I’m not going to get into blockchain 101 here, but the gist is, blockchains are hugely secure- they rely on peer to peer contributions to be made to a public ledger, except once something has been added to it, it cannot be changed unless the entire peer to peer network spontaneously decides to change it. Which obviously is an impossibility.

This resistance to tamper-ability is what makes them central to, for example, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. And now, it sounds like Sony has filed a patent that implements a blockchain based digital rights management solution, too. And, to their credit, it sounds like it would actually be a good one. Their patent filing reads “conventional [DRM] solutions may not be very reliable and rely on one unique point of failure. If the rights locker provider or system goes out of business or otherwise fails, the user loses all the acquired content”. Essentially, a blockchain would mean your ownership of a product would be linked to you forever- even Sony cannot alter that. In fact, it also adds a mechanism for transferring of ownership of your digital content- which is the one area that digital content has a clear disadvantage versus physical goods.

Of course, as with all patents, this may never come to pass- but if it does, Sony might have stumbled upon inarguably the best implementation of DRM there might be from a consumer perspective.

CD Projekt RED said it once and now level designer Miles Tost has repeated the company’s stance once more. If you’re looking to pick up The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on PC, then you can rest assured of the game being DRM-free on day one itself.

“You’ll be able to purchase The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for PC on GOG.com from day one. We believe that DRM does more harm to legit gamers than good for the gaming industry, that’s why the game will also be completely DRM-free.”

Given the number of releases these days that require some form of client or another to be able to play (we’re looking at you, Origin), this comes across as nothing but good news. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is currently slated to release on Xbox One, PS4 and PC in February 2015. Stay tuned for more details, including on the PC system requirements, in the coming days.

(Source)

DRM has often been one of the most talked about topics in gaming, with the very idea of DRM being flamed by millions of gamers left, right and centre. However, publishers have a different outlook. In an interview with TorrentFreak, a Square Enix business manager went on to state that DRM is almost a necessity for publishers and developers to protect their IPs, and it’s here to stay.

“The primary benefit [of DRM] to us is the same as with any business: profit,” said Square Enix senior manager of business and legal affairs Adam Sullivan. “We have a well-known reputation for being very protective of our IPs, which does deter many would-be pirates. However, effectiveness is notoriously difficult to measure–in short, we rely on the data available to us through our sales team and various vendors, along with consumer feedback.”

“The key to DRM is that it can’t interfere with the customer’s ability to play the game,” he continued. “It’s not uncommon for people to get a new computer every few years, or to have multiple computers. Sometimes they don’t have reliable Internet connections. There’s no perfect solution yet.”

Sullivan was then asked about whether, despite the backlash that DRM has received, it will be around some time down the line. Sullivan replied, “This depends on your definition of DRM, but generally yes–I think DRM will be essential for the foreseeable future.”

“So long as we’re concerned about things like data privacy, accounting sharing, and hacking, we’ll need some form of DRM,” Sullivan said.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Now here’s something interesting: Visual Concepts’ NBA 2K14, which received rave reviews on both current and next gen platforms, has apparently been patched since release to be always-online for the Xbox One and PS4. According to a recent NeoGAF, you have to be connected at all times in order to play the game, even during single-player modes.

Why? Purely because of the game’s Virtual Currency, which seems to tied to all aspects of the game and needs to be authenticated via the publisher’s servers. In order to prevent cheating, that authentication is going on at all times and necessitates an always online console. To make things worse, if your connection drops during play for any reason, you immediately exit the game.

And no, this wasn’t mentioned during or before launch. 2K Sports hasn’t even taken the time to clarify it publicly since the next gen versions releases. The person in question did later report that you can play the game without an internet connection – however, you’ll be fairly limited in what you can do. MyCareer and MyGM modes are totally inaccessible, and there will be an authentication loop for several minutes before the game starts as “offline”.

Have you been facing this issue lately? If so, what are your thoughts on the same? Let us know in the comments below. For a generation that opposed “always online” DRM for consoles, it’s amazing that 2K Sports even thought of implementing such a mechanic.

When Sony announced and revealed the PlayStation 4 from February 2013 onwards, it worked hard to convince gamers that nothing was changing from the PS3 era. And for most part, how it approached digital rights management, used game sales and region locking were pretty much the same.

Which made Microsoft’s approach with the Xbox One – when it debuted with 24 hour online authentication and other compulsory features only to drop them later due to public backlash – all the more confusion to Sony UK’s Andrew House.

“The one thing that surprised me most is that we were required to make such a clear statement that we were going to maintain status quo in areas that we took for granted. That wasn’t something dictated by us, that was by the moves the competition was making. That remains the largest surprise for me – how visceral that reaction was from consumers. But the fact that we had to put a stake in the ground, in an area that we felt was just common sense, still has me quite literally scratching my head.”

These policy changes coincided with Don Mattrick’s departure from the company, Steve Ballmer’s retirement and many more internal shake-ups at Microsoft. Regardless, the Xbox One and PS4 are now both available and selling well according to retailers.

(Source)

For more exciting features and top 10 lists, please click here. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and updates.

1. In 2007 Sony began a post-mortem analysis of PS3 on what went wrong.

2007 was the year when Sony began to breakdown what went wrong with the PS3, and it was them figuring out their identity on whether they are a software or a hardware company. The hardware guys developed the console rather independently then dumped it onto the software guy’s lap. Sony Computer Entertainment America’s CEO Jack Tretton stated that the PS3 was not developed in collaboration between the development team and the hardware team and this was something they wanted to fix.

Speaking to Penny Arcade, Deep Silver CEO Klemens Kundratitz spoke about the piracy issues. “Many publishers are not launching day and date because the PC is so difficult, but they fear the piracy issues, so they’d rather first focus on consoles.”

That doesn’t mean the Saints Row IV and Metro: Last Light publisher will be implementing any DRM “We have not, no. Uplay is not the way we want to approach things, definitely. I think we just need to make sure that the games we publish are worth the money, and certainly there is always this piracy situation that any publisher has. No publisher can tackle, really.

“In a business plan, we typically ignore it. It’s not something that is new, it’s something that has been part of our business for decades. As a publisher you just live with it, yes?”

Kundratitz also spoke about the success of Metro on the PC, despite all the issues of piracy floating around. “When we look at Metro for example, Metro is first and foremost a PC brand. In the first iteration, it was launched on Xbox 360 and PC, but it is at its heart a PC product. There is not a question about whether it’s difficult to also launch on PC, because PC is number one.”

“Console sales were bigger, no doubt, for the last Metro product, but PC has a very decent share and it has got a very active and committed community. As you know, we are supporting modders for Saints Row now, and also for Metro. It is a different type of gamer who plays on PC, and we keep them very much in focus. They are different groups.”

Do you agree on Deep Silver’s stance? Let us know in the comments below.

According to Microsoft’s Albert Penello on NeoGAF however, that seems unlikely. “I don’t see that ever happening with content you’re buying today either on disc and digitally. All of that DRM stuff was in place because there was no physical security on the disc itself, so all the licensing was done digitally.

“When you build that type of model, then you need to make sure people can’t install games on a bunch of machines, then unplug them. That would have made us an awesome Pirating machine, and that can’t happen for obvious reasons. When we went back to disc security, those DRM policies weren’t necessary. So no reason to turn it on later.

“If there’s ambiguity, it’s because it’s possible that, in the future, IF WE ADDED BACK some of those family sharing ideas we had in the beginning, we’d have [to] reintroduce similar types of policies. So IF you wanted to have a game and have that family sharing, always-in-the-cloud, and digital loaning – then we might add those requirements back.

“You can imagine a world where we have both types of models at the same time. Again, big IF, but the bottom line is I wouldn’t worry about us making those policies ‘retroactive’ which seems to be the issue I hear people worry about.”

The Xbox One launches this November across 13 territories worldwide, with 8 other territories such as Norway, Switzerland and Russia seeing its release in 2014.

It also seems that despite The Sims 3’s multiplatform status, The Sims 4 may not necessarily be heading to other platforms other than PC and Mac. As of now, consoles aren’t being looked at as platforms for the game according to Rodiek.

Concerning the lack of console releases, this could change somewhere down the line if the demand is high enough and if The Sims 4 is successful enough to warrant expansion on to other platforms. For now, it seems that The Sims Studio and Maxis are keeping it thankfully simple, avoiding many of the pitfalls that befell SimCity and ultimately catering to fans of the series. The Sims 4 will be released in 2014.

Speaking to TechRadar, Molyneux stated that, “I know Microsoft, I know they were only doing things because they thought they were long-reaching and long-thinking. But the world we live in now is that we have to realize, especially if you’re a big corporation, if you make one step wrong, the world will leap on you, and unfairly, very unfairly, they will judge you.”

The Xbox One formerly required 24 hour authentication, limited used game sales and sharing, and was region locked. This prompted an enormous outcry from consumers who took to skewering Microsoft for weeks until the latter reversed its policies.

“Whether as consumers we like it or not, just like every form of technology interaction, there’s an inevitability of online. We know that online is so much a part of our existence now that we’re going to be in a world very soon where we have to be online all the time. A mobile device is more and more non functional without a connection to the internet, and why should that be any different for consoles?”

Molyneux was a part of Microsoft when the publisher acquired Lionhead in 2006 and worked there until 2012.