Your confusing DRM meant to prevent copying with DRM meant to prevent cheating - one could argue that this benefits gamers. This DRM had no effect on whether one could copy teh game or not and the fact that it prevents the game from running is a mistake.

Ok - yes, I agree with you in part: yes it's DRM, however it's not DRM that was placed there to intentionally prevent copying - as per the comments Pete made. I am wrong by strict definition and you are right. However, going by that post already made above from the VP, it was there to protect players themselves against cheats - it's hardly a "bad thing" - and not to prevent copying, as evidenced by the fact that people could use the cracked version with this form of DRM still operational.

It seems to have been a mistake by somebody, they happen. What company in their right mind would prevent a game being played 15 months after the retail release. They have copies on the shelf still.

I think you should update the article and tell people this - because you have written as though this was DRM that was intentionally placed onto the game distribution to screw people around and it seems this was not the case - in fact it is there to enhance gameplay by preventing cheating. You are basically pushing the line that DRM intended to stop people cheating is as "evil" (your wording) as DRM to prevent illicit copying. It smacks of knee-jerk journalism - certainly TF isn't the only party doing this - however a small correction is needed in my opinion.

They'll create new protection ... however, if it's this ridiculously easy that one app fits all - what hope have they got I wonder? Expect a FLOOD of iphone apps I guess. Yippee!

And after all the whinging about "It's so bad, I must pirate, they don't deserve my money, I've got an excuse for piracy and it's certainly NOT THAT I just like getting a game for free" (amazing how people come up with these complex justifications when the root cause of piracy is so simple - FREE product) ... it turns out IT WASN"T DRM. ROFLMAO at many people here.

Don't use Windows then. DRM was bought in to combat piracy: it's not like it was put there just to antagonise users.

It would certainly explain why Razor1911 missed it. I doubt some people here will care though... this place is often like a hardcore cult with the propaganda and blatantly ignoring facts. Eg. "I pirate because of DRM" and "I buy music that I really like" (despite evidence to the contrary, it never gets reported here).

Still, I have bought it to the attention of the author so we shall see - I may be surprised.

Any Irish people reading here? Would be interesting to hear what the reaction of the mainstream and technical/IT press is to this.

Also it would be interesting to hear about what your perception is of public opinion generally regarding this deal.

Agreed with seedbox: also - whilst it's hard/unpredictable to predict the speed of any torrent owing to not knowing speeds/available bandwidth - number of seeds isn't a good predictor of speed.

The key figure you can use is the SLR or Seed to Leech ratio: this is obtained by dividing the number of seeds by the number of peers (or leeches). This is still highly unpredicatble but it's been shown that it's the best predictor of overall swarm speed.

As a general rule, anything over 1 is good.

If you have 500 seeds with 1000 peers, SLR = 500/1000 = 0.5. What this tells you is on average each seed will be uploading to 2 peers usually it's never that neatly organised though obviously.

(Add in the fact that not all bandwidth of each client is available due to multiple uploads and that peers who jumped in ahead get preferential treatment due to "tit-for-tat".)

If 500 seeds have 250 peers, SLR = 2, on average each seed can devote 2 upload slots to each peer.

Number of seeds is actually pretty meaningless: for example at one point I noticed GTA4 @ TPB had 1000 seeds with 75,000 peers. The swarm speed was not very fast as that is a terrible SLR and people waited days on end.

10 seeds with 2 peers, as illogical as it sounds, is, on average, going to be faster than the GTA example - given that they have the same speed connections & same upload settings - as the average of the 1000 seeds of GTA.<span class="idc-clear"></span>

Actually I would say that is partially wrong at least: ISPs - as a general rule - make less money off heavy users. The reasons for this are as follows: (note I'm not an expert however I talk to people who I consider to be and this is the general gist I've gleaned - I may be wrong and/or generalising):

ISPs pay a data wholesaler for a certain amount of data at a fixed bandwidth: for example perhaps they pay for 40TB/month OR they pay for bandwidth with unlimited data.

Then they make this available for their customers. As data allowances go up, so does the price of the plan the customer pays, - BUT - the price per unit of data that the customer pays drops - until the "lowest" for uncapped plans.

So you might have this happening for example:

Mom & Pop pays $50 for 80GB/month
Heavy User pays $80 for 200GB/month

(this is the pricing of my ISP, www.tpg.com.au) They do not advertise the 200GB plan ever ;)

So from the ISP perspective: for a $50 plan they can have get $200 for 200GB
OR for the heavy user: $80 for 200GB.

Then you add in that heavy users are much more likely to be downloading large files in a constant stream: this means that less customers can be using the bandwidth concurrently with the same speed: or, in plain English, the network becomes congested faster.

ISP's make more money off casual users - most ISP's have the situation where a minority of users use 80% of network capacity. Many casual users in fact subsidise many fewer heavy users because they are paying (much) more per unit of data. Heavy users are (much) less profitable than casual users in greater numbers.

Now, I do agree that (in my estimation which is not from a very unformed point of view) ISPs would baulk at losing a huge swathe of heavy users all at once, however in a slow process where they could replace them with lighter users - it would be more profitable.

Well, I doubt that people will even be able to sign up with them with the same details...