Latest News

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I know we’ve been absent as of late publishing articles on our front page. As some of you may understand, we are working hard at finding the right clients for our services. It’s not easy, especially when we carry a heart filled with uncompromising standards and values that we think will provide prospective clients with a greater chance of success in the PC Gaming Industry.

Unfortunately, there are few companies out there that would satisfy our high standards. By the same token, there are far too many out there who think a $5,000 or a $10,000 price tag will sway us. It sounds alright for 15 hours of work. It’s not the case when we know it will take more than 300+ hours for a game or DRM they’re developing. Heck, there’s even one company that demands the very idea of us working with them for free!
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This is a list of games protected by StarForce's DRM that I've been able to collect for your convenience, although I'm sure there are a few missing.

Also, my thanks goes out to Dmitry Guseff of StarForce for providing a few more game names to my collection.
As a side note: StarForce/Dmitry didn't know I was going to be publishing this list and Dmitry helped me with this list a few months ago, but I've only now found the time to get it here on RYG.

Added: Also a Thank you to our member mqstout for the update- letting us know which ones are now DRM Free if purchased via GOG.

I don't know all the particulars of each game or if any of the versions have changed, but this should help some of you.
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A year ago, I wrote an article "EULA's are now legal-and you're just renting that game!", where I stated that we would keep you informed of any major developments in this case, due to the large implications of the ruling.

You will notice that I stated this in that article:



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We recently received an email inquiry about the World of Goo and its' DRM from a reader. He was concerned that he'd found SecuROM on D2D downloaded version.


Screenshot of original ...

With my last news article, I told how Blizzard was trying to outdo Ubisoft in their DRM approach-and that the contest was tied, more or less.

Ubisoft has definitely pulled out ahead, with their incredibly botched release of From Dust.

It is just plain bewildering to see how a company can blow nearly every single point of customer goodwill in a matter of days.
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When Ubisoft recently had the unmitigated gall to announce that their 'always-on' DRM scheme was a fantastic success, everyone in the gaming community stepped back to laugh heartily at their silliness.

Then, as if to take the spotlight away from Ubisoft, within a week Blizzard not only decided that Ubisoft was a worthy company to compete with in stupidity, they decided to go them one better: by making Diablo III into 'always online' DRM and playable only while on-line, even for single-player mode.
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We recently got notified that EA has released a game patch for The Sims Medieval that swaps over the copy protection, apparently from SecuROM to another Sony DADC protection.

Now, considering Sony DADC really only makes one particular protection for PC called *SecuROM*, it confuses me as to why they even bother attempting to disguise it by saying it's something different.
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It is a bold and audacious statement, especially from a small team of management consultants such as ourselves. Some would suggest otherwise – that there’s nothing wrong with PC Gaming. From the tens of millions of fans nested and connected with Steam, through to the positive market research blinged out in cool infographics, it seems as if nothing needs fixing in the world of PC Gaming.

We could be wrong after all.
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We simply had to check this one out: Zynga making Privacy Policies readable for gamers in a form of a game/journey. Developed in line with their 5,500+ word Privacy Policy, PrivacyVille as they have named their game, takes consumers through the sorts of things that work “behind the scenes” with respect to any Zynga product they use.

However, they have made sure of two things: 1) PrivacyVille IS NOT a substitute of their Privacy Policy and 2) It is designed to encourage gamers into the games they have.
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Nothing feels more like a chore than reading through a EULA or a Privacy Policy end-to-end. They distract us from the excitement and joy in playing a game. They’re also not as clear as they should be.

And, in some cases, they mislead consumers into the notion that all these Publishers collect are nothing but bits of “non-personally identifiable” information.
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While the awesome support team at vBulletin continue to make and break their products (and make our lives a living hell), we thought it would be nice if we continued with another survey.

This time we've centred our survey on our extensive assessments on the DRM strategies of many Publishers in the PC Gaming Industry. But don't take our numbers and statistics to heart for there are some that you can literally see for yourself in the here and now.
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Game Tested: Brink
DRM Tested: Steamworks | Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Disc or Digital? Disc Version
Version(s) Tested: 1.02

Retail Release Date: May 2011 | Evaluated By RYG: July 2011

With much of the mainstream Publishers and DRMs evaluated it was time for us to look into one of the most popular DRMs in the PC Gaming Market: Steamworks.

Steamworks boasts some impressive figures: Over 30 million customers have used Valve’s DRM over the last 7 years. Its market penetration, according to Brad Wardell from Stardock Inc, in the last year hovers about the 70% mark. And, from a consumer/client perspective, it remains the popular DRM service around.
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We apologise for the lack of regular content provided in the last week. Much of it has been attributed to the extra workload and deadlines shifted from the last financial period.

It's not easy working two jobs and manage a business that isn't taking off as fast as we would have hoped. However, this is a learning process and one that we're still learning.

Thankfully, a lot has happened behind the scenes.
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