By Kieron Gillen on March 11th, 2009 at 3:37 pm.
Capcom do like that there PC. Well received Capcom-published Certain-affinity developed Pirate game Age of Booty has just had its demo released. Which makes this a great day for fans… of… booty. I’m sorry, I have to stop the post before we descend to a frenzy of buttocks-related gags. Watch the trailer while we try to control ourselves.
Oh God. We can’t.
I cannot lie.
11/03/2009 at 15:55 Ian says:
I like big boats and I can not lie.
11/03/2009 at 15:59 Kieron Gillen says:
Stealing that.
KG
11/03/2009 at 16:00 kabutor says:
It forces you to use gamespy Id to play with friends, wich is a piece of ****
No Steam-friends no buying.
11/03/2009 at 16:02 The_B says:
Well, you arsed this one up, Gillen.
11/03/2009 at 16:19 Fumarole says:
Baby Got Back? Really? Please tell me you’re hung over.
On second thought, it’s afternoon over there. Please tell me you’re drunk.
11/03/2009 at 16:20 bansama says:
Just a warning for those who care about this sort of thing, but the Age of Booty comes with a pirate’s delight in the form of SecuROM. And this includes the Steam version. Ugh.
11/03/2009 at 16:21 bansama says:
Blah for no edit, that should read, “the Age of Booty demo”.
11/03/2009 at 16:30 Heliocentric says:
Even on impulse? *checks*
Protection: SecuROM (5 Activations w/Unlimited Reactivations) unless you lose those activations by reformatting etc!
The game costs little, i was going to pick it up… So they give it limited activations? You know what fuck you capcom, i thought you understood PC. But no, limited activations on a mostly online game, couldnt you just use online authentication for play?
11/03/2009 at 16:30 Larington says:
Wait, securom on the demo?
Well, all the Capcom <3′s PC talk has just backfired.
11/03/2009 at 16:45 Heliocentric says:
fuck knows whats on the demo, I’m just pissed about limited activations. I dont realy care about DRM, especialy when its not forcing my to find the disc. I explicitly got GTA4 over steam so i’d not have to play a stupid dance with limited activations.
11/03/2009 at 16:55 Ginger Yellow says:
I’ve got the XBLA version and it’s hugely addictive, even single-player. It’s much, much more arcadey than I anticipated when it was first announced, and very frantic.
11/03/2009 at 17:11 Rich_P says:
hahaha who the hell puts SecuROM and activation limits on a $10 PC game? FAIL.
11/03/2009 at 17:20 Heliocentric says:
Ginger, I’ve wanted this to come PC side for a while and now if say braid had limited activations i could put up with it. And if i wanted to play it years later pirate it in the sound knowlege that i paid.
But, cracking a multiplayer game causes problems as You’d have a modified exe opening the door to cheating perhaps unless modified exes were banned.
But… with no activation limit and perhaps a requireed logon to a server to play (like steam or company of heroes) the need for the disc, and indeed limited activations fades away.
As it is i wont buy AoB, maybe capcom will realise they are only hurting their own bottom line with the activation limit.
11/03/2009 at 17:23 bansama says:
Wait, securom on the demo?
Yup. I ran it up on my SecuROM free PC and lo and behold, afterwards it had SecuROM on it and I had to spend half hour removing it again.
11/03/2009 at 17:26 Ginger Yellow says:
Hey, I wasn’t defending the DRM. I was just commenting on the gameplay.
11/03/2009 at 17:27 Larington says:
@Rich_P: Probably the same people who read about World of Goo’ piracy rate. Since it seems nothing is sacred anymore, well, unless thats its name.
As for Securom on a demo? Who the hell thought that would be a good idea? Doesn’t that sabotage the value of Demo files in the first place?
11/03/2009 at 17:32 Heliocentric says:
stops you opening it up it and crossing it with files from the full game to get a fully cracked full game with no programming time.
I remember in the past fixing a corrupted Amiga game by grabbing files of the demo and overwriting them on the disk. Magically the game no longer tried to get me to check the cd key equivilent out of the manual. I’d cracked the game by accident.
11/03/2009 at 17:34 Colthor says:
I think the reason for using the same protection on a demo as the full game is so the demo .exe can’t be used as a trivial crack for the full game (or be used to help make a crack).
11/03/2009 at 17:53 MacBeth says:
Ian: Genius
11/03/2009 at 19:10 JonFitt says:
In a Monkey Island style pun exchange swordfight, Ian would have left Kieron bloodied. Touché sir.
That’s not to say we haven’t had a fantastic array of puns here. Does anyone have a record of the best RPS puns so far?
11/03/2009 at 19:22 JonFitt says:
The anti-piracy measures on the demo is clearly there to stop people pirating the Pirate game. It’s true that people will probably pirate the Pirate game anyway, and the copy protection will only hurt the non-Pirates, but imagine the embarrassment that would be caused if you had to tell your executives that you made not attempt to stop the Pirates pirating the Pirate game.
Seems clear to me.
PIRATES! ahem.
11/03/2009 at 19:23 drewski says:
Publishers have been puting DRM on demos for ages. I recall being baffled back when Star FORCE was the most evil thing in the history of evil things that Codies were sticking it in with the demos of their games.
Because we can’t be having people illegal sharing free software!
11/03/2009 at 19:49 Skurmedel says:
Isn’t Age of Booty a board game originally? I can play that one for twice the cost but without the DRM. And I can see my opponemy opponents too! :)
Surely this game must be quite popular round the shores of Somalia?
11/03/2009 at 20:58 VLADIMIRPUTIN says:
I can’t even get the Steam demo to run, the Age of Booty process just dies on start-up. Thinking about it, this may be due to the Steam version not including SecuROM.
11/03/2009 at 21:34 Mil says:
Baby Got Back? Really? Please tell me you’re hung over.
No doubt he was thinking of the Jonathan Coulton cover (press “Play the song” to listen). That has to be gamer-approved, Coulton being the author of Portal’s famous Still Alive song and all.
11/03/2009 at 22:25 Y3k-Bug says:
“hahaha who the hell puts SecuROM and activation limits on a $10 PC game? FAIL.”
@Rich_P Considering the shit ton amount of piracy that ran through World of Goo at $20, I’d imagine it to be a pretty sound idea all considering. Despite all the rah rah rah about Securom.
12/03/2009 at 00:21 Wedge says:
Yes and we all know World of Goo was a huge failure selling 50k copies (these are massive numbers for a niche indie title) BEFORE it was put on Steam, and who knows how many after that.
Moreover though putting installation based copy protection in any game with it’s larger part being online is nothing short of retarded, as you could easily be doing more reliable and less troublesome “DRM” with accounts and authentication over that portion.
12/03/2009 at 00:51 Rich_P says:
@Y3k: The AoB PC release reeks of amateurism: shitty performance, unsupported resolutions, SecuROM install limits, and Gamespy (rofl). It’s like they go out of their way to make PC gaming as user-unfriendly as possible. Sounded like a fun game for $10, but not if I have to deal with installation limits and Gamespy matchmaking.
12/03/2009 at 02:21 catska says:
Good game and works great on the consoles.
12/03/2009 at 03:46 bansama says:
Thinking about it, this may be due to the Steam version not including SecuROM
No, the Steam version of the demo *does* have SecuROM as that’s the version of the demo I played. I wouldn’t mind so much if Valve bothered to mention it on the product page. As I’d then know what to expect and which of my PCs to install it on.
12/03/2009 at 04:03 Muzman says:
All the best jokes have been done, so I give you the one, the only white disco classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niU4qb8EnM4
(it’s only really funny if you’ve seen the movie. And even the…)
12/03/2009 at 07:08 redrain85 says:
Haven’t you guys read Capcom’s take on SecuROM yet? They think it’s swell!
http://www.videogamer.com/news/capcom_on_securom_its_not_the_bad_guy.html
So, he’s essentially saying that it’s each individual developer’s fault, if an implementation of SecuROM goes too far. And that, somehow, this makes SecuROM an innocent party.
Never mind that SecuROM are the ones who offer the stifling control mechanisms, in the first place. If they’re “much maligned for things that it is not necessarily responsible for”, then why don’t they prove that by dropping the limited activations and other mechanisms in SecuROM that end-users despise so much? Hah! :p