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hedwards: There's a contractual obligation involved. They don't just get to take back the games, I haven't personally seen the contracts, but they certainly have a clause to that effect.
Funny, so there is a contractual obligation involved, that there won't be any legal dispute with them and the rights owners and there is a contractual obligation involved that they won't go under in the three year period... now that's interesting must be some really interesting contracts there.

Never said that something "will" happen in those three years, but just that because they mention them doesn't means that nothing will or that it's any more a "guarantee" than what you find in any other subscription agreement.

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Gersen: Not really, they've been significantly more forthcoming about it than most companies are. They can't guarantee that their vendors are going to provide the same service in perpetuity hence the clause. As long as you keep your account safe it's nothing to worry about.
And once again how is it ANY DIFFERENT from Steam adding a clause saying that they can cancel your subscription anytime they want ? Something that is in Steam EULA since nearly the very beginning, something that is in all other digital distributor EULA. They never tried to hide it either.

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Gersen: Which is illegal in the parts of the world that OnLive is currently targetting.
Which is what I said, but still those solutions exists. (And said solution are used by GoG for several games)

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Gersen: Probably because you're being somewhat obtuse and spreading misinformation about the service.
What misinformation ?

That the way the service work, by its very nature, it's worse than the most draconian DRM out there, with no way, legal or not, to bypass it.

That if the service goes down you lose all the games you "bought" on it.

By curiosity which par of that is misinformation ?

You are the one you seem to think that because of the "three years" clause in their EULA it makes them magically better than all of the others digital distributors even though all those had similar clauses in the EULA for years.
Post edited September 11, 2011 by Gersen
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orcishgamer: You know I've always wondered if this is as true as it would seem on the surface. After all just about every MMO has pirate servers and it's not like that server code was ever released.
Most of today leaks take place with preview copies or pre-production copies sent to replicators and MMO pirate servers are not "leaks" but new servers created by reverse engineering; with streaming, you don't need to send "preview" copies and there is nothing to reverse engineer.

And even if some of the game code is leaked, it's only useful if there are compatible computers to run it on, for now streamed version are adapted PC version (i.e. made to run on any PC) but if a game is released exclusively for streaming then it will most likely be optimized for a specific hardware, no guarantee it will run on a standard PC.

Also if/when streaming represent the majority of the market, there might not be any "PC" left with enough power to run said game; if everything is streamed neither NVidia nor AMD will waste money releasing powerful PC graphic cards.
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orcishgamer: You know I've always wondered if this is as true as it would seem on the surface. After all just about every MMO has pirate servers and it's not like that server code was ever released.
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Gersen: Most of today leaks take place with preview copies or pre-production copies sent to replicators and MMO pirate servers are not "leaks" but new servers created by reverse engineering; with streaming, you don't need to send "preview" copies and there is nothing to reverse engineer.

And even if some of the game code is leaked, it's only useful if there are compatible computers to run it on, for now streamed version are adapted PC version (i.e. made to run on any PC) but if a game is released exclusively for streaming then it will most likely be optimized for a specific hardware, no guarantee it will run on a standard PC.

Also if/when streaming represent the majority of the market, there might not be any "PC" left with enough power to run said game; if everything is streamed neither NVidia nor AMD will waste money releasing powerful PC graphic cards.
This stuff will run on commodity hardware whatever it be and that stuff will be available for purchase somehow (the more copies they have to stream the more datacenters they'll need). Also, the software will have to be distributed somehow, probably to a lot of disparate geographical places. So I'm still not sure how it wouldn't leak somehow. There won't be any magical fairies powering the game servers, it'll be stock standard stuff.
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orcishgamer: This stuff will run on commodity hardware whatever it be and that stuff will be available for purchase somehow (the more copies they have to stream the more datacenters they'll need).
It's a question of demand and offer, if today computer are cheap it's because of the high demand, and mostly because of the general public demand. If tomorrow the general public move to "lighter" cloud based devices, then the demand for "real" computers will diminish and the prices will goes up.

Yes the hardware will be available for purchase, but the question is : at what price.

If the only way to play the two or three pirated games that are somehow leaked is to buy a 10'000$ professional server, I am not really sure there will be lots of volunteers.

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orcishgamer: Also, the software will have to be distributed somehow, probably to a lot of disparate geographical places. So I'm still not sure how it wouldn't leak somehow.
I never said those leak would be impossible, just would be a lot harder and a lot less frequent (not that games leaks are that frequent to begin with). Leaking some random review copy is one thing, hacking/entering into a company VPN/offices/internal network to copy/steal games binaries is a completely different thing, lot harder and lot riskier if you get caught.

For example how many time did you heard about a Steam game being leaked from Steam (as opposed as having a review copy leaked like for Deus Ex) before release date ? (Half Life 2 doesn't count ;-) ) And yet Steamwork using games also have to be distributed to servers worldwide before release.
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Gersen: For example how many time did you heard about a Steam game being leaked from Steam (as opposed as having a review copy leaked like for Deus Ex) before release date ? (Half Life 2 doesn't count ;-) ) And yet Steamwork using games also have to be distributed to servers worldwide before release.
Wait a minute, that's cheating, of course HL2 counts!:)
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Gersen: It's a question of demand and offer, if today computer are cheap it's because of the high demand, and mostly because of the general public demand. If tomorrow the general public move to "lighter" cloud based devices, then the demand for "real" computers will diminish and the prices will goes up.
There's a ton of demand for both servers and home based PCs (not to mention desktop PCs in offices) that has nothing to do with gaming. None of that is going away.

You're right that GPUs might become expensive but I'm not sure how much.

As for leaks they don't have to hack into the main company, getting remote access to one machine will probably do.

All in all, I don't think it would be great for PC gaming in anyway. I'm just not sure all the doom and gloom would be true, just around 96% of it:)
Post edited September 11, 2011 by orcishgamer