Stardock Declares Victory Over Demigod Piracy 403
We recently got a look at some hard numbers related to the piracy of Demigod , a new game from Stardock and Gas Powered Games. Now, two weeks later, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has essentially declared the game a success in spite of the piracy, and reaffirmed the company's stance that intrusive DRM is a bad thing. The game's sales figures seem to bear him out. Quoting:
"Yep. Demigod is heavily pirated. And make no mistake, piracy pisses me off. If you're playing a pirated copy right now, if you're one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you're a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way. The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games and people who don't buy games. The focus of a business is to increase its sales. My job, as CEO of Stardock, is not to fight worldwide piracy no matter how much it aggravates me personally. My job is to maximize the sales of my product and service and I do that by focusing on the people who pay my salary — our customers."
Not really accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't gloating. He isn't saying they've beaten the pirates. He's saying the game is selling well despite them, and it is. There's a big difference.
Re:One should never gloat (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, come on now - he's a visionary standing up for our rights! [slashdot.org]
I don't care about the personality of the CEO, as long as he's providing me with DRM-free games I can play on any computer any time, without fighting with SecuCrap, ShitForce, or requiring a DVD.
The only thing I care about (as a gamer) is whether the game plays (excluding obvious stuff like the game should be fun :P ), and lately a lot of games just don't run. :/ I can't tell you how aggravating it is to buy a game, install it, and find out it crashes instantly with some error code related to the DRM.
Damn you EA. You suck.
Metcalfe's law (Score:5, Insightful)
Won't something like Metcalfe's law also apply to games. The more people that play the game the higher the worth of the game. So while losing customers to pirated versions is bad (but I'd argue not too common and entirely unstoppable by DRM), gaining non-customers to pirated versions is actually good (not very good as you don't get any money) as it adds value to your game. In the case of multiplayer games this value is obvious (even if they can't play against legit version, they will help augment the community) and for single player games they may tell friends and eventually somebody they know who likes the game may pay for it.
It would be interesting if somebody could put a monetary value on pirated version (other than stupidly assuming every pirated copy is a lost sale)
Maximizing profit or maximizing game development? (Score:2, Insightful)
What should we be focusing on? Maximizing profit or maximizing game development? or in other words - producing games to live, or living to produce games? I know which future i want ... and i want it now!
Response to piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Games are easy to make. Gpogle for 'flash games' and you'll find 100,000 crappy little card games and Tetris clones. Good games are HARD to make. It costs real time from people with real talent who need to be paid in real money. The problem is that the costs of developing a game are not connected to the cost of replicating the game. The first copy of the game costs 5 million dollars. the second copy costs 4 cents.
Piracy isn't an issue until it's so rampant that those with the money choose to pirate anyway.
Would you pay 4 dollars to see a matinee? Would you buy a scifi novel for 6 bucks? Try comparing the time you spend enjoying each of these to the time you spend on a video game, and you'll find that the 40-50 dollars spent on a good game is surprisingly cheap!
I bought GTA San Andreas a long time ago. (years?) I picked it up again this last weekend and got another afternoon of fun out of it!
Don't be at all hesitant to buy a good game, even if you have a playable pirate copy - it's insurance for more fun in the future!
If you like what he's done.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If you like what he's done.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Or better yet, buy a copy then tell them why.
Which has long been his position (Score:5, Insightful)
His argument for a long time has been that copyright infringement sucks, but it happens protections or not. However protections piss off your legit customers. Thus, since they don't stop copying and do piss off the people that pay, don't do them.
I think this is quite a good attitude. I mean yes, people copied the shit out of Demigod. People copy the shit out of most anticipated new releases so that shows nothing other than people are interested in the game. The interesting title to compare it to would be Spore. Spore was much more highly anticipated, however it had real whiz bang copyprotection: SecuROM 7 including online activation. To hear the talk on it, you'd think this was your 100% anti-copying solution. All sorts of nifty encryption and obfuscation and you have to connect to an online server! Ha, beat that shit pirates!
The result? A torrent with 5 digits worth of peers active on it on the Piratebay when it came out. Ya THAT was real effective.
So Demigod got copied all over, but still sells well and they spent $0 on copyprotection and didn't piss off legit customers with it. Spore got copied all over, and they spent a non-trivial amount on protection and pissed off customers.
I don't know how it'll all play out in the end. What I know is that I do own Demigod, and I do not own Spore. SecuROM 7 games can get fucked IMO. I don't play the limited activations thing. I like to be able to upgrade and reinstall my system, and I like to be able to play my games 10, 15, 20 years later (I still play Xcom).
Re:Useless to get angry about it (Score:3, Insightful)
> the "copying = theft" mistake
From the definition of steal, courtesy of dictionary.com:
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance
Def #2 makes illegitimate copying theft pretty much by definition, but even if you want to interpret that as only "ideas" and not "intellectual property", then #3 will cover it with its fairly broad "to ... get ... insidiously".
So yes, copying is, in fact, theft. Maybe not in the same way as stealing a car is theft, but I don't see him saying it is.
"after 20 years of experiment, .." (Score:2, Insightful)
> The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games
> and people who don't buy games.
Thats what always puzzled my about filesharing haters: Why _do_ some of them bother at all, if they make enough money, that somwhere on the other side of the world, maybe also on some other planet, two people he never knew and will never know shared their stuff?
> accept that you're a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way.
And promptly, he delivers the answer himself. Just another delusionist trying to shoehorn the planet into his business model. Copying a piece of information from your neighbor is not a theft. Yes, you do get something for nothing, but thats the whole freaking point of a copying machine. Endless supply for everybody. It does not automatically imply (although he would undoubtely like the thought) that you suddendly owe the creator of the original "as if" the piece was a physical product which cost money to produce. You first have to bend your mind heavily, internalize this "as if" concept almost religiously (which happens automatically if "as if" would make you money) in order to overlook the difference. The copying machine works only one way. Yet, the delusionists still think that the money (i.e. the wealth) they should get in exchange for providing input pieces to the copying machine has either to be multiplied at the same rate (i.e. an astronomical one, no less), or else the copying machine has to be smashed in order to _not_ bring wealth to everybody.
"after 20 years of experiment, practically all arguments are now against the internet."
The quote (that didnt fit into the subject line) is a conclusion from a recent article by one of germanys largest newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine), which is usually known for lobbying heavily for tougher IP laws. I always knew our grandgrandgrandfathers were right back then! General Ludd was the man! Lets finally get breaking some damn copying machines again!
Try and buy or try and ditch (Score:5, Insightful)
As I see it, pirating a game is only excusable if you're doing it to try it, after which you either buy it or stop playing.
Just recently I did this with Galactic Civilizations II - I downloaded it, played it for a while, liked it, went out and purposefully bought the game: Stardock got another sale when, had I not had a chance to check the game, they would have gotten nothing (I don't trust the industry - been burned once too many by some of the over-hyped turds they put out)
Way too many games out there come out not working well or not at all. The game reviews press is no help at all - they'll give glaring reviews to games which are pretty enormous turds, and conveniently forget about the bugs and lack of long term playability.
In my view, it's not at all morally reprehensible to pirate a game for testing - as long as you buy it if you keep playing it.
You mean 'shit'. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bears don't do 'business' in the woods.
Bears do, however, shit in the woods.
Just, y'know, when people start cringing from /language/, then we truly are doomed.
thief? (Score:2, Insightful)
He used the term thief:
thief, noun,
a criminal who takes property belonging to someone else with the intention of keeping it or selling it.
which by it's definition doesn't apply in this situation.
I'll accept the use of the word piracy as it has widespread use as relating to copyright infringement but I do think it's rather ridiculous to compare copying data to theft and murder on the high seas.
Re:Try and buy or try and ditch (Score:5, Insightful)
The hardware thing is a real problem because there is no standard for what counts as "minimum" and "recommended". I mean sure every game lists though, but what they actually mean by it varies wildly. Some games are nice and realistic. Their "minimum" means "The minimum hardware you'll need to enjoy playing the game." You find that if you meet the minimum spec, no problem, you gameplay is good. You can't crank everything up, but you still have no play problems. Doom was a game I remember like that. My computer was right at the minimum spec, but it still ran well.
Well other games are very unrealistic. "Minimum" means "Minimum to get the game to execute, but don't bother trying to play it'll suck." Sometimes even the "recommended" means "Recommended to be even somewhat playable but you are still going to have lots of problems." Ultima 9 was one I remember like this. When my roommate at the time got it he had just about the highest end system money could buy, which met or exceeded the recommended specs, and it still ran like shit.
So I do sympathize with people because it's a real problem. We really do need some kind of standard in the game industry so that you can look at the required specs and get a feel for how your system will actually do with a game. If a game needs top notch hardware there's nothing wrong with that, however it needs to be clear. People need to be able to have some confidence that a game will work well on their system.
You = RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, this stance on DRM is like the RMS stance on openness "Unless everything is 100% my way, no compromise it is WRONG!"
No, Demigod isn't DRM'd. The DVD is a standards compliant DVD with no trickey shit. The game installs and runs with no checks of any kind.
Online play requires authentication and use of an online server? Oh well stop the presses I mean that hasn't happened with except, well, maybe every online game ever. As to if something like that is DRM is rather a semantic argument. Sure it does require a legit copy, but then the anti-DRM stance was never supposed to be about being allowed to illegally copy things, now was it? Needing to log in to a central server to play is a feature many games have simply for player convenience. Heck I remember when Gamespy first got started it was because the whole decentralized server thing with games like Quake was a problem. How did you find people to play with? So there was a 3rd party "central server" created that all the distributed servers talked to. Newer games are just having their own central service.
Finally no, you needn't run Impulse to run the game. Impulse has it's little "Impulse now" thing that it likes to run, but all that does is check for patches. Shut it down if you like (there's an option to tell it not to load on startup). You can run the game without Impulse, or without a net connection for that matter.
The point here is that if you are going to cast things like having a CD key and using a central matching service in the same category as SecuROM and such, then you are effectively making you definition of DRM meaningless and running off in to zealot territory. The reason you should, as a gamer, be anti-DRM is because it makes games not work. Like you take these recent games with SecuROM that you can only install 3 times, ever. After that, you are done. THAT is DRM and that is a problem. Wanting you to have an account on their online play service to play online is not DRM.
Gamers need to be a little reasonable here because remember, as with all things, there is a balance of rights. Yes, you should have the right to buy a game and play that game for as long as you want in the way you want. You shouldn't have some DRM program getting mad because you installed it too many times or because it doesn't like your CD drive. However the developers have rights too. They have a right to try and make sure people aren't illegally copying their game, and they certianly have a right 0ot make sure those people who do illegally copy it can't make use of the services the company provides for it. It shouldn't be an all or nothing situation on either side.
I'd liken it to freedom of speech. Yes, you have the right to freedom of speech, however your right to freedom of speech can't interfere with my right to freedom of association. What that means if you are free to speak your mind, but not in my living room if I don't want you to. I am free to ignore what you say. Yes, that does limit your rights in a small way. You don't have the right to force me to listen to your views, however that is a necessary limit on your rights to preserve mine and one I think we can all agree is reasonable.
So you need a balance in games rights too. Demanding no DRM is fine when DRM means "Shit that interferes with rights I should have." Demanding no DRM is not fine when DRM means "Anything you do that I don't approve of."
Re:You = RMS (Score:1, Insightful)
DRM = Digital Rights Management
In other words, anything intended to protect the rights of the owners of the data is DRM. Some DRM is particularly bad, like SecureROM and some is less problematic, like CD keys. All of it, however, is DRM.
Re:Response to piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
And the view I take supports this. I buy games in order to say "I like this game, make more of this." I also buy games in order to make it a statement when I don't buy Spore or Far Cry 2. For other games, I think it's important to note that just about everyone I know who pirates does it in two stages.
The first stage consists of "Am I going to buy this product? Do I have the money to buy it? Is it worth the money?" If the answer is yes then we buy it. If no then we move on to the next stage.
The second stage is simply "Do I want this product despite not being able to afford it / thinking it's not worth the money?" If no, then it is ignored - if yes, then it is pirated.
Now, I don't know about other people out there, but if you want to buy me every Nina Simone record ever, every Metallica record ever, blah blah until I have about 150 GB of 320 kB/s and less, then feel free. To me that wouldn't be a trivial amount of money, in fact it's more money than I have ever had. So either buy me the records yourself or recognise that piracy is not as big a problem as everyone not having infinite money.
You have to be kidding. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because a feature of a game is broken justifies pirating it?
You did exactly what he stated, you used whatever inane reason you could find to justify being a thief.
In other words, you declared yourself a victim and decided upon restitution you deemed appropriate, which apparently is that stealing other people's property is ok if it has a bug. What's next ? Unacceptable box art?
Game companies, actually any software company, do not have to attain a defensible position in regards to not wanting to have their products pirated.
What it really comes down to is that thieves will always find some justification. As soon as the their condition is met they will invent a new offense and thereby justify their continued thievery.
sorry, but your post sucks and that it was rated insightful is a disgrace to those of us who do programming for a living. I can't meet your high standards because they don't exist in any form that can be quantified thereby meaning anything I produce you want you will just take.
Re:You = nothing to do with RMS (Score:1, Insightful)
No, Demigod isn't DRM'd.
And in the very next paragraph:
Online play requires authentication
You're full of it.
If the game requires any form of authentication to unlock any significant functionality then it's DRM'ed. End of story.
It has nothing to with RMS. Nothing to do with zealotry. It's DRM. That's "Digital Rights Management".
You can try rationalizing the DRM all you like whilst pretending that somebody can still "buy" the game but you know full well that when somebody doesn't have control of their own keys it's just another form of rental.
Some people are happy to rent. Many aren't, no matter how hard the marketers and assorted astroturfers try to dissemble.
---
Adopt an astroturfer [wikipedia.org]. Make their life hell.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:1, Insightful)
In other words, you declared yourself a victim and decided upon restitution you deemed appropriate, which apparently is that stealing other people's property is ok if it has a bug.
Um. Y'know, I'm certainly in favour of respecting copyrights (I'm a photographer, and I've also written (GPL'ed) tools as well as (CC-licensed) short stories, so in fact, I actually *rely* on copyright), but let's stay with the facts: copyright infringement is not theft, and it's not "stealing other people's property".
-1, Drank the Kool-Aid.
(And yes, I know, it's a point that always gets trotted out again when somebody confuses these things, no matter whether it's deliberately or out of ignorance. But as long as people still confuse them, it's worth trotting it out again and again, too.)
Re:Ironically... (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh? What?
You (or someone) thinks a game has a horribly broken feature A and therefore thinks it's ok to pirate the shit?
Excuse me but just as the quote says, you're trying to rationalize your thiefing.
If you think game is broken piece of crap, don't buy it. It doesn't give magically give you right to ignore copyrights and pirate it.
Re:Response to piracy (Score:1, Insightful)
10-40 hours to read a novel? They write them 10.000 pages long these days?
Your 10,000 page example is idiotic.
When one reads a novel one actually takes the time to read the words, one does not just glance at the page prior to turning it.
Reading a 10,000 page novel in 10 hours would be 1,000 pages an hour which would be 3.6 seconds per page.
Reading a 10,000 page novel in 40 hours would be 250 pages an hour which would be 14.4 seconds per page.
In your case I'll be charitable and say you might manage to plough through a ten page novel in ten hours.
Re:Ironically... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Useless to get angry about it (Score:3, Insightful)
#3 is bullshit, since it more depends on the definition of a right, not on the definition of theft itself.
Using the logic that ignoring someone elses artificial (its not natural nor consensual, remember) "right" on something _you_ already possess you then could also argue that William Wallace was "stealing" when he refused to hand over his wife to get fucked by the english occupying forces who installed themselves an exclusive artificial right "ius primae noctis". Also a slave running away from his owner would be "stealing" because the slave obviously does not have the "right" to run away. Marital infidelity also could be "stealing" of someones exclusive "sex right" in jurusdictions where extramarital sex is not allowed.
The right to share information with other people is inherent, it doesnt have to be explicitely granted. Like your right to have sex. You dont first need somebody to "allow" you to have it. The right you think of, the copyright, is not a real right, but a _removal_ of other peoples rights to freely exchange information (or bodily fluids) with each other, ie a communication ban, i.e. censorship. Ignoring censorship "rights" isn't stealing, no matter how much you'd like to call it so.
Re:Useless to get angry about it (Score:3, Insightful)
According to that definition, when I was given a free Nintendo DS and 10 games because I won a raffle, I stole it - "to take, get or win [...] by chance"
For completely not-creepy reasons, the local teen center turned me into a criminal!
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Shivetya Said
But Brad Wardell is quoted as saying...
sounds to me like Brad accepts at least some of the downloads are people trying out the game to check fun factor and playability. I guess it depends on your definition of pirate, downing to try out for a limited time is not in my opinion pirating, find you like the game, conituing to play but not paying for it is.
Re:One should never gloat (Score:3, Insightful)
1. "I bought GalCiv ... they were not copyprotected."
okay, got it, what you bought was not copyprotected... you can install it, play it, and nothing gets in your way.
2. "Later on they snuck online-hardware authentication into the game."
I suppose that's by means of an update or something of the sort... okay, with you so far...
3. "So if they go out of business, and I upgrade to a new computer, I lose the games I bought."
and here you lost me, at least on technical grounds.
If at point 3 you can no longer play the game from point 2, could you still play the game from point 1? I presume that you can.
You'd have to argue that the game at point 2 is still the game from point 1 - and I'd argue that it isn't ; what if the developer went bust immediately after launch? you wouldn't have gotten any updates for point 2 to exist.. but you could still play the game from point 1.
So if point 3 should happen, nothing happened to the game you bought - you've still got it from point 1. You can't play it with the updates from point 2, but presumably you didn't buy those updates*.
Doesn't make what you mention any less troublesome - but in terms of what would happen to the games you purchased, in this case? Presumably not a whole lot.
=====
* Though more and more it seems that an implied part of the cost of purchasing a game is the 'privilege' to download major bugfix patches, often through some major gaming portal that will ditch that patch after a year or so and you have to hunt around to find the patch elsewhere.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
They do it because they think some games are not worth paying fifty bucks to get eight hours of gameplay.
I'd rather think that more often than not the people that pirates games do so because it's free, convenient, and consequent-free.
Think of it from the point of view of kids. All they'll need is a computer and a broadband connection and they'll be able to play all the latest games(movies, music, applications, books, comics, etc.) that they want.
The only incentive to buy games is for multiplayer and new updates. Stardock understands this, and thus controls their patch distribution to the ones that have legitimate copies for Galactic Civilizations II.
And the kids who do pirate now, will eventually grow up and get jobs and more importantly, money. Hopefully by then, with all the years of guilt of screwing good developers, they would buy the games that brought hours of fun to their lives.
At least, that's what I did. Doesn't make up for all of my past actions but it did remove the guilt of screwing the really good game makers out there. And for the other hundreds of buggy/DRM-ed games & software out there, I'm just glad I didn't have to pay for them and will now avoid them. :)
Bottom line, I bet it's all about money. A small percentage of pirates might be pirates because of their ideologies on DRM and whatnot, but that's just a handful of souls.
Developers/distributors thinking that every pirated copy is a lost sale is idiotic and hopeless. There will always be piracy, better to just not think about them and concentrate on making a good product. It could be a marketing tool even if the game is well made: All things being fair, the more people playing the game the more mods, custom content, and vibrant communities will form.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is still wrong. It's a differing act with differing consequences, but it's still wrong.
As a programmer... (Score:2, Insightful)
You're right that if copyright infringement is wrong, something like bugs at launch don't suddenly override this. However, if one doesn't believe copyright should even exist, then nitpicks like this have more force.
And yes, it's perfectly possible to make a decent living as a programmer without the existence of copyright. I don't feel personally aggrieved by copyright infringement. I try to stay out of businesses where a company depends on copyright for its existence.
Re:As a programmer... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right that if copyright infringement is wrong, something like bugs at launch don't suddenly override this. However, if one doesn't believe copyright should even exist, then nitpicks like this have more force.
If one doesn't believe copyright should even exist, then one should not participate within the society that has copyright. To be a part of society, you essentially agree to abide by the laws that society establishes. There is never a legitimate justification for breaking/ignoring laws, until such a time where you're seeking to overthrow your government.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were to go to target and buy a vacuum cleaner and found that an attachment was broken when I got it home, I could go back to Target and return the defective item. Games offer no such resolution. I can't take demigod back to Target and demand a refund because the multiplayer is broken, i have to suck it up and use "what works"
Pirating games may not be right, BUT when I buy something that doesn't do what it says on the box, I expect to have rights as a consumer. The game industry is screwed up because once you buy it, no matter how terrible it is, you are stuck with it.
Re:As a programmer... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't infringe copyright, I just don't believe that copyright should exist. It's silly to suppose that one must fully believe and internalize all laws of the current society. Social change in such case would be impossible.
Even if I was inclined to risk the consequences of copyright infringement, it would still be fairly silly to abandon society due to such a minor thing. Your "accept every single law or GTFO" attitude is fairly unrealistic.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with most of the above.
You are a pirate, accept it and realize that you are not paying for what you are using. If you just trying it out (most demos show you the best, not the worst in a game, like movie trailers), are caught in our "Changing economic times" or are just unable to pay then so be it. Accept that what you do is wrong, its a matter of the self-centered thought that only you matter.
Now if you can afford it and have tried it out, you really should pay for it if you feel its worth the buy. If its not, uninstall and be done. It would be nice if game companies took this stance world wide.
That said, Gas powered games just loves to produce games with horrible networking. Supreme Commander was a nightmare to get a game of more then 4 people going let alone staying without a person crashing or disconnecting. They where clueless on NAT, something that so many other companies have been doing for decades now. Broken games can be broken, try them out, if they suck in a manner you dont like then you uninstall and dont buy the product.
In the end, if you havent paid the money for someones work then you really are taking away from someone that has put the effort into the game creation. It would be nice if game companies provided a way for those that where unable to afford the full retail price could make a "donation" or some such payment of what they could afford.
Re:One should never gloat (Score:3, Insightful)
3. "So if they go out of business, and I upgrade to a new computer, I lose the games I bought."
and here you lost me, at least on technical grounds.
If at point 3 you can no longer play the game from point 2, could you still play the game from point 1?
I bought the game as an electronic download. I also bought the expansion packs via electronic download. This all goes through the Stardock package manager.
At some point the protection was added (I don't know at exactly what date). Since it wasn't announced and no permission was asked, I have lost the version without copyright protection.
I also believe the expansions require a certain patch-level of the main game, so if I had a backup of the main game somewhere, I still be locked out of playing my expansions.
The point is, part of the reason why I _bought_ the games was the lack of any DRM. In their current FAQ about this issue it's stated somewhere along the lines "Aw c'mon.. it's not like we're asking a bloodsample or something. Our DRM is non-intrusive and easy. C'mon guy!". But my point in losing my games in care of bankruptcy is still valid as long as they keep using DRM.
Though more and more it seems that an implied part of the cost of purchasing a game is the 'privilege' to download major bugfix patches, often through some major gaming portal that will ditch that patch after a year or so and you have to hunt around to find the patch elsewhere.
This is an interesting point. However, most games only release bug fixes. Usually any substantial real content is released as a pay-for expansion.
Combine this with the attitude of most software companies that the user is now a glorified beta-tester, ("Aw, we'll fix it in a patch, lets release now and start raking in the cash."), and suddenly the argument of expecting free bug-fixes seems very reasonable indeed.
As a sidepoint. I also bought "King's Bounty: The Legend" because I loved the old "Might and Magic Heroes" games..
The damn disc won't even read in my computer! My laptop's drive reads it ok but lacks the hardware to run it. The disc it not scrathed or anything but it's the damn DRM they're using that locks me out. I had to wait for a crack to be release to play it because on the official forums the advice was "Your DVD drive is broken, go buy a new one", which is bullshit because all other discs I own read just fine. It's not even an obscure brand drive.
In short DRM is evil incarnate. I don't buy any games with DRM that is too restrictive. The fact that Stardock snuck it in later sucks balls.
Take Unreal Tournament as an example. After a reasonable time, they release unprotected executables via the regular patches.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, isn't that great? By classifying any opinion that disagrees with his as "rationalizing," everyone is automatically wrong but him! Clearly, then, you must be a thief.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference, though. I'm not saying copyright infringement isn't bad, or that it doesn't harm the company, but there is a difference.
If someone steals a car off a dealer's lot, the dealer doesn't have that car to sell anymore, and thus can't make any money at all off it. If someone steals a comic off the shelf at a comic book store, the store doesn't have that comic book to sell anymore, and can't make money off it. If the person wouldn't have bought it if they couldn't steal it, the store has still lost money in either case: whatever they paid for the item, car or comic, is gone forever with no return. If the person would have bought it if they couldn't steal it, the store has lost whatever they paid for it, plus whatever profit they would have made.
If someone downloads a song, or a game, or a copy of some piece of proprietary software, the company still has it to sell to other people. If the person would have bought a copy if they couldn't download it, the company has lost the value of exactly one sale. If the person would not otherwise have bought it, the company has lost nothing.
Again, I'm not saying downloading software or music illegally is morally or ethically right -- in general, I think it's not, but that's irrelevant to the discussion at hand -- but there is certainly a difference between downloading cracked software and stealing a physical item.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't give the user any excuses to not buy the game, a few more people (with a conscience, just a slow one) will give you some money. If you treat them poorly, they will make shit up and convince themselves they don't need to pay. Then they buy your game out of the bargain bin five years later and say "I paid for it eventually!" I've lived with those guys a zillion times. I've also been part of groups where we all bought the game. YMMV.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case of copyright infringement the person it was copied from does not lose possessions and there is no guarantee that the person who copied the product would have paid for the product under other circumstances.
Media companies believe that they are the victims of theft whenever a product of theirs is copied. They see it as someone taking money from their pockets, even though the money may never have ended up there in the first place.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm wondering whether comparing the American fight for independence to your right to take other people's work without paying for the privelege makes you delusional or just misguided.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:3, Insightful)
It's interesting to me how peoples' point of view changes reality.
It's interesting how when some people think they're broadening their minds what they're really doing is stretching their conscience.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:4, Insightful)
You can sit and twist and contort it however you want, but people pirating games costs other people money. Making a bit-for-bit copy of someone's software is not a consequence-free act no matter how much some people here want to believe otherwise.
Neither side can prove that money would or wouldn't have changed hands. It's all a moot point from a legal perspective, anyway.
However we can talk about things from a moral and ethical perspective. Here's my take:
Corporations own the majority of IP in the world. Corporations lobby for what is effectively becoming an unlimited copyright term, violating the spirit in which copyright was enacted. They aren't respecting the people. Why should the people respect them?
Re:Not really accurate (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, you're watching way too much MSNBC. That's makes you just as bad as those who watch FOX all day.
Neither group knows what's really going on.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not really accurate (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that copying is stealing and believe the people responsible are thieving little creeps, but I challenge the assertion that Joe is a lost sale in your scenario.
Joe may be a little 14 year old pothead, with a $25 dollar allowance. Every two weeks he has enough cash to buy a bag, but has no money for games. Lets also say his parents dont buy him games to play. The fact that he enjoys video games means that he has to get them for $0 , or he doesnt play them. Now, playing a game and having interest in the game does not make him a lost sale, it just makes him a thief. There was never a point in time that he would even potentially have bought a disk. In a best case, his little pot-head buddies may enjoy the free version, but not have the will or knowledge to steal it (or more likely, have money or willing parets)... and these people may end up purchasing after playing the stolen "demo"
This is best case outcome, but Joe was never a potential purchase. I beleive this is why the article stated that the game was sold to the customers needs, not the pirates benefits.
Re:As a programmer... (Score:3, Insightful)
Replace "copyright" with "seperate but equal" and lets see if your statement about "never a legitimate justification to breaking / ignoring laws" holds true.
If you don't believe in copyright, then infringe, but do it in the open, just like others have fought laws they precieved to be unjust... and be ready to face the consequences.
Re:You have to be kidding. (Score:1, Insightful)
"sounds to me like Brad accepts at least some of the downloads are people trying out the game to check fun factor and playability. I guess it depends on your definition of pirate, downing to try out for a limited time is not in my opinion pirating, find you like the game, conituing to play but not paying for it is."
Thats what i did with GTA-4... I downloaded it & couldnt get it to work on my machine (although this is most likely due to their heavy-handed DRM than any problems with my computer) and so i deleted it, didnt buy the game, have never played it (despite the fact that i LOVE GTA) and probably never will play it.
Good job rockstar... your DRM got the point across. If i had been able to try the game out, i absolutely would have bought the game (as i have done with all the other GTA games) but since it apparently wont work on my machine, i wont bother.
Meanwhile... my new favorite game (dwarf fortress) is free to play, you never have to spend a dime in order to get full access to the game... and i have donated to the authors several times. Indeed, they got the $50 i would have spent on GTA-4.
Make a good game that i like, and ill buy it, even if you dont require me to. Make a good game that is blocked by a bunch of crap DRM, and i wont bother, no matter how good your game is.
I'm not saying that this is what all downloaders do, but it is the downloaders like me who *will* buy your game... if you let us... the other guys weren't going to spend any money in the first place, theres nothing to lose with them, and THEY are the ones who will be determined enough to get around your DRM & play the game anyway. Me, i wont bother, i'll just delete the thing & write it off as yet another game that cant or wont run on my machine... and when i see it on the store shelf i'll keep right on walking.
Re:As a programmer... (Score:2, Insightful)
So you're saying the Underground Railroad should have attempted to be as conspicuous as possible? That homosexuals should have come right out decades ago and faced an extremely conservative society, consequences be damned? Many important social changes would never have occurred had they needed to start as overtly as you are suggesting.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:3, Insightful)
However, being able to make infinite copies of something means that you also have the potential hazard of infinitely diluting its value. $50 / infinity = pretty much $0. That's not a good equation to try to wrestle with if you're trying to deal with people stealing your stuff, and the final result can be the same as if you no longer had a car to sell.
Re:Not really accurate (Score:3, Insightful)
How is the "if a physical object is stolen it's gone, if a digital object is copied it's still there" argument flawed? Certainly many people follow it to its illogical conclusion ("the digital object is still there, so no harm has been done"), but I would say that's a problem with the people drawing the conclusion, not with the basic argument.
Regardless, I agree: dishonest is dishonest, crime is crime. The fact that illegal copying only deprives the company of one sale doesn't make it any better, just less damaging.
Re:You = RMS (Score:5, Insightful)