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Pirates Vs. Publishers
1up is running a piece looking at the fight between pirates and publishers in the games industry. They use StarForce, and their frustrating copy protection scheme, as a basis for their discussion of both sides of the issue. From the article: "The goal isn't to encourage people to be honest, or to drive innovation in the hacker community, or to be an irritant because you've lost your CD and want to play. The goal of a publisher in picking a copy protection service is to make more money by selling more copies. The logic is that if it's impossible to pirate the game, then people have to buy it if they want it. Why doesn't that work? If your copy protection is StarForce, then it doesn't work because people are boycotting your copy protection. StarForce, which installs a hard-to-remove driver onto your computer, has an unproven but generally accepted track record of causing computers to slow down -- at best. Some reports have complained of permanently damaged physical drives or hard drives."
First off, I pay for my games. However I don't install the games I buy. I chuck the disks in the trash, download the ripped copy, and then install a no-cd crack on it. I've got a rather impressive collection of games and I do it with every single one. Quite frankly, I completely see why people pirate games. The pirate copy is much more user friendly, installation goes quicker when it's from a HDD, and there's usually no DRM infection to potentially damage my machine. I truly think publishers are also going overboard and irking honest people, if I purchase DOOM III it tells me that I cannot have a legitimately purchased copy of clone cd running, when your video game tells me what software I can and cannot own it's trying to step WAY above it's station. While I still continue to support the industry, their tactics are not thwarting pirates, and they are pissing me off in a royal way. I'm not sure how much longer I'll keep buying their cd's to make landfill fodder and parting with my hard earned money.
I have bought a vast amount more software thanks to trying it out via pirate-distrobution first. Simple as that. Goes the same for music, movies, etc.
If they want to bitch about lost sales to me, I'll call them on their lying marketting and slanted, paid-off reviews. It's all about publishers wanting control when it comes down to it, and pointing fingers when a shitty game doesn't sell.
If they could spin it they'd have people buying the most terrible crap out there for $60 a pop (haha), as every magazine review and media outlet hails it as a hallmark of interactivity. No thanks. I'll continue to bittorrent and decide for myself who gets my money.
On the other side of the coin, the only people who suffer (inconvenience of finding and loading the disc, damage to disc causing repurchase) are people who legitimately bought the software. The pirates (whom we need more of to lower global tempertures btw..) are all running cracked copies - that don't have any of the annoying dimensions - on the first or second day of the software's release (0-day warez anyone?). CD-Keys at least aren't as intrusive as most of the titles with them don't require the media in the drive. I like what Stardock has done with GalCiv2, a cd-key that is activated over the internet or email once per patch and doesn't require the CD in the drive (keeping pirates from playing multiplayer too btw). That's the balance that I'm willing to accept, how about you?
Shh.
Here's me, wanting to buy a game, Dark crusade.
I already have a pre-order in, its ship date is the 9th, today.
Its in most US shops from the 10th onward.
In the EU we'll be lucky to see it after the 24th/27th.
I could wait the 2 weeks to get it, or I could just snatch it off of a torrent site or emule or the like and have it very shortly after the pirates upload it.
This in my mind puts the pirates WAY ahead of the publishers, and more to the point makes the common games buying public, IE me feel more supportive of them.
And as another user commented, not having to find disks, not having PC destroying crap installed on my machine is a big plus to me.
I can see why some publisher who wants just to shove a game out of the door and forget about it might think anti-pirate CDs are a good idea, but any multi-player game, or indeed any game were content is expandable, unlockable or downloadable should not need anti-pirate measures. You need to access the web anyway, so why not check the CD serial key. Then you can reward your genuine customers with additional content, maps, objects etc. and shut out the freeloaders by barring them from the servers and so on. So they get to play a bugged 1.0 for a while. So what? Meanwhile your customers are on 1.5 happily playing the cool new levels you just released.
Games that force me to insert a CD really piss me off. I end up going to gamecopyworld or similar to acquire the crack. And that's the thing. Pirates can rip the copy protection in seconds and then dump the whole game up for download or provide a crack. So why bother with it anyway? Copy protection licence fees are still money down the drain when the pirates simply rip it out. That money would be better invested in keeping customers happy and "training" them through a positive experience as to why they should buy your game.
Don't bitch out people who pirate games and buy them. Bitch about people who don't pay. This isn't a judge dredd comic book. Civil disobediance against stupid laws like the DMCA that don't let me put a no-cd crack on the games I own is entirely appropriate and necessary. If everyone simply goes "oh it's the law lets always obey" society would be in a rather sorry state. Publishers are being paid for their work, there is abit of piracy, bringing down the hammer on it will only make it stronger, infecting users systmes with malware for corporate penny pinching is wrong.
They supposedly make YOU more money at the consumer's convenience; the trick is, they have begun to realize that you need to make the consumer WANT to use it, rather than force-feed it to them. Steam is one such example, and while it caught flak in the beginning, it has become a very nice addition and tool for cataloguing mods and distributing third-party games. It even allows crazy indy games like defcon! People are skipping adverts with tivos and other P/DVRs, so it is beneficial to make more interesting commercials. Times change, economic models change, etc. it's just a sign of progress.
That said, as much as I detest copy protection, I trust w4r3z k1dd13s even less. Despite being colossal jackasses about it, Blizzard at least has an ethical, commercial, and legal obligation not to fsck up my computer or data. If Blizzard does fsck up my machine, I have legal and social recourse. They have a reputation to protect, and so it is in their interest to deal fairly.
Not so with hackers who remove copy protection and other product defects (or, perhaps more to the point, claim to remove such defects). The guy I'm downloading the modded copy from may be a trustworthy, noble-minded hacker seeking only to improve the game's flexibility and reliability. Or, he could be an a--hole trying to steal my identity, build his botnet and spray spam all over the place, concealing his malware inside the game. Or, he could simply be incompetent and end up crashing my machine very unpleasantly. Either way, I have no way of knowing. There is no "reputation marketplace" (that I'm aware of) where I can feel comfortable or safe obtaining such material.
So unless and until the DMCA is demolished, I'm kinda stuck here. The game publishers will not stop incorporating defects into their products, and no one can build a trustworthy reputation for removing such defects.
Schwab
P.S: It's probably worth prominently acknowledging that Epic Games have been very accommodating with their Unreal Tournament game series. They start out with disc-in-the-drive protection, but it's soon removed in subsequent official patches. One of the friendliest policies out there.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Oblivion, one of the best selling games of the year, shipped with no protection at all. To listen to the copy protection companies you would think that they would have only been able to sell a handful of copies since anyone could rip and copy it in minutes. Instead, within a month over 1.7 million copies were sold (counting the 360 version as well).
There is not a major game that isn't cracked within days of release, if not hours. Protections may stop the casual copier, but they are not even slowing down anyone else. All the protection is doing is inconveniencing the consumer who is unable to easily back up their purchase.
There are always going to be those that won't pay for a product no matter what, but I believe that the majority of people will pay for something that's worth paying for. With the hours I spent playing Oblivion, it was well worth the purchase price, and by not putting invasive DRM on it I am much more inclined to purchase Bethesda software in the future.