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Greenhouse Games is the indie distribution website set up by the Penny Arcade team. There are more games for windows and mac than linux, but you will find a few titles that run natively, most notable the Penny Arcade itself, On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness (pt1 and 2).

Demos are available, so feel free to try before you slap down 10 quid or so.

So difficult to pirate that nobody bothers

So he's not a complete moron in thinking that a "perfect" DRM scheme exists. However, it's pretty stupid to think that something would ever become "so difficult to pirate that nobody bothers" -- remember, it only takes one person to bother.

Defense Grid is ten bucks, and it's giving me more than ten bucks worth of fun. Sure, I'm at Microsoft's mercy, and I don't "own" the product, but hey. Ten bucks.

It's also twenty bucks for the Greenhouse version, which seems more than a bit odd. It's worth mentioning, though, that you do own that one, such as it is -- the only DRM is a single Internet check on first installation, which seems reasonable for a downloaded game.

I charge $28 for a new game. I would LOVE to charge ten bucks. But, to stay in business, I'd have to triple my sales, and that won't happen. Would sales go up? Sure. Would they TRIPLE? Almost impossible.

I don't know about that. You didn't seem to have much trouble getting onto Slashdot, which would get you a fair number of sales. But your general attitude in this article already makes me skeptical, and there's no way I'm paying $28 for what I see in that game. $10? Sure, and if it was good, I'd tell my friends about it. $28? You just lost a sale, buddy.

The result? My games get pirated like crazy,

The question: Would your games be pirated less with more DRM?

More importantly: Even if they were pirated less, would that mean more sales for you? Because if I was pirating your games, and I suddenly couldn't pirate them anymore, I'd probably go pirate another game, not start paying for yours.

DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.

I will agree with that. However, very often, what we get in return is nowhere near worth the DRM.

An example of a marginally fair trade: Steam. Being able to IM a friend and hop into the game he's playing is cool. Being able to back up games, with a tool that will nicely create DVD-sized files, is very cool. Being able to download every game I own -- saturating my fiber connection -- after a reformat, in case something went wrong with the backup -- and needing only a username and password to recover all my games, and they're even planning to include savegames and settings, at some point -- is awesome.

But this is still a trade many users are unhappy with. I'm online all the time -- many users would like to play their single-player games offline.

An example of a very fair trade: World of Warcraft. The DRM is pretty much inherent in the system -- it connects to a server, and that server is unavailable to anyone who doesn't work for Blizzard. While there have been a few pirate servers, they pretty much have to reverse engineer and/or build from scratch most of the content and gameplay, and there's still the network effect -- if your guild's on a Blizzard server, you're on a Blizzard server. This is a case where you give up pretty much nothing for the DRM to work -- the one thing it takes from you is the ability to play offline.

One of the problems with eBooks is they take away the ability to loan or sell the books you buy online, not to mention the lack of a satisfying physical object, and they still charge the same price for the book.

That is why those of us in the know insist on unencumbered PDFs. I can get one that's watermarked, so I can't easily pirate it to the world, but I can easily share it among friends.

the purpose of DRM is to prevent free riders (aka self-justifying weasels and morally damaged scumbags).

The purpose of the McCarthy trials was to prevent communism from taking over America. It's a noble goal, but the casualties are unacceptable.

If DRM enables pro

(Offtopic: I haven't played a good RPG in ages. Any suggestions? Doesn't matter how old (or new) it is.)

• Fallout 3 - Shooter/RPG. Brilliant across the board.
• Mass Effect - Shooter/RPG. Excellent story, interesting dialog system, great graphics and music.
• Hinterland - RPG/sim-city hybrid. Quick and fun, but no story.
• Echelon: Book 1 - Haven't played this one yes, but it's been highly recommended to me.

Considering that the long-awaited PC version was just released a few days ago and people who didn't have access to XBox Live are just starting to play it, this game isn't exactly old news to some people even though it may be to you.

This is good since I know support Indie games more like; World of Goo, Multiwinia and the Penny Arcade game.

There is no platform for distributing comercial games available for Linux so far.

Au contraire.

It would be my game CD they broke, and there is little I can do about that. Kids break stuff and it's ok, you have to be very boring parent if you haven't noticed that.

This is highly theoretical since I have no CDs, you should only buy CD unencumbered games, such as:

• On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode Two
• World of goo
• Multiwinia
• Galcon RTS Risk

There should be others, but those run on many platforms..

It would be my game CD they broke, and there is little I can do about that. Kids break stuff and it's ok, you have to be very boring parent if you haven't noticed that.

This is highly theoretical since I have no CDs, you should only buy CD unencumbered games, such as:

• On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode Two
• World of goo
• Multiwinia
• Galcon RTS Risk

There should be others, but those run on many platforms..

If you want a Linux version, make sure you buy good Linux games that are out there. Push the statistics.

Penny Arcade Adventures was fun, and pretty trivial to get working on Ubuntu, even 64-bit.

I played the game on a Linux computer, and then moved the game to my wife's Linux laptop. I didn't notice any weird DRM.

There's a three install limit with the usual contact-them-for-more. It's an install time only check so it's hardly intrusive.

That's also why Halo 3 was such an amazing game. Bungie spent a huge part of their budget on developing and studying results from a staggeringly complete play testing environment. It was even featured in Wired.

Game companies should really learn these lessons.

If you want a good RPG in the style of the classic Origin games, then you can have it: Eschalon

http://www.playgreenhouse.com/

It is affiliated with (and I believe run by) the Penny Arcade guys. They sell games cheap, don't push DRM, and try to find games that offer Windows, Mac and Linux versions. They seem to offer trials for everything as well.

The percentage of people who would buy a game, copy it, and then return it for a refund or an exchange is probably so high that they are afraid to do these things.

RTFA. Bascially: Stardock measured an increase in sales when they added refunds, and not that many people bothered to return it.

I suppose there would have to be a point at which you start dealing with abuse, but keep in mind -- most people who want to pirate the game know about BitTorrent. The people who actually bought the game are, mostly, legitimate customers.

I'm thinking a compromise would be in order...

Well, I believe it does allow for the scheme Greenhouse (Penny Arcade) uses -- interestingly, also the scheme Windows XP uses, which was so controversial at the time -- where it phones home once at install, and once on significant hardware changes.

It doesn't do anything with that, yet -- no retarded limits like 3 reinstalls -- I assume it's to serve more as a watermark. If you're sharing it with a thousand of your closest friends via BitTorrent, they'll notice.

That does still bother some people, but honestly, I'm fine with it -- I wouldn't dare reinstall anything without access to the Internet these days. Of course, I'd feel significantly better if there was a crack in escrow somewhere, so that if Greenhouse fails, I can still reinstall.

Check out Greenhouse Games. This is an effort by the Penny Arcade guys to reach out to indie or niche game developers and put them on a non-suck digital distribution platform. By non-suck, I mean, it's easier to buy the game from them than it is to pirate it. They only do one featured game a month, and for the two months it's been around, I have bought both games and both ran flawlessly.

And you know what? I'm a Linux user.

That's right, both of the high-quality games that have been released there have had Linux, Windows and Mac versions. When I brought this up on the forums they said, basically, "We can't do this for every game, but we are seeking out games that run on more than one platform."

I actually wrote a review online for the first game, which was Penny Arcade's own Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. In the review I touch on how great Greenhouse is. I have a lot of hope for this distributor.

Yeah, because wanting to use your payed-for product however you want is "being cheap." Plus DRM doesn't even work, it's easy to bypass and really just makes things difficult for the actual paying customer (100% recycled argument, I know).

However, getting people to pay for an indie game is probably really freaking hard. Not only is it going to be virtually impossible to advertise due to the lack of funds, but most of the time it's actually easier to pirate the game than buy it. About 2 years ago I pirated Gumboy: Crazy Adventures (I have since bought it on Steam) because I liked it so much, but didn't have a credit card to buy it.

Annnd speaking of Steam, it really is an amazing platform to distribute indie games, though I don't know what kind of cut you get from selling it there though. Also, Penny-Arcade's Greenhouse site might become a good venue as well.

The Steam version, which was released later, got achievements. The people who bought it on release day got stuck with a game missing features, and were told by Greenhouse staff to suck it up. See this thread:

http://forum.playgreenhouse.com/jforum/posts/list/720.page

I know I will only be getting the next episode on Steam, since I know that the other versions are crippled.

I thought your review was pretty interesting. It does highlight that the game attracted gamers of really different tastes. As a result, everyone liked some aspects of it, and were displeased by others.

Personally, I loved the story and the writing. I see you had issues with a lot of the humor, ("shit...as in poop?"), but that's pretty classic Penny-Arcade style humor. Especially for Gabe dialog. So, at least, it was expected. I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just a matter of taste and it's perfectly fine that you're not into it, but PA fans should like it.

I do agree with you that I enjoyed the fact that the fights were easy. A lot of other people got annoyed by this (like the reviewer of the article). Personally, I disliked the fact that there were any fights at all. I was expecting something more adventure game oriented. You know, find items, figure out where to use the items, solve puzzles, enjoy the story. And that's where I was disappointed.

The game has just enough of an adventure feel to make those of us who enjoy the genre to judge it as such. You walk around an environment, collect items, the emphasis isn't in the action. However, it's also too darn linear. There are no puzzles. There's no thought involved. You're told where you should go at every point. if you walk everywhere in the environment, kill everything, and talk to everyone, you've finished the game. I would have loved the game if it had bigger environments, more puzzles, less fights and mini-games. It would have been perfect.

Decent review. A little harsh on the environments, given the engine. Still nothing about the crappy writing given there was so little of it.

see my review (after finishing the game): http://forum.playgreenhouse.com/jforum/posts/list/424.page#2684

see my previous vapid comment: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=566489&cid=23577559

//for some reason criticizing PA writing always garners troll mods

They not only created the game, but also are trying to get into distributing other works as well. It's called Greenhouse.

It does do a one time activation thing, but given its download only thats hardly going to be inconvenience. Also, I do not believe there is any download number restrictions - one key will cover multiple installs on multiple platforms.

Quote from a dev:
We don't anticipate having to limit the number of redownloads but remember that each new machine or major hardware change may trigger a new key to be issued against your license. Our plan is to allow multiple installs and to be generous in that regard to cover murdered systems, planned upgrades, people wanting to play it on their PC and their Mac or even Linux box etc. Even if the limit is reached--a limit that we have not determined yet--we will be flexible in resetting or increasing the limit for paying customers. If you are registered, we will keep your license keys stored for you in your profile and you will be able to see the number of times that license has been used for various systems so there will be no surprises.

Original thread:
http://forum.playgreenhouse.com/jforum/posts/list/302.page

Not quite as bad as our old friend SecuROM methinks.