I’d like to see a DRM field in VNDB for every release, because I think it would be very useful in many player’s purchasing decisions, so I’ve opened a thread asking for this feature. If I knew a VN wasn’t encumbered by DRM, that would be a green light for me to make the purchase.
If any of you have thoughts on this subject or how it might be implemented, feel free to respond on VNDB.
Yorhel has told me:
If there’s a good proposal and some discussion on the forums, I have no problems implementing such a feature.
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I’m not on VNDB (I barely use it) but I’d just like to say I like this idea.
Meanwhile, here’s what limited knowledge I have about DRM on VNs, for anyone else interested in this:
- anything from GOG, JAST, or MangaGamer: DRM-free
- anything from itch: probably DRM-free. (I guess devs could include their own DRM but I haven’t ever seen it done, except in a few cases where all they do is sell Steam keys and no actual downloads from itch.)
- anything from Steam: a crapshoot, really. or worse, if you consider the fact that you can’t download an installer. You may be able to ask around to find out whether the game files will run without Steam, but someone might accuse you of being a pirate if you do that.
- anything from DLsite: the store page does say whether it uses certain forms of DRM, but I don’t know if system region setting requirements (e.g. only works on PCs with region set to Japan, beyond just encoding issues) are accounted for on the store pages.
Yes, hopefully Yorhel implements it soon!
We have a Buying Visual Novels guide that we’re very proud of on wiki.comfysnug.space. It has details about which releases for a particular store are DRM-encumbered, which releases are DRM-Free, and whether they work in WINE.
I’ve never bought anything from itch.io, so this was good to know. And I hadn’t encountered any issues with region in DLSite, but I suppose WINE bypasses that.
If you want to add or correct something, feel free to sign up as a contributor and make some edits. You’ll need to contact neo for a password on Matrix as the page says, though, as email isn’t set up yet.
Oh yeah I saw that after I commented, haha, oops.
I’m not sure there’s much in the way of Japanese visual novels on itch – though there are the occasional Japanese indie devs there, like I know 1oo (dev of Lovely Composer) is on there, and so is npckc (dev of A Year of Springs). Having recently begun to use DLsite, I’m getting the feeling that DLsite basically serves the same niche as itch, but in Japan rather than the west.
I bought some stuff on DLsite recently, and in addition to specific DRM indicators it also seems to include (on every single store page) some sort of warning that you might need to set it to Japanese locale and such (there seem to be at least two versions of the warning). I know that there’s the mojibake problem in many cases even when stuff will otherwise run fine, but I’ve heard that there are some products that don’t run unless the computer clock is set to Japan Standard Time. (I forgot where I heard this, though…) Something like this would count as DRM but it’s not the specific forms of DRM that DLsite has pages for, so I have wondered whether this could be a potential unlabeled form of DRM.
I’m not sure there’s much in the way of Japanese visual novels on itch – though there are the occasional Japanese indie devs there, like I know 1oo (dev of Lovely Composer) is on there, and so is npckc (dev of A Year of Springs).
Thanks for this, I’ve added a note about this on the wiki page crediting you - I assume you’re happy for this contribution to be licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0? I came across A Year of Springs this week on VNDB and was vaguely interested in it, but since you’ve brought it up again, I might give it a go.
Having recently begun to use DLsite, I’m getting the feeling that DLsite basically serves the same niche as itch, but in Japan rather than the west.
DLSite is definitely far more indie than the DMM Megacorporation, so I think you might be right there. It does seem to cater to AA and bigger developers too, though, while Itch’s developers are predominantly indie developers.
I bought some stuff on DLsite recently, and in addition to specific DRM indicators it also seems to include (on every single store page) some sort of warning that you might need to set it to Japanese locale and such (there seem to be at least two versions of the warning).
Thanks for bringing this up! I’ve never seen this myself because I’m using the interface in Japanese, and it only shows up when you’re using it in English. I think invoking
winewithTZ=Asia/Tokyowill bypass any of these issues on GNU/Linux.I dug a little more into this: https://cs.dlsite.com/hc/en-us/articles/4401855931417
While some products may intentionally have region restrictions, others will simply have inadvertently caused the problem by not designing the software with non-Japanese operating systems in mind. (i.e. Not programming using international best-practice standards.)
Interesting that they’re basically giving you advice to circumvent region restrictions the developer has intended…but I’m not complaining.
I’m not sure what this is a contribution to, but sure, feel free to credit me for writing it up, thank you.
I actually haven’t read A Year of Springs so I don’t know much more about it other than who the dev is (and of course the synopsis on store pages). I hear it’s decent though. Also if you’re looking to buy it I think it’s on sale on GOG right now but I dunno when it’s on sale on itch.
And yeah I noticed Falcom games on DLsite. But I know I largely browsed the doujin section rather than the PC games section which I think has the more mainstream releases.
I think the two messages are based on whether it’s doujin or “commercial”, as I see one on doujin stuff and the other on “commercial” stuff (i.e. the stuff under that PC Games tab).
Necessary Settings
The application may not function unless a Japanese language pack is set properly in your PC / the System Locale is set to Japanese. For more details, please refer to [ How can I set my system locale to Japanese? ] on the Frequently Asked Questions page.
versus
Necessary Settings
Commercial Japanese software may not function unless your PC’s System Locale, Region, Format, Time Zone, and in some cases Display Language is set to Japan/Japanese. For more details, please refer to [ How can I set Windows 10 to Japan/Japanese? ] on DLsite Help.
I’m not sure what this is a contribution to, but sure, feel free to credit me for writing it up, thank you.
I added some information based on your comment to the wiki: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:buying
Diff and commit message here: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:buying&do=diff
Also if you’re looking to buy it I think it’s on sale on GOG right now but I dunno when it’s on sale on itch.
It’s on sale on Itch too. Technically it’s about 4 cents cheaper on Itch, haha, but I believe the developer gets a bigger cut. Everything from npckc is actually 30% off right now, and you can get all 42 games for $42. Community copies are also a weird and interesting idea.
The two warnings
Ah, okay. The different scenarios under which the warnings appear, and the content of the warnings themselves is quite odd. I’ll leave out the note about System Locale as it’s something you should be setting for every visual novel anyway, and it’s noted on the problems page of our wiki.
Ahh, thanks!
And thanks for telling me about the sale on itch, and reminding me to look at that site. I keep forgetting since itch rarely e-mails me telling me something’s on sale.