
Steam Removes Game 'Order Of War: Challenge' From User Libraries - mjn
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-removes-game-order-of-war-challenge-from-user-libraries/
======
lt
Another disaster about to happen is Games for Windows Live, a online DRM
scheme, used by many games, but in particular GTA IV, which doesn't have much
on online features except for the DRM check. It has been announted that GFWL
is going to shutdown July 1st. Many developers/publishers have indicated that
they are going to remove/replace it, but Rockstar not only hasn't mentioned
anything in that sense, it has recently updated the fine print on the steam
store for GTA IV adding new clauses:

    
    
        Access to special features may require internet connection, may not be available to all users, and may, upon 30 days’ notice, be terminated, modified, or offered under different terms.
        Unauthorized copying, reverse engineering, transmission, public performance, rental, pay for play, or circumvention of copy protection is strictly prohibited
        Partner Requirements: Please check the terms of service of this site before purchasing this software. rockstargames.com/eula
    

So while Rockstar is washing their hands if their offline, single player,
triple-A game stops working in six months, and also prohibiting circumvention
of this 'protection', GTA IV is happily being sold by Steam, even today being
promoted in their store front page as a daily deal of their winter sale.

~~~
Qualman
I wouldn't be too worried about this. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City
both utilized GFWL, and Rocksteady (the developer) simply released a patch
that removed the GFWL software. They play just as great as ever.

EDIT: Just kidding. I did not read your comment close enough, clearly. Here's
to hoping that Rockstar is as stand-up as Rocksteady, at least.

------
Silhouette
There is a broader issue here than just gaming, too. Many high-end
applications now have obnoxious DRM/copy protection schemes that require
varying levels of Internet connectivity to work.

I have asked a reseller about how this operates if the original developer of
the $X,000/seat software my business relies on goes under, and they basically
laughed my question off, saying that would never happen. I have also, in an
entirely different context, had some knowledge of legal actions involving that
same developer, and I don't share the reseller's faith in their guaranteed
longevity.

There have been occasional court cases on these matters, and at least in
Europe the courts mostly seem to have taken the view that if it looks like a
purchase (for example, if there was a reasonable expectation that once money
changed hands the new holder of the software would be able to use it
indefinitely) then it must be respected as such.

Still, I wonder at what point primary legislation is going to become
necessary. Copyright reform has been vigorously opposed by Big Media and
mostly successfully so far, but when you start hitting large numbers of
customers in the wallet and they can't just pirate their way out of it and get
away with it any more, sooner or later I suspect something has to give.

~~~
mjn
In enterprise (and academic) settings a traditional approach has been to let
the client run the license server. That's how Matlab works, for example: a
network-licensed copy won't start up unless it can "phone home", but typically
it phones home to the license server run by the client, on the client's
network, not to centralized DRM servers run by the vendor. I know for consumer
software things are slowly moving towards centralized-DRM as the norm, but I
thought for enterprise applications this kind of self-hosted license server
was still the norm. Maybe not?

~~~
warfangle
Theoretically, the bitcoin ledger could be used as a decentralized phone-home.

~~~
interstitial
Or say any other type of crypto-ledger that is not participating in the
currently fadish pump-n-dump bitcoin schemes. And I post this comment knowing
I will suffer the down-vote rage of bitcoiners.

~~~
to3m
The only possible reasonable response to this well-meaning comment is to point
out that you spell it "faddish".

------
shangaslammi
The article claims incorrectly that the game had 18 single-player missions.
The FAQ linked from the article is for the game "Order of War". "Order of War:
Challenge" is a completely separate, multi-player-only game that had its
servers shut down and was removed from Steam. The original "Order of War" is
still available
([http://store.steampowered.com/app/34600/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/34600/)).

In addition, the "Challenge" add-on was given free to those who bought the
original game.

This is a complete non-issue as far as Steam is concerned (the complaint about
publishers shutting down multi-player servers is certainly valid). There is
nothing that you could do with the game even if you still had it in your Steam
library.

~~~
aerique
I don't know this game, but if for example Blizzard would shut down the World
of Warcraft servers you could still play it on private servers. Same for a lot
of other MMOs that do not have their official server anymore like Star Wars
Galaxies and Earth & Beyond. People can still play these on private and / or
emulated servers.

~~~
hatu
Don't you need some kind of a cracked version of the game for that? I don't
know if you can play on private servers with a Steam version of a game anyway.

~~~
67726e
It probably depends on the game and how they store server information. For
instance, if they hostname for the server that broadcasts available game
servers is sitting in a .ini file, you don't need a crack. If it was a
hardcoded string in the binary, then you would. Of course some games may also
employ other mechanisms to restrict what/where you can connect to, but in a
lot of cases I've seen it is a matter of pointing to an IP with a server
running.

As an example, Counter Strike: Source stored the servers in a human readable
file and you could add alternative servers in the config file without a
problem.

~~~
maaku
And where do you get the software that runs on the servers?

~~~
aerique
Most server software is emulated but I suspect there might be instances of
leaked server software.

------
bjz_
Always on DRM is also a threat to the preservation of artistic works for
future generations. Folks still play the early Civilization and Sim City
titles even after all these years.

~~~
trycatch
All server-based MMOs will be canceled sooner or later. Dead sites will be
preserved by the Internet Archive, but dead MMOs will be known for future
generations only in Let's plays and secondary sources. Relevant article, "MMO
graveyard": [http://mmohuts.com/editorials/mmo-
graveyard](http://mmohuts.com/editorials/mmo-graveyard)

~~~
girvo
Which, interestingly, is why one of the head developers who worked on
Warhammer: Age of Reckoning (the MMO, that was quite enjoyable) wants the
debug dev version cleaned up and release: It removed all the online content,
and just let you take a character through the entire world, all offline. He
wants to do that, as a way of preserving the world. It might not have the
content, but its something, and an interesting take on it!

~~~
markeganfuller
Got a link? That sounds interesting.

~~~
Semaphor
Some googling turned up his blog post: [http://shinytoys.org/blog/war-in-a-
bottle](http://shinytoys.org/blog/war-in-a-bottle)

------
dm2
I recently purchased a game from Steam (Max Payne 3) and after I download the
full 30 gig game it tells me "cannot connect to key server". After several
emails with their support they inform me that Steam doesn't have enough CD
keys, yet they continue selling the game on their website. It has been about a
week now and I still cannot even play this game.

Plus, not only does that require a Steam account but you also have to have a
Rockstar account. What has PC gaming become?

~~~
blub
If you want to enjoy PC gaming buy from gog.com, I think that's the only
guarantee that it won't have some crap DRM. If you want to play recent titles
you're out of luck...

~~~
karlmdavis
Also Humble Bundle.

~~~
jhasse
Humble ->Indie<\- Bundle. There are Humble Bundles with DRM.

------
tomphoolery
No refunds? Really?!?

The guy who sold me my bong has a better fucking return policy than that.

~~~
fletchowns
The main appeal of the game was apparently the multi-player, which isn't going
to be that great if nobody bought the thing. You can't expect a refund for
this type of purchase from either Steam or the studio that developed it, that
is ridiculous. They shouldn't have removed it from people's libraries though,
and the developer should have released one last patch that disabled the DRM
and let you run your own server.

~~~
DanBC
Why can't people expect a refund? Why is that a ridiculous expectation?

~~~
fletchowns
Because it's in the contract that you agreed to upon purchasing. The only
thing you can do is no longer agree to those types of contracts.

~~~
belorn
You can not sign away all rights on purchase, or otherwise scam artists would
have a much easier time.

~~~
fletchowns
Maybe not all rights, but pretty close. This is the norm these days. People
will pay for temporary use of music, movies, tv shows, and video games until
some old guys in a skyscraper somewhere decide otherwise.

~~~
icebraining
Not really the same. Buying a subscription to a service carries a different
expectation vis-a-vis the payment of a lump sum for the product.

------
K0nserv
The response to these news are surprisingly meek, but I guess we can attribute
that to the game in question not having a large player base. I for one think
this behaviour is unacceptable and it destroys gaming as an industry. In 20
years will the teenagers/kids of today have no way of playing the games they
grew up with simply because the servers have been turned off?

Patching DRM out of the game and releasing server software to allow people to
host their own servers should be industry standard in these cases. This is
must surely be the result of politics at a much higher level than the studio,
I don't think any studio likes to see their game just disappear of the surface
of the earth just like that; after all that would be the equivalent of
murdering ones child.

------
salient
And people can't wait until they get OS-level DRM like in Windows 8 and
Chromebooks, just to play Netflix in "HTML5", even though it plays just fine
now in Silverlight, and TPM in their hardware?

I don't think they really know what they're asking for. Once the Pandora's box
is open, you can't put the evil back inside. You'll regret ever wanting that
"safety" or "convenience" feature, when it will make your computer a lot _less
safe_ (from the vendors themselves, government censorship, etc) and a lot
_less convenient_ (when everything you want to use has frustrating OS-level
DRM enabled).

Wake up and smell the coffee. If it _can_ be abused, it _will_ be abused.

------
drawkbox
The root problem was them shutting it down because the game client hit their
servers and they were shutting them down. Running servers is costly. But game
developers should do an update or at least provide a way to turn off
multiplayer or allow others to run servers when the game is finished. There
isn't really a system for this yet but there needs to be, multiplayer support
ends for most games eventually. The good ones allow it to live on in
communities if they so desire. And killing single player missions for DRM sake
highlights the problem. Good networking middleware and cloud services for this
could solve the problem rather than every game company remaking this over and
over and having to deal with this.

~~~
tokenizerrr
There's a pretty decent system. Self hosted game servers, and a patch to
disable the DRM once the official servers go belly under. Unfortunately few
developers care enough about their users to do such.

~~~
GrinningFool
It's not so simple as "few developers care enough". Do you seriously think
that there are a signficant number of game developers who just turn around and
say "fuck them, they're only our customers anyway"?

It generally comes down to restrictions placed by the publisher. Due to
agreements with the publisher[1], the developing company can't just release a
patch to disable DRM whenever they want - they are contractually obligated to
not release _anything_ without publisher approval. And publishers are very,
very reluctant to approve disabling DRM.

[1] Source: contacts and contract work in the industry, and got to deal with
the second-hand effects of publisher restrictions myself.

------
qwerta
We had similar problem: InstallShield is very expensive software. The company
which sells it was renamed, and they changed domain name together with license
activation server...

So we could no longer activate software we bought. Suggested solution was to
buy new version. Pretty bad since we could not make new build without this
software.

Luckily for us we had everything virtualized already (not so common a few
years ago).

~~~
StavrosK
Hah, nice suggested solution there. I've been wondering why NSIS isn't more
popular, it was fantastic when I was using it, very light, fast and
extensible.

~~~
qwerta
NSIS is light years ahead of InstallShield. But all sucks compared to APT or
other Linux installation systems.

------
forrestthewoods
The article does not make clear if the single player aspects of the game were
running on the now defunct servers or not. There's a pretty big difference in
"DRM" and "requires remote hardware running server code".

~~~
tommis
the article said the game had always-on drm, even for singe player game. The
company who made the game shutdown the servers, making it impossible to play
either multi- or singleplayer, so valve simply removed a non-functional game
from the library

------
JeffL
I don't think the issue is Steam deleting the game so much, since this game
had always on DRM and the servers were going down. It makes sense to delete
the game rather than dleaving an inoperable game around. The issue is more the
always on DRM and the idea that people pay for a game upfront that requires
the servers to be running.

It would make more sense if a game that you buy will always run to some extent
without servers, or else, if servers are required, then don't charge upfront,
and pay for the game with subscriptions that can maintain the servers.

~~~
malka
editors should be required to provide a patch so that the solo part of the
game can still be played after the editor consider that the game is no longer
and decides to shut down the server.

------
namers
I'm pretty sure their EULA mentions that you agree to such terms, so there is
not much buyers can legally do.

The simple solution is to do a quick scan of the EULA( tools to help exists )
of the next game you would like to play for a longer period to and then if the
it includes these ridiculous terms simply don't buy it.

~~~
gommm
Even if it's included in EULA, it doesn't mean that this would be allowed in a
lot of jurisdictions. A lot of clauses from most EULA are not applicable
everywhere.

I think there'd be a case in most european countries.

~~~
namers
My point was that instead of getting screwed, you should not buy the game,
this way you hurt them them most.

If they break some local laws what are you, the buyer, going to do really.

~~~
maaku
Games aren't some fungible commodity you can shop around for. If you want to
play that game, what else can you do?

~~~
forrestthewoods
A single game isn't a commodity, but entertainment is. There is an almost
unlimited amount of entertainment available for only a handful of dollars.

~~~
maaku
Games are art. If you don't like the policies of the Louvre, do you go to the
Musee d'Orsay instead and have the same experience? Not if you know anything
about art.

------
izzydata
And this is why I'll never feel comfortable paying for a full priced game from
a digital download. Until they can sell it to me in a digital format that
allows me to own it and have complete control over it in whatever way that I
want I will either not play the game, pirate the game, or get a boxed copy.

------
TrainedMonkey
Anyone got original license for that game? Did it include clause that could
have allowed for anything like that?

------
moron4hire
This case is clearly SquareEnix's fault and not Valve's. When are gamers going
to finally wake up and start voting with their dollars against DRM? This
couldn't happen in a market where the consumer doesn't just swallow whatever
shit is flung their way.

------
MichaelGG
Aren't you allowed to circumvent DRM for certain fair use cases? Certainly
disabling DRM on the single-player parts would fall under that, wouldn't it?
Valve would earn respect back by releasing a crack/replacement DRM that uses
Steam.

------
goggles99
LOL... steam and all their holier than thou blog posts about being open and
better than Microsoft - That was never anything more than a rant about the
Windows 8 built in app market that they were afraid would undercut their
profits and dominance (a scheme against competition). They are neither open
nor respect rights of ownership. AFAIK, Microsoft themselves have never
forcefully removed an app from Windows in this manner.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Did you even read the article? The game was to become literally unplayable
because its developers (Square Enix) decided to pull the plug on the DRM and
multiplayer servers instead of handing out a DRM-disabling patch.

~~~
mortyseinfeld
So you're justifying Steam deleting the game, even though you won't come out
and say it.

