To hell with (tm), (r) and other crap

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As the title says. You no longer play Neverwinter Nights, you play Neverwinter Nights (tm), get software from Microsoft(tm). Sometimes they will even use bold or italicise names because they are so "adorned" in the logo. Before, we had elements of legal jargon from the omnipresent EULAs and other such crap. Nowadays we have marketing and PR jargon. Forgotten realms is no longer a fascinating setting, it's a "fascinating Intellectual Property" (yeah, with capital letters! ). It's not "Baldur's Gate series" but "Baldur's Gate franchise". You don't receive BioWare games in contests, you win "BioWare merchandise". And don't get me started on press releases out of which a half is always unintelligible blurb. It just sucks.

And games have been becoming worse and worse. They no longer make games and sell them. They make games marketing and PR and just spam out some fillers to justify the whole marketing/PR traffic. It's depressing.

Where is immersion when you meet (r), (tm), (c), "intellectual property", "franchise", "merchandise" and all such crap even in game manuals? Are you suppose to immerse in their marketing/PR world of screwing customers out of cash and creating sectarian talk to repeat like a mantra almost to the point of killing your brains?

And if a friggin' lawyer has a problem with this, then there must be a problem.

Discuss.

 

The situation is getting quite ridiculous, indeed. I wonder when they'll start adding the (tm) and (r) and (c) crap inside of the games.

Imagine having to talk to Elminster(c) about problems in the Sword Coast(c). He then gives you a Melf(c)'s Acid Arrow(tm) scroll. He then tells you that this won't infringe Melf's Intellectual Rights, due to the fact that most mages in the Forgotten Realms(tm) offer their spells as Open Source content...

Although this could open up new strategies for DnD combat:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0065.html

 

Wow, watch my Paladin(7)/Champion of Torm(r) (tm) (33) build.

 

What bothers me is that with the original NWN you don't actually buy the game but a liscence to it. So let's say Jonny Boy and Mikey Boy, two brothers, wants to play NWN together. Both have seperate computers but oh no! They can't play with the same cd-key! So they must buy TWO freakin' copies of the game. WTF dude?

 

How unfortunate. It must suck to be a nice, law-abiding citizen when we, the Evil Pirates(tm), get it all cracked free of the crap.

 

"Bioware merchandise" is far better than "Bioware games" when it comes to BW contests - there's usually clothing, mousepads, mugs and such as well.

 

And don´t forget about the migthy "starfoce"(tm) (another reason for NOT being a legal person with a legal copy of a legal software)
May be that´s why I always play with Chaotic or neutral characters(the 90 % of my copies ARE pirates)

 

Me too. Also generally evil.

This (tm) and (r) thing is meaningless. If Tolkien didn't write his books we wouldn't have NWN, BG, IWD, entire Forgotten Realms, other worlds and games in these worlds (or settings, whatever) which generally uses a hot elf chick(tm) on their cd covers...

 

Oh right, breasts(r), the leading force of the industry.

 

Way to go, just the sort of thing to get everyone riled up and support pirating and cracking.

 

Arr, pirating is good. Nothing like hacking 'n cracking yer way to sweet victory, mate. Sissies and lawcrabs can stay ashore. Ay, me remembers me first experience with the Pirate Bay 'n the like. T'was love at first sight, it was. Me suggests ye set yer sails towards it when ye can. Me needs a fresh lawcrab to mop up me deck, me does. With 'er face. Good faces hard to come by nowdays...

 

If it's anything by EA Games, it deserves to be pirated.

 

That is the most ironic thing about the whole issue, I think

You've obviously never played the original Secret of Monkey Island (tm) demo
Come to think of it LucasArts (well, Lucasfilm Games at the time) were so ahead of their time. They were making fun of the overuse of tm and (R) and all that in games over 16 years ago!

I'm not going to dwell onto that topic, but I have ended up using a crack for almost every protected game that I have bought legally. Why? Because the LEGALLY purchased game wouldn't work, and when I would call the company and tell them about this they would ACCUSE me outright of having pirated the game.
Then of course you have things like Starforce that mess up your system IF and ONLY IF you have a legal copy of the game, and bloody Steam whereby your agreement to the EULA gives Valve the right to mess up your system while explicitly stating there's nothing you'll do if that happens.

Utterly ludicrous.

Back a little more on topic...
I find it more and more depressing that the PR announcements for games are carbon copies of each other. And in all of them, every other word is "epic".

 

What the hell is this topic even about? What on earth are you all talking and getting so riled up about? I'm struggling to see the issue.

 

There are no straight- line- issue.This topic is more like a catarsis, or a way to excusse ourselves for having SO MANY pirate copies(and not feeling bad about it).

 

Most of the games I've pirated I wouldn't pay a cent for, and they usually don't last long on my harddrive. Especially an EA game, or anything else that is mass produced consumerism rubbish.

I've bought the games I play the most, but I still get cracks because I am so sick of having to get up from my really really comfy chair to fumble about in the dark for a cd that may or may not be there, then end up dropping stuff down the back of my desk or into my pile of dirty underwears. Just means I have to turn my light on at random intervals in the middle of the night, and thats really kind of annoying.

Piracy doesn't worry me one bit, all the game companies are so large and rich that they arent really losing that much money if a few geeky rpg players pirate their games. It's not as if they make any money from rpgs really anyway...if they did, Troika would still be making awesome games.

 

@ Harbourboy

People are getting kinda riled up because:
-- New burners are coming out (Blue-Ray and HD-DVD). They will feature new, stricter copy-protection methods.
-- Vista is coming out. Even though there is no reason to upgrade to it, many will do it anyway. They are, probably, feeling a bit pissed off of the new EULA rules.
-- The new consoles are coming out. More anti-piracy measures.
-- Mandatory Internet-validations are getting more common. Sucks if you don't have Internet or you don't trust the company.
-- Star Force messing up with your system.
-- Sony attacked Lik-Sang and bypassed legal system to prevent customers buying out-of-region consoles. Although it was an isolated incident, some are worried that the attacks become commonplace.

Personally, I wish there were more small-but-notable players in the market.

 

I'm still not sure what the issue is. None of the things you have mentioned bother me in the slightest.

 

Hmmm...like Harby said,we´re (sligthly)out of the bounds of the topic here.
The way I see it, all of the above postings feeling the same about an industry that declines faster in the matter of quality(over maketing/selling many products) ,and forget about us: a bunch(I migth think that we´re no THAT MUCH) of angred players who feel a new released/purchased game a little bit like a rape(¿how do you call when you get fuked and receive nothing in exchange?), due to that we all aproach to the shores of piracy, like a desesperated but unusefull attemp for avoid this unexpected(but suspected) violation from the software(tm) firms.
I think that the breach is closing over us,like Wordplay suggested, beacuse the owner of the "intellectual property", "franchise", "merchandise" HAVE the ways(legals or not) to put us between "Schilla and Charibdis", or if you prefer, the sword and the wall (and I think the list that Wordplay claims is short), until the day the only choices we have to make with our poor system will be:
Did I play old BG series(and the like) or did I play (help!!) some MAME?

 

@ Harbourboy

Well, to put it simply; the new restrictions can cause your flicks to be unplayable if you don't buy a specific player. Or they are poor-quality unless you do X, which is what the companies want you to do. They can also mean that where you previously could do what you wanted with the stuff, you now can use it only for a limited time.

And if you break the software, you may also have to pay of the damages to the company.