Are there any advantages to getting the steam version of DCS?

[Dragon1-1]

21 hours ago, Czar66 said:

Yes, we don't own anything but a temporary license to use 'X' product.

That's not quite correct. We own the product, full stop. It's just that the check for it works like one for a licensing system, which makes little sense here, but which was presumably familiar to coders coming over from enterprise software (which is almost exclusively subscription-based). If the authentication servers were to go down, ED would have to find some other way to let people keep using the product they paid for. This is part of why the Hawk debacle caused them such a massive headache - they basically have, for legal reasons, to keep the last version of DCS on which it worked available for those who bought the thing, no matter how old or obsolete it is, because otherwise they'd have to find some way to refund those purchases.

Same with Steam, BTW. They're a storefront, and have to play by the rules like everyone else. A brick and mortar store that goes bankrupt couldn't force you to give back all the boxed DVD sets of the games you bought from them (anyone remember those? ), and Steam is not allowed to prevent you from playing games that are on your computer even if it goes down. Downloading and Steam Cloud is another matter, I don't know what would happen with that, but what you bought is legally yours. At least in EU.

[Czar66]

2 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

That's not quite correct. We own the product, full stop. It's just that the check for it works like one for a licensing system, which makes little sense here, but which was presumably familiar to coders coming over from enterprise software (which is almost exclusively subscription-based). If the authentication servers were to go down, ED would have to find some other way to let people keep using the product they paid for. This is part of why the Hawk debacle caused them such a massive headache - they basically have, for legal reasons, to keep the last version of DCS on which it worked available for those who bought the thing, no matter how old or obsolete it is, because otherwise they'd have to find some way to refund those purchases.

Same with Steam, BTW. They're a storefront, and have to play by the rules like everyone else. A brick and mortar store that goes bankrupt couldn't force you to give back all the boxed DVD sets of the games you bought from them (anyone remember those? ), and Steam is not allowed to prevent you from playing games that are on your computer even if it goes down. Downloading and Steam Cloud is another matter, I don't know what would happen with that, but what you bought is legally yours. At least in EU.

It is explicit on EULAs across Steam that we are not being grated ownership. We are licensees.

It is explicit on EULA from ED:

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/support/license/

"2. OWNERSHIP

2.1 The Program is licensed for your use. This Licence confers no title or ownership in the Program and should not be construed as a sale of any rights in the Program. This Licence shall also apply to any patches or updates you may obtain from Eagle Dynamics SA for the Program."

 

We are just disagreeing on the word 'ownership'. I get what you're saying.

In my view, what we own is the password for the account(s) control. What we buy is a license for said account(s). Either Steam or ED storefront.

Analogue to owning a product as in a Vinyl copy of an album is not the case here.

"own /ōn/

 

adjective

1. Of or belonging to oneself or itself.
   "She makes her own clothes."

noun

1. That which belongs to one.
   "I wanted a room of my own."

intransitive verb

1. To have or possess as property.
   "owns a chain of restaurants."
2. To have control over.
   "For a time, enemy planes owned the skies.""

 

"If the authentication servers were to go down, ED would have to find some other way to let people keep using the product they paid for"

That doesn't mean they will do it when it and if it happens. I fully hope there are a lot more decades for them yet to come. A lot of games are having services being sunset and games that just reached 10 years old without an option for legit customers to keep having the access they've paid for. Big and small companies regardless.

The only current way for digitally distributed products to guarantee customer access to said product if online services go down is the unrestricted offline capability as in GOG storefront provides. You can backup an installer with 100% of the game files and run the installer without online data transfers.

ED might even consider releasing DCS pre Edge at the best build with all released modules at the time (with proper agreement with the 3rd party ofc) as a 'classic' product with full offline capability without any sort of DRM or authentications with single fee access in 15...30 years, when hopefully the latest DCS will have a lot more going on. Just being creative. Sky is the limit.

Edited April 27, 2024 by Czar66

[Dragon1-1]

1 hour ago, Czar66 said:

We are just disagreeing on the word 'ownership'. I get what you're saying.

I was speaking English, EULAs are written in legalese. A program is intellectual property, so if we owned it in legalese-sense, then we could do a bunch of things with it, including, for example, renting it or opening a sim room and charging for its use, which is obviously not allowed (not that it stops people from doing so on occasion). It's not a new concept, BTW. Any program that you might have bought from a brick and mortar store is also licensed, though you do own the physical CD, the case and the instruction manual. A vinyl copy of an album is actually a very relevant comparison - you're not allowed, for instance, to bring your copy of the album to a bar and play it on the jukebox. To do that, you'd need to license the contents of the album for public broadcasting. That doesn't mean the record label's goons can come to your house and take the disk away. Nor are they allowed to remotely brick it (I think there was a lawsuit with Sony about things like that).

Also, besides that, EULAs are unenforceable, and they have been ruled so in court. Ignoring all the legalese, if you paid money for something, you have the right to keep using it, as it was when you bought it, and in EU at least, pretending to sign away this right by clicking a button does not actually remove it. Continued updates are not assured, neither are online services, but the product itself is not supposed to suddenly cease working, if the environment doesn't change at least (everything can be broken by Windows updates, of course).

1 hour ago, Czar66 said:

That doesn't mean they will do it when it happens. A lot of games are having services being sunset and games that just reached 10 years old without an option for legit customers to keep having the access they've paid for. Big and small companies regardless.

Services being sunset =/= games being taken away. In most cases I've seen, the game still works, even if the multiplayer doesn't. MMOs are an exception, but these tend to be subscription based anyway. Besides some Ubisoft back catalogue (HAWX 2 and I think a few other games from that period), I don't remember this being particularly common. Do you have any examples that aren't either freemium (microtransaction stuff is, AFAIK, much less protected) or subscription-based?

Edited April 27, 2024 by Dragon1-1

[Czar66]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

I was speaking English, EULAs are written in legalese. A program is intellectual property, so if we owned it in legalese-sense, then we could do a bunch of things with it, including, for example, renting it or opening a sim room and charging for its use, which is obviously not allowed (not that it stops people from doing so on occasion). It's not a new concept, BTW. Any program that you might have bought from a brick and mortar store is also licensed, though you do own the physical CD, the case and the instruction manual. A vinyl copy of an album is actually a very relevant comparison - you're not allowed, for instance, to bring your copy of the album to a bar and play it on the jukebox. To do that, you'd need to license the contents of the album for public broadcasting. That doesn't mean the record label's goons can come to your house and take the disk away. Nor are they allowed to remotely brick it (I think there was a lawsuit with Sony about things like that).

Also, besides that, EULAs are unenforceable, and they have been ruled so in court. Ignoring all the legalese, if you paid money for something, you have the right to keep using it, as it was when you bought it, and in EU at least, pretending to sign away this right by clicking a button does not actually remove it. Continued updates are not assured, neither are online services, but the product itself is not supposed to suddenly cease working, if the environment doesn't change at least (everything can be broken by Windows updates, of course).

 

Understood.

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Services being sunset =/= games being taken away. In most cases I've seen, the game still works, even if the multiplayer doesn't. MMOs are an exception, but these tend to be subscription based anyway. Besides some EA back catalogue (HAWX 2 and I think a few other games from that period), I don't remember this being particularly common. Do you have any examples that aren't either freemium (microtransaction stuff is, AFAIK, much less protected) or subscription-based?

 

Understand that DCS only runs with the modules you've purchased, with services online. If you venture into the offline mode, beware of the dangers of hardware failure and machine ID change rendering a mandatory support manual contact to be able to reconnect a DCS installation to your account. Other videogames that have been sunset had a much more lenient approach of access.

Some games today, in the other hand, cannot be accessed without a handshake to servers, like DCS authenticator even though it has a 3 day tolerance after the last successful login. Their sunset had not yet happened but if their servers are down, is over for offline play/launching into the menu and play.

• Milestone bike games cannot get past splash screen without their servers running (heavy single player aspect)
• Helldivers 2 same deal like Milestone bike games. If your internet go down mid play even in solo you're ejected out of the match and locked into an error screen. (co-op mainly but has the option of single player)
• Warhammer 40k: Darktide
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint (single player first)
• DiRT Rally 2

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_using_Always_Online_DRM

Truly there are a LOT of co-op/multiplayer first titles, but also a lot of single player first.

Is a little different the 'game taken away from you' in digital terms. If you can't access it because something else went down and you're not aiming to play multiplayer, the software had been indeed taken away from your control. Hence the meaning of 'ownership' I've quoted.

You don't own something when, for it to serve you, needs permission from someone else.

Edited April 27, 2024 by Czar66
corrections

[Mr_sukebe]

If you buy via Steam, around 30% of the purchase price is going to Steam and not ED.

I buy all of my modules stand-alone to optimise the money ED gets such that they can keep developing DCS

[Dragon1-1]

24 minutes ago, Czar66 said:

Their sunset had not yet happened

Herein lies the rub. For those games, just like for DCS, the always online DRM can be patched, in a final update, to be disabled, in order to allow the servers to go offline without screwing the players out of their money. In fact, it turns out even HAWX 2 seems to work now, if you bought it before it was discontinued (you just need the right launcher version). The scenario you're worried about hasn't happened because it's literally illegal.

If you paid for it, you're entitled to have it, end of the story. No EULA in the world can change that. Servers going down temporarily is not cause enough to break out the lawyer (unless it happens constantly), but if they went down permanently and the game was not patched, you'd have a good case to ask your money back, at least. I don't know about US, but EU has some pretty robust customer protection mechanisms. 

[Nevyn]

On 4/22/2024 at 10:39 PM, Gunfreak said:

I have no statistical evidence. But seems that there more corrupt and problem patching on stand alone than steam.

Since when?

[Gunfreak]

7 minutes ago, Nevyn said:

Since when?

Because after every patch someone on various Facebook groups have problem with their stand alone update. While never seen anyone with steam having corrupt downloads.

[Czar66]

1 hour ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Herein lies the rub. For those games, just like for DCS, the always online DRM can be patched, in a final update, to be disabled, in order to allow the servers to go offline without screwing the players out of their money. In fact, it turns out even HAWX 2 seems to work now, if you bought it before it was discontinued (you just need the right launcher version). The scenario you're worried about hasn't happened because it's literally illegal.

If you paid for it, you're entitled to have it, end of the story. No EULA in the world can change that. Servers going down temporarily is not cause enough to break out the lawyer (unless it happens constantly), but if they went down permanently and the game was not patched, you'd have a good case to ask your money back, at least. I don't know about US, but EU has some pretty robust customer protection mechanisms. 

Yeah, you're right. Appreciated the talk/exchange.

[Nevyn]

1 hour ago, Gunfreak said:

Because after every patch someone on various Facebook groups have problem with their stand alone update. While never seen anyone with steam having corrupt downloads.

I must be extremely special then, over decade of downloading patches and not once has this happened to me, maybe I should start buying lottery tickets.

[Dragon1-1]

You may just have a reliable internet connection. Some people, in rural areas, for example, have a flaky connection that drops bits all over the place. Not everyone has a gigabit-grade light pipe. Steam is remarkably robust as far as stopping and restarting downloads goes, ED's system might not be as good at it.

[MAXsenna]

You may just have a reliable internet connection. Some people, in rural areas, for example, have a flaky connection that drops bits all over the place. Not everyone has a gigabit-grade light pipe. Steam is remarkably robust as far as stopping and restarting downloads goes, ED's system might not be as good at it.

Right. That's actually a fair point. Was this better when it was torrential perhaps?

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Nevyn]

3 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

You may just have a reliable internet connection. Some people, in rural areas, for example, have a flaky connection that drops bits all over the place. Not everyone has a gigabit-grade light pipe. Steam is remarkably robust as far as stopping and restarting downloads goes, ED's system might not be as good at it.

I live in Africa, I will  leave it at that.

[Raisuli]

On 4/27/2024 at 3:06 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

Herein lies the rub. For those games, just like for DCS, the always online DRM can be patched, in a final update, to be disabled, in order to allow the servers to go offline without screwing the players out of their money. In fact, it turns out even HAWX 2 seems to work now, if you bought it before it was discontinued (you just need the right launcher version). The scenario you're worried about hasn't happened because it's literally illegal.

If you paid for it, you're entitled to have it, end of the story. No EULA in the world can change that. Servers going down temporarily is not cause enough to break out the lawyer (unless it happens constantly), but if they went down permanently and the game was not patched, you'd have a good case to ask your money back, at least. I don't know about US, but EU has some pretty robust customer protection mechanisms. 

Since I can't use the MP servers this is why I go offline once I'm done with updates.  If DCS is set offline ED can vanish and it will still work.  At least that's what BN said a while ago, and so far he hasn't been wrong.

[freehand]

There should never be corruption that's what protocols are for.