AOE Tillers. Again

What I meant was that, as of the last we heard, there was no intention of them removing the call-home DRM. The 249 release, as originally intended, does not help with the server shut-down scenario.

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but it helps by making the game a server-independent single player, or is there something I don’t understand about this on-pause update?

“Single player” is just a server run locally, so it also requires the phone-home DRM in addition to the Steam login DRM.

This is something I specifically tested on the 249 beta release. If you are not connected to the internet when you attempt to start a single player session, it does not work. I can’t remember if you get dropped if you lose internet connection after you start playing, though. I’m looking for my comments from the feedback thread.

Edit: Couldn’t find any comments I made with details on that, but I was largely dismissed by other players when I brought it up as an issue.

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and by releasing such update, aren’t they providing that?

or, if they sit down to it (possibly), and decide/realize the mmo must be terminated at some point, couldn’t they re-configure the local universes feature to make it true single player (no connection to mmo, no DRM)

I can see now what you are talking about, btw; couldn’t get a grasp of it at first; thanks for patiently explaining

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They could potentially do that, yes, but that’s why it’s part of my worst-case scenario for a released 249 - releasing as-is and then shutting down all official servers is still game death.

BUT, in addition to the option of them just turning that off (or leaving the auth server on a cheap machine), there is also the option of the players creating an anti-DRM mod to bypass that requirement. It would be relatively trivial except that it could be a security issue for people installing it - depending on how it has to be done. A side note is that this anti-DRM bypass would probably be able to give everyone on a server GleamClub for free, since they intended to continue to monetize GC for single player and private servers.

Developing some kind of phone-home DRM bypass is something I likely would have gotten involved with immediately after release since I know that would be a show-stopper for a lot of players.

Also, no worries on explaining it :slight_smile: I think I was using too much jargon and making assumptions at first :man_shrugging:

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was googling and learning the legal side of that and what laws are behind it - looks like developing software by-passing DMR is illegal

Yep. So is using it.

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Seems pretty insane how they’d still want to monetize GC on a single-player version of the game.
And I estimate myself as being a very flexible person in regards to monetization in games, if that can help the devs keep developing their games… but this is pretty bad, IMHO.

Honestly, after all the ghosting from James&Cie on the matter of development of 249, if they end-up releasing it with DRM and such, I’ll have no shame in using a bypass, no-matter how illegal it is.

Truth is though, if we were in the ’almost worst case scenario but not quite’ of only getting a version of 249 with the weapons and shields, I’d be happy about it.

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