Q&A: Mike Morhaime on DRM, WoW and the next MMO

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Roman
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Q&A: Mike Morhaime on DRM, WoW and the next MMO

Unread postby Roman » 19 Oct 2008, 03:28

Wow, I didn't know that Heroes V was supposed to have Starforce. Kudos to you all for fighting to remove it and succeeding! I was not following the development of HOMM V - I didn't even know it was being made.



In any case, I hope you are right that Heroes VI does not have some draconian DRM (DDRM), since that seems to be the trend these days.

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Muszka
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Unread postby Muszka » 19 Oct 2008, 04:07

Could someone enlighten me in short what is Starforce and DDRM. I guessed that these are some kind of Copyright protections, but how do they work?
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Roman
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Q&A: Mike Morhaime on DRM, WoW and the next MMO

Unread postby Roman » 19 Oct 2008, 07:13

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and DDRM for Draconian Digital Rights Management - a term that seeks to differentiate between normal/friendly DRM that relies on CD checks, CD keys and so on and between draconian DRM that has limited installs, necessitates online activations and so on.



Starforce is a specific DRM program, just like Securom. Starforce was one of the worst examples of DDRM and many consider it to be outright malware. I think, however, the new versions of SecuRom come close to Starforce in their negative impact on the legitimate end user (the pirates, of course, are unharmed, since they have a DRM-free copy that doesn't include any of that rubbish (online activations, limited installs)).

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Muszka
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Unread postby Muszka » 19 Oct 2008, 11:42

Ah. I see. Than it's a crap indeed. Thanks
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