GameSpasm

The Witcher series of action role-playing games is reaching further than ever before, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launching simultaneously on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2014. The new consoles have been mired in discussion over DRM (digital rights management) recently, with Microsoft instituting connectivity requirements to play games, and PlayStation leaving publishers to decide how to control the sale and resale of their content. The Polish developer behind The Witcher, CD Projekt RED, now tries to find an ideal incarnation for its publicly asserted values, which are staunchly opposed to DRM of any kind.

"I can only talk about our intentions; we don't have any agreement finalized yet," CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiński tells me, carefully choosing his words. "It's all quite early and we're finding out about it this week, at the conference. But our intention, obviously, is to choose the most gamer-friendly solution." In CD Projekt's perfect world, those solutions would be aligned with their PC- and Mac-based digital distribution platform, GOG.com, where games are 100 percent DRM-free. "Whatever the solutions will be for our partners, we choose something ideally as close to what we have on GOG as possible."

Continue reading The Witcher 3 DRM-free on PC; 'gamer-friendly' solution sought on consoles

The Witcher 3 DRM-free on PC; 'gamer-friendly' solution sought on consoles originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: 2014, cd-projekt-red, drm, e3-2013, marcin-iwinski, PC, The Witcher 3

"It's dead, it's dead, it's deep-sixed, it's at the bottom of the Mariana Trench," Electronic Arts' President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau stated plainly yesterday about the company's Online Pass program to Joystiq.

Following EA's announcement in late May that it was eliminating the Online Pass program, gamers braced for "the twist." That occurred last week when Microsoft finally announced the digital rights management (DRM) scheme for the Xbox One, which would have made an Online Pass program unnecessary. However, with Sony's announcement the PlayStation 4 will follow the current model of game console DRM and used games, it was a question if Online Pass was back on the table at EA.

"We're not crafting a strategy to bring [Online Pass] back, you will not input codes to unlock your game, it's not going to happen," said Gibeau. The executive then moved on to tell us the company's decision to kill Online Pass and Microsoft's Xbox One DRM plans weren't linked at all, therefore PlayStation 4's recent reveal wouldn't have changed their decision on the program anyway. He called the Online Pass program "flat out dumb."

Continue reading EA: Online Pass staying dead after PS4 reveal, program's expiration not tied to Xbox One

EA: Online Pass staying dead after PS4 reveal, program's expiration not tied to Xbox One originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: drm, e3-2013, Ea, Electronic Arts, Frank-Gibeau, microsoft, online-pass, Playstation, Project ten dollar, PS3, Xbox

"It's dead, it's dead, it's deep-sixed, it's at the bottom of the Mariana Trench," Electronic Arts' President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau stated plainly yesterday about the company's Online Pass program to Joystiq.

Following EA's announcement in late May that it was eliminating the Online Pass program, gamers braced for "the twist." That occurred last week when Microsoft finally announced the digital rights management (DRM) scheme for the Xbox One, which would have made an Online Pass program unnecessary. However, with Sony's announcement the PlayStation 4 will follow the current model of game console DRM and used games, it was a question if Online Pass was back on the table at EA.

"We're not crafting a strategy to bring [Online Pass] back, you will not input codes to unlock your game, it's not going to happen," said Gibeau. The executive then moved on to tell us the company's decision to kill Online Pass and Microsoft's Xbox One DRM plans weren't linked at all, therefore PlayStation 4's recent reveal wouldn't have changed their decision on the program anyway. He called the Online Pass program "flat out dumb."

Continue reading EA: Online Pass staying dead after PS4 reveal, program's expiration not tied to Xbox One

EA: Online Pass staying dead after PS4 reveal, program's expiration not tied to Xbox One originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: drm, e3-2013, Ea, Electronic Arts, Frank-Gibeau, microsoft, online-pass, Playstation, Project ten dollar, PS3, Xbox

"It's dead, it's dead, it's deep-sixed, it's at the bottom of the Mariana Trench," Electronic Arts' President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau stated plainly yesterday about the company's Online Pass program to Joystiq.

Following EA's announcement in late May that it was eliminating the Online Pass program, gamers braced for "the twist." That occurred last week when Microsoft finally announced the digital rights management (DRM) scheme for the Xbox One, which would have made an Online Pass program unnecessary. However, with Sony's announcement the PlayStation 4 will follow the current model of game console DRM and used games, it was a question if Online Pass was back on the table at EA.

"We're not crafting a strategy to bring [Online Pass] back, you will not input codes to unlock your game, it's not going to happen," said Gibeau. The executive then moved on to tell us the company's decision to kill Online Pass and Microsoft's Xbox One DRM plans weren't linked at all, therefore PlayStation 4's recent reveal wouldn't have changed their decision on the program anyway. He called the Online Pass program "flat out dumb."

Continue reading EA: Online Pass staying dead after PS4 reveal, program's expiration not tied to Xbox One

EA: Online Pass staying dead after PS4 reveal, program's expiration not tied to Xbox One originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: drm, e3-2013, Ea, Electronic Arts, Frank-Gibeau, microsoft, online-pass, Playstation, Project ten dollar, PS3, Xbox

Many Steam and Ubisoft customers are complaining that Heroes of Might & Magic 6 has become unplayable since the release of its recent expansion, Shades of Darkness, and the 2.1 patch that accompanied it. The issue seems to center around Ubisoft's Uplay service, which refuses to accept the download codes issued to customers after they buy the game.

Users are saying that, after downloading the game and activating through Steam using their key, Uplay won't accept the key again, saying that it has already been redeemed. After this, players have access to the Heroes 6 expansions, but are unable to play the main campaign (it's grayed out in the menu).

For its part, Ubisoft has acknowledged the issue on its own forums, assuring users that their keys are "not broken and will be fixed as soon as possible." The company is also recommending a workaround discovered by forum user ElektroDragon, which involves manually downloading and installing the patch instead of allowing the game to do it automatically.

Meanwhile, Steam users have started a petition against Ubisoft, specifically its use of 3rd party DRM via Uplay. The publisher has a rocky history with its PC games, often releasing them long after their console counterparts and saddling them with restrictive DRM. Earlier this year, Ubisoft's Uplay director, Stephanie Perotti, said that the company is working to improve its relationship with the PC community.

We've contacted Ubisoft regarding this latest issue and will update this story if we hear anything new.

Might & Magic Heroes 6 currently unplayable for many originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 06 May 2013 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: drm, Might-and-Magic-Heroes-6, steam, ubisoft, uplay

Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, project lead on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, has confirmed multiplayer modes, quick-time events, and DRM are not part of the plan for the third entry in the role-playing game series.

The "final saga of Geralt" will maintain a focus on single-player content, Tomaszkiewicz told Forbes, though multiplayer had been considered for the game at one point.

Quick-time events found in previous Witcher games have also been abandoned. The lead designer noted that QTEs "didn't fit" the experience and often leads to frustration for players. "There is a small number of games where it is fun, like, for example, in the Uncharted series, where you don't even realize that you've just finished a QTE sequence. And I think that only this way of using QTE has any kind of future in games."

Calling digital rights management "the worst thing in the gaming industry," Tomaszkiewicz confirmed The Witcher 3 will not have such restrictions. Though the decision against using DRM applies to retail copies and CD Projekt's GOG.com platform, other digital distributors such as Steam would still feature its own form of DRM. Distribution channels for The Witcher 3 have not been announced.

The Witcher 3 is coming to the PC, PS4, and "high-end platforms" next year.

Witcher 3 skipping quick-time events and multiplayer originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: digital-rights-management, drm, Konrad-Tomaszkiewicz, microsoft, multiplayer, PC, Playstation, PS3, quick-time-events, The Witcher 3, wild-hunt, Xbox

Netflix has unveiled the first details of a long-term strategy to shift towards using HTML5 for its web-based video playback.

Netflix, which owns about one third of the market for prime-time Web streaming video, far ahead of competitors like Amazon Prime and Hulu, currently uses Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin for video playback. That’s in contrast to many other video services, which use Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, or other services to play video within their web pages. However, Microsoft has announced plans to wind down Silverlight by 2021. That means Netflix — and anyone else relying on Silverlight — has eight years to find an alternative.

HTML5 is a promising, if somewhat half-cooked, alternative. The open web standard, while widely hyped, proved disappointing to many developers in 2012, failing to live up to expectations for cross-platform support, performance, and other issues. But while mobile consumers spend far more time in apps than in their mobile browsers, HTML5 still has potential as the underlying rendering framework used within apps. Also, developers like HTML5, as does the guy who invented the Web.

And fortunately for Netflix, HTML5-based solutions that meet Netflix’s requirements are in the pipeline. Chief among those requirements are the need for content encryption and copy restriction (aka digital rights management, or DRM), “a requirement for any premium subscription video service,” the Netflix blog post drily notes. The W3C’s Encrypted Media Extensions specification provides just that support, Netflix says. In addition, the Web Cryptography API (also from the W3C) gives Netflix programming tools for encrypting and decrypting data, and for digitally signing content and verifying customers’ identities, which are also needed for the delivery of DRM-restricted video.

Finally, the W3C’s Media Source Extensions specification gives Netflix the ability to embed a video player in a web page, via the <video> tag, and also to control how to deliver audio and video to that player via its HTTP servers and content delivery network. It also gives Netflix the ability to switch to different servers in case one goes down, and to control the playback in various ways using JavaScript, which gives it flexibility to experiment.

“In addition, this allows us to implement our industry-leading adaptive streaming algorithms (real-time selection of audio/video bitrates based on available bandwidth and other factors) in our JavaScript code,” the blog post states.

These three key specifications aren’t completely baked yet, nor are they usable in most browsers, which is why Netflix isn’t quite ready to jump fully into the HTML5 pool. (Nor does it have to, given the long, eight-year sunset period for Silverlight.) Instead, it’s dipping its toes in the water, working with Google to implement support for its HTML5 player starting with the Chrome browser on Samsung’s ARM-based Chromebook.

Hat tip: Ars Technica

Photo: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings plans world domination, back in 2010. Credit: Ben Lucier/Flickr

Filed under: Dev, Media

Tags: dev, drm, HTML5, Media, silverlight, streaming-video, web video

Netflix has unveiled the first details of a long-term strategy to shift towards using HTML5 for its web-based video playback.

Netflix, which owns about one third of the market for prime-time Web streaming video, far ahead of competitors like Amazon Prime and Hulu, currently uses Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin for video playback. That’s in contrast to many other video services, which use Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, or other services to play video within their web pages. However, Microsoft has announced plans to wind down Silverlight by 2021. That means Netflix — and anyone else relying on Silverlight — has eight years to find an alternative.

HTML5 is a promising, if somewhat half-cooked, alternative. The open web standard, while widely hyped, proved disappointing to many developers in 2012, failing to live up to expectations for cross-platform support, performance, and other issues. But while mobile consumers spend far more time in apps than in their mobile browsers, HTML5 still has potential as the underlying rendering framework used within apps. Also, developers like HTML5, as does the guy who invented the Web.

And fortunately for Netflix, HTML5-based solutions that meet Netflix’s requirements are in the pipeline. Chief among those requirements are the need for content encryption and copy restriction (aka digital rights management, or DRM), “a requirement for any premium subscription video service,” the Netflix blog post drily notes. The W3C’s Encrypted Media Extensions specification provides just that support, Netflix says. In addition, the Web Cryptography API (also from the W3C) gives Netflix programming tools for encrypting and decrypting data, and for digitally signing content and verifying customers’ identities, which are also needed for the delivery of DRM-restricted video.

Finally, the W3C’s Media Source Extensions specification gives Netflix the ability to embed a video player in a web page, via the <video> tag, and also to control how to deliver audio and video to that player via its HTTP servers and content delivery network. It also gives Netflix the ability to switch to different servers in case one goes down, and to control the playback in various ways using JavaScript, which gives it flexibility to experiment.

“In addition, this allows us to implement our industry-leading adaptive streaming algorithms (real-time selection of audio/video bitrates based on available bandwidth and other factors) in our JavaScript code,” the blog post states.

These three key specifications aren’t completely baked yet, nor are they usable in most browsers, which is why Netflix isn’t quite ready to jump fully into the HTML5 pool. (Nor does it have to, given the long, eight-year sunset period for Silverlight.) Instead, it’s dipping its toes in the water, working with Google to implement support for its HTML5 player starting with the Chrome browser on Samsung’s ARM-based Chromebook.

Hat tip: Ars Technica

Photo: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings plans world domination, back in 2010. Credit: Ben Lucier/Flickr

Filed under: Dev, Media

Tags: dev, drm, HTML5, Media, silverlight, streaming-video, web video

During last year's Kickstarter campaign for Shadownrun Returns, developer Harebrained Schemes was dutiful in noting that every pledge level included a DRM-free version of the game. While that technically remains true, Harebrained Schemes has recently announced a slight caveat: All post-Berlin Campaign DLC will have DRM, and will require Steam.

It shakes out like this: Backers will receive both a DRM-free version and the Steam version of Shadowrun Returns (which does have DRM) when the game launches in June. Additionally, anyone who pledged enough to receive the game's Berlin Campaign DLC will also be given permanent access to both versions. After that, however, all DLC will be distributed exclusively through Steam, DRM in tow.

"The reason is that our license to develop Shadowrun Returns actually requires that the game and its DLC be distributed under DRM," a Kickstarter update on the situation reads. "This didn't come up earlier because the situation was complicated by the number of parties involved in the license and because the process was 'ongoing.'"

"Ultimately," it continues, "we were able to successfully negotiate an exception with Microsoft for us to provide our Backers with a DRM-free version of the Kickstarter rewards (specifically the game and the Berlin Campaign) but that exception does not extend to non-reward DLC. So unfortunately, we cannot sell or give away DRM-free versions of the game or DLC on stores like GoG, and that's why any future Shadowrun Returns DLC will only be available for purchase on Steam."

A table posted by Harebrained Schemes, illustrating the specific differences between the Steam and DRM-free versions of the game, has been embedded after the break.

[Thanks, Travis!]

Continue reading Shadowrun Returns' non-Kickstarter reward DLC to require Steam, DRM

Shadowrun Returns' non-Kickstarter reward DLC to require Steam, DRM originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: DLC, drm, drm-free, harebrained-schemes, kickstarter, linux, mac, PC, shadowrun-returns, steam

During last year's Kickstarter campaign for Shadownrun Returns, developer Harebrained Schemes was dutiful in noting that every pledge level included a DRM-free version of the game. While that technically remains true, Harebrained Schemes has recently announced a slight caveat: All post-Berlin Campaign DLC will have DRM, and will require Steam.

It shakes out like this: Backers will receive both a DRM-free version and the Steam version of Shadowrun Returns (which does have DRM) when the game launches in June. Additionally, anyone who pledged enough to receive the game's Berlin Campaign DLC will also be given permanent access to both versions. After that, however, all DLC will be distributed exclusively through Steam, DRM in tow.

"The reason is that our license to develop Shadowrun Returns actually requires that the game and its DLC be distributed under DRM," a Kickstarter update on the situation reads. "This didn't come up earlier because the situation was complicated by the number of parties involved in the license and because the process was 'ongoing.'"

"Ultimately," it continues, "we were able to successfully negotiate an exception with Microsoft for us to provide our Backers with a DRM-free version of the Kickstarter rewards (specifically the game and the Berlin Campaign) but that exception does not extend to non-reward DLC. So unfortunately, we cannot sell or give away DRM-free versions of the game or DLC on stores like GoG, and that's why any future Shadowrun Returns DLC will only be available for purchase on Steam."

A table posted by Harebrained Schemes, illustrating the specific differences between the Steam and DRM-free versions of the game, has been embedded after the break.

[Thanks, Travis!]

Continue reading Shadowrun Returns' non-Kickstarter reward DLC to require Steam, DRM

Shadowrun Returns' non-Kickstarter reward DLC to require Steam, DRM originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: DLC, drm, drm-free, harebrained-schemes, kickstarter, linux, mac, PC, shadowrun-returns, steam