcrosenkreuz5213]

Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series no less

[@talkysassis]

So, you're telling me to join (or create) a group dedicated to break all kinds of DRMs just for the sake of it? Because that's what I want to do.

[@KarstenPHT]

QSERF did it first (or this is a QSERF joke or reference)

[@KarstenPHT]

or you mispelled DRM (but its been 30 mins)

[@talkysassis]

@@KarstenPHT It was a miss. It's hard to type on a new keyboard layout

[@ETXAlienRobot201]

it's certainly tempting, but requires ungodly amounts of time/skills >.

[@HydraSpectre1138]

Moral of the story: DRM screws law-abiding citizens more than pirates. The worst DRM I experienced would be with Denuvo on Sonic Origins. I cannot run the game with DXVK at all (which is pretty much necessary on my PC since I get lagspikes and freezes for some reason on DirectX). However, Team Sonic Racing, another Sonic game I bought with Denuvo, allowed me to play with DXVK.

[@Channel-gz9hm]

I've used cracked copies of everything for so long, so thoroughly, that I don't even know what it's like out there for normies obeying the rules. All the way back in 2008 when Spore tried to tell me that I could only install MY GAME 3 times and then it was garbage I was done being a good boi. Oh yeah, doing something as simple as changing a DVD drive for a new one could trigger Spore's DRM to consider your PC a "new computer" towards that limit.

[@xnephysisthere]

Normie asks, do you really know if the cracked stuff you are downloading has malicious stuff hiding in there? How do you protect yourself?

[@msobota4080]

@@xnephysisthere by learning how your system works

[@kvdrr]

@@xnephysisthere I'm not surprised plebs ask this sort of question when they download stuff from Google results. All reputable websites are blocked by major search engines. Subreddit dedicated to piracy is a decent starting point. Once you get into a reputable website you can consider stuff safe unless proven otherwise, not the other way around.

[@user2C47]

@@xnephysisthere ​ Or, just be safe and don't ever try to pirate content. Going without the content is better than waking up to an empty bank account. Also, for those who still live with their parents: Doing illegal things on the family computer or network is a one-way ticket to being grounded.

[@gregbirger5810]

My entry to "alternative solutions" was after buying a disk copy of the original Bioshock when it came out. The files needed to install the game were not all on the disk itself, and required an internet connection to download them via the installer to have a working copy. Not because of size limitations, mind, but strictly as a DRM solution. That was the last straw.

[@bernardobritto8352]

I bought a laptop that came with windows 11 (unfortunately) and I was surprised to see that I couldn't even change the system's language because apparently my windows activation key didn't let me do it

[@TheExileFox]

That would annoy the hell out of me because A: English is not the default language here. B: English language tends to cost extra

[@spinosaurr]

Another reason to not install this bloatware system

[@Crow-lz7et]

@@TheExileFox Wait. What exactly is the meaning of cost you're referring to ?

[@k.chriscaldwell4141]

Yeah, I had to use a activator on a downloaded version of Micro$oft 7 just to be able to have 7 in the language I needed. Redonkulous. I now have downloaded language packs of several languages. Micro$oft can bite me! _They steal, therefore I pirate.

[@Orcastruck]

Drm gay Linux based

[@wayoftherose]

What do you even mean by that?

[@lorenzo8755]

@@wayoftherose Drm gay Linux based

[@fossforever512]

@@wayoftherose if you don’t know I feel bad for you

[@Jan-px7tn]

@@wayoftherose drm gay, linux based

[@smeggers]

@@wayoftherose Drm gay Linux based

[@GeekyGami]

The worst kind of DRM I have seen is getting a game on a CD, installing it, and it telling me it needs to download the game off of Steam and giving me a Steam key.

[@TheExileFox]

@@RenMyee that makes me sad because it's such a good series

[@wallythewall600]

@@RenMyee The point is exactly that you will not preserve them. Moving to online-only is the wet dream of every single company that sells video game consoles. There's people still playing Super Mario Bros on ancient SNES consoles and carts, or the Wii version or whatever, and Nintendo's CEO himself has a massive shitfit when they can't personally resell you "Jumpy Red Italian Plumber: Classics for Newest Console" for $14.99 every single generation form now until the end of time. Meanwhile, it's literally the same old SNES ROM running on an emulator. This kind of thinking is also why the last two Battlefields, apart from the latest one being shit in general for 10 billion other reasons, do NOT allow you to host your own servers. They saw people sticking to their older, better releases (BF4 is still plenty active to this day) instead of buying their newer games and they absolutely will not have that. At some point EA is gonna take Battlelog offline, when it won't cause as massive a shitstorm, and sue the Hell out of anyone trying to implement a third-party substitute service.

[@Slashx92]

@@wallythewall600 Yeah EA is blind. They just blamed the pandemic and halo infinite for the shitshow of a release taht battlefield 2042

[@zubbworks]

That is why I don't like steam. It's prob a fine service other than that. GOG seems cool.

[@Damitsall]

This insane DRM is why I will never buy movies, tv shows, or music ever again. This is going back to when Apple made decent products. I remember I couldn't even burn a MP3 CD with music I had purchased on iTunes. It took me years of fiddling with stuff to fully get rid of the DRM on everything I had payed for; where the stuff from Limewire never had an issue.

[@eloskowy4954]

paid*

[@Jaws1375]

I forgot about that, you could make CDs with music you had burned off other CDs but God forbid you add a song you downloaded from itunes to that mix. There were fairly easy ways around it, and I think eventually they changed that, but it was really annoying.

[@Damitsall]

@@Jaws1375 Yea that was part of my problem, over the years the DRM got worse. If I had fully done it 5-10 years ago when I first wanted to remove all DRM I probably could have burned MP3 CDs. I procrastinated for years because it was a big task, and it only made it harder. The lesson is don't buy media; actually if you can still get physical CDs, I guess those are fine.

[@coolsnake1134]

I remember that well with iTunes, me and my brother would always make CDs for listening to in the car or on our portable CD players that we would take on the school bus and Apple did eventually fix that but I believed they only allowed a certain amount of burns per song but there were so many ways around it like copying the CD that you already burned, downloading the song on another computer and burning it to disk there and then logging out of iTunes. Sometimes depending on the operating system and the version of iTunes even creating a new user account on your computer would work. I think I remember even installing a second copy of Mac OS X leopard on an external hard drive and I would occasionally boot my school issued MacBook off of the external hard drive to get around the stupid limits.

[@Lovuschka]

If a title has DRM, just pirate it. Don't pay for an inferior product!

[@DrMoofK]

let's take a moment to bless the Brain Lords behind crack teams. absolute saints

[@lunakittyyy]

Remember those Sony CDs that used to install rootkits as well? I swear, companies try so hard with their DRM and it always ends up being more of a headache for the end user than it is for the people trying to crack the thing

[@NameUnknown-]

That explains why some of my games worked perfectly fine in my laptop, but when trying to use them in the desktop computer, which was way better in specs, i got nonsense errors about cd dirty. That computer had 2 cd slots....

[@prefexdev]

The worst DRM that I experienced last year's that's was WindowsApps directory that had harder restrictions than system32. I had Xbox Game pass and I wanted to install community language pack for a game named Hollow Knight. DRM was locking me from modifying game files and dual-booting Linux didn't fix even, WindowsApps directory had only broken syslinks to memory in Linux.

[@CronusPerson]

Same here. A week ago I was trying to figure out why Skyrim (the one on Xbox gamepass) wasnt working. So I went to the WindowsApps folder and surprise! It was a pain in the ass trying to change anything in that folder

[@prefexdev]

@@CronusPerson don't worry I lost my sanity and my time in only 2 days. I ended with asking my friend for account access to play it on steam. Thank you Windows for including this ****.

[@C_Yo]

I'm so happy that PC Game Pass now has the option to install to other folders, it makes modding so much easier

[@Jaws1375]

This was a similar issue I found. Had to change the authorization of my folders just to uninstall pso2 from the windows store when the store itself failed to recognized that the game was installed. So my disk space was out 80 or so gigs but I couldn't play the game and had to manually remove the files, which took such a long time to do.

[@fitmotheyap]

That's why I hate windows store and won't use it until they make anything downloadable and editable on other disks

[@21luminas]

This video makes me feel better about all those games and softwares i pirated in my life.

[@caryjasperrumbaoa1321]

That's how piracy exists. No one wanted to deal with the wasted resource like processing power and local storage.

[@jay-d8g3v]

Damn.. a rootkit for a "DRM".. exactly why I would rather find games from 3rd party sources.. *coughsinpirate*

[@krinkrin5982]

Bought the StarWars collection on DVD. It needed a special player to actually watch... and then crapped out and refused to play ever again after I updated my video driver and codecs. DarkSpore killed the game on release date. The server had a bug that automatically blocked the registration of new accounts after the beta period was over, making it impossible to play even single player after the premier. The whole dev team by that time got already moved to other projects, so there was no-one to fix that. Battlefield 1942 got released without a valid CD key in the box. Meaning the only way to play it was to download a crack. EA. just EA.

[@jasonvoorhees5640]

as a star wars fan you deserved it tbh

[@krinkrin5982]

@@jasonvoorhees5640 Sorry, but I don't follow.

[@JohnDoe-yo2ue]

This is why I torrent and download patches haha, I remember buying a game for my old PC which had a "always online" DRM. I forgot the game's name but it was a J-RPG. There was one time where I was mid game our internet connectiom suddenly went out and I can't play the game for a whole week or two. Companies are definitely stepping up their DRM systems.

[@howtomundane3109]

That's one of the reasons I only buy games, that allow you to install on multiple devices & run offline. Because DRMs are just an asshole-move

[@xxdarkzon3xx]

I actually can understand the reason behind DRM, and im not a huge fan of piracy if you can get the original and support creators. BUT, i really hate DRMS who only makes thing worse for people who legally buys the item. i mean, the printers DRM are trash, a lot of game DRM are horrible!

[@TheExileFox]

The only valid "drm" is making a good product. Everything else is pretty much just a waste of time and money.

[@TheGuyWhoIsSitting]

DRM or not, people will still pirate your stuff. Frankly why bother with the R&D? You're just going to punish your legitimate customers while the same people who were never going to buy it anyways get a better experience. Even with legitimately purchased software I've gotten garbage experiences. I've purchased some video editing software and no matter what I put into it, the output file is always bigger than the source file. Even if I clip something out of the source it almost always ends up being larger. It's nonsense.

[@Herkan97]

All DRM is against the customer. Even something as tame as the Steam DRM.

[@Mystro256]

The best DRM system is Linux's display rendering manager

[@dherokbattleborn]

Is there a way to find the drm leftovers without having to search for each individual software you installed? My pc has went through quite a few games and it’s hard to tell what has it and what doesn’t

[@JB-fh1bb]

Nope! This is why us old-timers got used to formatting the hard drive every 6-12 months. Companies that use DRM do not like to document how to remove it (and they change it every time they think it might get figured out).

[@MHNK77]

Yeah, a clean install sounds like a good idea. Maybe CCleaner could help but it means installing even more crap

[@dherokbattleborn]

@@JB-fh1bb Alright guess I’ll just wipe my drive later. It’s always a pain but I guess it’s my fault for installing games on a pc used for multiple things

[@dherokbattleborn]

@@MHNK77 CCcleaner is trash. In my eyes that tool is a virus. I’ll guess I’ll just be wiping my drives

[@akeem2983]

Every time when I hear about Star Force I always feel like it's either a joke or a special project that was intended to show that piracy is a much safer and ethical way to get software than purchasing software that have DRM

[@grandstarstudiosFORMER-YT]

but the viruses

[@akeem2983]

@@grandstarstudiosFORMER-YT Some DRMs are even worse than viruses

[@grandstarstudiosFORMER-YT]

@@akeem2983 true VERY TRUE

[@jaredneaves7007]

It shits me that the only way I can buy a movie these days is to "purchase" a poor quality hosted version of my movie from a streaming provider.... or buy a BluRay or DVD version. I can't buy a digital high quality copy that I can put on a USB drive or my NAS? I would happily pay for the content... but I get so much more functionality from pirating it that I am forced to do it!

[@brunor.922]

There is actually a pretty easy way to disable windows 11 TPM requirement. (Rufus)

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

I can live with Windows 10 until 2025, but if Microshaft hasn't taken back their BS requirements officially by the end of support date, I'll switch to Linux on my gaming PC, too. MS should pay for their actions with market share.

[@username-du2er]

@@IndellableHatesHandles i guess i dont really need to tell you this since it's mental outlaw's channel, but my experience on linux has been great. used it for about a year. if you dont play a significant amount of games that use anti-cheat (or play games where the devs refuse to enable proton/wine anti-cheat support...) then you really can't get any better. can even yoink games and run with wine-ge perfectly fine. any games that require some kind of winetrick or winecfg DLL nonsense usually have community guides on that sort of thing

[@radonulk108]

@@IndellableHatesHandles I know this comment might be a bit old, however there's Windows 10 LTSC which is the only good version of win10 that works as intended (no any bullshit that comes on normal editions such as preinstalled apps and updates are the same as on 7/8.1), and besides it's officially supported for the entire decade (until 2029 around). If you're still on 10, you should definitely give it a try.

[@ЕвгенийВладимирович-э9э]

5:11 I have overridden this limitation for the price of 500 rubles(roughly 7 bucks) Nothing to really flex about, it is just funny how the manufacturer expected me to buy overpriced components when in reality it’s that simple to handle.

[@uta390]

How sir

[@seredachan]

@@uta390 Depends on the printer. When it comes to my printer, I solved this issue for the price of 0 UAH (roughly 0 bucks).

[@Dan-hx6ni]

@@uta390 probably installed a CISS

[@ЕвгенийВладимирович-э9э]

@@uta390 my particular printer had a limitation on a number of pages which one cartridge can print. however, this limitation was completely artificial, so I removed it by using script I bought in the internet.

[@b1urple]

Lost Planet 2 (2010) on PC uses Games for Windows Live as part of its DRM. One of its DRM checks, weirdly, is to check how many threads your PC has. The game will not function if you have more than 12 threads. Maybe this made sense in 2010, but it definitely did not age well. Every time I wanted to play the game, I would have to restart my PC to disable a couple cores, then I would be done playing, and have to restart my pc to re-enable them. There isn't any community fix for this, because this DRM is embedded within the games executable. Brilliant. Recently, Capcom has actually de-listed the game on Steam due to GFWL issues. Who knows, maybe they will bring it back one day with the problem fixed. One can only hope.

[@Wazoru]

Damn, I nearly avoided a bullet by getting a Ryzen 5 3600 wtf

[@Primus1243]

There is now an official thread and core fix file for this issue. I have it running on mine and it does work now. In fact, LP2 still works multiplayer with GFWL, but it's more peer to peer instead of through servers as that's how Microsoft set up the system after they shut down most functions. You really need to go find two game files to place in your folder and that should fix most issues. Start in DirectX 9 mode, change some settings around, especially display, and then once that's save, then go to DirectX 11 and that should work.

[@ash161]

I love that the more companies try to make it difficult to pirate things, the more rewarding it becomes because of how obnoxious their DRM is

[@rps215]

Back in the day, I remember these code wheel or color card thing that games had. I always thought that these were some sort of child lock for game time management or something. My first annoying encounter was around 1998 I think. Before that, I had no idea that there is a difference between original and pirated copies. After all, I live in Indonesia, a country which a lot of software manufacturer never care about back then, yeah they know our neighbors Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and others but somehow they completely miss that massive country next to them. That's is why back then it was much easier to find pirated copies here than original ones, be it games or other software. Or even worse, music piracy. I can't really tell which cassette is original and which is pirated because the pirates packaged it so well and even made their own printouts for the case and cassette stickers. My first experience was I think it was Jagged Alliance 2 or C&C Tiberian Sun. I didn't know that I was supposed to copy the crack and I thought something was broken. Only a while later I found one game and I read at the bottom of the readme file that I was supposed to do just that. I was studying in Singapore during that time but pirated CDs were everywhere there too. Of course one thing that annoy me, when my CD rom drive gets broken, I hate that some games forced users to have the CD in the drive.

[@fryfry377]

Well, way back in the day (the '90s), my CRT monitor PC wouldn't let me play Age of Empires unless I put the disc in. Not exactly DRM, I know, but still pretty traumatizing. And I couldn't keep playing Riven if I didn't have all... 16 discs, or whatever it was. >:( I don't remember, I'm too old.

[@FamiliarGecko]

Riven has 5 discs. Or at least my official German copy of it has 5. (Or I assume. The discs say "(number)/5". Can't actually confirm if it's a complete set cause it was a hand-me-down, and I don't speak German at all... ._. )

[@ThePandafriend]

It were five discs. Back in the day I got copies from a friend.

[@fryfry377]

@@FamiliarGecko what a game. Ironically, one of those things that looks WAY better on an old glass monitor. I might be thinking of the X-Files game for that 16 disc thing, that one was a mother...

[@TheJacklikesvideos]

yes, that is exactly DRM.

[@wadmodderschalton5763]

Given that Microsoft has never updated Windows Media Player since the release of version 12 in 2009, Windows Media DRM is likely not on Microsoft's high-priority list anymore in the era of HTML5.

[@theaninova]

It's so sad that paying gives you an objectively worse product than pirating. Blu Rays are a prime example that come to mind. Not only is it ridiculously hard to play them back on PC, but they also spend the first 15 Minutes serving you unskippable ads. Serving often anti piracy ads that the very people that pirate them would never have to see, and just scaring the shit out of little children that have to watch them because they're unskippable. A pirated copy will just play back the movie, on any device, and any media player.

[@MrHack4never]

I remember sharing a DVD drive over LAN to play a game at the same time as my little brother was playing it, because it used disc-in-tray DRM and it had no issues with a network share as a disk directory It did crash eventually, but that could just be from the disk not delivering data at the right time, and the game wasn't expecting very long answer times

[@coolsnake1134]

Hosting lan parties with my friends back in the mid 2000s/early 2010s before everything was available anywhere on Steam was the biggest reason that I would use the no CD cracks for games, a lot of times we would want to play a game like battlefield 1942 and someone would either not have the game installed or they wouldn’t have their CD or they would bring a laptop that didn’t have an optical drive or they took their optical drive out for whatever reason and couldn’t play the game.

[@primorock8141]

Wow I didn't know about those printer paper dots, it just keeps getting worse...

[@preflex3502]

Those have been around for decades. That's also why many printers will refuse to print a black-only page when the color cartridge is empty or missing. It needs the yellow ink to print the tracking dots.

[@pawouapproval984]

Just a little update MO~ I've recently started studying for the LPIC-1 just because I've had a ton of fun with linux. After that my plan is to head backwards and start picking up some of the comptia certs like network+ and security+ as well. I hope your job has been well! This channel has inspired the hell out of me, thanks for all the content!!

[@jlmknight]

Windows 8 had a pop up that blocked your whole screen reminding you to activate.

[@blindedjourneyman]

Star force was such bs, my dad cussed me out as a kid when he found out I bought a game with that shite cause we had to reinstall windows xp from scratch on our home computer, one of the things that made me go sailing and not looking back.

[@Mentalbox52]

4:50 My mom actually got around this by buying 3rd party refillable ink carts. Take em out, refill em, hit the reset button and you're set. Since me and my sister were home-schooled, this came in major handy since it meant that she could print multiple copies of material with only one book. She could also resell the book during summer since it wasn't filled with test answers.

[@TheFourthWinchester]

Stopped buying DVDs cuz of the incessant ads and anti piracy unskippable screens. That was the worst. Like how many people buying their content actually pirate? They dug their own graves.