Release Date for The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

After I found out (too late though) about the disk version of Testament having the totally ignorant drm garbage it does have , I'm very inclined to avoid them (focus ) in the future myself .

So this means that disk version of SH Testament has a limited number of installs ? And The Next Big Thing and Yesterday disk versions have limited installs ?

Faust I know that GOG advertises DRM free but what about Steam, Zodiak , Gamers gate are they DRM free ?

GreyFuss are the digital downloads and copies at Just Adventure also limited installations ?

hatshepsut

hats:

1) The retail Version of Sherlock Holmes offers UNLIMITED installations on THREE different computers max. Which means that you can install it on your computer unlimited times, but if you change or upgrade your computer 3 times (higly unlikely i guess in the near future, we don't change computers that often but theoretically the possibility exists), then you are out of activations.

2) Yesterday, Runaway 3, The Next Big Thing require ONLY internet connection. NO other limitations (afaik).

3) Only gog.com offers every game as DRM free. The Other e-tailers usually have DRM protection (serial, internet connection, limited installations etc.), which is mentioned in the game information. They offer DRM free games too, but they are a great minority and in that case it is mentioned too in the game information.

Not too sure about Steam or the others , Hats . In the case of Steam , they employ drm , in the sense that you can't really trade a game / give it to someone wihout their Steam info .

tsampikos

Thanks for the information on the three points. I want to get the above mentioned Pendula games but was worried if the retail versions had limited installations. I really hope I don't have to change or upgrade computers 3 times in the near future.

Faust

Thanks for the info. I've bought a lot from GOG and a few from Steam and dotemu. I haven't bought any from the other digital download places. As a general rule I only buy the downloads if I can't get a disk copy.

hatshepsut

During the activation process with my Testament of Sherlock Holmes it stated that I have 4 activations left. But if I needed more then I would have to contact them

Thanks GreyFuss that is good to know that you can more activations for Testament if you need them.

hatshepsut

Is it the retail version Greyfuss?Because what I wrote above is from a statement of a Frogwares member describing the activation system.

Retail, disk, UK release

I'm pretty much the same way Hats . In the case of Lost Horizon , a disk is very difficult to find , so it looks like a download is my best option .

tsampikos wrote:

1) The retail Version of Sherlock Holmes offers UNLIMITED installations on THREE different computers max. Which means that you can install it on your computer unlimited times, but if you change or upgrade your computer 3 times (higly unlikely i guess in the near future, we don't change computers that often but theoretically the possibility exists), then you are out of activations.

I wonder how this actually works though. It may just be 3 activations, with the game leaving its activation information on your hard drive when you uninstall. If that's the case, if your hard drive goes bad or if you get a virus and have to reformat, you'd lose that computer's activation even if you still have the same computer.

gruefeeder wrote:

tsampikos wrote:

1) The retail Version of Sherlock Holmes offers UNLIMITED installations on THREE different computers max. Which means that you can install it on your computer unlimited times, but if you change or upgrade your computer 3 times (higly unlikely i guess in the near future, we don't change computers that often but theoretically the possibility exists), then you are out of activations.

I wonder how this actually works though. It may just be 3 activations, with the game leaving its activation information on your hard drive when you uninstall. If that's the case, if your hard drive goes bad or if you get a virus and have to reformat, you'd lose that computer's activation even if you still have the same computer.

All too true ! One of the more stupid points of drm of any sort . I remember recently , seeing a discussion on drm , especially as it relates to Testament , on another forum . After some back and forth , a moderator , basically put a stop to it , saying that , in a roundabout way , this discussion has been beaten to deah , and if we as gamers want more games , shut up .

There is a common market law: "The one who pays is right". And we pay. They live from us. So nobody can tell us to shut up, especialy if we can't accept a humiliating and ridiculus copy protection system like this which puts limits to propertial rights.

tsampikos wrote:

There is a common market law: "The one who pays is right". And we pay. They live from us. So nobody can tell us to shut up, especialy if we can't accept a humiliating and ridiculus copy protection system like this which puts limits to propertial rights.

Agreed !

I'm confused about all this drm talk, because I'm of the opinion that when one buys a game (download, disc, whatever) one owns the right to PLAY the game, but NOT the right to the game itself. Example: when you buy a book you have the right to read the book's story, but you do not have the right to the story itself, that stays with the author. You don't have the right to copy the story from the book and sell it, which in the case of games is how the pirates work, isn't it? They copy the game and sell it, so the owners of the game try to protect themselves by limiting the copies one can make with the drm activation thingy.

The early Sierra games had all sorts of protections! Once, if I recall correctly, there was a manual and you would have to go to a certain page and look for the third word on line 10 before you could play. Each time you came back to play you had to look up a new word. Well, I thought it was fun at the time!

Let me see if I can try to explain it . In case you don't know , drm stands for Digital Rights Management . In theory , it is meant to protect a game from being pirated , thereby protecting the creator's work . In actuality , drm has proven , time and again , to be little more than a cancer for those of us that do the right thing , and buy a game legitimately . Anyone remember Starforce , and the p.i.t.b it was ? People , if they want to bad enough , are going to pirate a game , and some silly measure meant to prevent it , will not stop them . Again , the quickest way in th world to get someone to do something (pirate a game , as an example) , is to tell them they can't (drm) . I got nosey once , Testament was hacked , and on torrent sites and crack sites within 2 days of it's official release . Drm simply does not work ! All it does is hurt legit customers . A more recent form of drm , is requiring a constant net connection to play (Diablo 3) , and Razer Synapse 2.0 (you have to create an online account to use your keyboard or mouse , to download the drivers . The mouse or keyboard is basically useless without it , and in the Razer terms of service , by agreeing to it , you allow Razer to collect information about your usage habits , for possible use by Razer and other companies . That is called "data mining" ) . Whew !! Out of breath now !

Those old systems work great, and they still have the ability of working today. Some newer systems however, make a situation where if you use all your activations, a company no longer exists, servers no longer exist etc then the game you bought will be a worthless, useless piece of plastic, as you won't be able to activate the game to play it. People who get second hand copies will not be able to activate it, people in 15 years with legitimate bought products paid full price for will not be able to repaly the games that they bought/ "own".
It is terrible situation, and all it does is punish legitimate customers.

DRM aka Digital Restrictions Management

Let me think...What do Piracy and second hand games have in common? Of course! The publisher doesn't earn a penny out of them. Pirated games are for free, the profit of a sold second hand game goes to seller, developer or publisher rearns nothing in both cases. This is a new problem for them. That's why, especially in the console market, they try to develop mechanisms which forbit the replayability of second hand games(!!!!). So sick really!!!!

If I pay for a copy of a game, I must be in the position to fully own it without any unfair restrictions. I may want to destroy it, eat it, burn it in fire, play it 100 times, wash it, put honey on it and so on....because this certain copy is mine! So giving money for something that restricts your propertial rights in an unfair extreme way, there is a problem. I do not have something against logical DRM systems. They could provide printed passwords in manuals, lifetime serial keys with each game copy, require the presence of the DVD in Drive in order for the game to work, etc., they can offer DRM free games to prevent a potential buyer from downloading a pirated copy. They could sometimes offer more reasonable prices and make offers. In other words they should "throw the money out of the window, so that it returns back from the door". And they forget another simple law: "What is locked can be unlocked". And by trying to acchieve a result against this law, they invent crazy and sick DRM systems. But all they do is hurt buyers who buy legitimate copies of their work. In other words the hurt the ones who support them!!!! Isn't that crazy enough????

Mullane wrote:

people in 15 years with legitimate bought products paid full price for will not be able to repaly the games that they bought/ "own".
It is terrible situation, and all it does is punish legitimate customers.

And not only 15 years from now. It already happened with Frogwares' own Sherlock Holmes collection. Due to some business conflict with the publisher the online activation on the disk doesn't work and players that bought it are supposed to ask their money back from their vendor!
If we continue to buy these drm infected games this not going to stop. That's why I so stronly disagree with all those developers trying to get their games on Steam Greenlight, a portal that even admits adventures don't sell there (and for now I'll ignore the incorrect use of the word 'sell' as Steam doesn't sell games at all, only allows you to play them).
Why not try to make GOG the place for adventure game developers and players?

Anyway, here's the announcement about the SH collection.
http://www.frogwares.com/blog/sherlock-holmes-5-adventure-game-collection-public-notice/

Relevant quote:
If you already bought the collection and it wasn’t activated yet, please bring the box back to the shop, print this news and take it with you to show the seller your good faith, we hope they’ll understand and will proceed to the reimbursement.

Hope they will understand , and proceed with the reimbursement ? In other words , we're being told that if we purchase this collection , tough rocks , we (frogwares) don't care about you . Dummies ! I hink it's time to avoid games from Frogwares from here on out . GOG is looking that much more attractive now ! As for Steam there are a couple of adventures , where Steam is the only place the games are available .

I don't go to links I don't know, but this time I took a chance and clicked on the Frogwares link, and read the message on the problems with the Sherlock Holmes 5 Adventure Game Collection. Having read it, I'm on Frogwares side! It seems to me they are doing their best to correct the problem, sort of like a car maker recalling a car with problems. It has absolutely no connection with anything even remotely resembling drm restrictions that I can see. It also has nothing to do with pirating, unless Creative Mindz LLC was pirating the game instead of living up to the contract?
I don't know anything about torrent or crack sites, but I got the impression that the problems there are with hackers, not pirates. Welcome to the computer age!

To me Digital Rights Management is like Copyrights for authors. It is a lot more complicated because a computer is more complicated than a printing press, but the idea behind drm is the same: protection for the creative mind's hard work in creating the product. Hey, guys, a game just doesn't fall into place willy-nilly! It took a lot of *blood, sweat and tears* by a person or a team to make it happen. So they do have a right to protection, don't they?

By the way, did you know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, tried to kill off Holmes because he was tired of him, but his readers practicallly demanded more stories? Kind of like gamers wanting Syberia 3.

mindysue wrote:

It has absolutely no connection with anything even remotely resembling drm restrictions that I can see. It also has nothing to do with pirating, unless Creative Mindz LLC was pirating the game instead of living up to the contract?

Players who bought the game can not play it because of the drm involved. It is not possible anymore to activate the game online because of a business disagreement between Frogwares and Creative Mindz.
And now not Frogwares, not Creative Minds but the shops that sold the game are supposed to refund the players.

So now, ironically, the only way it is possible to play the games you paid for is if someone cracked it and removed the drm.

Anyone remember the posts (over at JA and AG) from developers like Frogwares, Detalion, and Microids Canada about how the publishers of their games weren't paying them as per contract? Being in non-US countries, they weren't able to find legal means of getting their payment. Detalion and Microids Canada aren't around anymore because they weren't paid for their work.

I think that's what this business with the Sherlock 5 Adventure Collection is about. Once again Frogwares contracted with a publisher for a boxed version and wasn't paid for their work. Only this time they had some recourse -- they could deny activations. They might not be paid, but they could at least make trouble for Collective Mindz LLC.

This isn't ideal for Frogwares of course. It's never a good thing to have your name on the box of a non-functional game.

Based on what you have said , gruefeeder , this whole mess , besides the drm garbage , seems to me like little more than schoolyard nonsense . One didn't hold to their end , so , "to get even" for lack of a better phrase , Frogwares is denying activations . Um .... Not cool at all ! By having their name on the box , Frogwares appears to be the bad guy . If they had anticipated this problem from the beginning , why did they even go ahead wih it in the first place ? If you think about it from that perspective , it appears as though that this whole mess is little more than a childish temper tantrum .