Release Date for The Testament of Sherlock Holmes

How does Frogwares deny activations to games in a boxed set? Another point of confusion for me is about the contracts between developers and publishers, like do the devs pay to have the games published, or do the publishers pay for the rights to publish the developers games? And the distributors are at the end of the line with the games going to the retail stores, right? So somewhere in this chain Creative Mindz LLC didn't do the right thing and live up to its agreements, and Frogwares wants to stop the games from being played. Is that something like stopping payment on a check because the other party failed to do whatever the check was for?

Mindysue wrote:

How does Frogwares deny activations to games in a boxed set?

I don't know what company handles the activations. But if it isn't Frogwares themselves, they may be paying another company to host the activation servers -- which would give them control over which games got activated. There must be some way of differentiating activation requests from the boxed versions -- some sort of digital fingerprint that is unique to the boxed versions. From what Frogwares posted on their website, they are the ones who have control over activations and not Creative Mindz.

gruefeeder wrote:

There must be some way of differentiating activation requests from the boxed versions -- some sort of digital fingerprint that is unique to the boxed versions. From what Frogwares posted on their website, they are the ones who have control over activations and not Creative Mindz.

I don't think the games are available for download at all, so there's no need for a fingerprint. All activations are denied.

Good Grief, now I'm more confused than ever. When you buy a boxed game, you play from the disc and as far as I know there is no connection to the Internet with the disc. I didn't connect to the Internet until April 11, 2005, therefore I had what is known as a "dedicated computer" since it wasn't connected in any way to another computer. There was no way for the game to be "not activated" as long as I had a legitimate game, not a pirated copy. So, does this mean that the Frogwares SH collection cannot be played unless you are connected to the Internet while playing the game?

HandsFree wrote:

I don't think the games are available for download at all, so there's no need for a fingerprint. All activations are denied.

The game box for the Sherlock Holmes 5 Game Collection lists Secret of the Silver Earring, Mystery of the Mummy, The Awakened, The Nemesis, Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper, and these are all available for download at http://frogwaresus.nexway.com/
So unless the Collection installs all five games at once, and activates them all at once, there must be some way to differentiate the Collection versions from the download versions.

mindysue wrote:

Good Grief, now I'm more confused than ever. When you buy a boxed game, you play from the disc and as far as I know there is no connection to the Internet with the disc.

Online activation for boxed adventure games is still somewhat new. However Frogwares isn't the first that has used it. Telltale certainly used it for their boxed version of Wallace and Gromit -- which was the end of my buying boxed games from Telltale. I later bought an unfettered Wallace and Gromit from GOG and never played the Telltale version. Other than Telltale, Viva Media used online activation for the boxed version of Rockin' Dead (activated through Steam).

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I didn't connect to the Internet until April 11, 2005

There were no boxed adventure games with online activation at that time. The first boxed game with online DRM that I know of was Half Life 2, in 2004, which used Steam, but that was not an adventure.

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So, does this mean that the Frogwares SH collection cannot be played unless you are connected to the Internet while playing the game?

No it means you can't play this particular game collection AT ALL because the activation server has been turned off. However if the activation server were still working -- if Frogwares hadn't had it turned off -- you'd only need to connect to it once -- to activate the game -- and then you could disconnect from the Internet and play it all you wanted. It's pretty much the same as buying a game from The Adventure Shop, only you don't have the long download of a multi-GB game. First you install the game from the discs -- and the first time you try to play it, it asks to activate. You can put your discs away after installing, because the game doesn't use disc checks.

gruefeeder wrote:

The game box for the Sherlock Holmes 5 Game Collection lists Secret of the Silver Earring, Mystery of the Mummy, The Awakened, The Nemesis, Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper, and these are all available for download at http://frogwaresus.nexway.com/
So unless the Collection installs all five games at once, and activates them all at once, there must be some way to differentiate the Collection versions from the download versions.

Ah, I didn't know that. Still, those games don't need online activation from what I can see. Only testament of SH does; that's why the disk also has drm, because they didn't want to differentiate between the download and the disk version (that's what Frogwares' The Hood said on the gameboomers forum).

As Faust said, Next Big Thing and Yesterday also have drm on disk and you'll only know that if you can get a good look at the tiny letters on the box.
In other words, if you don't want online activation you can't buy disks anymore. And you can't download except from gog or dotemu (are there any others?).

HandsFree wrote:

Ah, I didn't know that. Still, those games don't need online activation from what I can see. Only testament of SH does;

That may be true of Secret of the Silver Earring and Mystery of the Mummy, but I'm pretty sure Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper is not DRM-free (yet). I'm not 100% sure though, as I haven't bought any direct from Frogwares.

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that's why the disk also has drm, because they didn't want to differentiate between the download and the disk version (that's what Frogwares' The Hood said on the gameboomers forum).

OK, but the Sherlock 5 Collection doesn't include Testament, only the previous games. The boxed version of Testament was published by Focus, and as far as I know there aren't any problems with activating that one.

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As Faust said, Next Big Thing and Yesterday also have drm on disk and you'll only know that if you can get a good look at the tiny letters on the box.
In other words, if you don't want online activation you can't buy disks anymore.

You can if you know whether a particular game uses online activation or not. Unfortunately I don't know of any website that tells you which games use it. And not every game that uses online activation throws up a message about it. Some people aren't even aware their game is activating unless they get a message from their firewall "Do you want to allow this connection..." and it's from the game phoning home.

But you're right that you can't depend on a boxed game not using online activation anymore.

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And you can't download except from gog or dotemu (are there any others?).

Some games sold by Gamersgate are labelled DRM-free. For example, Botanicula and Alpha Polaris. However there's a trick to getting all the installation files if you want to back up the game. Someone told me how to do this, but I'd have to look up the exact procedure. Gamersgate allows you to download and save all the files needed for the installation of their DRM-free games. But the process of installing it deletes one of the files, so you have to copy this particular file to somewhere else on your hard drive before completing the installation. As you can see, backing up the game is not as easy as with GOG or DotEMU.

Other than that, there are some Kickstarter games that promised a DRM-free download. And some small independent developers offer one, though others are turning to Steam.

Many thanks, gruefeeder, I didn't know that newer boxed adventure games needed online activation in order to be played. Now I'm wondering if that is the problem with my boxed Gray Matter game. I wasn't able to play the game after I installed it, but instead got a message that I totally didn't understand. I was so frustrated that I completely gave up and just threw the game on my pile, where it still is. Maybe I'll try it again one of these days and maybe I'll understand the message better ... or not. Anyway, thanks again for bringing me up to date on what's happening to adventure games, such as they are these days.

Another bad example of drm in action . In the case of Gray Matter , the particular form of drm it uses is Tages, and it does require a net connection for activation . I have that game as part of the Adventure 4 Pack (along with Black Mirror 2 , Rocking Dead , etc . ) . There is a way around the online activation, at least from what I have seen . The last time I played Gray Matter , I had a net connection on my desktop .

gruefeeder wrote:

However there's a trick to getting all the installation files if you want to back up the game. Someone told me how to do this, but I'd have to look up the exact procedure. Gamersgate allows you to download and save all the files needed for the installation of their DRM-free games. But the process of installing it deletes one of the files, so you have to copy this particular file to somewhere else on your hard drive before completing the installation.

@Grufeeder - I have 1953 KBG that I d/l from Gamersgate, installed & played already, and when I first d/l it I wanted to back up all files on a disk. But since I already installed/played some of it I reckon I'd have to go back to Gamersgate & re-download it, b/c I never copied the downloaded files into a second "spare" folder. And I'd like to upgrade the HDD in the computer that has the game on it (W7 Acer laptop) but before I upgrade, can you please look up the exact procedure for me to back up my copy of 1953 KBG (considering all facts stated above)?

Thanks.

Google is your friend ABZ

hatshepsut

hatshepsut wrote:

Google is your friend ABZ

hatshepsut

Hatshepsut is right. ABZ, you could have Googled and found out yesterday. Instead you wait for me to Google it and get back to you. Post #7 on the forum thread at ageod tells how to back up the setup file that gets deleted during the installation. Or just google "how to back up gamersgate games"

AlienBZ wrote:

gruefeeder wrote:

However there's a trick to getting all the installation files if you want to back up the game. Someone told me how to do this, but I'd have to look up the exact procedure. Gamersgate allows you to download and save all the files needed for the installation of their DRM-free games. But the process of installing it deletes one of the files, so you have to copy this particular file to somewhere else on your hard drive before completing the installation.

@Grufeeder - I have 1953 KBG that I d/l from Gamersgate, installed & played already, and when I first d/l it I wanted to back up all files on a disk. But since I already installed/played some of it I reckon I'd have to go back to Gamersgate & re-download it, b/c I never copied the downloaded files into a second "spare" folder. And I'd like to upgrade the HDD in the computer that has the game on it (W7 Acer laptop) but before I upgrade, can you please look up the exact procedure for me to back up my copy of
1953 KBG (considering all facts stated above)?

Thanks.

Call me kooky , but , isn't this thread about Testament, or a bit more to the point , the drm garbage being used on Testament and the Sherlock Holmes Collection debacle ? ABZ , not that asking a question about a game is a bad thing (thanks Hats and gruefeeder for the info) , but in the future , if you want to ask a question that is different from the thread subject matter , start a new thread instead of attempting to hijack a thread (this thread in particular) .