Research

Posted in Industry on June 27, 2008 at 1:04pm.
There are 2 comments.

I’ve started playing around with searching for trademarks, patents, and copyrights for various games and ideas to see what is and isn’t covered already. So far nothing really interesting (I just mainly wanted to share those links for others to use), but I did find one curious item. The name “Tower Defense” is actually trademarked by a company in South Korea.

Seems interesting. It was only granted recently (June 3, 2008) but I wonder how long it will stick. Afterall, if the company doesn’t enforce their trademark against the literal dozens of games online using “Tower Defense” in the name, can the trademark actually be upheld? I’m no lawyer but I remember being told that the key with trademarks is that if you don’t enforce them, you lose them. Seems that this companyhas some work to do if that is the case.

Now back to random searching.

Edit: It also appears that Valve owns the patent for generating virtual eyes.

Nick vs. EA

Posted in Industry on May 09, 2008 at 10:10am.
There are 6 comments.

It’s official. I never really liked EA. I put up with them because they own half of the development world it seems, but I would never go so far to say that I liked them as a company. Now, on the other hand, I can say I definitely hate them for this. DRM that has to re-validate every 5-10 days. Seriously? Seriously? That’s two requests for verification that somebody actually thinks this is a good idea because I’m honestly confused as to why this extreme DRM seems necessary.

As discussed in a GameDev.net thread, you’ll see that most people agree: this is dumb. All this does is make those hacked or pirated versions more appealing because they won’t have to revalidate every 5-10 days. I’ve decided to no longer purchase Spore, a game I had preordered eons ago when it was first announced. I simply refuse to put funding into something that is nearing absolute absurdity in terms of punishing customers. EA’s not hurting pirates with this; they’ll find a way to patch this right out and then you’ll see piracy rates shoot way up. The only people getting hurt is people, like me, who want to go out and spend $50 of hard-earned money on a game. And since I’m not a fan of being hurt, I think I’ll save my $50 for a company that doesn’t feel the need to treat customers like criminals.

In seriousness, this troubles me. As someone who wants to make video games at some point for a career, I can’t believe that these executives think that this crazy DRM restriction is going to actually help in any way. I would bet they would see a substantial increase in the number of sold copies if they dropped this. I know I would buy it if there was no DRM like this. It’s absolutely crazy and unnecessary. All it does is punish the people who want to pay your bills.

As a final note, I leave you with a soon-to-be classic comic from Penny Arcade:

Update: BioWare has announced that Mass Effect, the other game besides Spore that was set to use this DRM, will no longer use this system in its entirety. They will still do online validation during installation of the game and for any extra content, but there will be no on-going renewals necessary. It’s sort of a half-win. Now if we can get the same from Spore the world will be a better place and I’ll be able to play what should be an awesome game without feeling bad for purchasing it.