Monday, October 31st 2022
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II Disc Version Doesn't Actually Have the Game on it, Serves as Hardware DRM
So you live in Randomville in the middle of nowhere, with a slow ADSL that's barely a few Mbps fast, and thought you could enjoy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II on PlayStation 5 with its disc version? Think again. It turns out that the disc version of this game doesn't actually have the game on the disc. That's right, those unlucky enough to buy the disc version found that it only contained 72 MB of data, which when autorun, gets the console to fetch the up to 151 GB of the game's payload over the Internet. The disc only acts like a hardware DRM, in the same way as certain expensive software ship with USB flash drives that need to be plugged in for you to use the software.
After enduring the massive download, you're required to keep the disc inserted to play the game. It is possible to ship the entire game in two 50 GB Blu-ray discs with the best available compression tech. The problem with CoD off-late has been that the developers either forgot how to distribute game patches, or are using the sheer file-size of patches as an anti-piracy measure; with most of them spanning several dozen gigabytes, and major updates even fetching the entire game's triple-figure GB payload all over again. This 72 MB disc-based distribution is below the belt.
Sources:
Lance McDonald (Twitter), Tweaktown
After enduring the massive download, you're required to keep the disc inserted to play the game. It is possible to ship the entire game in two 50 GB Blu-ray discs with the best available compression tech. The problem with CoD off-late has been that the developers either forgot how to distribute game patches, or are using the sheer file-size of patches as an anti-piracy measure; with most of them spanning several dozen gigabytes, and major updates even fetching the entire game's triple-figure GB payload all over again. This 72 MB disc-based distribution is below the belt.
58 Comments on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II Disc Version Doesn't Actually Have the Game on it, Serves as Hardware DRM
I do not mourn optical media for video games one bit, though, I feel for people with data caps sometimes.
But AngryJoe wasn't very angry in the beta, so it can't be that bad. Maybe savable. Let's wait for his release verdict.
Who are these people who still buy physical in these day and age? I get the vinyl fetish, but games is just dumb.
Bad 4G signal can download Max 200GB in month.
Edit: And as others have said, "update spam" is a double-edged sword aka "Why bother with decent QA when always online = we can turn our pre-orderers into unpaid beta-testers on the back of a meaningless trinket (pre-order bonus)..." That trashy feeling stuff is definitely objectively worse than it used to be.
They're currently the worst for everything:
- Paid, seasonal DLC that makes your game practically unplayable unless you keep up to date with the frequenty, expensive DLCs.
- Numerous titles tied up in various lootbox-mechanics litigation from the US FTC, EU, and more, with Blizzard/Activision still pushing the mechanic heavily.
- Sued by the State of Californian for employment violations
- The Frat-boy sexual harassment scandal apparently ran rife through all levels of the company
- Employee suicides and mass employee walkouts
- Cosby-suite scandal
- Anti-union small-print in contracts, strict anti-union social media policy, active monitoring, telling employees not discuss wages and contracts.
- CEO Bobby Kotick caught red-handed signing up with the Union-busting lawyers who prevented Amazon workers from Unionising
- Evidence of data destruction and document-shredding for at least three of the above incidents, probably more.
- SEC investigation into both major sexual harassment scandals and subpoena of Bobby Kotick
- Harrasment of Blizzard co-leaders by Kotick.
All of this pre-Microsoft, since that takeover is still in progress.IMO the company is poison. Let it fail, the IP will fall to Microsoft who will likely take many of the employees on under their own wing.
I also hate the change of movies mostly going to digital platforms only, especially if it's a platform that doesn't own the rights to the movie. If that digital platform doesn't renew contracts or they have their rights pulled for some reason, you no longer have a movie you can watch that you paid for. Plus, you constantly have to stream it to view it, so it's a drag on your data cap (unless you're lucky enough not to have one). I like having movies on DVD/Blu-ray. I can put them all on my server and if by some chance something should happen to said server, I can always grab the physical copy and watch it on a DVD/Blu-ray player or on my computer that still has optical drives.
These days people are like, "Physical is dead. Digital is better."
I think these people don't realize how much control has and is being taken away from the consumer with the change over to digital. If that doesn't bother you, then good for you. But I, for one, hate it.
Regarding single-player games, though... GoG's model is probably the closest to perfect as we are going to get. Standalone, DRM-free installers which you can backup as you see fit.
To claim that the costlier and more complex endeavor of making both the game itself and maintaining the cloud/moderation infrastructure to handle it is more common than the conventional develop-> ship -> push small-sized patches if applicable approach, is a bold claim, imo.
Assuming of course, we're putting all games with online-components in the same bucket, which is a poor generalization.
For every Fortnite, Apex or Genshin, there is a boatload of small-publishers/indie titles focused on solo-play (although they do make for a case against physical media, in their own way).
Edit: Minor disambiguation.[/JUSTIFY]