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Not the only time this brokenness happened:
http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/370034

"The rest is just licensed libraries to save people from reinventing the wheel each time. DRM is one of those."
"and the investment in DRM is minor "

The importance of something is not necessarily related to the amount of money you invest in it. Again I point to the measles example (which, I will concede, has its own problems): you're telling me that just because the vaccine is cheap, it isn't a big deal. Or because plastic surgery is really expensive, it's solving an important problem.

I never said that DRM is a significant fixed cost. Just because it isn't "secret sauce" doesn't mean it's not important.

Indeed, and I think few will disagree with me, that the survival of the PC as a platform compared to the largely piracy-resistant latest-generation consoles was the emergence of Steam. Piracy is a sufficiently significant business concern that the CEO of Stardock owes his success to his keen understanding of it. I refer again to http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512.

Crysis is a bad example, and he does point out how hardware had a big role in Crysis's failure. Piracy did too. And I believe him, as someone who has more business experience than either of us, probably.

"Piracy only has a noticeable effect when you're selling enough units not to care. "

This however is patently untrue. The success of App Stores, Steam, consoles, comes from people getting paid for what they sell. Brick and mortar stores have been practicing "one stop shopping," "impulse buying" and whatever other retail innovations in abstract form for decades now. But recently, much later than "AT LEAST the 80's", piracy has made brick and mortar retailers very bad at getting software developers paid for what they sell.

To ignore the role of piracy in the industry is to ignore its greatest threat to existence. It is the ingenuity of key players in distribution, newcomers like Valve and old behemoths like Microsoft and Sony, that has kept the industry afloat and have prevented serious failures. Large studios and publishers, be they Stardock/Gas Powered/THQ or EA/Activision, consider the creation of consumer-acceptable DRM like Steam, online-authenticated serial keys, etc. to be an essential innovation in their industry. But don't dare tell me that a dysfunctional creators-don't-get-paid world somehow makes an abundance of high-quality innovative work. To say there's no harm is to ignore the amazing financial and creative success things like Steam, Apple's App Store, Xbox Arcade, dsware and consoles in general have enabled.

I will take with summary judgement all that has been said about Crysis, as long as you read the Stardock CEO's treatise. It's less about the failures and more about the successes. It's less about failed products and more about changing your creative process to target people who buy creative work, not consume creative work. By reducing the impact of piracy, innovative DRM has made a lot of highly innovative, creative development financially viable. This should be sufficient.

[quote]Crysis is a well known example of a video game. While technically profitable, it was not competitively profitable, in that it performed much worse than other games of its scope in the past (for example, Doom 3) as a consequence of piracy.[/quote]

and this is proven ... how? Doom 3 is by id Software. Makers of Doom 1, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 3 Arena, etc., and coded by John Carmack. There are lots of people who would anything from that development house at that time, unseen.

Now Crysis was not bad, but not exactly great, either. It's the same genre, but really not the same thing.

[quote]
This would imply a substantive loss due to piracy.[/quote]

Again, proven how?

[quote]Try Googling crysis piracy, or read a link here: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19203%5B/quote%5D

Which is full of speculation -- and not backed up by even a speck of actual data.

Don't get me wrong -- Crysis sure was pirated.

[quote]The CEO of Stardock wrote an excellent article explaining business models for accounting for piracy, specifically commenting on the Crysis case. http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512%5B/quote%5D

There is no mention on Crysis in that article, and no mention of piracy harming their business model either.

[quote]Later, piracy would prove to damage his game Demigod's short term viability, though technical measures (DRM in abstraction, though in practice just a method to detect pirated copies of the games) recovered it from likely failure. [/quote]

Backup, please? As asked in the original question?

[quote]Piracy is perceived to be a sufficiently significant problem that dealing with piracy is as important as dealing with marketing, deadlines, etc.[/quote]

Indeed. And all I can read out of that is that it's greed at work -- after all, if you have 100k pirates playing your game, the greedy mind will think "wow, 100k sales !" and go on to try to implement DRM, restrictive licensing, crappy always-online "protections", etc. to make that happen -- which does nothing to actually curb 100k pirates, and it really doesn't convert 100k pirates into sales. But a greedy mind will still feel as if they just lost 100k sales. (Not to say pirates are not greedy, I am looking at it from the other side in this argument).

[quote]It's a core business concern. What you're asking for then is "prove to me that measles is a horrible disease. Can you show me evidence of large populations dying due to measles in recent history?" You won't accept the answer, "we vaccinate against measles, everyone knows its bad but there aren't population-wide failures precisely because we vaccinate." [/quote]

Bad analogies and trying to subsume other people's reasoning is not exactly a good discussion tactic.

[quote]DRM and other measures have made serious problems due to piracy unlikely, but they still harm the product.[/quote]

How have DRM made serious problems due to piracy unlikely? Backup, please? Data?

[quote]You also are problematic with "provably": "provably" by mathematical standards or by, say, business standards? No one can "prove" why a product is a success or failure, but merely provide persuasive evidence for it. I would imagine you have the same misunderstanding with the legal system, which does not require proof of "no possible doubt" but rather proof of "no reasonable doubt." [/quote]

Again you assume unrelated things in this discussion. It makes you look stupid.

[quote]There is no reasonable doubt that piracy harmed Crysis, making it (compared to other games) a financial failure for Crytek.[/quote]

But indeed there is reasonable doubt. One could ask whether its system requirements were simply too high, whether its marketing plan was decently executed, whether its prospective customer base

Crysis is a well known example of a video game. While technically profitable, it was not competitively profitable, in that it performed much worse than other games of its scope in the past (for example, Doom 3) as a consequence of piracy. This would imply a substantive loss due to piracy. Try Googling crysis piracy, or read a link here: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19203 The CEO of Stardock wrote an excellent article explaining business models for accounting for piracy, specifically commenting on the Crysis case. http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512 Later, piracy would prove to damage his game Demigod's short term viability, though technical measures (DRM in abstraction, though in practice just a method to detect pirated copies of the games) recovered it from likely failure. Piracy is perceived to be a sufficiently significant problem that dealing with piracy is as important as dealing with marketing, deadlines, etc. It's a core business concern. What you're asking for then is "prove to me that measles is a horrible disease. Can you show me evidence of large populations dying due to measles in recent history?" You won't accept the answer, "we vaccinate against measles, everyone knows its bad but there aren't population-wide failures precisely because we vaccinate." DRM and other measures have made serious problems due to piracy unlikely, but they still harm the product. You also are problematic with "provably": "provably" by mathematical standards or by, say, business standards? No one can "prove" why a product is a success or failure, but merely provide persuasive evidence for it. I would imagine you have the same misunderstanding with the legal system, which does not require proof of "no possible doubt" but rather proof of "no reasonable doubt." There is no reasonable doubt that piracy harmed Crysis, making it (compared to other games) a financial failure for Crytek. To the readers of my comment: my point is that there's clear, reasonable evidence of the harms of piracy. But we're faced with a questioner who has an adversarial and unconvertible frame of mind.

This is one of the reasons I think Sins of a Solar Empire looks interesting. One of the key parts of the game is different races with very different abilities.

Haven't had a chance to play it yet (so little time for gaming anymore...), but I'm definitely going to make time for this one. Might be worth a peek if you're into space based RTS's.

It's a shame that the PC version of Fallout 3 was so bug infested and prone to constant crashes for a large percentage of players that Bethesda was perfectly willing to ignore. I've also heard about crashing issues in the console versions, but never witnessed this firsthand.

Heard nothing but problems with GTA IV like low framerates and excessive system requirements so I'll be skipping that one. I never really cared for the GTA games much anyhow.

Far Cry 2 was crap, pure and simple. Not too surprising since the original was crap as well.

Spore got old after about 5 hours. The idea was inventive, but the gameplay was practically non-existent.

I am looking forward to Mirror's Edge when it gets released on the 13th. I've already setup my rig with a good video card plus a 9600GT for dedicated PhysX processing specifically in anticipation.

Honestly I had more fun with freeware and indie games this year.

Iji is a fantastic freeware game that seems to draw inspirations from games like Flashback and Deus Ex. Changing your play style (ie. passive or aggressive) and having choices that actually affect the story was really nice for replayability, not to mention the unlockable bonuses. It also features fluidly animated, minimalistic visuals in a similar vein to Another World or Flashback and a great soundtrack (make sure you download the high quality soundtrack for best effect).

Tetroid 2012 is a trippy freeware version of Tetris. Absolutely the best Tetris clone ever made.

TAGAP is a freeware game that came out last year, but who cares? It's The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins and it's fantastic. It resembles a cross between Smash TV and Abuse with very high production values. TAGAP 2 is supposedly on the way also.

Dave the Ordinary Spaceman is a freeware retro "2D" platform game with some interesting play mechanics and effects. I won't say anything else since it's much better experienced.

Penumbra : Black Plague is the sequel to the 2007 game Penumbra : Overture. It's a first person survival horror game that actually manages to be scary. It has a good story, nice visuals and realistic physics interaction with the environments.

Sins of a Solar Empire was the best RTS game of 2008 and probably one of the best of all time. Battles take place in epic scale across entire star systems with hundreds of ships in combat simultaneously.

I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.

And how does that make you feel knowing that the publisher spends more time thinking about people that aren't their customers, than you? Shouldn't they just be worried about making their customer happy? I mean, they still turn a profit when they publish, and Stardock managed to get quite a bit of a following with Sins of a Solar Empire without resulting to DRM.

If you don't like them, don't buy from then, and don't pirate. If you pirate, you are saying that you actually do want their product (though you prefer it (nearly) free). Actions speak louder than words

The only up is that online games are having a ball, since cracking those are harder. My hope is that someday it will be feasible to simply host the game on some server and deliver all the content over the net, so that we can get rid of the arrrrggghh pirates.

And when some jackass decides to DDoS your content/directory servers to grief a couple hundred thousand people, I'll laugh because you rent your games and have no control by design. I'll do the same when your content provider decides the ROI on supporting an old game isn't enough to justify the hosting expenses.

When DDoS, I get a refund for the lapsed. Sure it might mean I have to do something else for a day, but I will survive, the same is true for a blackout for everyone. If the server gets discontinued, I will move to another game. Since it is online, subscription-based content, I have lost nothing. In all likelyhood, I have moved on long since.

Anyway, this is the only growth area on the PC game market, primarily because of piracy. Yes, I would prefer a world without DRM, piracy and so forth, but I do not see a way to get there. I do support almost every independent linuxgame out there, (at least every second), but it is not enough, apparently due to piracy (yes, linux is just as much hit by this as windows).

I'd bet that the reason we don't see another monkey island or similar is due to piracy.

And how does that make you feel knowing that the publisher spends more time thinking about people that aren't their customers, than you? Shouldn't they just be worried about making their customer happy? I mean, they still turn a profit when they publish, and Stardock managed to get quite a bit of a following with Sins of a Solar Empire without resulting to DRM.

The only up is that online games are having a ball, since cracking those are harder. My hope is that someday it will be feasible to simply host the game on some server and deliver all the content over the net, so that we can get rid of the arrrrggghh pirates.

And when some jackass decides to DDoS your content/directory servers to grief a couple hundred thousand people, I'll laugh because you rent your games and have no control by design. I'll do the same when your content provider decides the ROI on supporting an old game isn't enough to justify the hosting expenses.

If you want good, non-DRM games at reasonable prices, I have two good ones for you:

World of Goo: The demo is the first 1/4 of the game. It's a blast. Silly building/puzzle game. Well worth the $20 they're charging. Made by 2 guys.

Sins of a Solar Empire: A Fantastic RTS game, based on building orbital structures around planets, and massing fleets of spaceships, some with unique abilities and leveling increases. It's got great music, but the controls are the pinnacle of what I've seen in any RTS game, EVER! It's worth buying it just to see how controls should work.

Yeah but the few non-geek apps that are affected have already got those workarrounds in place, tested and being used by large numbers of users

http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/faqs.aspx

Look for:
"Q: The game is telling me that I may not be able to host the game. What do I need to configure?"

Is a video game a "geek app" or a "non-geek app"?

Yes, but there are no alternatives in most cases, because mainstream publishers insist on DRM. Sure there's the occasional title that bucks the trend, but generally they remain convinced that ever-more invasive DRM is neccessary.

In fairness copy protection isn't entirely wrong; make it trivial to copy a game for your friends and many average users will do so. Publishers should be looking at raising the bar enough to deter such casual copying, but no more than that: limited online activations, rootkitting the system with performance-reducing drivers starforce style etc are all counterproductive since they hurt your legitimate customers far more than the dedicated pirates they're aimed at, who just go and grab a cracked release off IRC / bittorrent. Keep it up and those customers won't be far behind, having been made to feel like suckers for paying for a product that's actually inferior to the free release.

Sins of a Solar Empire by Stardock. DRM free, doesn't even nag you for a CD.

This is a spiritual successor to Homeworld. It's a 3D space RTS where the scale is truly epic, the largest battlefields involve dozens of solar systems with hundreds of planets and thousands of ships. The UI has been tweaked and polished to let you easily manage fleets and planet resources on this scale. It's incredibly impressive.

If you loved the Homeworld series you should check it out. RTS fans would love it as well.

The only downside, at least for me, is there is no campaign. Instead you have a series of scenarios. There is a vibrant multilayer community, which plays something like a very aggressive variant of Civilization, since infrastructure is incredibly important but unlike Civ the attacker is almost always at the advantage.

link

Yes, it was DRM free, until they started releasing patches exclusively on Impulse.

Sins of a Solar Empire made by Stardock is a recently released DRM free game (their other games are DRM free as well).

We've discussed Stardock's anti-DRM policy before.

No affiliation with Stardock, just a happy customer.

I think this guy said it best.

I agree with this.

down with brittney spears, survivor MLXVIIII, and mtv!

I think this guy said it best.

Sounds like you might want to check out Sins of a Solar Empire.

This is related, and worth reading. It's a post on the Stardock forums about why they don't use copy protection on their games. http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512

They do that all the time, and it's still cracked and released. Publishers are starting to realize that they're spending too much money/time/effort on copy protection, and are moving to a non-DRM mindset, see stardock for an example. I didn't even bother downloading Sins of a Solar Empire for a test run(as I usually do) - I bought it outright because of their stance on copy protection. I also know several others that did the same exact thing I did.

"Sufficiently" seems to be "no copy protection" - just a good game.

Sins of a Solar Empire

Like I said, the online activation is not activated until some patch came out (and according to this source, it will be when a "content update" is released).
If your game fail to activate, you basically won't be able to play if you try to install this update.
I knew a company who had used a "gmail system" like you described, it was Egosoft with X2 : registering your serial on their web site gives you access to a "no-cd" patch. There were no additional hardware tying, you could happily copy this exe around. But it's not what Stardock does. Read the whole linked thread (like when you transfer updates toward an offline PC, you have to activate through copy-pasting stuff in an email to get an signature file).

Despite that most sales of Sins of a Solar Empire thus far have been through TotalGaming.net (direct digital download), Sins topped the charts last month at retail for PC games.

Here are the stats courtesy of NPD:

February 2008

1. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. Sins Of A Solar Empire
3. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest
4. The Sims 2 Free Time Expansion Pack
5. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
6. World Of Warcraft
7. The Orange Box
8. The Sims 2 Deluxe
9. The Sims: Castaway Stories
10. Crysis

Sins of a Solar Empire was released in February. No CD/DVD copy protection included. One other note, NPD doesn't include sales at Walmart where a significant percentage of the sales of Sins of a Solar Empire occurred. Unofficial tallies we've received internally put Sins at #1.

Thank you so much for your support!

We hope over the coming weeks and months we are able to keep the game fun and interesting for you as we continue to provide free updates based on your feedback! Free updates is our version of "copy protection".

All of the Stardock games have had this for awhile. Galatic Civilizations II was awesome, and apparently the new Sins of a Solar Empire is awesome too. It's nice to not be treated like a criminal.