Now thanks to the US Copyright Office’s ruling this week, games that have a single-player component that requires online authentication to access can be modified or copied if the publisher has formally shut down the servers for longer than six months.
This would mean that games abandoned by publishers with dead DRM servers could legally be cracked and played again. The EFF was trying to make it legal for owners of non-MMO titles to circumvent DRM in order to keep playing the games they own and this week, they succeeded.
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
I can't think of any games where this ruling would apply, but it's still a good thing if only to show publishers that there are potential long-term consequences for using always online DRM for single-player games.
It isn't just online-only single player, but games that require online authentication before they can be played. With Game For Windows having just shut down, I'd imagine that this opens up a few games. Perhaps some stuff that used to be on Stardock's service before it went belly-up.
It'll open up even more in the future, should certain publishers either shut down, or in the case of say, EA, shut down specific games when sequels are released or they just aren't profitable enough. Sim City could be a future candidate, for instance (or did they already patch that out?)
Specific example, as a result of some brief research: Apparently the Neverwinter Nights expansion authentication servers have been shut down, and post release content (all single player, like Kingmaker) is not legally playable with the retail releases.
Blackhawk wrote:With Game For Windows having just shut down
...huh? GFW Live servers are still running.
Shrug. I thought it was shut down. There was a big stink about it a year or two ago, and older games started patching the service out like mad and going to Steam. Maybe they changed their mind - I dunno. Every game that I've played since that was originally GFWL no longer has it.
Blackhawk wrote:With Game For Windows having just shut down
...huh? GFW Live servers are still running.
Shrug. I thought it was shut down. There was a big stink about it a year or two ago, and older games started patching the service out like mad and going to Steam. Maybe they changed their mind - I dunno. Every game that I've played since that was originally GFWL no longer has it.
It's still going but they phased out GFWL check-ins from a lot of games. So unless you use it for matchmaking and whatever else it's supposed to do, you often don't have to deal with it at all.
" Hey OP, listen to my advice alright." -Tha General "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer." -Stigler's Law of Eponymy, discovered by Robert K. Merton MYT
Yeah, I did some reading. They apparently leaked a shutdown announcement a couple of years ago right after they shut down the marketplace and 'discontinued' the brand. People went apeshit, and companies started migrating/patching their products to Steam. Microsoft then backtracked on it and left it up, but aren't doing much of anything with it.
Match making and online multiplayer games are not exempt.
Only single player games that "check in" before running locally can be "hacked" to allow them to play without the remove authentication call.
It's better than nothing, of course, and it shows a level of common sense that I thought was gone, so it's clearly a good thing even if it doesn't make me jump for joy just yet.
Abandoned online games are one rules change away from a comeback.
ESA say they don’t have an issue with that, however - what they’re arguing against is this exception being applied to abandoned online games, which they say would require the the publication of proprietary server code in order to work.
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Frankly I dont give a shit about their proprietary code or anything. If they are simply going to sit on it and never use it then give us access and let us play stuff again. Id love to go back to some old stuff i can no longer get at.
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I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"