Ah it has come to this now has it? I'm a member here since yesterday. And if you really where a company dedicated to consumers happyness you'd have thought twice before becoming a DRM systems enabler. I'm merely pointing out your hypocrisy. Now the powers that be threaten to bann/silence me because I've become a public disturbance. Stirring up controversy not appreciated I see. You know silencing consumers has a long and glorious tradition with DRM proponents. Go on, make my day. I've stated my case and I'm not alone. The truth is out there and it will find you too.

Sorry, you don't get to be a martyr based on your posts so far; none of the Stardock people who've commented on this thread have posted anything to that effect ("that's crazy, go away" is not the same as "stop or be banned")... As I've said, we're not your old work.

Even threads like this one about piracy are allowed to run as they will. Unless someone gets to be very personally insulting or confesses/facilitates illegal behavior, they're generally free to discuss as they like.

You know you're right, I hated the DRM part of my old work (I liked the web-development part). I've got two perfectly good reasons to hate the DRM part, which have nothing in particular to do with my previous work:

• You as a company decide not to trust your paying customer
• Dealing with that DRM crap from a programmers perspective is just a darn hassle and it would be so much easier without

You see, I was always happy when I could generate tangible benefits for my customers and end users. However everytime I had to do something of which I knew it reduced the usability and rights of the end user, I hated it.

How are you sure that the customer is a paying customer? I remember a post on a Sins of a Solar empire forum from SD or IC explaining they have required sending Serial in e-mailed bug reports to ensure that bugs reported are on a legit version and not on a pirated one.

I'm sure paying customers are going to be hit with goo because you don't get to escape goo by paying, it's like you pay AND have to put up with goo.

I don't mean sucks from the perspective of the content producer part. I mean sucks from the perspective of the distributor part. It sucks because instead of just linking to the download you have to:

• Query some restrictions backend weather a user has rights for some content
• Ask that restrictions backend to package the content up in a DRMed container
• On the client end you need some code that obfuscates the decryption key (you do not want the user to have it)

In case you're wondering why Goo needs IE7, that is why, because some custom activeX crap is going on designed to keep the user out of the loop of trust. It really would be *so* much easier if you could just link to the .EXE

I am not sure that it will works that way with GOO.

From what I have read, the first step is required, since it is the one that will allow people to download the game from any Digital distributor.

But step 2 and 3 are already in GOO since activation will be made on customer side. No need to do a specific packaging at the Digital distributor level.

Come now, nobody implementing DRMs today is so simple minded. As you might've noticed Goo is delivered as encrypted exe containing the actual content. That means that the precise algorithm by which they manage the keys and encrypt the container is variable. If you crack one of the schemes, they just shuffle in a new scheme. In fact, it's not unlikely every container uses one of a variety of schemes.

Btw, Stardock, I know a company that has a patent on Polymorphic DRMs (surprise surprise), don't be surprised to hear from Packet Video soon ^^

I don't know, but I each really simple scheme that gives the end user too much trust is extremely easy to crack. Therefore you need to obfuscate stuff a fair bit, and part of this is not making the decryption key glaringly obvious.

It is impulse, the means to donwload the game from Stardock server that is IE only

See Annatar11? THAT is what I meant. Not that it needs Impulse or some other specific client. Guess you misinterpreted my post there.

If this is really the case THAT is somethhing I definitely have an issue with.

@Kryo: Very well written and fact stating post there in reply #68.

@pyalot: I can relate to your anger. Heck, I even was all fury and flames when GalCivI shifted from updates which you could download on one machine with I-Net access and install it on the game rig WITHOUT I-Net connection to the nescessity of an I-Net connection on your game rig itself. But lemme tell you that in my experience SD always tried their best to help their customers in any way they could and make their mechanisms as seemingless as possible. If they go down the GOO path then it is IMHO not with harmful intentions. More on the contrary.

And even though I'm also strictly opposing DDRM which kept me from purchasing and enjoying a number of games I would really have loved to have played, I really don't see neither a big risk in the GOO mechanism nor that SD expresses its distrust of their customers through it's introduction, rather than them trying to make things as easy as possible under the given circumstances. So you might want to cut those guys n gals some slack.

Granted this is not as easy now that Ubi obviously is going back to CD keys. But who knows what THEIR true intention behind this move is...

Good thing that it isn't, then!

So since this all seems to be about trust, and it's basically SD (and its fanboys) doing the "oh but they're not evil" part, and it's me doing the "I don't buy it" part, how about a token of trust from SD towards me (and in extension the "I don't buy it faction").

You can prove that you have nothing but the best intentions by:

• Precisely describing how Goo works, technically
• In particular explaining what's the encryption/obfuscation part is about
• What's actually happening when you activate
• What's actually happening when you transfer rights

By this I mean, which companies would be involved, what services need to be running, what registry entries and other data get written/inspected, what data is exchanged, what encryption scheme is used, what keys get exchanged etc.

Hasn't Stardock already stated that they will not use Goo on their own games, and that this is just for 3rd party publishers?