Back in 2014, Gloomywood launched a crowd-funding campaign for its stealth adventure game, 2Dark. Gloomywood promised to release this game on DRM-free digital stores (such as GOG and Desura). However, and after signing up a publishing deal with Bigben Interactive, these plans have been abandoned.
As Bigben Interactive claimed, 2Dark will be using the Denuvo anti-tamper tech. As such, there are – obviously – no plans to release this game on GOG (after all, the publisher will have to remove the Denuvo anti-tamper tech in order to make it available on that particular store).
As Bigben Interactive’s community manager stated:
“2Dark uses Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM system. This DRM system has proven useful against piracy and many game studios make use of it in order to protect their creations. As the publisher of 2Dark, Bigben Interactive is also responsible for the protection of 2Dark and its intellectual propriety against piracy. This DRM will, in addition to Steam’s own DRM system, help the creators of 2Dark continue doing what they love: bringing great games to players!”
Regarding the promises that have not been fulfilled (like the Linux version that has been cancelled and the fact that there would be a DRM-free version of 2Dark), Bigben’s community manager had this to say.
“Gloomywood’s crowd-funding campaign did not mention a DRM, but the campaign has evolved much more than originally anticipated. After all, there were no initial plans to develop for PS4 or Xbox One consoles, record the soundtrack with an orchestra, and provide a voice to Smith (as well as many other things.) This was all made possible because Bigben, and the 2Dark fans, believed in Gloomywood’s creative vision and wanted to support the game.”
In other words, Gloomywood’s publishing deal with Bigben Interactive prevents it from releasing a DRM-free version of 2Dark.
Ironically, the purpose of crowd-funding campaigns is to get games funded by gamers so that developers are free to do exactly what they want and not what their publishers force them too.
Heh, guess that campaign wasn’t enough after all!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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So not only do they get their money in advance through crowdfunding, but they also get to pack their game with DRM and give a middle finger to their backers. The problem with crowdfunding continues to be its zero accountability, every time a developer does this it makes it harder for everybody else to get their funding.
Once, I saw crowdfunding as a potential alternative to copyright, as it eliminates the disadvantages of classic patronage (namely the lack of creative freedom) and is the correct way to pay for the actual effort of producing something (as opposed to paying for copies anybody can make and distribute with little effort), but I guess they just want to have their cake and eat it too.
Isnt the guy who made this alone in the dark dev? Cant trust him either.
Backers should file a class action lawsuit. It’s one thing to not be able to fulfill promises due to budget, technical limitations or unforeseen problems, and another thing entirely to sell away the promises for a publisher contract in spite of the people who made your game possible in the first place.
They should, but I guess nobody expects that anymore, not after No Man’s Lie.
I mean, sure, Steam tightened up its sh*t, so now they’ve got some disclaimers on screenshots & so forth, but since nothing legal happened, yeah…..
“It’s one thing to not be able to fulfill promises due to budget,”
and another to use that money to pay for drm and console versions
Before crowdfunding i thought Devs were innocents, abused by the demons know as publishers, not anymore.
Perhaps there should be rules in place at these crowdfunding sites whereby investors are asked if they wish to retain their investment in any given project in the instance substantive changes are made that do away with what was stated in the original sales pitch.
For example, a simple tick box option meru presented to investors that requires a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response to the question ‘The basis on which this project was originally advertised has substantively changed. Do you wish to receive a refund?’
That said, I’m no expert on how the various crowdfunding sites operate so perhaps some make it easier than others for investors to get refunds. I’m guessing that some of them are more pro-consumer than others.
Wut.
You invest $20, & you expect to receive something, down the line, that’s not called “feels good”, right?
Well then, that’s called an investment, not “charity.” Charity only goes one way, emotional &/or ego inflation aside (not to mention tax breaks).
Investments have a very specific meaning and functions, crowdfunding is more akin to pre-ordering a game that isn’t complete yet. You’re buying an incomplete game and hoping the updates add everything promised. There’s always the risk a project doesn’t proceed as planned. Crowdfunding is gambling in a way.
I just wish there were repercussions for more slimy moves such as these from the crowdfunding platforms themselves.
Perhaps I ought to have used the term ‘backers’ rather than ‘investors’.
Yeah, but even pre-ordering is an investment. Sure, it’s technically a misuse of the actual term, but the basic principle is the same; you “invest” into a product, & expect an eventual, down the line payoff, all while hoping that the creator/s don’t crash & burn either six months in, or six months from launch, which’ll result in you losing your entire investment.
I’d definitely agree to it being a combination of a pre-order & an investment, though? I mean, after all, investing & crowdfunding are both gambles, no?
Agreed, there really should be a little bit more oversight. Ah, the negative side-effects of such an unregulated Internet really are annoying, sometimes.
MN 9, tides of NumaNuma something, hell all major ones i think. Publishers won’t pay for the project, they go to KS and are successful in it, publisher now will support it, screw the fans and just deliver whatever you can while keeping most of the money while making excuses for why you won’t deliver what you promised, it just a scam now.
I’m guessing people can apply for refunds? After the cut content announcement by Inxile, everybody who asked for a refund got one.
No, in the vast majority of cases there’s no official way to get a refund. You have to hoping enough people cause an uproar to cause the developer to grant refunds (not too likely), or do something like dispute the charge with your credit card company/do a chargeback (which comes with its own set of problems).
What happened with Shenmue?
Lovely. These days it seems to be full good news, torment became 1/3rd of itself, System Shock became a *modern* game, 2dark became a AAA game… . .
Hear hear people this dev promised the backers that the game will be released on Windows,Linux and Mac and on steam,gog ad DRM free.
Now this game is released on Windows,ps4,Xbox with the windows version only on steam and no gog with blasphemous DRM named denuvo. With no Linux version in sight.
And here I thought indie devs can’t be deceptive. This here is a fine example of devs getting the money from backers and then giving them the middle finger. Smh.
Yeah, as much as I was looking forward to this, this studio and Frédérick Raynal are never getting any money from me. I’m so glad I missed the crowdfunding campaign.
You thought indie devs cant be deceptive? really?
Certainly not the ones who crowdfund their games. Yes I didn’t think of them like this.
But it seems like more and more crowdfunded games are not delivering up to the initial promises.
Broken Age was funded in 2012, this has been happening for a while now.
PUBLISHER.
Of course it does.
Do we know the extent of what they needed to complete the game?
(inb4 Kickstarter, let’s just point out that KS IS TO KICK START not fully funding to completion).
Do we know if they pitched the game to other Publishers and this one was the only one that picked it up?
5 minutes in their shoes people, their KS pitch may be full of deceit in hindsight, but there is probably more than a simple story of “they could choose another one and choose this instead”.
I agree, but the tone they keep repeating with us indicates they either have one hell of a sh*tty PR department, or they’re just plain assh*les who either never did, or simply at some point stopped giving a f*ck about the people who got them started in the first place.
Much like No Man’s Lie & every other pr*ck before them, they have yet to apologise for any one of these after-the-fact changes, regardless of whether or not they were done on purpose, or just as a byproduct of their publishing agreement.
If nothing else, they could at least have done the same thing Star Citizen did & offer refunds to people. Sure, the publisher might not be too happy about having to push out some extra cash, but regardless, this behaviour is unacceptable, especially since it’s becoming quite standard amongst independents the alleged “last bastion” of conscientious, independent development.
I mean for f*ck’s sake, Sony got sued after removing the ability to upload new operating systems into the PlayStation 3 (since they were still advertising it as a feature), & yet these blokes are skating by after cancelling support for Linux, “because.” The irony of this is absurd.
Yes, it is typical scummy PR behavior, yes they should offer refunds and/or apologies and own it, yes people have their right to disappointment.
What I’m getting at it is the generalization. “Oh KS is a scam”, or “Indies are being the bad guys”
NO, f*ck no. A team, a guy, a failed project may taint the believability of such bastions, but they are not representative of the whole.
If we’re at the point of “AAA suck” and “Indies suck too” then all that remains is to f*ck off from games for good. Because there is nothing left.
Yeah, but that’s a general thing; [insert tedious meme about bad apples making everyone else look bad, or whatever it is].
Kickstarter has, indeed, helped out quite a few actually good projects, like Wasteland 2, Star Citizen, Kingdom Come, etc. etc. etc. but then you get all these other stories, like the ones posing as a STALKER sequel which turned out to just be stolen artwork, these guys, & so many others that have ended up never finishing, &/or just changing things up after a while.
Or, even worse, delivering something moronic, like the Ouya turned out to be. Ugh.
AAA’s overwhelmingly suck, whereas specific portions of the indie community are beginning to push people, whereas other indie developers continue to deliver prime-grade product, I agree. As for what’s left; well, there’s always the non-AAA non-indie games, unofficially designated the “AA” IPs from smaller publishers, with smaller production budgets, etc if you’ve already cleared out your Steam Backlog, while the industry gets it sh*t together? 😛
Yes, and this is the part I deliberately baited the subject in: What makes you relate to those games?
The people that works on then. Or am I wrong?
Because this is part of my issue with gaming nowadays, (the majority of) gamers don’t relate to people, they relate to the product. It is the same behavior AAA Publishers have.
They only relate when it favors them, when it doesn’t, they don’t try to understand, they want their product, their entertainment.
Mind you, this isn’t trying to excuse bad behavior, just merely point out that “consumer in first place” isn’t a rule set in stone. There is much more complexity to our hobby than we actually are able to discuss.
YOU BAITED ME? YOU BAITF*CKER!
HA! 😛
Yes, & no. Or, rather, both, I’d say. The subject matter & the development team both are important to me, if not most people, since who develops it sets forth my level of expectation, just like the subject matter does, albeit, in a different manner; if it’s a CDPR game, you expect [this], right? Whereas, if it’s an EA game, you expect [that], instead, right? Exactly.
But you do make a good point, we don’t relate to individual people the way we do movie directors, or actors, or whatnot, we relate to studios, ergo companies, as a whole; development teams, as they were at specific points in time. id Software 1991-2000, for example, & that’s because of the products they made during that time frame.
But yeah, both publishers & consumers aren’t trying to relate anymore, even though this is pretty much their fault, what with their change of attitudes towards the consumer once they realised just how much money there was to be made in this industry (especially because of consoles). After all that, yeah, consumers turned bitter & uncaring as well, but with good reason, to be fair, even if, excessively so, at times.
But that is the thing Zats, when you say “the consumer” who are you talking about?
If there is big money to be made in the industry, whose fault is that?
“Oh but the masses are wrong” Yeah, I the sentiment, and I quite like the small and more focused and low budget development, but that also creates a disequilibrium of standards. They bar will have to constantly be high, otherwise it will certainly fail, and being small, affording failures like that isn’t feasible without major backing.
Basically what I’m saying is that the game industry needs Buddha. xP
“Develop the mind of equilibrium. You will always be getting praise and
blame, but do not let either affect the poise of the mind: follow the
calmness, the absence of pride.
Dumb-*ss b*tches, that’s who’s fault it is. Why do you think EA Sports has been going on for, two decades now?
I understood about half of this part, but I think I agree.
Follow the Middle Path, & seek Enlightenment in the natural stuff of life (*cough ganja cough*)? 😀
(lol)
Can you blame them though? (well, you can, sort of )
It is from your perspective they are being dumb, though if you want to play a football or other sport for example, who else might provide it to you? To those people the trade off between being captive to and the entertainment provided is worth it.
We can argue about being a responsible consumer, and being critical and it is all completely valid, and we also can try and educate people to better practices hold hands and sing the kum ba yah but in the end the preference and subjectivity will make stuff just seem contrived for the sake of something unachievable.
We’re all too different.Everyone should mingle with his own filth and let things go if it becomes too sanitized.
Exactly. Thank f*ck they’re letting go of Call of Duty, at least, at last.
“What I’m getting at it is the generalization. “Oh KS is a scam”, or “Indies are being the bad guys”
NO,
f*ck no. A team, a guy, a failed project may taint the believability of
such bastions, but they are not representative of the whole.”
No one said that.
Praise that! o/
This is just a fine example to not trust strangers.
Looking at games released by this publisher, A sack of s**t is more worthy than their games.
>”This DRM system has proven useful against piracy”
>Resident Evil 7 cracked in under a week
>wtf.jpg
RE7, Mad Max and Metal Gear where the worst “protections” by Denuvo, OTOH Just Cause 3 took more than a year to crack (and the game still runs like sh*t).
If Denuvo protection will boost their sales, the answer will be NO.
Except it won’t, & we all know that now.
Compare mafia 3 gta v or fallout 4 with any denuvo game.
Denuvo does not increase sales, people who pirate it, just skip that game and pirate something else.
Can i be honest here? Its too easy to pirate GoG games. Ever visit pirate bay? every gog game is up there, these are complete and most of the time fully updated versions of the game. they are as easy to download as a blu ray movie or music album. I love GoG and i love drm free but i really think its the pirates that are going to ruin that service for us.
Pirates aren’t a developers customers. Punishing consumers because of people who were most likely never going to purchase your game is idiotic.
Its easy to pirate gog games. Its basically just like buying the game and downloading it off the site. This is why publishers dont want to release on GoG. This is a problem. How do you suggest they fix it?
Wait 5 years, drop the DRM, release it on GOG, & treat us like console peasants; “you want? Okay. Re-purchase,b*tch.”
Yes, it’s a problem, but seeing as even Denuvo is going to get cracked eventually, you might as well just stall the GOG release for 90 days or some such, because either way it’s going to get uploaded to the torrent sites.
Publishers don’t want to release on GOG because now they think if they leave the DRM on, they’ll get more sales out of it in a few years, or some such f*cked up logic, I don’t know. Either way, it’s not like they’re not doing it because GOG doesn’t have DRM, they’re only doing it because GOG doesn’t allow DRM – assuming there even is a reason in the first place, & it’s not just “we released it on Steam, isn’t that enough?” “logic.”
As in, Steam has a DRM system, it’s just not very effective, which is why so many an*l pr*cks go for 3rd party DRM systems like Denuvo on top, which GOG doesn’t allow. As such, considering the inefficiency of Steam’s DRM service, I’m not really sure why they don’t want to release on GOG so much, except, maybe in order ot keep up their “anti-piracy” appearances, I suppose.
“This is why publishers dont want to release on GoG.”
Prior denuvo everything was cracked day 1.
If not Day 0 or Day -3, even.
Sometimes, they’d get some really embarrassing leaks, indeed…..
This isn’t a GOG issue this is a piracy issue. Games released only on Steam can just as easily be downloaded, it just takes longer to initially crack them, but many times not long at all. I’ve seen them end up on piracy sites as early as the same day of release. Even games with very complicated DRM get cracked.
The point is games are going to get pirated. The only way they don’t is if you use DRM so overbearing it becomes a nuisance to your paying customers which garners bad publicity and hurts sales.
Pirates were most likely never going to purchase your game because they’re kids who can’t afford games, people in the third world who can’t afford them, or cheap people who don’t buy games and almost exclusively pirate them.
Why waste money and resources stopping those non customers whom you were never going to get money from to begin with? It’s better to focus on the people actually buying your games and give them the best experience possible. Part of that includes not making them put up with DRM that hinders their experience.
Yeah, and? It’s also easy to rip Steam games without 3rd party DRMs like Denuvo. Steamworks does absolutely nothing to stop cracking.
CD Projekt has a market capitalisation of over $1.7bn so they’re seemingly doing just fine the way things are.
post me some sales numbers? i know not everyone pirates but you have to admit pirating a gog game is way less involved than steam game.
Sales numbers of what, compared to what? At best we could compare Witcher Steam to Witcher GOG. Aside from that, GOG is primarily selling 5+ year old games that barely anyone buys anymore in any major numbers.
These old games sell, they just don’t sell in major amounts, over a short amount of time, like newly released &/or recently released products do, & since no other site does old PC games on the same scale as GOG, there’s nothing to compare it to, really, save for Steam, which isn’t even a very good comparison in the first place.
Good points.
*mutters something about a Valve Monopoly conspiracy*
*rubs his tinfoil hat*
Steam games without Denuvo is just as easy, what are you smoking?
With Gog games you take no steps. you click the file it installs and you launch. thats it. Take me through the steps of pirating a steam game. With a gog game you need no third party programs at all. Its way more involved if you dont think so then you’ve never pirated anything.
GOG process:
– Launch GOG.
– Find game.
– Download game.
– Install game.
– Play game.
Torrenting process:
– Launch [insert Torrent Client name here] & [insert browser client name here] (if even).
– Find game.
– Add torrent file to client (assuming you’re not direct downloading).
– Install game.
– Install crack.
– Play game.
Yeah, I don’t see the difference.
you forgot to exlude the exe from your antivirus.
Oh, right, good point.
It’s been a while ^^
lol, steam games usually just involves copying a dll file to the game folder, if you can’t do that, you can’t install a torrent client in the first place.
“pirating a gog game is way less involved than steam game.’
You do reallize that there are groups who have mastered steam emulation and cracking? (I mean the games no you cant crack steam to play games for free)
Duh, it’s DRM free after all, what do you expect?
Thats the problem right? this is why publishers are choosing not to use GoG right?
As I said in the other post, that’s basically a theory, at best, as Steam’s DRM is next to nothing.
Sure, it’s quite possible they’re not adding them to GOG in order to keep up their anti-piracy appearances, but that’s also theoretical, even if, the only logical reason.
Or, semi-logical, rather. Then again, the so-called “industry leaders” don’t seem to do many of their choices in accordance with simple logic either, so…..
That’s actually why they’re stalling on 4K streaming to PC, you know?
They’re terrified that the new 4K DRM they implemented will get cracked in no time, much like the Blu-Ray DRM was (which it most likely will, of course).
Oh yeah, that.
That’s both a hardware & a DRM thing, though (I think), since Intel has to add the DRM to the hardware side of things (yeah, literally, the CPU has to be DRM-compatible), or some such bullsh*t, & with Microsoft pushing them to dump “not Windows 10” support, [insert obvious here]. Or, something like that, it’s been a while since I read up on the 4K DRM stuff.
On the other hand, the UHD format wars stuff isn’t even finalised yet, so things will definitely still change a lot in the future. That, & Microsoft will eventually cave & admit Windows 10 is a f*cking joke, so there’s that to look forward to, as well. The container, for example, is officially supposed to be HEVC, & they are, actually using x.265 right now, but even that isn’t technically finalised, yet, so, yeah.
Oh yeah, but, hasn’t that been the case ever since DVDs? I mean, pop in the disc, watch unskippable law enforcement warnings, watch unskippable advertisements, slog through a sh*tty menu, [watch more advertisements], watch movie vs. click file, watch movie? 😛
when will that happen exactly GoG has been up for many years.
Exactly. If it comes to it, then they’ll just lose [most of] their AAA clients, which only means so much in the big picture, considering they get most of their income from the old games which nobody “up there” cares about, anymore, so…… yeah.
Either that, or they could make a short-term (release window up to ~90 days post-launch, or some such) exception, but that’s just a hypothetical, & one that would aggravate a great many people, for that matter.
yeah why would you not pirate them instead? I dont know propably cuz no drm with fast download speed and autopatch is better than cracked drm with slow download speed and no patches?
You know what would be nice? A damn demo. Look at that awesome new indie puzzle game She Remembered Caterpillars if you scroll down on its steam page you see a nice “download demo” button. I tried the demo and paid my $11.99 right after. 2Dark publisher wants $25 for this and i dont see a demo. Do they expect everyone to buy it and then refund it if the game sucks?
Meh
“DRM-free digital stores (such as GOG”
Is GOG only DRM-free in the instance one doesn’t wish to ever update games from there with the latest patches? As I understand it, and please correct me if I’m wrong, doesn’t GOG use DRM or something akin to it when the user seeks to install game updates?
No. Galaxy isn’t DRM at all. Not to mention last I checked you can just install the patches manually.
If that’s the case then do CD Projekt have any systems in place to deter folk from pirating all games sold on GOG?
there is none.
Nope. It’s literally just a server with a desktop-side client program that lets you download to a specified location, & launch at will, online or offline, since the executables don’t even go through the GOG client, unlike Steam, u-Don’t-Play, & ripOffigin.
Thanks for the clarification. My bad then!
No they don’t. They focus on their actual customers instead of pirates and have been very successful.
Wouldn’t that be on Oxide for not providing an alternative?
MP being implemented through a client doesn’t necessarily mean that the client itself is “DRMing” the game. They’re just providing a structure, the devs choose to use it or not.
So many devs these days are getting away with breaking promises to their backers. I wish they’d all start getting sued. Make an example of all of them to stop others from doing it. The worst part is when gamers make excuses for them. ‘Oh the Wii U is a dying platform anyways,
the people who paid their hard earned money for that port can just buy a gaming PC or a 300 dollar Switch and get a code for that.’ Disappointing all around.
$300 for a Nintendo “Dead Pixels? No worries, that’s a feature!” Switch with 32GBs of Flash Memory.
I mean, wow, Nintendo, this is 2017, you can buy a 500GB SSD for under $200 as a consumer, so if you’re a f*cking monolith like Nintendo trying to get an exclusive supply deal for a console, it’s not like you couldn’t get it for half off…..
But nope, 32GB’s is just fine, since, apparently some people actually prefer living in 2007, instead.
F*ck me.
P.S. Yeah, smart move discontinuing the Wii, Nintards, because this is just so much better.
That’d be pre-2007 because PS3 was available with 60GB internal storage in 2006!
Also, of Switch’s measly 32GB of flash memory only 25.9GB of it is available to the user for storage. D’oh!
HAHAHAHAHAHA GOOD POINT!
NintenD’oh!
Ninturdo.
Why you shouldn’t trust crowdfunding, with but specific exceptions.
“The support of responsible players is really important…”
So they’re implying that gamers who purchase DRM-free games are being ‘irresponsible’. He’s also arguably implying that the likes of GOG who sell DRM-free games are ‘irresponsible’.
Don’t you just love being condescended to? 🙂
You dumb-as-f*ck consumer r*tard moron ^^
Indeed. Such a thing isn’t even a Phil Spencer exclusive nowadays!
It’s a good thing in fact.Everytime a dev act like that and put denuvo in their game they make me save money as i will not buy their game.More money for other great games and devs that care to their fanbase.If people want the game industry to stop using denuvo they need to vote with their wallet.
“Ironically, the purpose of crowd-funding campaigns is to get games
funded by gamers so that developers are free to do exactly what they
want and not what their publishers force them too.”
CPY should focus all effrot to crack this game as a middlefinger. I dont even care about the game, but if you take peoples money to fund your game and you ignore the drm free consumer friendly platforms they wanted only to make console versions and therefore dumb down the game…you deserve to have your studio shut down.
Obviously the best action is to boycott the game and ofcourse pirates dont buy games, so devs are not losing sales, but just crack the game CPY to stick it to them then tweet at them “LOLZ OMG PIRATING IT RIGHT NOW, TRIGGERED?”
what!?! yall missed the stretch goal? denuvo was somewhere between orchestra and console version
Ruins any crowdfunding for future projects. Trust is a ficky thing.
Companies have become obsessed with short term profits… They will ultimately be destroyed from within as a result. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. DRM does nothing to increase sales… and destroys the long term relationship with consumers. DRM = A huge net negative effect… all in the name of short term profits.