Microsoft Hates Gamers

I read this article a couple of weeks ago, found at Stupid Evil Bastard The title of the article is "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection," and it is very enlightening. It deals specifically with Vista's Digital Rights Management (DRM) and the problems their DRM poses. The Executive Executive Summary of the article is:

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

This is true. But to modify it a bit, I think that the Vista Content Protection specification also constitutes a letter of homicidal intent against PC gamers everywhere, and they're doing it just to pander to major media corporations.

Okay, so I'm being a little melodramatic, but that doesn't change the fact that Vista's DRM presents one thousand and one problems for the next generation of PC gaming. As an avid PC gamer lo these many years, I resent much of the Vista DRM, as it puts me and my ilk into a very objectionable position: the position of a body between a rock and a hard place.


The major problem is that we gamers are damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we don't upgrade to Vista, we will be unable to play the next generation of PC games, those that will run on DirectX 10. DX10 is only compatible with Vista, so staying with XP severely limits our options.

If, on the other hand, we upgrade to Vista, we'll be smacked with the problems mentioned in the linked article, which I strongly suggest you read, as it is a powerful indictment of Microsoft and Windows Vista. The first major problem is a financial one. The hoops that MS is currently making hardware manufacturers jump through to be Vista compatible will drive up prices across the market. The goal with these hoops is to make all hardware as secure as possible to protect what MS refers to as "Premium Content," presumably HD video files, MP3s, and other such media, but not necessarily limited to those. The hoops require, among other things, that the manufacturer of a piece of hardware get its hardware's security systems approved by no fewer than three Hollywood studios. Don't believe me? Here's a quote from an actual MS document.

The evidence [of security] must be presented to Hollywood and other content owners, and they must agree that it provides the required level of security. Written proof from at least three of the major Hollywood studios is required.

Hollywood studios know nothing about computer engineering or security, yet this is a mandate if your hardware is to be Vista compatible. Additionally, MS is only allowing certain board layouts to increase "robustness" and security, and they are not optimum layouts. They do not even allow for the removal of nonessential parts to create a lower-grade and cheaper product. Following these and other "robustness rules" makes each piece of hardware cost more, and the cost is then passed on to the consumer as a price hike. What you get, then, with Vista, is more expensive equipment that is actually crippled and sub-optimum because of the very rules that drove the cost up in the first place.

The worst part? Because all hardware manufacturers must go through these processes, you're paying this price even if you don't run a Windows computer.

The next travesty to gaming (and indeed all of computing) is Microsoft's "tilt bits" functionality. "Tilt bits" are set whenever any device detects something "unusual." I'll quote (rather extensively, sorry) from the article to better explain the process.

Vista's content protection requires that devices (hardware and software drivers) set so-called “tilt bits” if they detect anything unusual. For example if there are unusual voltage fluctuations, maybe some jitter on bus signals, a slightly funny return code from a function call, a device register that doesn't contain quite the value that was expected, or anything similar, a tilt bit gets set. Such occurrences aren't too uncommon in a typical computer. For example starting up or plugging in a bus-powered device may cause a small glitch in power supply voltages, or drivers may not quite manage device state as precisely as they think. Previously this was no problem — the system was designed with a bit of resilience, and things will function as normal. In other words small variances in performance are a normal part of system functioning...With the introduction of tilt bits, all of this designed-in resilience is gone. Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it could be a sign of a hack attack, with the required reaction being that (from the spec) "Windows Vista will initiate a full reset of the graphics subsystem, so everything will restart."

Sound good to you? This means that you plug in your USB drive, and shit breaks down. You experience a slight lightning storm, and shit breaks down. Imagine the ease of screwing over an entire network with the tiniest of effort. Since we're talking gamers here, imagine what happens if you're playing CS Source or Unreal Tournament and somebody, heaven forbid, turns on the lights in the same room as the computer. It won't restart your entire system, just your graphics subsystem, but the damage will be done. Continued minor fluctutations could render your computer, or a network, completely unusable for any length of time. How did this seem like a good idea to anybody? Oh, right, because it "protects from piracy.

The final major strike comes with Vista's policies on hardware drivers. First off, Vista kills the current wonderful trend of driver unification, the practice of making one standard driver for a variety of cards, like Nvidia's Forceware.

In order to prevent the creation of hardware emulators of protected output devices, Vista requires a Hardware Functionality Scan (HFS) that can be used to uniquely fingerprint a hardware device to ensure that it's (probably) genuine. In order to do this, the driver on the host PC performs an operation in the hardware (for example rendering 3D content in a graphics card) that produces a result that's unique to that device type.

What this means is that each separate piece of hardware has to have its own specific driver. Bye-bye, Forceware. Hello more wasted time and money by hardware developers.

This goes hand-in-hand with Microsoft's demand that, in order to prevent third parties from creating drivers that might emulate a regular driver's HFS signature and leak their precious Premium Content, hardware manufacturers call a moratorium on the great two-decade history of open development. All technical details of all hardware must be completely confidential. Anybody who was planning on keeping XP until a new, DX10-compatible version of OpenGL was developed, sorry. Not gonna happen. Because of all this, Linux developers have offered to make Linux hardware drivers free of charge, in essence doing the hardware makers' work for them, just so Linux can stay up to date.

The final part of the evil Microsoft driver triumvirate is their new practice of driver revocation. If, at any time, a hardware driver is found to be leaking even the tiniest amount of Premium Content, it will be immediately revoked by Microsoft, instantly making a brick out of important, expensive piece of hardware across the world until the manufacturers can create a more secure driver. Heaven forbid that five or six bytes of last week's episode of "Prison Break" be leaked out into cyberspace! We must take measures to render our users' computers useless! Great plan, Microsoft. What this means for older, legacy hardware is that they'll be permanent bricks, as they won't have new drivers created. This screws over your average user, too.

There are other problems out there. There's MS's disabling of certain functionality without the exactly proper HDMI setup. There's extra resource consumption by both the CPU and all devices necessary to run Vista's absurdly unnecessary encryption algorithms, further hamstringing already subpar equipment. And what if Microsoft determines that games are "Premium Content?" Then you can't even run them without perfect HDMI.

So what does all this mean for the gamer? It means you'll have more expensive hardware that runs at suboptimum levels for multiple reasons. It means that you'll have an unreliable system that's prone to graphical resets at any time for the tiniest of "problems." It means that your overly expensive and subpar hardware is prone to being bricked and rendering your shit unusable for something that you didn't even cause and probably isn't even hurting anybody. It means there aren't even any third-party alternatives to any of this. Your PC gaming experience is thrashed and ruined six ways from Sunday, and DirectX 10 be damned. And to what end will your computer's performance be so thoroughly fucked?

So Microsoft can get in good with the media companies as part of their plan to turn every home computer into a total media center. But why? Most people don't even use their computers this way. If they wany to watch a DVD, they buy a DVD player. Their computer is a separate entity, built for gaming or typing or surfing the net. Microsoft is pandering to the whims of the MPAA and the RIAA to ensure that they'll be able to sell their Premium Content digitally to a mostly oblivious public. As a software company, they're supposed to pander to the market and to the customers, not use their weight to completely reshape the market. As developers of an OS, they're supposed to create a system that allows people to easily and effortlessly interact with a computer. They're not supposed to make good with media conglomerates, and they're not supposed to design an OS based around "media security," all at the expense of their entire user base. That's not the purpose of an operating system. They're treating every last one of us like potential criminals. And will it stop pirates? Of course not! These are the most resourceful people on the planet, and they'll break it within a week. If it gets fixed, they'll break it within another week. These measures will stop nothing. The entire exercise is completely absurd.

To everyone that reads this, do not buy Windows Vista. Send Microsoft a message. Tell them you'd rather use outdated software and hardware than deal with their nonsense. Tell them that they've overtepped their bounds. Tell them that yes, they are committing suicide, and we'll dance on their graves. They're screwing us over, no matter what choice we make. Microsoft hates gamers.

I know they're a huge, giant company, but they expect huge, giant things from Vista, and if it doesn't deliver, well, they may just realize that change is in order.