Spoiler-free Sonic Mania discussion thread

I find this stance baffling.

The devs regularly hang out in this forum and your suggesting pirating the game. Good one.

I'm keen to hear opinions about how piracy can be stopped without the use of DRM. Anyone got any better ideas than the current solutions?

Also keen to hear stories about how DRM has destroyed any of your past computers. I'm willing to bet it hasn't, but happy to be proven wrong.

 

Rime developer removes game's DRM after software cracked

You know, Denuvo imposes a Monthly fee to SEGA, no? If the software gets cracked, there's no reason to leave it on the product and keep paying.

Why? I bought the game and It's fair to have an offline way to play it. Here's my Steam profile; I bought the game and will pirate it when I have the chance to have a copy without DRM.

Nope, but my PC runs League of Legends just fine (60fps) and there are noticeable 10fps moments for a second or two on Mania for me.

 

Has anyone had any real issues yet?
I mean most of what I hear is 'ooo i heard it does bad its THE DEVIL I TELL YA'

2% CPU for me during game play on a computer which isn't new or too special. So I doubt its doing anything that bad, and people with bad PC's just have something to blame I guess.

But hey, convince me otherwise! I like to get unreasonably outraged just as much as everyone else!

 

If there is a monthly fee, then why would Sega continue to pay it after a certain release window has passed?

 

I get that part of it completely, that's definitely not what I think is ridiculous.

I suppose if people weren't outraged and protested with refunds etc, this would have potentially done it's job of increasing true sales of the game, which would be fantastic because this is Mania, guys.


Just feeling like a lot of the hate is manufactured out of rumours and sheeple.

 

"It works fine on my PC therefore it must work completely fine on everybody else's too!"

No. Amazingly enough, something that runs well on one machine can run badly on another machine, and vice versa.

For example, I have a Samsung laptop and an HP laptop. The HP laptop is newer and slightly more expensive when I bought it, so as you'd expect it runs most things better.

However, some games run worse on the HP laptop than they do on the Samsung laptop. And as far as emulation goes, Fusion runs better than Gens on the Samsung laptop, but Gens runs better than Fusion on the HP laptop.

So imagine I'm playing on the Samsung laptop, and see someone on the HP laptop complain that Fusion doesn't run very well. I could quite easily say "your computer must be shit then, it runs fine on mine", but that'd actually be completely false because the HP laptop is in fact the more powerful one.


TL;DR: hardware differences are a thing

 

My computer struggles with Firefox sometimes and runs Mania like it's a Mega Drive emulator (except for tiny little slowdown in a couple of fiery places).

 

Understood already. Seems to me like a minority of people to me though, not the plague its being made out to be.

And my sub point also stands that no one knows it's the DRM, could be the computer not handling the game, just being blamed on the DRM cause it's easy. If the hardware varies as much as you say you don't need to stretch your imagination too far for that one.

 

Overlord, I bought the game Twice (Steam and Switch). Nobody is even thinking of stealing the game and not paying Sega and the dev crew what they surely deserve. I'm a graphic designer and it's a constant battle against underpayed opportunities and clients that don't value other people's work but, the correct way to fight piracy is to:

1 - Offer fair prices (Mania has a fair price IMO!)

2 - Offer exclusive content to people who bought the game (maybe online access or a free theme for your Steam/PS4/Switch -- which was already done with the preorders)

3 - Emphasize physical media benefits (really weird for Sega to go digital then act completely crazy with some CPU hog on a 180mb game).

4 - NOT INCLUDE SOFTWARE THAT MAKES USING THE SOFTWARE FOR THE LEGAL USER A BURDEN


Steam is already a form of DRM, not perfect but at least it has benefits. Making a DRM-ception that makes the game run poorly (on random moments) on my i5 laptop is ridiculous.


I do the same thing with my audio CDs. I usually buy the album then download the FLACs from some torrent site because my laptop doesn't have a CD drive to rip them.

 

This sums up the whole situation so nicely, and then some. I want to quote tweet your tweet about this on Twitter, once the right summary comes to mind.

I don't think I'm mad about the DRM itself anymore, and it will be removed later, one way or another, anyway. Now, I'm instead somewhat upset at SEGA for partnering with such shady individuals. No matter where people sit in the Denuvo debate, none of us should stand for this.

(Edit: Removed a quote reply because people have already responded to it and mine felt redundant.)

 

It doesn't cease to amaze me how resigned most people are that nobody really owns anything anymore. In 20+ years time, I want to be able to pickup Sonic Mania and play it, just like I can with my original Genesis cartridges of the classic games now, without having to (re)buy an emulated/ported/updated/remastered copy for PlayStation 9. As long as games rely on online services like Steam or Denuvo, they'll never really be ours.

It seems to me that most people people just go "it works now, so fuck the future", and game companies must love this, because they get to end support for older versions/systems and sell you the same games over and over, with very few people actually seeing anything wrong with this business model. And that's assuming that games DO work well now, which they might not due to DRM (performance issues, false malware positives, lack of internet connection, etc.). The fact is that DRM schemes *NEVER* help games run better... their impact is either transparent (for now) or negative, never positive.

 

Just got back from the pub (bit drunk) so take what I say with a pinch of drunken salt...

Still haven't seen in this thread (or the now locked one) a better solution to combatting pirating than DRM given by anyone, so for me, it's still the best way at this point in time.

better solutions will come along in the future.

I'm honestly happy for the gaming industry to have these kinds of protections - because the music industry has absolutley fuck all to protect itself.

EDIT sorry masteremerald didn't see you last post - bit drunk bed calling :<

 

iTunes, Spotify, etc. that give barely anything to the musicians themselves anyway?

 

I'm glad there's someone else on this forum who understands this.

As far as I'm concerned, Denuvo is the wrong way of combating piracy and I still believe that iLok is the single worst thing that plugin developers could opt for (I am so grateful for Waves for coming up with their own solution that isn't garbage), but DRM is a necessary evil in my eyes.

 

They already had a great game at such a great price that they made 99% of the Sonic fandom want to buy it.

Then they made some people consider pirating it when they added DRM.

 

Far more knowledgeable people will probably be able to point out several things wrong with what I'm about to suggest, but here I go:

Bring back physical PC games. Instead of having them be on CDs, have them be on encrypted proprietary cartridges and have them be read by a proprietary cartridge reader that connects via USB/SATA/PCIe/whatever. Create an encrypted sandboxed application/VM running a custom OS to interact with the reader. Have any configuration, patches, or modding be done through the application/VM itself.

Since the games are tied to the cartridge, players can own their PC games just as they would physical console games. Just like with console games, however, losing a physical copy means having no way to recover it.

 

I believe I stated this elsewhere, but I can't find my post? But. I personally am okay with unintrusive DRM. Do I like it? No. Because I believe in being able to do what I want with something I own/bought/paid for, with only *reasonable* restrictions (can't say it was my work, can't duplicate and distribute it, that sort of thing).

But DRM itself? I'm okay with. I play a little Sims3, and you know what? The CD codes that need to be used to install the game and expacs? I'm fully okay with. Because they don't hinder my use of the product. I put in the code during install, and that's about it (I think we need to have a CD in to launch too, but that's unclear from our experiments).

My roommate is the one that got me into that game, and has about half of the expacs. When I got into it, I gradually bought the ones she didn't have (and the base game, obviously). Between the two of us, we can both play all the expacs. Is this a grey area? Arguably, but it's a family-like situation since we live together. And, more importantly, if I were to turn my discs in to a used game store, whoever bought them would be able to use them.

Granted, this case applies to physical games more than digital, but its a good example of how I'm not against DRM or similar protection as a concept. So long as it doesn't hinder me and my enjoyment of the media. Sims 3 doesn't need me to "check in" to confirm I'm allowed to play it. I play Sims offline without any issue ever.

If Denuvo were to suddenly decide that it was time to phone home, and I was visiting family, though? I couldn't play. When Denuvo shuts down, I can't play anymore. I have CDs from about 2001 with CD codes that I can still install and play. Can we expect this from Denuvo? No.

That's why it's bullshit.

The most frustrating part is, Steam has Steamworks already. This was apparently only ever going to be a Steam release. Why not use what's right there and won't cause a huge outrage? It's baffling.

(And yes. I personally experience issues with games that have Denuvo. Many of them are minor, but the games they usually come with are so large that I can brush it off. For a game the size and digital impact of Sonic Mania having even just noticeable lag between Acts when the Switch version did not? That is disgraceful and personally disgusts me. That is the problem with Denuvo specifically, not DRM as a whole.)

 

Oh snap, I'm not alone in my issue! I noticed the little bit of lag between transitions. The console ports have this too, but it's SO MUCH LESS.

God this Denuvo shit needs to goooo