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Ascend Alt
Viziam
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Posted - 2007.03.14 13:07:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Ascend Alt on 14/03/2007 13:04:56
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6449421.stm
Article about how rife game piracy is. I guess that is part of the attraction of MMOs, even if someone managed somehow to get hold of a copy of the game for free they still need to pay you to play.
I do agree though that piracy is a big problem, I am an older gamer (30+) and am not really "down with the kids" when it comes to piracy and I can afford stuff I want easily (not loaded, but ú20 is hardly going to break me) but I know that nearly all of the younger guys I speak to ingame never really buy anything, whether its music, movies, software or games but just download *****ed copies of everything.
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Dark Shikari
Caldari
Imperium Technologies
Firmus Ixion
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Posted - 2007.03.14 13:36:00 -
[2]
Game piracy has done two things.
1. Reduce the sales of crappy games. Since people get to actually try it before they buy it, companies can't as easily sell shovelware.
2. Demonstrate how useless copy protection is.
In a way the companies are actually shooting themselves in the foot; some recent copy protection makes it quite difficult to play the game with an authentic disk, so many people just resort to piracy.
People will always buy games. What is happening is twofold:
1. The kids who don't have much cash to buy lots of games are getting them free. The people who can afford them are still paying.
2. Companies are realizing why people download games; convenience. Its easier to torrent a game than to go get it at the store. Solution? Switch to online distribution methods, like Steam, to make it easy for the gamer.
--23 Member--
EVE-Trance Radio--The EVE Textboard |
Weebear
The Bowrey
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Posted - 2007.03.14 13:38:00 -
[3]
In the UK, the average Pocket Money is around ú8. That is almost a full month worth of saving for your average kid. They ain't going to wait that long while other kids in their class already have a copy etc.
You can't blame pirates for the entertainment industries inability to adapt to the changes in it's market audience and pricing a huge part of it out of purchasing things legally. |
Ealiom
Blackhole Entry Point
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Posted - 2007.03.14 13:57:00 -
[4]
It always makes me laugh to hear from various sources these 'facts' about the amount of money lost etc.
It's a joke, just because ive downloaded Sim City 5000 or whatever doesnt mean I was going to buy it. Far from it in fact. If I want a game I buy it, if im curious ill download it and give it a whirl.
Ditto for movies and music. I listen to pandora and note those that I like. If I like them enough I buy the album.
Executioner Model Blackbird Model |
Malcanis
Galactech Industries Ltd.
Freelancer Alliance
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Posted - 2007.03.14 14:16:00 -
[5]
Check out Galactic Civilisations II; Stardock has a very enlightened (and extremely successfull) attitude towards copy-protections.
http://www.galciv2.com
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Zirth
Caldari
The Black Fleet
Rule of Three
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Posted - 2007.03.14 14:22:00 -
[6]
The best solution is requirement of an internet connection on your game.
Like I bought Half-Life in store, if I had asked a buddy for the CDs I'd still have to download Steam and enter the serial. A serial is useless when it can be shared, but when you register a serial online, and its listed as used you can't share it anymore.
That stops piracy. There's barely any piracy in a game like EVE, you can share your account, but that's it. You still can't have two different accounts playing at the same time on a single monthly subscribtion. MMORPGs barely have this problem, apart a *tiny fraction* of people on private, almost unpopulated and boring servers.
Some instances tie the serial to an account. As if they don't, a serial can't be used again, when say a computer crashes. You try to register again, but the serial is in use. So an account is created when registering the serial, but even then you can't have two people login onto the same account at the same time.
Now internet wasn't always available. Alot of people bought singleplayer games because they had no internet. But when you look at the numbers in some countries and parts of the world, where 90% of the copies are pirated, knowing that most computer owners nowadays have an internet connection, you're better off requiring an active internet connection, disabling a tiny ammount of people from playing, than having 90% of the people not pay for your game.
Then when a single copy of $50 is put up for download as a torrent, and thousands of people download it, that single copy won't work as only the original user has payed for the serial tied to his account, which he of course won't share unless he doesn't want to play anymore. Even then it'd still be used by 1 other person, not thousands.
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Weebear
The Bowrey
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Posted - 2007.03.14 14:44:00 -
[7]
What happens when some clever person figures out a programme that can generate serials and all of a sudden legal copies bought in the shop no longer work? The cost in fixing that problem probably is probably not worth the hassle.
What about people who do not have broadband connections or have a bandwidth cap? Are they then to pay twice to play a game they have bought.
In the same way that games are *****ed to have no CD required, they would be *****ed to have no internet connection required.
What happens when the company go out of business? Do thousands of games just become inoperable to the people who shelled out the cash to buy them? I still play games that I got more than 20 years ago as I still find them entertaining today. Would the companies be expected to support the playability of the game for that long?
Requiring an internet connection is not foolproof and it is expensive to the development company. It would also disuade many potential buyers from buying it and looking for one of these *****ed copies they can play whenever they want. |
Crumplecorn
Gallente
Eve Cluster Explorations
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Posted - 2007.03.14 15:52:00 -
[8]
Edited by: Crumplecorn on 14/03/2007 15:50:18
Copy protection hurts legal purchasers, not pirates.
The best example is HL2, the introduction of the glorious requirement to have an internet connection to play your single player game. Not only to activate it, but to download the uncrippled version.
The alternative being to get a pirated copy which has no such requirement.
I buy my games (the good ones, like HL/HL2), but I refuse to buy crippleware and told my friend he was an idiot when he bought HL2.
Now, all modern games do their best to be unplayable crippleware*, however most can be gotten around, either by *****ing them of making an image on the hard disk, but AFAIK if you buy HL2 all you get is a coaster (unless you're a fan of bending over) because the pirate versions required huge modifications.
So, unless Valve give us a proper pirated-quality release of HL2, there will be a gap in my collection 
Starforce games are up there too, they are quite often unplayable, and sometimes damage Windows too, that's a good one. You should really check your prospective game to make sure it doesn't have this, and if it does be ready to rip starforce out and ***** it, not just to make the game playable, but to prevent unhappy things from happening.
It's like another one of the Net wars. Game companies are fighting to make games harder and harder to play, in some cases succeeding and making nice dents in their customer base, while the pirates, unfazed by these efforts, continue non stop to bring people working versions.
*If your game requires the CD even though the files it needs are all on the hard disk, it is crippleware, if it is a single player game which requires and internet connection, it is crippleware.
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If you go into your options menu, there's a difficulty slider. Put that all the way over to the easiest setting and you'll be fine. |
Ealiom
Blackhole Entry Point
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Posted - 2007.03.14 16:24:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Ealiom on 14/03/2007 16:21:52
God bless the no CD cr4ck!
Executioner Model Blackbird Model |
Vari
Carbide Industries
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Posted - 2007.03.14 17:23:00 -
[10]
Edited by: Vari on 14/03/2007 17:26:04
Average length of singleplayer games nowadays: 10-20 hours
Length of longest games today (Zelda: Twilight Princess for example): 60 hours
Said times quoted in days: .8 days & 2.5 days
Level in WoW you would be if you played for 2.5 days: ~40
Basically, WoW and other MMOs are huge timesinks for players, that's where all the time (and money) has gone.
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Jebidus Skari
Amarr
S.Y.N.D.R.O.M.E.
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Posted - 2007.03.14 17:39:00 -
[11]
If a game/music cd/DVD is good I buy it. Mostly I like one or two tracks from an album or I can tape films from the TV that aren't really worth buying, the companies lose nothing because I would never waste money on half baked products.
Sure, blame piracy for people not wanting to waste hard earned cash on utter crap. They need to step up their game and make decent products not whine about 'lost cash'
I got sick of paying a company for it's game only to find later that it wasn't worth the petrol to get to the shop  Only game that will get my money in the near future is Bioshock.
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easei
Energy.
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Posted - 2007.03.14 20:49:00 -
[12]
Well the way I see it all it's doing is pushing the game developers to the console market because there is less piracy.
Developers are cranking out as many games as they were if not more than before. It's just now you have to own an xbox/ps/wii to play anything great.
This doesn't hurt developers as much as hardware companies. In the old days of having to upgrade that videocard to run the new hot game now all games have to conform into the console spec's. Theirs no need for that nvidia 8000 (which is like 3x the graphical capibility of the xbox 360).
So software companies will not die as the record industry will, consoles will save them.
As an aside Dark Shikari is right game developers used to release bad games on the pc platform. Now the bad games have moved onto the consoles. Games that come out for PC prolly score higher on average then they did 4-5 years ago.
The best games will always come out for PC (FEAR, Farcry, HL2, Oblivion.
Go take a look at crysis its supposed to come out in a bit. (only problem is you need vista (dx10) to run it..I refuse to install that DRM'D piece of trash on my computer)
Energy Recruitment |
Shalia Ripper
Caldari
Caldari Provisions
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Posted - 2007.03.14 22:14:00 -
[13]
Poor game development and skyrocketing productions costs will hurt the industry more than piracy will.
That said, if I really *want* a game, I will buy it.
I didn't when I was 16 (16 years ago), but I was poor then. My friends and I swapped copies of games all of the time.
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Arian Snow
The Nest
Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate
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Posted - 2007.03.15 02:51:00 -
[14]
Edited by: Arian Snow on 15/03/2007 02:48:28
If 'Company of Heroes' and 'Supreme Commander' could be installed on win2k I'd have bought them!
If X3 Didn't use starforce I'd have bought it.
I take great care to examine what kind of copyprotection a game uses before I buy it. Tbh lately I have be buying less and less games, as the gamepublishers alienate their customers more and more with malicious copyprotection and daft or nonexistant support.
They are digging their own grave. Piracy has and allways will exist. If publishers cared to make their games more accessible and of better quality people would buy more games.
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I dont remember I dont recall I dont have memory of anything at all! |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Imperium Technologies
Firmus Ixion
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Posted - 2007.03.15 03:40:00 -
[15]
 Originally by: Arian Snow
If X3 Didn't use starforce I'd have bought it.
X3's copy protection is a joke to be honest. Not only is it easily bypassable, there are many ways to do it, ranging from simple but annoying to really easy.
1. Unplug your CD-ROM drive. X3 will work fine with your mounted CD image.
2. Use StarForce Nightmare to disable the drive. Takes a few seconds but works just as well.
3. Or just use a NO-CD patch and the game works just fine regardless 
--23 Member--
EVE-Trance Radio--The EVE Textboard |
jbob2000
Gallente
KIA Corp
KIA Alliance
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Posted - 2007.03.15 04:30:00 -
[16]
Well you can't get online when you play a *****ed version (for the newer games anyways) so that forces you to buy it. Also, updating pirated games is a pain in the ass.
The only reason I download games is because i can play them over LAN at school with tons of people, and it's silly to have to go and drop 50$ on something we'll only play on and off for a month of two.
Plus, some of the best games are free. Like TrackMania.
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KIA Recruitment |
Araxmas
Black Lance
Against ALL Authorities
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Posted - 2007.03.15 08:12:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Dark Shikari
In a way the companies are actually shooting themselves in the foot; some recent copy protection makes it quite difficult to play the game with an authentic disk, so many people just resort to piracy.
Yep when hl2 came out there was crap loads of problems with steam so people resorted to downloading a pirated steam-free version to bypass it.
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Robbie Rotten left me |
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