Capcom Trys Out DRM on PS3, “Rampant PSN Sharing” To Blame [UPDATE]
Yesterday, we reported on a possible online error for Capcom’s Final Fight: Double Impact. Problems being reported that users could not play the PSN title without being connected to PlayStation Network. Unfortunately, this is no error, nor is it an actual problem – because Capcom has done it purposely.
“Nacthenud”, a user on gaming website IGN, shot an email to Capcom complaining on the Final Fight: Double Impact online issue, asking if it was a form of DRM, or a problem of some sort. Thankfully, Capcom responded.
I’ll try to be short. Yes, there is DRM. 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.
To be honest, you could just log in as yourself and allow them to play. I understand there is a principle here, but we would appreciate your understanding of our position while doling out your criticism.
If Capcom has evaluated the impact of game sales for Final Fight: Double Impact, without the use of game sharing, it’ll be interesting to see the outcome. Will future Capcom titles on PlayStation Network use DRM as well? We’ll have to wait and see.
What’s your opinion on all of this? Post below and share!
[UPDATE]
Capcom would like to formally apologize for the issues consumers are having with the PS3 version of Final Fight: Double Impact. Typically, the notification for a required PlayStation Network connection appears in the full game description when a game is downloaded from the PlayStation Store. Unfortunately when populating this content this detail was overlooked and wasn’t included in the versions of the game that released in North America and Asia. It was included in the release for Europe. Capcom should have checked to make sure the notification was included when the final game was made available and we sincerely apologize for this oversight.
The DRM requirements for Final Fight: Double Impact are not unique to this release. This protection mechanism has been implemented in numerous games offered on the PlayStation Store before. When it was brought to our attention that the notification was missing, we acted quickly with Sony Computer Entertainment America and a fix is on the Way.
We would like to thank our vigilant fans for bringing this to our attention and we will exercise better scrutiny on future Capcom releases.
[Source]
27 Responses to “Capcom Trys Out DRM on PS3, “Rampant PSN Sharing” To Blame [UPDATE]”
What is DRM? I looked it up on wikipedia (Yeah I know smartest move) and it came up with Digtal Rights Management
If they want to prevent game sharing ok understandable bu not likable but not being able to use it on the same system thats just not right.
this is just stupid, i dont have a broadband connection unless im at my gfs place, which means that 70% of the time i wouldnt be able to play this. what a stupid idea
they should have mentioned in the description that you can’t play without internet connection,
before you bought it, not after.
looks like capcom is taking the high road. Time to update your story.
“Capcom would like to formally apologize for the issues consumers are having with the PS3 version of Final Fight: Double Impact. Typically, the notification for a required PlayStation Network connection appears in the full game description when a game is downloaded from the PlayStation Store. Unfortunately when populating this content this detail was overlooked and wasn’t included in the versions of the game that released in North America and Asia. It was included in the release for Europe. Capcom should have checked to make sure the notification was included when the final game was made available and we sincerely apologize for this oversight.
The DRM requirements for Final Fight: Double Impact are not unique to this release. This protection mechanism has been implemented in numerous games offered on the PlayStation Store before. When it was brought to our attention that the notification was missing, we acted quickly with Sony Computer Entertainment America and a fix is on the Way.
We would like to thank our vigilant fans for bringing this to our attention and we will exercise better scrutiny on future Capcom releases.”
source: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/108/1085230p1.html
The game can be played on different accounts on the same PS3, just make sure that the account that was used to buy the game is set to sign in automatically.
I don’t have my PS3 connected to the internet, so I guess I can’t play this game.
stop rampant game sharing? not stopping me from letting my friends borrow my street fighter 4 disc, are you. hey, there’s one less $60 dollar sale you won’t be getting, now will you? it can not be shared beyond 5 people to any one account, but the disc based games can be shared endlessly. hell, i could trade it in to game stop or sell it elsewhere and you get nothing from that resale. do you see where this crazy idea is gonna lead….
DRM on disc based games will soon follow, thank you.
i’ve said it before, i’ll repeat for here, if you choose to share your games, you risk losing them if anything happens to your ps3. want that game again after that, you’ll have to buy it again. there’s 2 sales of the same game, perhaps. but this under handed use of unannounced DRM (even sony didn’t know) is shameful and could only hurt future sales of other psn related games. and where did everyone get this crazy idea game sharing was rampant? is everyone on psn sharing games with everyone else? is it just a small percentage of psn users doing it? is capcom still upset no one bought that lame space game smash tv rip off they offered? i’d love to see sales figures of final fight vs other non DRM capcom psn games. i bet those without sold better. and what happens if you lose your internet connection? your ethernet port breaks and you have no wireless router? there’s one game you won’t be playing again, Period! so thanks but no thanks, and that “apology”, shove it.
Game sharing (with my own devices, not my friends) is the only reason I put up with paying full price for a download title. If my kids want a crap game that for some reason costs $30 at least they can split the cost on one account. This is a problem? The problem is that they are charging waaaaay to much for download titles (over hard copies) with few consumer benefits. At least game sharing on my own damn devices was a benefit I thought was worth paying for. If you take this away, fuck your digital-download-at-full-price nonsense.
….and this is why DLC games suck.
A game that I buy where I get physical media ANYONE can play on the system. They expect everyone to buy numerous copies of their game to play on the same console? Fine they get ZERO cash from me from now on.
They are going to do this with future games released on PSN like Bionic Commando 2 just watch. I have nothing against them doing it but it just sucks that you have to be online to play Double Impact what if I don’t want to be online? It would of been nice if it had offline mult-iplayer of at least Capcom should of mentioned that its an online only game which would thrown flags to not purchase it.
Understand why the did it, but I think they were wrong by not letting the consumers aware of the DRM before the purchased the game. I wonder how many people would have not purchase this game if they knew about the DRM.
yeah, they need to give people a heads up with this stuff. it’s getting too sneaky for my liking. I had no idea that Warhawk was locked like it is until recently… so I ended up buying a used copy for my brother so we can play online. It would just be nice if there was bold text in the descriptions of games with restrictions on the PSN Store. I’m less likely to buy a game that doesn’t allow me to play it on my other systems within a 24 hour timeframe. but then again, this type of thing… most people probably already have CPS ROMs on MAME. I like both games, it just wasn’t my first choice of purchse. I’m hoping Sony will start to regulate this on the store.
Can’t blame them. I blame all the suckers who abused the system, not Capcom.
^
gamesharing for starters more or less died recently, in vain of the 150 usd account scams, but even in its prime it followed all the rules you would expect…
1943 was successful and sold really well, and was a common trade item…
fret nice, ive never seen for trade… and according to ps3trophycard.com no more than 50 people in theory *only 50 people on that site have a trophy for the game* bought it
Final Fight double impact, i could see selling ok *still yet to see anyone mentioning owning it =P* but seriously it lacks playablity for more than a few hours reguardless… But to each their own, its not like complaining about it will do shit, dont like it dont buy
@Jackc8
Then you wont be able to download it either.
99% of people who are bitching about drm are the same people who bitch about torrent sites getting closed down.
They could always make up with Dead Rising 2 Special Edition though games companies shouldn’t really be giving games away for free so I doubt it.
Also DRM is differant to torrent sites being closed down, in my opinion everyone who owns an account on my PS3 should be allowed to play the same games as me, they shouldn’t have to pay extra just get their hands on the PSN games I own.
I have played final fight on 2 accounts – same system
it worked fine , maybe it’s a glitch but I played on my main account and a few hours later on my secondary account . maybe it’s only if the second account is a foreign account it doesn’t work ?
@FJ1100
It plays fine if your main account automatically signs into PSN and all you do is switch between the two.
i dont do game sharing. and i also dont buy many things on psn. ive probably spent $30 total. but this just gave me even another reason to not wanna buy. when i read about people saying how digital disribution is the future and how much better itll be, i literally want to physically hurt them. why the hell would you not want full and total control over the games you buy? being able to share, sell, trade, borrow, or just collect copies of games? the day that DD becomes the only way to aquire games is the day i stop gaming.
@Timewarp, You CAN play the game on other accounts on the same PS3.
While I have shared 3 games once with my friend, I cut that out. Now I can understand trying to implement DRM (even though it fails) on PC. But there is nothing to pirate on PS3. I say just change the account sharing thing. Make it so you can only have 5 accounts on that specific PS3 somehow, not multiple ones. That will solve the issue. Now I have to disagree with the guy who said they charge too much for PSN games. I think they are a great price (most of them) and there are great games on PSN. There aren’t many complete games on PSN that should be on a disc; But ones I own like Pain, Super Stardust HD, SSF2HD, etc were not too expensive. The only time I spend more than 10 dollars on PSN is for PSPGO games (or I guess you could with DLC on some games). Anyway, all I know is I am glad that PSN is another format to deliver games; without it we would have never had some of these games because it wouldn’t be worth the hassle to put them on a disc. I don’t believe that downloading is going to take over physical anytime soon, but as time goes on it will get better and better. Eventually, as the tech progresses, physical will become less of the market, but that is a ways off. We have to remember guys that PSN is still fairly young, it will get better. I don’t believe that Capcom did this on purpose. Why would they? They only get a backlash from gamers like us. lol.
As far as sharing the disc goes, it is a different premise. You can share the disc with your friend or trade it in, sure. But you can do that with anything you buy that is physical (cars, whatever). I think their problem is that 1 person buys it and multiple people can play it at the same time. If your friend borrows a disc, you can’t play it when not at his house. When you want it back, he may go buy it. I can understand companies and devs complaining about game sharing, because it’s like a 4/1 type of ratio loss. Discs on the other hand are only a 1/1 loss and a different premise. I mean if devs are going to complain about trading in games, then they need to complain about trading in cars to a dealership as well. I don’t think console games are going to have DRM on every disc either; at least not on the PS3. Hope what I wrote makes sense, sorry for the length.
Who care? People whining about this are the same people that whine about anything that doesn’t let them get over on the system anymore. If you don’t want to deal with Capcom’s restrictions then just don’t buy the games that they’ve added DRM to and then hopefully after enough of you whiners don’t buy, maybe they’ll see a big enough loss in sales to drop this idea.
Like the above post mentioned the game Battlefield 1943 already. It was one of the most successful games recently on PSN even WITH the fact sharing happens. The real reason this is being done by Capcom is probably the guy who is in charge of PSN Sales/Marketing, is grasping at straws, as to why CAPCOM doesn’t have as much success on PSN. Hmmm maybe because they keep remaking games a limited number of people buy or fail to bring anything “NEW” to the PSN gaming community.
It’s easier to just say “It’s those D#$ people who share that take away our business”
@Captnstryker
“because they keep remaking games a limited number of people buy”
Thats where DRM comes in! More people will have to buy the game and not just get it off their buddy!
hello ,,,
i just hope no one else does this stupid move,,,
i buy a lot of games & my DLCs from various accounts (all my games are imported because SONY didn’t felt necessary to include MU in any zone)
so if i always import games & need my multiple accounts to buy addons, and because of this i buy also a lot of PSN games, SONY & developers must be happy.
i play on only one account, don’t want such issues, so to all developers, go create DRM-infested games on already cracked platforms & let us enjoy our games.
cheers!
they should make it so you would have to be in the same house to download like using the same internet connection. that would be step 1 atleast