DISTRESSING GLIMPSES OF GAMING'S FUTURE

Generally speaking, the future of gaming is digital and online-connected. I, for one, am largely in support of much of this, as I quite enjoy the benefit of, say, being able to easily bring all of my handheld games with me wherever I go or easily download my collection of PC games without ever looking for a disc or CD key. The rare instance when I'm without Internet or the long wait for the My Games section of the Xbox 360 dashboard to load aside, I'm a fan of all this digital business. However, on occasion there are things which cause me to wonder if it's all worth it and make me hesitant to debate anyone who is averse to becoming excited about the direction the industry is headed. 

Take Dragon Quest X, for instance. Unlike previous games in the series, it is an MMORPG and, as such, it requires an online connection (and carries a subscription fee, at least in Japan) for all but a few hours. The decision to take a previously single-player-centric series into the MMO space -- a move Final Fantasy has made twice, first with XI and then with XIV -- will continue to be talked about. Personally I'm indifferent to the move as I don't have any particular affection for the series beyond being a casual fan.

What becomes troubling about DQX is today's news that players' characters can be deleted if they are not logged into at least once every three months. This won't present a problem for those who routinely play the game. Those who do not, or anyone who decides to take a break from the game for a while, will have to face the looming threat of possibly losing their characters. Having lost numerous Diablo II characters a decade ago to the occasional break I would take or simply because I had too many accounts to manage, I know how frustrating it can be to essentially lose a save game as a result of becoming busy with something else. 

However, it was more understandable for that to be happening with a game in the early 2000s that I played online for free. DQX is being released in 2012 and carries a subscription. It should be doing what it can to ensure players come back if they leave the game for a period of time, not potentially forcing them to start over from scratch if they take a break for a few months during a college semester or after having a baby. 

Ubisoft's maligned Uplay DRM has been a source of many complaints, and even when working as intended it (and services like it) could be included in this story. What's even worse is that a major security issue with a small browser plugin Uplay installs was discovered last week that posed a serious risk for those with certain Ubisoft PC games installed. This ended up being blamed on a "coding error," as opposed to the initial suggestion that Ubisoft was discreetly installing a rootkit on users' computers. 

The problem itself was resolved quickly enough, although one has to wonder what might have happened if the exploit were discovered by someone who did not share it in a public forum. What if this information had only been shared among ne'er-do-wells and Ubisoft was unable to release a fix before the damage had been done? While it could be argued that DRM does no good in the first place, what's undeniable is that it's unfair for legitimate consumers to be hassled with DRM restrictions and potentially subjected to an exploit like this -- only pirates who circumvented Uplay would have been safe. Hopefully this instance will help to prevent something like it from ever happening again, though the continued widespread use of DRM itself won't be of any assistance in that regard. 

Even the service whose DRM is most widely accepted by gamers, Steam, has me somewhat concerned. Last week Valve updated the Steam Subscriber Agreement all users of the service are required to agree to. The most noteworthy of these changes fell in line with a trend we saw established last year by Sony, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft in prohibiting class-action lawsuits against the company. That means that, unless this sort of clause is deemed illegal (which it may already have been, depending upon where you live), you would not be able to join up with others to sue Valve. 

While Valve was fairly forthcoming about this change and was plenty happy to list the benefits of it for gamers -- Valve will foot your legal bill if you have a legitimate claim -- it fails to highlight one key point about updating the agreement. Should you object to these (or presumably any future) revisions, you'll lose access to your account and your games. You won't be entitled to a refund, and you won't be able to regain access to your account if you have it deactivated. While it would seem there's no reason you couldn't simply hold off on agreeing to an updated SSA rather than deactivating your account, it doesn't change the fact that there is no permanent way to access Steam games without accepting the terms of the most recent agreement. 

As someone who relies on Steam almost exclusively for PC games (I'd have to go back many years to come up with more than a handful of non-Blizzard games I purchased outside of Steam), this is worrying. Not enough to get me to suddenly abandon making Steam my go-to place for computer games, maybe, but next time I'm faced with the prospect of buying a PC game from elsewhere I might not find it so objectionable. Others, however, could take this as yet another reason to bemoan digital games and avoid using services like Steam. 

There are other things that make me worry about the future of gaming, whether it be the eventual phasing out of secondhand sales by digital games or the way season pass DLC that people have paid for can be altered before they get their hands on it, as was the case with Max Payne 3. For all of the good the future is bringing, it's also important to be aware of the downsides so that we're better prepared to deal with them and to hold companies responsible as necessary.