What Sports Interactive/SEGA have achieved is nothing short of magnificent!

Quite simply put, they have achieved a level of such low standing within their own community that right now, they would give EA a damn good run for their money.

We've support Sports Interactive for years, and how do they repay us? by implementing DRM which a lot of us told them not too, in polls and threads.

A lot of us warned SI/SEGA that this very situation would happen come launch day, with botched activation servers, and keycodes, and all of this being crippled by thousands of users experiencing the same problems.

We said that Activation would stop us who had bought the game from playing, while within a matter of hours the pirates would be playing their game without a single hitch.

DRM stopped you, the person who paid, in hard currency this morning from playing the game.

No amount of apologies can ever repair the damage that has been done, on what must be, one of the worst product launches in Sports Interactive history!

DRM - Doesnt Work, it stops the Customer not the Pirate.

Why didnt SI/SEGA learn the lessons that EA learned the hard way with Spore/Red Alert 3, sales haven't been anywhere near as good, infact Spore was cracked before it was even in the shops to buy!

How many more times must the community say this to developers before they listen, DRM doesnt work, yes you have a right to protect your content, but surely dont protect it from the very people who actually pay you, for the game.

DRM is a failure, if you want proof, go check any number of torrent sites, and your product is there being downloaded/seeded and played by people who didn't buy the game.

So ask yourselves .. what are our LOYAL customers doing who PURCHASED the game ...

Well, they are unable to play a game they have purchased, they are angry, disappointed and many should consider returning the game, as the box doesnt mention any activation being required to play, therefore in breach of the Sales of Goods Act.

I think they are very silly, it will only encourage people to go down the piracy route. They can get a free game without the hassle (because lets face it, every single copy protection system will be cracked sooner or later)

Or they can do the honest thing and have plenty of hassle, waiting to play a game that they have been counting the days down to for months.

I think SI will learn from this, hopefully it won't cause too much damage as this game is the best yet

I think they are very silly, it will only encourage people to go down the piracy route. They can get a free game without the hassle (because lets face it, every single copy protection system will be cracked sooner or later)

Or they can do the honest thing and have plenty of hassle, waiting to play a game that they have been counting the days down to for months.

I think SI will learn from this, hopefully it won't cause too much damage as this game is the best yet

Not only i have to wait 5 more days to play it(live in us) but i ll have to go thru the same crap when i get it?

My fingers are itching and my mind flyes.......

Quite simply put, they have achieved a level of such low standing within their own community that right now, they would give EA a damn good run for their money.

We've support Sports Interactive for years, and how do they repay us? by implementing DRM which a lot of us told them not too, in polls and threads.

A lot of us warned SI/SEGA that this very situation would happen come launch day, with botched activation servers, and keycodes, and all of this being crippled by thousands of users experiencing the same problems.

We said that Activation would stop us who had bought the game from playing, while within a matter of hours the pirates would be playing their game without a single hitch.

DRM stopped you, the person who paid, in hard currency this morning from playing the game.

No amount of apologies can ever repair the damage that has been done, on what must be, one of the worst product launches in Sports Interactive history!

DRM - Doesnt Work, it stops the Customer not the Pirate.

Why didnt SI/SEGA learn the lessons that EA learned the hard way with Spore/Red Alert 3, sales haven't been anywhere near as good, infact Spore was cracked before it was even in the shops to buy!

How many more times must the community say this to developers before they listen, DRM doesnt work, yes you have a right to protect your content, but surely dont protect it from the very people who actually pay you, for the game.

DRM is a failure, if you want proof, go check any number of torrent sites, and your product is there being downloaded/seeded and played by people who didn't buy the game.

So ask yourselves .. what are our LOYAL customers doing who PURCHASED the game ...

Well, they are unable to play a game they have purchased, they are angry, disappointed and many should consider returning the game, as the box doesnt mention any activation being required to play, therefore in breach of the Sales of Goods Act.

good point.

Hamster, I think you're forgetting one thing here mate. Without DRM (or some sort of online activation process) SI would loose so much more money than you could imagine. If SI loose so much money they stop supporting the FM series simply because they can't afford it. If they can't afford to support the FM series they can't pay the developers to code the new FM games down the line. If that happens, no FM at all for us. I understand your frustrations believe me. I'm first to admit it was a pain in the backside trying to get a game I payed good money for to work. But I'm also glad SI did use DRM to protect their software.

you say the game is available via torrents. Yes this is true. However if you read most of the posts linked to those torrents you'll find that the "crack" they use is the exe from the demo and it doesn't allow them to play the game without it crashing. So when you say DRM doesn't work, you're simply wrong. Can you imagine how many people tried to download this game via torrent and ran to the shops to buy it because it wasn't working right? These people should support the Football Manager series properly. They say they love FM yet jeopardize it's very existence by getting illegal copies of the game.

Bottom line is (and I know I'm not alone here) I think FM is THE BEST series of any genre of game. If I buy the game and it takes me an extra few hours to get online to play that game I really don't mind once the developers get payed and keep releasing more of the FM series.

PS: This is not a rant at you by any means. I'm just saying it how I see it

Dave

Go read on torrent sites ... Lots of comments like "Downloading this, got the piece of **** legally but cant install it, returning it tomorrow".

Pathetic move SI, you truely lost alot of customers this time.

Hamster, I think you're forgetting one thing here mate. Without DRM (or some sort of online activation process) SI would loose so much more money than you could imagine.

Wrong the crack is already out there and it works... There was a couple of bad ones but there is a fully working one now that also got all the triggers away.

I checked out the Torrent sites out of curiosity. Sure enough, the files that I've found there are just copies of the demo masquerading as the full game.

Hamster, I think you're forgetting one thing here mate. Without DRM (or some sort of online activation process) SI would loose so much more money than you could imagine. If SI loose so much money they stop supporting the FM series simply because they can't afford it. If they can't afford to support the FM series they can't pay the developers to code the new FM games down the line. If that happens, no FM at all for us. I understand your frustrations believe me. I'm first to admit it was a pain in the backside trying to get a game I payed good money for to work. But I'm also glad SI did use DRM to protect their software.

you say the game is available via torrents. Yes this is true. However if you read most of the posts linked to those torrents you'll find that the "crack" they use is the exe from the demo and it doesn't allow them to play the game without it crashing. So when you say DRM doesn't work, you're simply wrong. Can you imagine how many people tried to download this game via torrent and ran to the shops to buy it because it wasn't working right? These people should support the Football Manager series properly. They say they love FM yet jeopardize it's very existence by getting illegal copies of the game.

Bottom line is (and I know I'm not alone here) I think FM is THE BEST series of any genre of game. If I buy the game and it takes me an extra few hours to get online to play that game I really don't mind once the developers get payed and keep releasing more of the FM series.

PS: This is not a rant at you by any means. I'm just saying it how I see it

Dave

There's no proof of this. Sins of the Solar empire was released without any DRM, or basic copy protection, and the sales for that game were way up. Do you know why? They concentrated on making the game good.

yeapp there's a working crack, this "protection" hasn't worked in any positive way whatsoever.

I checked out the Torrent sites out of curiosity. Sure enough, the files that I've found there are just copies of the demo masquerading as the full game.

Nope, the full game is out there, as well as a crack that allows you to play the demo for longer than 6 months. If you see anyone complaining about holiday mode not working, they've downloaded the crack and are playing the demo

There's no proof of this. Sins of the Solar empire was released without any DRM, or basic copy protection, and the sales for that game were way up. Do you know why? They concentrated on making the game good.

If a game is no good, people wouldn't bother getting it either legally or illegally. If a game is good, legal and illegal copies will be more popular. It's not that difficult.

yeapp there's a working crack, this "protection" hasn't worked in any positive way whatsoever.

notice the crack is only out today rather than 3 days prior to the release which was si's reasoning for doing this in the first place.

So yes, SI did do what they set out to do, but were let down by the 3rd party when it came to authenticating the game.

And tbf retailers have no legal requirement to even take the game back anyway as there is no fault with it so i'm sure the "i'll just take it back and download it" threat isn't going to work as well as alot of people think

Nope, the full game is out there, as well as a crack that allows you to play the demo for longer than 6 months. If you see anyone complaining about holiday mode not working, they've downloaded the crack and are playing the demo

Well, I'm not interested in playing just in one league, so I consider it a poor version of the real thing.

There's no proof of this. Sins of the Solar empire was released without any DRM, or basic copy protection, and the sales for that game were way up. Do you know why? They concentrated on making the game good.

It's hard to copy a disk from a game that made it's name as a download only game though

Doesn't matter about torrents, cracks or whatever.

The game is good and I'm sure that will eventually outshine the problems, pirates and everything else.

Haha, these cracks will break at the end of the FM year. The triggers have not been done away with, they are all the same useless crack repackaged.

I checked out the Torrent sites out of curiosity. Sure enough, the files that I've found there are just copies of the demo masquerading as the full game.

Hahahahahahhahahahahahaha Hahahahahahahhaha ahahahahhaha

Sorry but you are so wrong and you think you are so right.

Haha, these cracks will break at the end of the FM year. The triggers have not been done away with, they are all the same useless crack repackaged.

Some of them are, but there is a file floating around that is not an actually EXE where you replace something, it is a file that patches some files in the fm folder and the triggers are gone, holidays work (didnt in the first cracks) and some people have played +1 year (werent you supposed to be sacked or something?).

Hamster, I think you're forgetting one thing here mate. Without DRM (or some sort of online activation process) SI would loose so much more money than you could imagine.

Well that's certainly a claim. Do you have anything that's even remotely a fact to prove that?

I'm pretty sure FM08 made SI a fair amount of money and that did not use online activation. Even a more recent title like Fallout 3 seems to sell pretty well, and they decided to go against the newest DRM trend, and only use a simple disc check too. So, what exactly is that claim based on? Remember that every time someone downloads a game it does not equal a lost sale. Most of these pirates wouldn't go out and buy the game anyway - if they can't download a working copy, then they'll just find something else to play.

The only people that are really suffering from the use of DRM are the honest customers - And that's why DRM never has worked and never will work.

Hahahahahahhahahahahahaha Hahahahahahahhaha ahahahahhaha

Sorry but you are so wrong and you think you are so right.

Indulge me.

did i miss the point when SI said the DRM was to stop pirates full stop?

it was designed to stop them getting it before release date. Not even EA could stop pirates, what makes you think SI would even try

Well great then, can we have it all gone now then when it is cracked ? No ? Oh well.

DRM is pathetic maybe even more pathetic than SI.

Hahahahahahhahahahahahaha Hahahahahahahhaha ahahahahhaha

Sorry but you are so wrong and you think you are so right.

Some of them are, but there is a file floating around that is not an actually EXE where you replace something, it is a file that patches some files in the fm folder and the triggers are gone, holidays work (didnt in the first cracks) and some people have played +1 year (werent you supposed to be sacked or something?).

Exactly right. The full game is out there, with activation removed, and it has been since around mid-day.

No, its not very hard to take a download only game and repackage it. That game is still around on torrent sites, its just that it had such a good reputation for being a) a good game and b) hassle free that people actually paid to download it rather than pirate it.

Well great then, can we have it all gone now then when it is cracked ? No ? Oh well.

DRM is pathetic maybe even more pathetic than SI.

Maybe it is but thanks to people downloading games because they don't get their own way, get use to it, cause it's something you're going to see more and more in the future, no matter what games you buy

Some of them are, but there is a file floating around that is not an actually EXE where you replace something, it is a file that patches some files in the fm folder and the triggers are gone, holidays work (didnt in the first cracks) and some people have played +1 year (werent you supposed to be sacked or something?).

doesn't seem to be a valid one anywhere public, which is all SI are going to care about. the 'russian' one is apparently useless btw. cba to check the other channels.

I think it's held out pretty well, all releases nuked thus far, but I'm going to stop on this here cause I know the mods don't like the subject.

doesn't seem to be a valid one anywhere public, which is all SI are going to care about. the 'russian' one is apparently useless btw. cba to check the other channels.

I think it's held out pretty well, all releases nuked thus far, but I'm going to stop on this here cause I know the mods don't like the subject.

Fair enough you dont want to keep talking about this but i can only add that it is fully working and unless they did a very weird trigger that nobody notice (then what is the point ?) then there is none anymore.

Also this is just some homemade stuff, a scene group will come in and proper sooner or later.

Maybe it is but thanks to people downloading games because they don't get their own way, get use to it, cause it's something you're going to see more and more in the future, no matter what games you buy

And then the companies will see more and more downloading, it's that simple.

doesn't seem to be a valid one anywhere public, which is all SI are going to care about. the 'russian' one is apparently useless btw. cba to check the other channels.

I think it's held out pretty well, all releases nuked thus far, but I'm going to stop on this here cause I know the mods don't like the subject.

Ehm, the first thing I see when i check out the most famous torrent site is an ISO file that's come from the game dvd..Where exactly are you looking?

They just need that along with one of the minute files that removes the triggers and then they have the full game. As I said, thats been around since midday, when most people couldn't activate the game thanks to the pathetic DRM

yep, which has a failed crack attached to it

yep, which has a failed crack attached to it

I can see you don't understand this stuff..they just have to use one of the working cracks..It does work, believe me. A friend of mine was so ****ed off with the activation service not working he downloaded it, then tried about 4 of the cracks before he found one that worked.

He assured me that he will uninstall it and use his proper retail dvd at some point, but to be honest i can understand why he downloaded it, he had it working within 10 minutes of downloading it, as opposed to the 4 hours he spent trying to activate the stupid retail version.

oh, I understand this stuff fine. i still believe that all the cracks currently out there are bugged to hell. every release is nuked. but I don't want to talk about this any more, as mods will not appreciate it.

oh, I understand this stuff fine. i still believe that all the cracks currently out there are bugged to hell. every release is nuked. but I don't want to talk about this any more, as mods will not appreciate it.

Believe that all you want, its not true.

Again, I have seen an illegal version that is 100% working and has been available since midday.

Believe that all you want, its not true.

Again, I have seen an illegal version that is 100% working and has been available since midday.

Exactly and i have also seen it working 100%... The deal with torrent sites is that all the comments are ********, people asking why a crack doesnt work when it say "CRACK ONLY" in the title and they think the full game is in there too and people not knowing how to do it... It's 100% and working, and it's working better than legal version.

He got banned for that post? What a ****ing joke.

He got banned for that post? What a ****ing joke.

i'd assume he was banned for being an Alias more than for his opening post

I'm looking into the ban. We do not ban people for kicking up a fuss (just look round the forums). Either he was banned for something else (as said, most probably an alias account of a previously banned user) or it was a mistake.