Games with DRM List

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Is it possible for you to post a list of the games Peach Princess, J-List & G-Collections releases that has DRM on the disc? And update it when or if you decide to repress that title with the DRM removed?

I don’t mind one that requires the disc in the drive to run but any type of online registration I don’t like.

I put off buying any GC games that had V-Mate when they released them and only bought them after they were repressed without it. I am surprised you guys decided to use DRM since they do not work.

#2

I assume this is a response to this article?: http://www.jastusa.com/v-mate-removal-p … -live-beta

Software Defender (the current DRM scheme) is rather benign compared to what V-mate 1.0 used to be. Unless the PC you play the games on doesn’t have an Internet connection, can’t really see it bothering people (except in instances like Princess Waltz where it actually bugs the game). Worst-case scenario: you have to wait 2 years for a DRM removal patch before you buy a game.

Official activation FAQ here: https://help.jlist.com/index.php?_m=kno … ticleid=31

Also, I don’t think they typically repress games once they decide the DRM is no longer needed. They just release a patch that removes it.

#3

Can’t speak for anyone else, but I bought the DL edition of the English localisation of Princess Waltz (blame the low price and Ignosco, he talked me into it =P) and have had no issues whatsoever with the DRM itself, even after installing and playing the game on multiple machines (the absurd font choice is something I find harms the experience more than anything else - also wtf, no antialiasing? Changing the font in the registry causes the game to crash at a couple of points for me >_>)

Having DRM on DL titles, particularly commercial ones, is so common I have no problem with it. But in PW’s case apparently the disc version has it too, which is a bit odd, although not unheard of; the packaged releases of several of Light’s budget downloadable games had activation, and a couple of package-release only games from other brands also had it.

#4

On principal DRM bothers me.

In practice? Not really.

#5

The first time you start it after a reboot the game hangs on load. Closing it with task manager then restarting the game allows the game to start normally. It seemed like a frequent problem when the game was released.

#6

Hasn’t happened to me yet, although I’ll admit I rarely reboot my machines so that may be why.

#7

My (disc) copy does the same thing. For me it’s perfect routine to start the game twice every time I play it, and Ctrl+Alt+Del the first time.

I’m actually rabidly anti-DRM, but I figured I could make an exception in this case because of the “eventually, the DRM is released” promise. Where are the old Software Defender patches stored, btw? I have Kana Little Sister on disc, and I don’t think it had V-mate. Is there a patch I should be getting for it?

#8

Er, I didn’t think JAST started using Software Defender until they released Princess Waltz.

#9

Software Defender is pretty recent–Kana was released WAY before Software Defender or even V-mate were introduced. Let’s Meow Meow! (2004) was the first game protected by V-mate. Games released on disc before that have no requirement for online activation (although downloadable editions are protected by either V-mate or Software Defender).

Back then, I made a FAQ (now horribly misformatted by the board move) to detail the restrictions V-mate introduced: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2201&p=40833

Hard to believe that was 5 years ago…back then, the introduction of V-mate caused quite a flame war (940 posts in a single thread, compared to around ~600 for Family Project across multiple threads). Quite a bit more venom too, because V-mate angered a far greater percentage of the board. Ironically, back then such things didn’t even make headlines–whereas every detail regarding JAST USA and Mangagamer’s releases is now under the careful scrutiny of the blogosphere.

#10

I suppose the usefulness of DRM depends on whether the positives outweigh the negatives. DRM might deter casual piracy, although within this market, I’m not sure how much casual piracy actually exists.

Anyway, JAST USA has never been anti-DRM. They don’t want to use DRM that causes many problems for customers (which was why V-Mate was removed from pressed games), but Software Defender is about as mild as these things get.

DRM may or may not work, but if it’s so easily circumvented, I don’t see how it hurts buyers either.

If cracks are readily available, hasn’t your investment already been protected? Paying customers still have easy access to the fixes (in the event that the company goes under or if software conflicts are never solved), so they’re no worse off.

#11

Most of the games, at the very least, have a CD-check implemented. You can fully install the game to the hard disk, but it will still demand the disk for no valid reason.

Annoying, to be sure. But I prefer it over the V-Mate system of having to register a game with a CD-Key.

I do not know which, if any, games use copy protection.

#12

I was under the impression that just about every retail game has at least disk copy protection, including the JAST titles that aren’t protected using online activation.

#13

This isn’t the case at all. I can name a few JAST/PP/GC titles that don’t require the disk to be in the drive. Heck, one of them apparently doesn’t even need any registry settings, since I was able to put it on an external drive and demo it for some friends on another machine.

#14

Most of them don’t need registry setting for anything but having the disc’s autoplay detect whether the game is installed or not, but you can easily start the game manually from the harddrive anyway. The majority of them can be run from a different OS than the one they were installed with, at least of the ones I’ve tried. A couple of them have local .cfg files that might act up if you use a different folder structure or drive letter when trying to run from a different OS or harddrive.

#15

G-Collections (original company) protected most of their games with Safedisc. I think AlphaROM may have been used as well.

I’m not sure if JAST USA/Peach Princess ever used a copy protection scheme. They had CD checks before, but this was eventually dropped. AFAIK, games released from 2006/2007 onward do not require the disc to be in the drive.

#16

There’s a difference between a “CD check” and “copy protection”. With the latter, I was referring to protections on the CD that prevent it from being duplicated successfully–although your latter example would nullify the usefulness of such protection. A CD check requires copy protection to be effective at curbing piracy, but copy protection does not require a CD check. Both require that the game not be executable without installation (otherwise the protection could be circumvented by just circulating the installed files, as you illustrated).

#17

Actualy, dummy cut refers to removing junk data put on the disc.

#18