Boo-urns!: Final Fight's PS3 DRM Starts Up Not So Final Fights
While I was previously all excited about the recent release of Final Fight: Double Impact, it saddens me a little bit that there's some silly DRM issues potentially holding people back from enjoying this awesome game on their PS3. While 360 owners are used to "one purchase, one download" styled transaction on Live, most of the downloadable games on the PS3 allow for some type of game sharing, allowing users to download (or redownload) their purchases on the same or different consoles. While many see this as a nifty way handing console switching or as a digital backups, other crafty players have been using it to trade games with other players. It's not exactly piracy and its ok by the user agreement that Sony puts out, but it has been costing publishers evidentially.
In a pretty douchey move that's ruffling a some people's feathers, Capcom choose to put some DRM on Final Fight that requires that the player's profile be logged into PSN. The reason behind this is that the game automatically checks to see if any "shared" copoes of the game have been launched in the past 24 hours. So for example if you shared the game with a friend, and he played it last night, you're going to have to wait a bit to play it again (just as your friend will wait after you get done playing). As if that wasn't annoying enough, just remember that not all PS3 profiles are allowed online since an option given in the parental controls settings allows master profiles to block any type of online activity. This probably wouldn't even have been that bad if all this information was clearly presented to players at the time of purchase, but lets face it, the PSN's current method of relaying that type of information to users is a little on the ineffective side and that's if it was even listed there to begin with.
An upset IGN forum member claims to have spoken with a Capcom representative and got the following response...
...This was employed to combat the rampant "PSN Sharing" that has been going on over the last year. We're sorry that your family cannot play the game on their individual accounts (same console). This is a limitation of the Sony network. We are not committed to do this with all titles moving forward but the only way to evaluate impact was to try it with one title first.
Boo-urns, I say! While I can't exactly blame Capcom for doing something like this, I can't exactly praise it either. It just doesn't seem like a realistic solution for all their titles, especially ones that aren't primarily focused on online functionalities. But I guess if things like game sharing are cutting into their ability to make games for that platform, I'd rather have DRM'ed releases than none at all. It just seems like there's some other type of middle ground to find here, but it's eluding them.
[Capcom's Response on the Final Fight DRM] IGN Boards
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Posted to on 26 April 2010
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: boo-urns, capcom, downloadible games, drm, final fight: double impact, ps3, sony
Wait, what's this "one purchase, one download" malarky? I purchased Chime on my ex's 360 so that all the gamertags on his Xbox could play it, and then downloaded it again on my own 360 and faced zero problems.
I mean, I understand where Capcom is coming from... but that's sort of what the PSN is all about. I believe Jack Tretton once said that the whole "share with 5 systems" thing was intentional for just this reason, so that you could potentially buy a co-op game and play it with your friends even if they decided not to slap down the cash. It ended up, at least in my circle of friends, fuelling more game purchases specifically for the reason of "If I buy this, Brad or Jeremy will play with me, and co-op makes everything better." I understand wanting to milk every last cent out of a game release, but this just seems excessive to me.
My husband has recently purchased his own PS3 to play co-op with me. I really hope this does not make it into other games as we've enjoyed having to only purchase a game once to be playable on both consoles. That's a better deal than we get with Steam!
I did not know that Final Fight Double Impact did this, but I don't really mind at all - gamesharing is a huge issue with the PS3.
Also, the PSN version of Warhawk has the same restriction: 24 hours must pass before another account can load up the game. I wonder if there are any other examples?