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PCGA To "Take Up the Challenge of Piracy"
Posted by
Soulskill
on Tue Nov 11, 2008 01:25 AM
from the work-cut-out-for-you dept.
from the work-cut-out-for-you dept.
Ars Technica reports that the PC Gaming Alliance has declared themselves the "guardians of PC gaming," which includes finding ways to help gamers decide on gaming hardware, and to make progress on the issues of piracy and DRM.
"[PCGA President Randy Stude said,] 'The PCGA will take up the challenge of piracy, not to assume the responsibility that the ESA has taken on... rather the PCGA would like to address the methodology that publishers might be able to take to solve, or to do a better job trying to solve, the piracy challenge for their substantial investments in content.' The PCGA won't give a standard approach to publishers, saying it is much more likely it will release a series of recommendations to publishers, and track piracy on an annual basis to see if the problem is growing or shrinking. The PCGA is also working on methods for members to track how effective their antipiracy measures are once a game has been released."
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Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
Members [wikipedia.org] include Microsoft and WildTangent.
I think I'm gonna be sick.
I'd prefer to have Penny-Arcade as the "Guardians of PC Gaming"
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It usually comes as a 'helper' (adware) app in some software discs for peripherals. I have seen this installed as part of a digital camera install, but I cannot remember which one. (Kodak, I think?)
You might check to see when it (WildTangent) was 'last modified', then do a file search for 'modified on that same date-time' to see what else came in at the same time.
I doubt it came from AT&T, but I guess anything may be possible anymore.
Most likely a camera, digital picture frame, etc...
Anyone with current
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Isn't that the spyware bunch? I know I recently had to remove WildTangent software from my Dad's PC,and he has never played a PC game in his life. So all I can figure is he got zapped in a bundle or something,because WildTangent was running on his PC and slowing his PC and net connection down bad. Just the fact that Spybot detected them is enough for me to label them crapware,although someone here may know more about whether they are adware or spyware. I know I have been seeing it more and more on older folks PCs,and come to think of it they all had AT&T DSL. Does anyone know if this crap is being bundled with AT&T software?
According to Decrapifier [pcdecrapifier.com] it comes bundled with 70% of HP/Compaq PCs
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Members [wikipedia.org] include Microsoft and WildTangent.
I think I'm gonna be sick.
November 3: Casual Dev WildTangent Closes Internal Studio, Cuts Staff [gamasutra.com]
They'll still be doing publishing apparently, but no more in-house development.
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"Did you know that "654", is a variant on "69", which is used by the editor Raul654."
Citation needed ^_^
I don't see what the problem is (Score:5, Insightful)
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But the DRM has gotten so nasty lately that I'm afraid to buy any games for fear it'll bone my PC.
And ironically, the best way around it while still staying legal is to download the cracked version from BT or usenet, and then buy the boxed game and toss it in the closet.
Guess which step most people these days leave out?
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Re:I don't see what the problem is (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, and it's very tastefully decorated too.
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A house near me (I live in a university town) does actually rent out two large closets as living spaces, $100 a month. This is the kind of house where 2/9 rooms are hotboxed at any given moment and there's a concert in the basement every week. YMMV, but I think it might be pretty fun.
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Hey, I actually lived in a closet(3'x7') for a year you insensitive cliche!
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I don't see what the problem is with simply needing a legit key to play online.
The problem is in the act of deciding if a key is legit or not.
..) don't have much of a problem here because even illegitimate keys must pay. Games which are not pay-per-month (ex: CounterStrike, Diablo, ..) do have a serious problem with key validation.
Pay-per-month games (ex: World Of Warcraft, Eve Online,
I don't know what solution is acceptable here, however the latest DRM schemes seem to address a different issue entirely (that of removing First Sale rights from the consumer.)
Stop treating the customer like a criminal. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can beat the pirates on the first 3 points, people are generally a lot more willing to pay.
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Let me add more to this. The software industry is one of the few industries that get away with selling complete bug ridden crap, and stuff that will stop working one day as computers and operating systems advance with no recourse to support.
I have an old copy of FF7 for the PC which just barely works, but it took a lot of hunting around the net to do so. This could be cured by forcing old games source to be opened so that the games themselves could be maintained as newer hardware and OS's are released. Y
Re:Stop treating the customer like a criminal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only do you get the piracy thing, but also lately quite a lot of DVDs I've bought came with commercials for other movies. With the anti piracy (don't steal this movie) and FBI warning (smart one to show in Denmark) and absurd long menu sequence and commercials for other movies (skip able) it took almost 4 minutes before I got to see my movie - and you have to sit through it every bloody time you want to watch it. Next time I'm downloading!
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Re:Stop treating the customer like a criminal. (Score:5, Informative)
The best way around that crap is to stick the disc in your computer, and use various software to rip out the garbage. Optionally, use Handbrake, encode to h.264, and stream it to a set-top-box/game console instead.
Parent
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At that point it's faster and easier to just find a torrent and download the movie.
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The best way around that crap is to stick the disc in your computer, and use various software to rip out the garbage. Optionally, use Handbrake, encode to h.264, and stream it to a set-top-box/game console instead.
Yeah, that takes less than four minutes. Thanks, champ.
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Usually you can skip it, but you have to hit menu at the right time (there is a 1-2 second flashing with something like: "hit menu now to skip trailers").
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...says someone who still no doubt expects to get paid for HIS job, although you are clearly delusional enough to expect you have the right to take the fruits of other peoples work for free.
Fucking bullshit. You are just rationalising being a cheap-ass.
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...says someone who still no doubt expects to get paid for HIS job [...] take the fruits of other peoples work for free.
Canonical pays money to developers in return for them making the software better. The software that they give away.
Consider that for a while.
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and that works for video games how exactly?
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And Canonical is losing money on the proposition, as we discussed recently.
Consider that for a while.
The PCGA? (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't that the standard body for chimp golfing?
consoles are the key (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do people still use PCs for gaming? PCs are business tools... Consoles are better for gaming because the game development company can rely upon a specific hardware configuration.
This isn't a troll, but an honest observation.
obvious answer (Score:2)
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I bought Unreal Tournament 3 recently for my ps3 (which I bought primarily to watch blu-ray movies on) for three reasons:
1. It's $20, brand new
2. I saw that the company put up map packs for download on the playstation store, for FREE - unlike every other game that charges you up to $10-15 for a couple extra maps
3. You can use a USB or bluetooth keyboard and mouse to play the game, on the ps3!
I've only played it for a few minutes (I've got other things, like being a grad student and browsing slashdot, to do)
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Consoles are worse for gaming because the game development company is stuck relying on a specific hardware configuration no matter how how many years old.
Re:consoles are the key (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask the 10M-ish WoW players....
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Because console games are dumbed down to fit "no keyboard and mouse". It's impossible to control a game with the complexity of, say, Master of Orion. Just because some people are incapable of the mental processing required to do more than basic FPS doesn't mean we all suffer from the same lack of brains.
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The sort of games I like (sports sims. As in PROPER sims like Out of the Park Baseball) just don't work on a console.
And FPS and RTS only work well with mouse and keyboard, and if you're hooking them to your console to play them... You may as well just buy a PC.
Not to mention the PC is open. I write a game, I can release it, dead easy. I want to release it for a console I have official hoops I have to jump through.
And finally, I can still play Sensible World of Soccer and Cannon Fodder on my PC. (To name bu
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No, you are playing a REMAKE of a game. NOT the original. Any SWOS fan I know has no interest in that cheap cash-in on a legend. It's the original game we want. Not some watered down remake. (Just like I'd rather see the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre than the remake.)
And as for Vista... Well all I can say is there is a lovely DOSBOX version packed up with multiple configurations, team options etc... You can download for the PC, and gamepads work just fine with it and it's awesome.
And having played both t
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"This isn't a troll." Yeah, and she said she was 18. Still, I'll give you one (of countless) reasons: have you tried Alt-tabbing to Visual Studio on any of the consoles?
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Keyboard and Mice support, modding support, better graphical capabilities, easier to customize a setup (i.e. more options to do so), certain types of games work better with keyboard and mice, I can still play my games from 10 years ago on a new PC if I want to do a small amount of work...
Oh, there's reasons if you choose to not ignore them.
Don't kid yourself here. Even with the same hardware configurations, developers for consoles are still making buggy games. Recent ones are Fable II and Fallout 3.
Re:consoles are the key (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but you do actually sound a little like a troll. :) But I'll assume you're sincere.
"Consoles are better for gaming because the game development company can rely upon a specific hardware configuration."
Why does that make it better for the person who matter - the gamer? It's better for the development company, sure. Though if you're developing for XBox 360, publishing for the PC as well is relatively simple.
I have a gaming PC, a gaming laptop and a Wii. Of the three, the Wii gets by far the least use, gathering dust bunnies. Why do I game on the PC primarily?
1. Graphics: after gaming on a PC, looking at the Wii's Resident Evil 4 is like having sandpaper applied to my eyes; the pixels look the size of planets. One great thing about PC gaming is not just that new games look great - even older games can look better. After loving Oblivion, I've gone back to play Morrowind. If I was playing this on the XBox, it would only look as good as it did back in 2003. On the PC, I can take advantage of graphics cards upgrades and user-created mods such as the Morrowind Graphics Extender (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXEhlyqlzU0) so that the game looks far better than it did back in 2003. Which leads me to...
2. Mods & Community: Being a console owner is essentially a passive consumer experience. Sure, there are the beginnings of allowing user-created content on consoles, but this is still in its infancy and will _always_ be tightly controlled. For the PC, it's a collaborative experience; even a non-coder like me has been able to get involved, working on the unofficial Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines patch.
Just one example; look at the amount of mods and tweaks available for the PC version of Oblivion; you can customise it to your heart's content.
3. Meeces: I just can't play FPSs on gamepads. Have tried and failed. Same with strategy games. The mouse just seems to fit these games a lot better. Gamepads are fine for driving games but since I don't really like those, I don't them much. I actually have one anyway - the XBox controller works great with the PC wireless dongle - but those times I occasionally use one.
Oh, and I don't get the supposed "benefit" of consoles that you can slouch on the couch while playing them. If I'm playing a shooter online, I want to sit up alert in a nice comfy desk chair.
4. Portability: I can play the same games on both my desktop and my laptop, and using Microsoft's FolderShare (http://www.foldershare.com/) I can seamless and invisibly have my savegame files synchronised between the machines.
5. Cheaper games: People often point out that PCs cost a lot more than consoles. Very true. But, I'd be buying a PC anyway for non-gaming functions. OK, sure, I have to pay a bit more for a gaming PC over a normal PC. But new PC game releases cost around 20 less than the console equivalent. So, if you you're say buying 2 new releases a month, that adds up to almost 500 a year saved, which is easily enough to keep on the upgrade path.
P.
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Because my 2 CPU quad core 3 GHz machine with 8 GB of DDR and dual SLI GeForce BGX 1024 MB 8800GTX is pretty screamin' fast. I can pretty much play anything I want on it and I can emulate consoles.
When the console can emulate other consoles, let me know. I can also burn DVD while compiling code while recording TV and play Half Life 2 at the SAME TIME - and what's more, I can play at 2560 x 1600 on my $1,000 monitor without spending $$$ for an HDTV plasma (much less Mitsubishi LaserVue) screen that can't d
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I need a PC at home for business needs, and there is a big bonus at not needing to maintain, buy and worry about another electronic device. It does everything I need, including games as well, so a consle would offer no value to me - getting some games (like GTA) a few months earlier would be a small advantage, but it's not worth enough even to spend the effort to investigate and decide which of the current consoles to choose.
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Beyond that, for most games that I can get on a PC and a console, I get it for the PC. I have a gaming PC that is more powerful than a console. I prefer the ease of getting user created mods for these games on the PC. You just don't have the
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The herculean efforts involved in PC gaming...
All I can say is you must be doing it wrong. I game on the PC, and there are no herculean efforts involved.
... I'm no longer a student and have to work for a living.
Me too. That doesn't preclude gaming on the PC in the least. Again, I have no idea what you might be doing wrong, but this just screams "you're doing it wrong" to me.
Who put them in charge? (Score:4, Interesting)
My brother and I recently started an independent video game company and I had seen the PCGA covered on Slashdot a few times before. Looking for resources to help us, I called them up asking what they could do for us as a Mac, Windows, and Linux video game developer. They basically straight up said, "well... nothing". To be 100% honest, I do not really know what they do. If I had not seen them on Slashdot, I would not have known they existed.
I look forward to the day when they can do something for us, but until then as a PC game developer, albeit small, I can let you guys know that these guys don't represent us in any way shape or form. However, I wish them luck on their anti-piracy endeavor.
Meanwhile, on our end, we are going to lay off the invasive DRM and instead rely on creating high quality downloadable content and other online features like multiplayer which provide a clear incentive to purchase our game.
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"I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law" -- Aristotle
Some of us don't need DRM to keep us honest. You'd be wise to do the same.
It's like the XKCD comic says... (Score:4, Informative)
Steal it, and you're a criminal. Get the DRM locked media, something happens with technology that makes you have to try and remove the DRM lock just to use what you bought, and you're a criminal too.
Piracy will be way more popular now that every company is scrambling to DRM-lock their products (sort of like the Sony 'rootkit' happy fun time, companies have decided when we pay for something, they can stick whatever they want in their product and let us sort out the mess leftover).
Aw how things change. (Score:3, Informative)
This is all the copy protection Doom2 needed - And it was a heck of a money factory, in fact people still buy the doom collector's edition today because the wads can be used on the many ports (BTW id software GPLing the engine didn't stop them from profiting this way)
Well, I tend to miss those times...
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Re:Don't waste your money on Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)
the difference here is if there was a mistake on a wikipedia page you see the fix now. If you stumble across an old magazine that had a print error you don't necessarily have the page 400 font size 3 correction printed 6 issues later laying beside it..
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