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cue severel screens of justifiable anti drm complaints Two things:
1) I don't question the existence of piracy on various platforms, but I do very much question how various companies reach the figures they cite in regards to lost sales? It's very easy to flog the piracy horse and make it the scapegoat while avoiding taking any personal responsibility for other relevant factors such as pricing, DRM, activation limits, lackluster promotional campaign and downright poor game programming.
2) If they can find other methods of curbing piracy without negatively impacting (and yes, that includes tieing a game to a specific user account so it is effectively not worth selling on second-hand which is a customer right - I'm looking at you Steam), or otherwise inconveniencing the paying customer then by all means. Based on current methods I would welcome a sane solution, but remain sceptical. Yeah agreed, as you say, they can come up with as intricate a form of anti-piracy that they want but you can be sure that someone will crack it...sad but true because it is definitely affecting PC games and gamers! what a ****, despite crappy ports of console games to PC, Ubisoft's PC sales are double that of last year.
More crappy piracy measures will just ensure lower sales for them, their QA for PC games leaves a lot to be desired anyway with patches for crashes not appearing for 6 months after a games release etc.
Although i did enjoy HAWX on the PC so +1 for them for a decent PC version there. yes piracy is like a deadly virus spreading across the PC land. It turning all who incounter it into vicious pirates.
On guard i say. 'You fight like a Dairy farmer!' How appropriate. You fight like a cow...
I've got a suggestion: in the words of Geordi Laforge, it's crazy, but it just might work. How about we stop calling it 'piracy' (with all of its various connotations of coolness and high seas chicanery), and instead call it, maybe, I don't know, how about 'theft'?
I know that pirates are people, too; like I know that pornhounds are people, too. But with all due respect, they are a bunch of thieving b*st*rds, to be fair.
(That said, so are Activision. 55 quid? You're having a giraffe, or indeed a bubble bath...) The first and most obvious way to reduce piracy is to reduce the cost of the games even further. Another way would be to do as America's Army did, and that's to have games only work on developer owned servers. Expensive? Perhaps it's not cheap, but if the industry worked together, it would reduce the cost. And if the figures we're continually quoted from the industry are to be believed, this could work out far cheaper in the long run.
Steam's route of DRM is unfair to the honest gamers. So much so, I think it's disgraceful. Unlike those annoying adverts we see in DVDs we've actually bought and own, telling us copying movies is piracy, the games industry needs to be more respectful to honest gamers. I don't care what anyone says, the whole industry exists because of each and every one of us that buys their products!
The simple fact is no amount of advertising, marketing or education will change pirates from doing what they do. Also, like it or not, the government, along with internet providers, and the music, movie and game industry need to collaborate to resolve this. While laws, courts, fines and imprisonment don't stop theft, they do help reduce the amount people that would otherwise consider this activity. Most of us are aware that owing (UK only) council tax and other bills can result in court action, fines and baliffs, but having a computer filled with thousands of pounds worth of pirate games doesn't put your finances or personal possession at any risk!
One of the biggest issues really is with the attitude of all concerned. Gamers who do this don't care; while it may be theft, you inevitably look upon a friend who downloads games or movies differently than you would one who breaks into houses! I know people who download music and movies (not games as it happens) and I don't see them as criminals. If one started breaking into homes or businesses, I certainly wouldn't want to know them. The law, I believe, barely cares about the subject. It's far more important to ensure the local community and businesses are safe than to worry about someone copying games or movies from a company situated the other side of the world. Governments fail on pretty much any subject they attempt to get involved in. Internet providers clearly don't care whatsoever, and even if they did, they can fall to 'human rights' and privacy laws to ensure their continual laziness on the matter.
There are resolves, but if the world can't look after the planet and the people in it, I really don't think game, movie or music copying stands any chance.
When all said and done, if noone the big players mentioned above cannot resolve this then at some point, when the industry believes it's costing them too much they'll be forced to give up on PCs altogether and concentrate on consoles!
I have one last controversial idea. Create an incentive scheme (as Governments have set up with tax and benefit fraud), whereby there's an easy and anonymous way to point the finger at known culprits. While no one is likely to get their friends or family in trouble, it'll create a little paranoia, especially if the reward of several new games were an incentive and attractive enough. Sadly the digital industry is like the car and housing industry would be if windows, doors and locks weren't invented! Well ubisoft I wish you luck and hope you are successful but be warned the following:
1)If I have to be online to play the game (assuming its not an online only game haha) I wont be buying it.
2) If you limit installs aka Far cry 2, I wont be buying it. Just as I didnt buy Far Cry2
3) If your method of protection gets snoopy and disables or overides software on my PC I will not buy your game.
I totally understand companies doing their best to halt or slow piracy but seriously, Mirrors Edge, Dead Space, Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead would be in my collection right now had it not been for limited installs. Prove it can be done better Ubisoft I love how companies always blame piracy these days for poor sales, as if they have a crystal ball telling them how much of a game they should have sold.
I also love how it's always the companies who either don't release anything good, like to treat their customers with the same contempt you would afford a chewed bit of gum on your shoe, or just throw a tonne of 'anti-piracy' software on their games which is completely pointless as the only people who actually have to deal with it are the paying customers.
It just seems to be becoming the fashionable excuse these days.
I will however also throw in my two cents for "how to stop" piracy.
1) Don't be greedy little ****tards (looking at you Activision).
2) Use this Anti Piracy message: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MM0VO3slK8&feature=related. That should see them off. 8)
Oh, by the way Runadumb, whats that anime you're showing there? It looks cool. :) Check, check and check. Those are all vital "must-know-before-purchasing" points and they constitute immediate and irrevocable deal-breakers in my book. I have zero sympathy for the publishers and developers that utilize such methods; get new methods or go to hell. I'd rather they go bankrupt and disappear from the gaming scene than get away with those insidious, yet ultimately futile, methods. No quarter shall be asked for and none shall be given. En garde! :twisted: its an oldie called Battle Angel Alita. James cameron keeps threatening to do a live action film version but keeps getting distracted.
prince of persia was released without copy protection. wonder how its sales to piracy stats went. Cheers Runadumb. I never would have found it searching on the net based on that small clip. :wink:
Doesn't really help that the game itself was dire. From a story point of view, having to spend 8 hours trying to prevent an ancient evil from escaping, only to then be forced to set it free in the credits, is not my idea of good story telling.
Not to mention the fact that the game held your hand the entire way through, thereby nullifying any and all challenge. :?
It is an interesting point though as I'm beginning to think that this piracy thing has been blown out of proportion, as a convenient scape goat.
It's not as if it's a new thing afterall. Hell 'piracy' in this form has existed since we were given the hardware to copy floppies and record programmes off the tele with vhs.
Yes, it's grown with the industry and the internet has certainly made it easier to distribute, but is it really as bad as they want us to think? :?:
Who knows, but I would like to see some sales figures from companies who don't release their games with copy protection before I make a judgement.
Case in point "X3: Terran Conflict" is protected by Tages. During a sale on steam, there was a topic in the forums, 300 posts strong within only a few days, of people who refuse to buy the game whilst it still has the Tages software bundled with it.
Whilst only a small proportion of the overall populace, how many lost sales has this cost Egosoft?
Spore (Rubbish), Farcry 2, X3, Bioshock, Mass Effect. I'm sure they all claimed that piracy hurt sales and yet they all used heavy drm. It didn't stop pirates from getting hold of free copies and instead only hurt the paying consumer, driving most legitimate sales away.
The way I see it, copy protection has hurt sales far more than Piracy. :? Your right about piracy, there's always been a lot of piracy on PC, but publishers never gave a crap when sales were high, it's only when sales drop do they start blaming all their woes on it.
DRM seems to be going out of favour, and with good reason, most games are pirated and spread before the retail copy hits the streets, so what's the DRM preventing? Sub based and DLC funded games are the way to go, put out your game for free, with a limited time or content cap, and then get people to either pay a monthly sub or sell them extra content via micro transactions(or both). i still see streaming games as the future, not yet but in the future
still a few places without broadband let alone fibre optic high speed
and to me thats not a good thing, i want hard copys |
