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Game Developers Should Ignore Software Pirates
wraith808 points out a story about remarks made by the CEO of software and game development company Stardock about sales in the PC game industry. His suggestion to other developers is simple: ignore the software pirates. From Ars Technica:
"'So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don't go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That's what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they're developing for,' Wardell writes on his blog. 'But not PC game developers.' Don't let people who aren't your audience control the titles you make, and ignore piracy. This is much like Trent Reznor's strategy, although the execution is different. Instead of worrying about pirates, just leave the content out in the open. The market Reznor plays to will still buy the music; he's simply stopped worrying about the pirates. He came to the same conclusion: they weren't customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose."
Perhaps this is something that Microsoft should embrace for their own good...
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
But copy protection still stops a lot of piracy, especially for shareware authors and multi-player games.
Devil's advocate here:
Public game companies can't just ignore pirates because shareholders will be all over them for not doing anything about such a big "loss of revenue".
Yes, to us, CD-ROM protection and such is worthless and only encourages cracks, but a lot of companies use it as CYA, mainly to fill out the "due diligence" checkbox for the blank of "stopping IP loss", so when the copy protection stuff does get cracked, the company can shed crocodile tears, tell their shareholders at the next quarterly meeting that they did their best, but the old evil pirates beat them again.
Private companies, or those not shackled to having to keep their quarterly profits up, to heck with anything else, its different In the long run, not having some form of copy protection brings in more revenue because more people see the game and will at least pick it up, especially if it has expansions.
These days a lot of the money from games comes from places other than boxed sales. There's add-on content and online play. If you charge $5 a month to play the game, who really cares if the player pirated it or not?
Put identity in the browser.
Perhaps, if there has to be any protection, the best would be to have a multiplayer network, but only one of the same CD serial number can be on at a time. This would encourage people to purchase the game.
For example, Neverwinter Nights 1 and Warcraft 3 as of now has the CD protection patched out, but people definitely still buy the game to access multiplayer features such as server lists.
For a moment I read the title of this article as "Game Developers Should Ignore Software Patents"
TFA says "stopping piracy" is irrelevant.
That is... it doesn't matter to you, the profit-minded game publisher, how many people play your game. All that matters is how many people buy the game. If spending money on copy protection doesn't actually increase sales, then that money has been wasted: you would've been better off using it to make the game better, or just keeping it in the bank.
Strong copy protection might stop people from playing games they haven't paid for, but that doesn't mean it makes them go out and buy legitimate copies of those games. It might just make them move on to a different game (freeware or more easily cracked payware), or spend their time watching TV instead.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it.
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I don't mean to sound like a copyright hawk (I'm not), but this advice is awful for game makers outside the freeware/shareware model. for one, no large game company is going to listen to this guy, so this ends up another tidbit for armchair game developers on slashdot to tell each other and assume it is true.
For another thing, it isn't true. It's bad advice on face. Any product which takes significant production costs but can be gained for the use of a user's time (read: free) will lose money if the product is sold at marginal cost--or, if the product is offered at some rate above marginal cost but that cost is avoided for most users. The nature of game design is huge up front costs and a probable revenue stream to make up for those costs and generate a profit. If the average user out there can costlessly pirate the game, a good deal of that revenue stream is lost.
This does NOT mean that games should have 100% piracy protection features. That's also stupid. It is arguably physically impossible to prevent a (non-remotely authenticated) game from playing on a computer where the user has custody. All of the required parts are there--it's the same argument for DRM. No one is going to generate a copy protection scheme for computer games with 100% efficacy. What it SHOULD mean is that a reasonable protection should exist to prevent most copying, just like plenty of games have now. No spyware, no intrusive checks. Just some reasonable authentication measures. All you need to do is prevent a good percentage of people who would pirate it costlessly by downloading it. Not everyone.
Steam is a flawed example of what might work very well. Steam can (probably) be spoofed, but who cares? Most of us don't spoof it. WoW is another good example, their game works on a subscription model, so it is almost pointless to pirate it. Q3 is close to the extreme--it's probably pretty easy to pirate it and the demo basically includes the game (for the most part).
the right answer is to find an envelope type solution. Envelopes don't prevent people from stealing or reading your mail. They don't even ensure that you can check 100% if your mail has been read in transit. but they deter the least motivated due to the minimal effort required (versus a postcard) and they deter others based on the threat of detection. there is no reason to build a piracy scheme similar to the HDMI demands--don't get me started. but it also is not even remotely realistic that major software companies will take a shareware outlook to piracy in the near future.
Public companies can do anything the hell they like, as long as the inform their shareholders - if they tell their shareholders they're not going to worry about piracy anymore, then those shareholders can feel free to sell and invest elsewhere if it bothers them.
Advanced users are users too!
Firstly, I would like to say that I work for a major games label, and I have specific knowledge of why we do put DRM on the discs, and I call bull on this CEO. I dislike DRM just as much as the next /.er, but we actually do have a damn good reason for DRM, and it has nothing to do with preventing you from making copies of the game for backup, or your friends, or putting it up on a BitTorrent tracker - honestly, we don't care about the individual small-scale pirates. That's why there is not Game-Developer-IAA hunting after college kids.
What we do care about is when somebody in the mastering lab, or somewhere else along the line in between when the title goes to manufacturing and when it hits shelves, decides to take the game to a wholesale bootlegger. What we do care about is when a bootlegger makes half a million copies of our game and gets wide distribution to retail stores that either don't know any better or don't care. This is a major problem in Asia, particularly China. Bootleg retail copies hurt us in two ways: (1) Obviously, we lose revenue, but just as importantly (2) Customers tend to blame us, and not the bootleggers, when something goes wrong with a store-bought game because it was a bootleg (CD's that start flaking, etc) - it's a major problem for the brand-name.
Yes, it sucks that backup copies are collateral damage in this battle. But you tell me a better method for us to guarantee that no wholesale bootlegging will occur, and I'll take it to my superiors.
Actually there's a very valid reason to consider pirates: possible conversion into paying customers. If you provide a reason for someone who has already pirated to buy the game then piracy becomes a sort of free advertising. This is one of the good things about unique CD-key requirements on online games: it doesn't really prevent piracy, but it provides something extra for pirates to come into the fold in the form of multiplayer. It can even be legal. Just look at the spawn-copy and CD sharing systems blizzard implemented in Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Diablo. Shareware also served much the same purpose. Sure you could get a full copy of a game off a pirate BBS back in the day, but if you already knew you liked the game you couldn't shake the lingering feeling you were being a total scumbag as you did it.
Find out why the piracy happens in the first place. Most PC users will not think much of spending $20 for a reasonably entertaining game or $50 for a great one. What went wrong? Lack of being able to complete the purchase 100% online? No substantial demo to help one evaluate if the game is worth buying or works on a particular computer? Need for "$2 per level pricing" so that people who loose interest do not hesitate to buy the next game? Lack of differential pricing for developing countries.
Most restaurants do not have problem with patrons running off without paying the bill. Game/general software industry needs to figure out how they encourage the behaviour that hurts them.
Trent Reznor's cost of manufacturing is quite low in comparison with the amount of effort spent on copy protection. A game that costs $200 million to make and hopes to earn $250 million can afford to throw $500K into copy protection without really hitting the bottom line.
As long as the Internet remains a free and open protocol (with the same effect seen in the sneakernet before it) then absolutely nothing will stop a pirate with half a brain cell. The trick is to find a way to not punish your customers who actually bought the product along the way. I hate the inconvienience of digging through a pile of hopefully unscratched from the digging discs to find the one I want to play. Fair-dealing here in Canada lets me use cd-cracks to avoid that hassle. I wouldn't mind seeing a two stage system for games, if you're online contact a authorization server to play (yes single player) so you don't have to have the disc in the drive *or* if the server is unavailable then require the disc in the drive. For me this would mean not even going into the grey area of cd-cracks because the hassle would be mitigated - I wouldn't be punished because others steal the effort of the developers.
As an aside, Information should be free in a perfect world but until shelter and food is then damn well pay what someones asking for their effort. You pay the publisher they pay the developer, they pay their employees, they pay their rent. Until that last requirement is removed then a effort sharing system (aka capitalism) is just required for luxury items. Linux is an example that sidesteps the monetary requirements in that the effort is spread around enough people that the cost per person is actually minimal. If entertainment matured more towards current open-source models then it could benefit from the same situation: organization - open model, sound, geometry, engine packs would mitigate entertainments profit dependence.
Shh.
Whining about pirates is like complaining about all the girls you could have dated. But didn't.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Shareholders aren't managers. A company's discretion is not changed wildly by their public/private status. Shareholders may vote, choose new managers, or in RARE cases, sue, but they usually don't get (or want) control over the day to day running of a business. Most shareholders aren't active investors concerned with specific policies. they are mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and the like. They don't know and don't care. They invest based on fundamentals and their needs to diversify. That they would become involved in an issue this arcane is silly.
they stop people who don't know that first level. that might be a huge fraction, depending on the game audience. I'm not advocating just using CD keys. I personally think that some variant of Steam is preferred because it offers the most chance for authentication with the least intrusion.
I'm not disputing that the cracks are easy to find, but the that doesn't change the basic argument. some large chunk of people will be tempted to say "fuck it, I'll just buy it at EB" rather than d/l a gigabyte game and find a crack.
This will get EASIER, not harder, as digital distribution makes it so that it is reasonable to distribute say, Madden online for a credit card charge. Then the choice is download it for free and mess around w/ the crack or pay 30 bucks and download the game in the same time.
In my case approach of Stardock worked the other way - I have boxed versions of Both Galactic Civilisations and GalCiv II...and I even not really into 4X strategies! (though GalCiv II might be changing that, not sure yet...)
I wonder if they sorted out availability of Sins of Solar Empire in EU...not only I'll buy this game because it DOESN'T MESS IN MY OS (similar to..."scene" cracked versions of many other games), but I might actually like it a lot.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Raise your glass and say cheers, someone gets it! The people who pirate seem to have a common bond, they are not willing or able to pay for it. Ignore them and they will walk all over you, but at least your not wasting your potential profit trying to stop them. It's a "cat and mouse" game. If the cat catches the mouse, it just craps it out... there always seem to be more mice. Mice find ways around obstacles, even if they have to chew through it (reverse engineer) or sacrifice one of their own (get someone on the inside.) Mice tend to want to help one another. For the people willing to pay for it, they will buy it. Some want to taste the milk before buying the cow, even if it means draining an entire cow and buying another cow (beating the game and then buying it because they liked it). By putting a copy protection on a game, it just means that once the company goes under, legitimate owners of a media will not be able to recover or play an old archived version of a game. Many purchase the products and use cracked or patched games to get rid of the need for media insertion. This is especially true for laptops that make a humming noise when a disc is in or creates vibrations you feel while gaming. Don't waste money to create an hassle for the consumer. Waste the money to make it better for the consumer. Everyone hold up your glasses and say cheers. If you are not wearing glasses then hold up a glass. If one is not around you than pretend to hold up a glass (if you have no arms and cannot physically hold up a glass than you can still pretend to.)
"Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, has a much different point of view: the pirates don't matter.... ignore piracy"
Uh huh. I call BS. With his Galactic Civilizations II, they didn't use DRM. You know what they did do, however? They enticed users to own legitimate copies by limiting updates and bug fixes to those legitimate users. At that time, he argued that DRM could be cracked and was burdensome on legitimate users. But - by offering upgraded service to legitimate users, he was aiming to make sure pirates had a weaker experience of his game. Brad Wardell is *not* ignoring the pirates - he's got his own ideas about dealing with them, but "ignoring them" is not his strategy.
Copy protection works for software. The error that most people seem to be making is thinking that if it doesn't stop everyone it failed. That is not true. Reznor's argument is only partially correct, only higher level pirates can not be converted. Lower level pirates can be, and they are more numerous. This also means that the most intrusive and questionable anti-piracy methods do not need to be used.
On numerous gaming forums over the years I have witnessed a recurring story. Kiddies saying: I burned a copy of my friend's disc and it didn't work so I went out and bought my own. Copy protection worked.
On a larger scale I am familiar with selling academic software in a university bookstore. I've seen required software sell 1/15th of what the required textbooks sold, software that was initially released without copy protection. The developer then added some copy protection, simple and easily defeated copy protection, a package that is known and had pre-existing cracks. It worked, the next quarter's sales of the required software was nearly in line with required textbooks. Copy protection worked. I'd like to add that this was in a university environment, no shortage of people with the technical knowledge to crack the discs for someone else. Also, these were pretty inexpensive software packages, the textbooks came with coupons reducing the price to about $30.
Most pirates will pirate software if it is trivially easy to do so, regardless of a low price. If you erect some sort of barrier a large number of these will buy.
Trying to stop all piracy is futile. But not using simple non-intrusives copy protection does cost sales. There is an optimal point balancing protection and incompatibility, and it is not zero protection.
No, see, that's not it at all. The biggest problem plaguing most PC releases nowadays is that in order to keep up with the high power of most console games, a huge amount of PC horsepower is required; Hell, the X-Box 360 is more powerful than my PC. The Wii probably is, for that matter.
So, PC game developers whip up these massive, beautiful games (Crysis), wherein no earthly system of the time can possibly run it at a decent speed, and what can people do? Your $500 Dell desktop isn't going to cut it. You'll need at least $1000 ($1400 for a laptop) worth of hardware just to hope to be able to play the game at a playable speed, and you'd better hope you didn't skimp on the video. The problem with this is, not many people opt for the heavyweight PC; Most families, companies, bachelors, etc will want to run as cost-effectively as possible and thus won't bother with expensive video cards (the ones in question being at least $200 and at most $600-$700). There's really a very small market for "hardcore" PC gamers (the ones who want a 360/PS3-style experience and are willing to spend the sum of both consoles' worth in high-end gadgetry to do so), though it's very, very lucrative for hardware manufacturers.
So, why should I, stuck with my crappy old Radeon 9600 Pro, go out and buy Crysis, even if I really wanted to? The answer is: I shouldn't. There's no possible way I could even squeeze 2FPS on that one. That's one sale gone. And what about all those people with $500 Dells who are also gamers? There's more missing sales.
The point is, you can't blame software piracy for making a piece of software so unwieldly that only a niche market of users can actually hope to run. At least a 360, Wii, or PS3 will, hopefully, be capable of playing anything certified for release on it. The PC doesn't have such luxuries, and that's where the stumbling block is. Until IGP chipsets become powerful enough to compete with discrete graphics solutions (never), you'll never find the massive reception that you would otherwise find on a platform that's actually genuinely capable of pushing the graphical "wow" you want. End of story.
In summary, you're comparing apples and oranges. PC's have wildly varying specs, and even users interested in playing your game, in many cases, may not be able to. Consoles are rigid, and have typically zero differences between variations of the same model in terms of horsepower; Thus, anyone who owns a 360/PS3/Wii will also be able to, without question, play your 360/PS3/Wii game.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
That's essentially what Steam does. In fact, the CD key isn't even needed, as evidenced by the fact that loads of people purchase games entirely online. Valve just associates a game with an account.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
This is what I've been saying about music. Ignore the pirates. Oh, same about all the stolen beer. Hiccup! Oops. Err wasn't me.
Keep telling yourselves that... as much as you want to believe otherwise, making this kind of stuff available for free does not make them more money, unless it's a completely unknown product. Oh I dunno, that depends on how much PC gamers have been annoyed by games that require the disc or games that fail to run due to over-zealous protection. I'd also say it depends on if a game gets a sequel or not. A no-sale on the first game may create a fan for the second. That no-sale in the beginning wasn't necessarily money lost, just not money earned.
I'd say more but I'm arguing with an AC calling people tards who obviously hasn't put any thought into what he's so opinionated about. Good night.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
1. If the company sees financial savings with no ill effects from abandoning invasive DRM systems then it's reasonable to assume that they can provide shareholders with the same graphs, charts, presentations, and analysis that would convince them that it's a good idea. If they don't like it then they can take their dollars elsewhere. they don't actually have any control in the company aside from the threat of selling their shares.
2. "Ignoring Pirates" wouldn't be such a big deal if the estimated loss due to piracy wasn't so ridiculously over-inflated in the first place. If any company has a hard time convincing shareholders that it's not worth worrying about pirates it's only due to their own fear mongering at a prior date.
Collector's Edition
No matter what a game company does to protect their game as in terms of copy protection, its never gonna stop the pirateing. about mostly only effective is the cd-key for online play, if person likes game enough for single player a lot of them will buy a legit copy to play it. Granted there have been private server cracks for pirated versions but usally for game is hard to find them, and its much nicer to just buy game and have axx to every server.
Think about what you're saying for a second. Sure, a tech-savvy kid can easily find cracks and apply them, but such skills are still relatively rare in the marketplace as a whole. Not to mention the fact that if you picked 1000 random people out of game shops around the world and asked them about bnetd, the VAST majority would probably not know what it is!
I still remember when Counter-Strike got popular... All the kids at school were playing it, and the VAST majority had legal copies - despite being otherwise shameless pirates in every other way. Some enterprising individuals tried to circumvent the protection via key sharing, etc, but in the end all of THEM just went out and bought it for sheer convenience (having WON kick you off for duplicate keys sucks). I have ZERO doubt in my mind that Valve took a fair chunk of piracy out just by using something as simple as a CD key.
Then there's the other end of the spectrum... Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. It ran random crap in the background that will refuse to run if ANY semblance of a virtual CD driver is present, or certain models of CD drives... Suffice it to say it generated LOADS of false positives and was a pain in the ass. IMHO that game is the TEXTBOOK example of how NOT to implement anti-piracy in your software.
they give you (or don't hinder you from stealing) the single player to entice you to buy the multi.
Imagine if blizzard gave away a single player WoW that you could play over hamachi with your friends...maybe you would even play it A LOT over hamachi with your friends.....but eventually (because the game is so good) you will want to play it online with more ppl. you weren't going to buy it anyway before you played it....what did they lose by giving you a piece of it?
that is pretty much exactly what occurred with sins of a solar empire with me. got the torrent, got sick of beating the shitty AI at a great game....played my friends (who also got the torrent) on hamachi (when they wanted to)...felt shamed for stealing such a great game (gasp) and wanted to be able to play whenever I wanted to...then bought it.
I am an unrepentant software thief and I bought soase. Maybe there is at least a tiny bit of truth to what he is saying.
I am not disagreeing with what you say in your post, just pointing this out.
You're missing the point. Piracy is easier than getting the game legitimately and will continue to be so as long as pirates can crack the game. Once the lock is picked, it's picked for everyone. Don't waste money putting a better lock on the thing, put your money into providing value for legitimate customers.
If you make the game just as easy to get legitimately as it is to pirate (remembering that you can't make pirating any harder), things become clearer. Pirates don't buy games and never will; honest people do and always will as long as you don't punish them for it. You can't stop the pirates and you don't need to stop the honest people; who are you protecting against?
...a pirated copy does not usually equal a lost sale. Duh. That's what I've been saying for years. People pirate stuff because they wouldn't or couldn't buy it in the first place.
I'm not talking about counterfitting, which is entirely different in my mind from piracy. Counterfitting is when someone produces copies of a product and passes them off as the real deal for profit. Counterfitters should go to jail for trying to make a buck off someone else's hard work. Piracy is when someone snags a free and obviously unofficial copy for themselves and no one makes any money off the deal. Pirates should be left alone because they're not hurting anyone.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I think we agree (or would) on a lot of things. Offering a full featured teaser and charging for the (easy to police for copyright problems) multiplayer is a GREAT solution. That offers copy protection for the customers that want to pay for it in an inobtrusive way. That's what the guy isn't saying. It's not like they would be cool with you ripping them off for the multiplayer (though it is clearly possible). That's their real game.
He just needs to be clear about it. That isn't zero copy protection. That is smart copy protection designed to make customers happy, not pissed off. I like stardock. I like most shareware game companies. Since I grew up on macs, those are the only companies I knew, because most "real" games didn't get ported (except mist......woo....hoo....). Shareware companies have the right idea about copy protection for THEIR level of game making. If EA produced sins of a solar empire, you might feel less of a twinge about ripping them off. I alwas felt bad about ripping those shareware guys off because their site always made it seem like they were eating cat food and my purchase would help them feed their kids. The feeling of altrusism is hard to replicate.
They are on the way to the right idea. but they deliberately (because they are pushing their business model as teh awesome) are understating the nature of piracy (queue scary MPAA ghosts and PSA's about how ripping GTA means you fund terrorism). The low level piracy problem is converting those firs few chunks of potential pirates/buyers to buyers. The money still means that most game companies will choose the conventional route for now.
I for one will never buy a game that uses Starforce copy protection. When i bought Call of Juarez i was unable to play it without reinstalling windows because it was convinced that i was running a CD emulator.
Cd keys, online authentication and the like are fine, but there is a limit to what is really necessary. There will probably never be a game that cannot be cracked and redistributed (Although WoW came close) so the author is absolutely correct. Spend the time and resources on the game, not the pirates who will thwart you anyways.
Oh yea, the cracked copy of Call of Juarez I downloaded from pirate bay worked great, thanks pirates!
Please explain us carefully where DRM will stop any pirate bootlegging 1/2 million CD/DVD copy of a game. Especially that most crack appear within hours of the game being released. So a good bootlegger would break in/pay somebody inside to give an iso at the same time as the gold master is pressed. And the bootlegger would still have a leg on you, because frankly they probably have the same equipement as you do to press their bootleg, or can pay professional hacker to remove the freaking DRM. DRM was NEVER EVER against the bootlegger, it has always been against CASUAL copying !!!. And that is where the article shine : who cares about casual copying ! Only an extreme minority would buy the game instead of casually copying it. And that minority is MOST PROBABLY offset by people having problem with the DRM, be it software problem (freaking DRM don't always work) or philosophical problem (why should I root my PC for your piece of crapware ?). You are NOT increasing your market share by ANY means, you are lowering it !!
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visit randi.org
I think the article is pretty insightful, and shares a lot of my own sentiments that I've had since the "Don't copy that floppy!" era. The average software pirate on the Internet is not within the publisher's potential customer base. Honestly, how many young adults do you know who have the money to plunk down on Adobe Photoshop, yet how many have it? If they weren't able to get Photoshop for free, they would not get it at all, and would instead go with a free (or at least cheaper) alternative. Net money loss for Adobe: 0. Popularity and word of mouth advertisement (maybe reaching those that DO have money): priceless.
Personally, I'm a starving college student. I also love video games. The problem here is money: I really can't afford to pay for my favorite hobby, yet I keep my finger on the pulse of the gaming industry. Unfortunately, until I graduate, I won't be able to contribute, effectively excluding me from the potential customer base (though rest assured, I do buy games whenever I can). Whether the publisher prevents me from playing their game or not makes no difference, they can't take money where there is none. Though, there is a boon... gamers come in packs. If I download a game that I end up loving, and give a glowing recommendation to my friends, they will pay for it. Sure, the publisher didn't profit from me directly, but this one penniless pirate hooked 2 or 3 paying customers that wouldn't have otherwise bought the product. The publisher still wins.
I have never met a person who could comfortably afford to pay for their games and does not. Though many do pirate games here and there, the game industry still gets their money from games they do buy. A person tends to spend an allotted entertainment budget no matter what; even if a game is potentially free, if the customer has money to blow, they will blow it.
That's called StarForce 3.6 Advanced with drivers, probably the most feared copy protection on earth (except perhaps for its later versions, which have not been cracked for years).
please stay in your shell thinking that DRM measures of any kind work always work and shal stop anyone what they do is make the end user cost higher and justify loss of citizens rights in order to do this stupid stuff.
This is all very true. However, if it weren't for games like Doom III and Crysis pushing the limits, I do not know if companies would be working so hard to get out the next-gen graphics cards.
There literally is no forseeable ceiling to graphics power - at least in terms for what the consumers will want. Oh, photorealistic graphics? Well, how long until you can render an entire city in photorealism? How about an entire state/province? Country? World? Galaxy?
As much as people might hate games like Crysis, they are a necessary evil. And this is coming from someone running a RADEON 9250 PCI card. I can play WoW and Half Life 2. d:
This is true. This is why World of Warcraft and similar games are so successful. Smarter companies have turned away from graphics or used smart design compared to making something that requires a miniature nuclear reactor for a power supply and a graphics card that can render every pixel on Doom Guy's face in glorious HD 14 billion megawhatzits quality.
Remember though, gameplay, not graphics, is what has always mattered. Think of some of the most revered and/or innovative games in the last ten years. Viva Pinata. Katamari Damacy. Rollercoaster Tycoon. The Sims. Starcraft. These are not exactly graphics powerhouses, but they're fun, and there's millions upon millions of people who are running $500 Dells (the poor bastards) and buying them up.
Aside: did I mention you can pick up Rollercoaster Tycoon deluxe for like $15 with shipping to pretty much anywhere in the States? What a steal for a good bit of nostalgia, especially since my original three game discs were stolen. >:
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
While I have a great deal of respect for the author, this doesn't help quite a few of the companies (and PC gamers) out there.
Basically, the position 'we will only attempt to sell to people who would prefer to buy over download' doesn't scale to big budget titles. There are a lot of gamers out there who like AAA, content rich games. These are the games that need to sell a million+ units just to break even. Ignore the programming - some of these games have dozens of artists and designers working for multiple years.
The 'make niche games' position doesn't help these developers (or the gamers who love their games). We're talking about shops like Valve and Relic here.
The game industry is certainly eyeing whats going on in the movie and music industries. The basic truth is that most people would rather download for free than vote on what they want to see in the future by buying it.
Consumers demands for content rich games is exceeding sales. This means that big blockbuster titles are likely take a hit similar to flight sims several years back. For some gamers, this is probably great. There are plenty out there who would love to see the death of the FPS/action genre if it means a few smaller games come out in their place.
Its going to be a rough few years as big devs figure out how to stay in buisness. Its likely to drive the 'big/blockbuster' titles even more towards the consoles which big markets and lower piracy rates so far this generation.
There's another wrinkle to ignoring piracy-- the DRM development concerns might take offense at you rebuffing their concerned offers of support, not unlike the 'insurance' offered by neighborhood protection rackets. This is the same outfit that had a pirated torrent of their game posted on the Starforce forums, by a member of the Starforce forum moderation team no less. Officially no harm was meant, but unofficially... come on. Ignoring DRM in favour of adding value post-purchase is the last thing that the copy protection racketeers want.
"What we do care about is when somebody in the mastering lab, or somewhere else along the line in between when the title goes to manufacturing and when it hits shelves, decides to take the game to a wholesale bootlegger. What we do care about is when a bootlegger makes half a million copies of our game and gets wide distribution to retail stores that either don't know any better or don't care. This is a major problem in Asia, particularly China. Bootleg retail copies hurt us in two ways: (1) Obviously, we lose revenue, but just as importantly (2) Customers tend to blame us, and not the bootleggers, when something goes wrong with a store-bought game because it was a bootleg (CD's that start flaking, etc) - it's a major problem for the brand-name.
Yes, it sucks that backup copies are collateral damage in this battle. But you tell me a better method for us to guarantee that no wholesale bootlegging will occur, and I'll take it to my superiors."
If Asia is so non-profitable because of bootleggers, then just don't sell your game in Asia. This is a perfect example of what Stardock's CEO was talking about. You're looking at the huge user base in China, but ignoring the fact that Chinese IP law makes the customer base much smaller.
Asking for a better method to stop wholesale bootlegging implies that you already have a method that works. This is yet another delusion that the games industry seems to have fallen under. Piracy, and to an even greater extent, bootlegging are not stopped by DRM. DRM has been a near complete failure for the games industry. All DRM does is force bootleggers to do things to the game that may make it less stable, and you just said that you get blamed for that.
The games industry is under the mass delusion that DRM increases their profits. The only people with measurable profits as a result of DRM are the companies making the DRM packages.
Stardock is one of the few sane game developers I've encountered. They have NEVER lost money on a game. They have NEVER made a bad game. For any other developer, that is called success, and commands respect. Yet, because what this guy is saying flies in the face of the standard nonsensical business practices of the games industry, "big" developers - who regularly make unprofitable and often terrible games - are thumbing their noses. It's very "high school" to be honest.
I don't think that's quite right. Quite a few shareholders do want to know, and do care about detailed aspects of the business. These types of things are the essence of detailed fundamental analysis, and knowing these things are what gives good investors an advantage. The better mutual funds' managers are all over this kind of stuff. They are not active managers, but they are active evaluators of management. That's how you try to make money in this space.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
The Radeon X600 is a recent graphics card. The Radeon 9600 that the GP talked about is a card I bought with my computer almost five years ago. And even then, it wasn't all that new. There's no way in hell the GP can play Crysis with his 9600.
All good points, though I'm not partial to World of Warcraft. However, I am currently playing Warrock, which is a graphically mediocre game with excellent gameplay, especially in the team-based side of it. It's a lot of fun with voice chat going with a clan all in the one map, and it's a lot of fun alone, too, for anyone who likes online Battlefield/Counterstrike-style FPS games. This game also runs pretty well on even IGP chipsets, which is a complete departure from the norm. And I like it. The games that push the envelope are indeed a necessary evil, but as long as they push it faster than the hardware does, low to mid-range graphics solutions won't cut it for pretty much anyone who wants to do some gaming. I'm of the firm belief that IGP-friendly settings, even if they look like absolute crap, should be incorporated into releases. It'd be weird playing CoD4 with pretty flat textures and polygons more at home in the first Rainbow Six, but hell, if I could play it on a $500 Dell, who's complaining? How much extra work would it be to shrink/compress textures and down the polycount? How much extra space would it take up? I can't imagine very much.
But the reason behind the PC market struggling to keep up with the X-Box 360/PS3 in terms of graphical prowess (and the reason for no IGP friendly graphics options in most cases) is simple: Nobody wants the PC gaming market to die off, much less to consoles, whose traditional role in the world of gaming has been a back seat to the mighty PC, even if only armed with an S3 Virge back in the days of software rendering. Graphics don't make the game, but to many people I talk to, it's common to hear "this game's graphics suck" or "I don't want to play that, look at how shitty it looks". However, they're mostly console gamers, and again, there's where the emphasis comes from. Consoles have evolved such that they rival high-end PC's in terms of raw graphical power, and because of their price tag, one might wonder why their $500-700 budget PC can't run games as well or that look as good as their $400 X-Box 360. They don't really care much about the gameplay, or why it happens to be.
But, those that HAVE found games that conform to their budget PC's that happen to actually be really great games are likely to know what to look for in a game. The unfortunate truth about these games, though, is that their follow-ups are very likely to be far more graphically intensive than these systems can handle. That said, in the coming years, more and more IGP's are shaping up to be capable game performers (the integrated Radeon HD 3200, for example, and its ability to scale in "hybrid" mode with other Radeon HD's provides excellent expandability and initial performance for an IGP, especially in comparison to the current standard), and video card tech is moving along at a rapid pace, making mid-range cards today sell at low-end prices tomorrow. The only problem there is, by tomorrow, they really will be low-end. It's an unfortunate treadmill.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
No, it isn't. Managerial independence to run companies is fundamental in making profits in the long run. And as short sited as investors are, part of the model for stock valuation comes from long run growth prospect versus acceptable risk and alternatives.
Due diligence is important, but is REALLY important for large individual shareholders. in other words, a large shareholder may be able to press a company into a course of events it might not have done so otherwise, but it will require a lot of pressure. Not only that, it requires time, and time is (presumably) precious for someone who has lots of money.
That is not to say that analysts and mutual fund managers aren't hounding companies to take action, but the OP's suggestion was that action by a company was precluded by shareholder interest, which isn't true in large part.
..the person quoted in the article to +5, Insightful. I think he's got the right of it, game pirates are always going to find a way around your protection scheme you spend $1,000,000 developing, so why worry about it? Most people will pay for the game anyway.
That is all it takes. That will always be all it takes.
Which means, do absolutely nothing. Even entering CD keys is kind of a pain in the ass.
Now, I'd suggest a middle ground -- CD keys are fine, network authentication is fine (either opportunistically, or require it exactly once), but spyware, driver/hardware examination/mutilation, and process blacklists are just going to be an endless arms race between you and the pirates, and will drive legitimate users away.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Surely the professionals selling half a million illegal copies to stores can circumvent the control measurements (especially those "must have cd to play" measurements). I always thought the control measurements were to "keep honest men honest", while those who make a sport (or a business) out of getting illegal copies will manage to find a way.
I agree, and it's not just the big games like Crysis. A friend of mine bought the Lost video game, only to find it won't run on his computer. He lent it to me to try out. Even though my computer meets all the box requirements, it is completely unplayable. I literally get like 2fps at 800x600 with all the bells and whistles turned off.
I'm not going to spend a dime to upgrade my computer, and I'm not going to spend a single dime on another PC game ever again. I can go get the 360 version and be guaranteed that it will work.
PC gaming is dying, and good riddance.
That said, I was estimating a full system, from scratch, and if you are building a PC specifically for gaming, then you're already several steps ahead of what I'm talking about here. Usually, Ma and Pa won't buy a computer from Newegg though, and while you can get a much better deal building one yourself that way, it's much easier to just buy a Dell, Gateway, HP, or *insert brand name here*. And that's the truth for the majority of PC's out there; I would be very surprised if there were more "white boxes" in the world than brand name PC's, and even so, "white box" PC's are typically either already gaming rigs, or filled with more bottom of the barrel budget parts. That said, they're usually far more expandable, which is a definite plus to any Ma or Pa who shops at a local computer shop instead of Best Buy.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
It's actually too bad that it's dying this way; I remember the days when Rainbow Six and Unreal Tournament were released. Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear ran excellently on everything I've tried it on, all the way down to a P2 333 with a Voodoo 3 card (which exceeds the minimum requirements, admittedly, but it ran like silk and looked good doing it). Hell, I could play Unreal Tournament at low settings on a P233 with 64MB of RAM and an S3 Virge in software rendering mode (which also exceeds the minimum spec), and it not only didn't look half bad, but at the time, looked particularly stunning at max quality with all the bells and whistles turned on, and required only a modest system to come close to it (that P2 333 did pretty well). I know several people who still play it, in fact, and again, it still looks good. What the hell happened? Why the sudden lack of support for those low-end systems? In my opinion, there hasn't been that great an increase in visual quality to warrant such requirements nor slowdown, and to this day I continue to complain about muddy textures and poor polycounts in supposedly graphically-stunning games. I feel like I'm stuck in 2002.
... Get off my lawn!
And why the hell are the system requirements simply the bare minimum to *run* the game?
None of it makes any sense. If software devs want their product to reach the widest possible audience, which is always a Good Thing (TM), then they need to realize that low end stuff is the norm, unlike the consoles they're porting to/from. Crysis was just one big shot in the foot, as far as I'm concerned; Which is OK, because it's just trying to sell the engine more so than the game itself, just like Half-Life 2 (which was a good game all told) and Doom 3 were. However, what good is an engine that powerful if it requires a system more powerful than currently available to fully take advantage of it in "HD" quality (and a system at least of the mid range to even run it at an acceptable speed)?
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
It does sound like a much smarter business strategy than the norm of giving *worse* service to customers than to users of unauthorized copies.
I never make unauthorized copies for a number of reasons, but I hate when I can't find the right CD needed to play a game I already have installed on the harddrive, or I want to play a steam game when I'm not online. Same for DVD's that won't play in my region, or won't allow me to fast forward over boring legalize, or music that can't be transfered to my favorite player.
While I've brought up Steam several times in this discussion, I'm going to advise against it.
Absolutely provide a downloadable version, and maybe use something like Steam. But don't use Steam itself.
As a user, no, I can't take them with me anywhere I play. Sometimes, I play on Linux. Sometimes, on OS X. Support on each is limited, and is hacked together with things like Wine and Parallels.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The people I know who pirate the most also buy the most. They're games junkies. They can't get enough.
Seriously, Blizzard did this 10 years ago. If you have neat stuff online that pirates can't get to, there's more incentive to buy the game. LAN games aren't effected, (we're not going to buy 8 copies for one LAN party) but there's much incentive to buy, even if you're buying Bnet more than the game. You really can't stop local piracy, but you can require online accounts to require genuine CD keys to create.
All copyprotection does is punish your legitimate customers. Slightly different industry, but mining software is appalling for this. Surpac/Datamine/etc all have the most god-damn-awful licensing software on the face of the planet. If you were to run a cracked version, you wouldn't have to deal with it.
Effectively by going legit, you're paying to be fucked around by the licensing software.
Same with code-wheels, safedisc, etc, etc. Its an inconvenience to your PAYING customers that the pirates don't have to deal with it. Fuck that.
Include a decent manual, an additional online content (forums, news, ability to post suggestions for expansions, etc - whatever) for paying customers - but don't punish them.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
"they weren't customers, they might never be customers, so spending money to try to stop them serves no purpose" really hits home. Case in point, I am a NIN fan, one who is willing to buy the latest album even if have not previewed it. Same thing with Stardock. I own GalCiv, GalCiv2, and SINS (and also a copy of Windowblinds). Sure I could have pirated these and used them for free, but why bother? It's easier for me to justify spending my hard earned cash on worthwhile products that I enjoy while at the same time supporting the developers who make the products that I enjoy. Wins all around...
Now. about that copy of CS3 that I downloaded... I'm at odds with this because I've grown accustomed to all the great features Adobe has provided. I can rationalize it by saying that if Adobe doesn't make a profit from me then I will not make a profit from Adobe's software, but this is still wrong and vexes me so. Not everyone that buys Photoshop is looking to make a profit from it and can justify it thusly, so I am still in the wrong.
And now to my point. I would some day like to be able to afford a fully licensed copy of Photoshop. If Adobe were to employ the tactics used by the RIAA and MPAA I don't think I would be inclined to buy anything from them and would instead seek out alternatives to support. However, since I have not been subjected to any raids or subpoenas, I do not feel threatened, and it is merely my moral fiber that keeps me in line. It is that same moral fiber that says "I shouldn't be using this, but I will, humbly, so that some day I may be able to afford it" rather than "Oh yeah. CS3 is MINE, bitches. Suck it, 'The Man'."
No it's not right, but it will do for me thinking that I'm morally superior to all the other pirates out there.
Meh, humility... Sometimes it's for me, other times it's not.
There is simply too much glass..
It has to increase sales by at least the amount that the protection itself costs. The includes all the costs which include not only the purchase cost (or development cost if you roll your own) but support costs (at lest some users will have problems with it) and potentially some lost sales from people who don't like or can't use your particular kind of copyprotection.
So it isn't just a matter of saying "Well this protection increased sales by X," it isn't worth the money unless X is greater than the total cost of implementing said protection.
Thus far I haven't seen any studies done on this sort of thing, so I wonder if it really does save them money, or if they sort of take it on faith that it does.
They follow their own advice, and it has worked so far. Galactic Civilizations II didn't have any copyprotection. They had a CD key if you wanted to get updates (not that you couldn't copy those as well) but the game had no technical measures to prevent copying. Well, it didn't just sell, it in fact did very well. It sold well enough that a number of retailers ordered a larger second batch (normally your biggest sale is your first batch, the rest are just to replenish inventory). For that matter you can download games you've bought by logging in to their software. However the files you download aren't encrypted or tied to the software in any way, they could be copied to another computer no problem. So they aren't just talking out their ass here.
Now will it keep working? I don't know, but we'll see. They just launched another game, Sins of a Solar Empire, that is supposedly the same, no copy protection. I can't tell you about it, my copy from Amazon hasn't arrived yet, I'll get it Monday.
While you are probably right that companies won't do this, that doesn't mean his view is invalid. He isn't sniveling that other people should make no money like him, because in fact they do make money. Also, while Stardock is small compared to many, they aren't a "shareware over the net" company. They sell boxed software in stores. Go in to Target, Sins of a Solar Empire is on shelves right now. Thus he's got some room to talk about how he thinks things should be done.
Now. about that copy of CS3 that I downloaded... If it weren't for people like you (us) learning Photoshop on free downloads, it would never have become a verb; and I wouldn't have pushed for 5 licenses of the CS3 suite at work.
I'm a working game developer and I totally agree with Brad (CEO of Stardock) about how to deal with piracy. I sort of cheat by dealing with MMO's, but the basic principle is the same: Who gives a shit how many users you have? Our job as game developers is to make money (and also feel fulfilled artistically, they're not incompatible), so we need to focus on paying customers. Pirates are just a force of nature, and we need to manage them correctly (that thing that Titan Quest did where it crashed for pirates is just plain idiotic) instead of fighting a self-destructive war against them. It's kind of like fighting a guerrilla war in the mideast: there's no way to win.
Further ramblings are available on my blog at http://doublebuffered.com/2008/03/20/piracy-customers-and-making-money/.
Game developers generally put a lot of money into making the games harder to crack. The bad part is that they're still being cracked. So they lose money over nothing...
I'm starting to get to the point where I'll happily buy Stardock games without even bothering to check the reviews. Galvic II is...not spectacular imo, but a plain good game. SoaSE is pretty good as well, but in both cases it's the fact that a) they don't treat me as a criminal until proven otherwise and b) the sheer convenience of their distribution model that won me over.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
IGN
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
10. Crysis
Courtesy of NPD
February's Top 10 Best Selling PC Games [March 13]
Amazon.com
1 Hoyle Card Games 2008 $12
2 [Logitech Laser Mouse]
3 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
4 The Sims 2: Free Time
5 Command & Conquer: Kane's Wrath [Out March 24]
6 Sins of a Solar Empire
7 SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition $15
8 Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm
9 World of Warcraft 60 Day Pre-Paid Time Card $30
10 The Sims 2 Deluxe
March 21 [early AM - updates hourly]
The Amazon list is interesting for its diversity - and for its demonstration of the endurance of a classic PC game. SimCity 4 for the Mac will set you back about $60.
There are free online servers for WoW, from what I hear. I'd be surprised if there weren't for any of the other online-only games.
Expansions and updates are also easily cracked.
The only (non moral) reason to pay for the online experience is if your friends refuse to use pirated versions. No use playing the game to spend more time with your friends, if you can never get to their (legit) server.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
> But you tell me a better method for us
Don't get your cds pressed in a cheap labor country, like China. If you're in the US, get them pressed in the US, then sue the hell out of them if they do leak the thing. You get what you pay for. Pay less, get shoddy service. Also, why do you think that a person who can make half a million copies of your game would be deterred by DRM?
I know it's probably, most likely, not that easy, I appreciate that it's not your choice, that for global distribution it's probably easier/better to have multiple plants press your media.
The point of TFA is that you have your legitimate customers who you deprive of value. You call it "collateral damage", I call it "I'll buy from someone else."
> to guarantee that no wholesale bootlegging will occur
Either with or without DRM, wholesale bootlegging "occurs." This is not something you're going to stop, as has been demonstrated by DVD, Blue Ray, CD protection rackets of various sorts, etc. Any and all media are distributed freely over the internet. DRM lost (didn't see that one coming?) so it might be just better to create a better game for the money and run with the people who are willing to pay for it, your loyal customers, the one group you do not want to piss off.
Galactic Civilisations is a very good game. Yes - I probably could have just pirated a copy, but no, I bought it. I was actually persuaded to do so because of this account of a game. Very entertaining. Unfortunately, though it would run on my old Linux system under Wine with an Nvidia graphics card, it keep crashing with my new AIT card. Well, it crashes with the proprietary drivers. It works with Mesa but doesn't have any 3D acceleration which makes it a little tricky to play.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
That only works the first time. Also the hardware is usually sold at a loss while the profit comes from the game titles.
I'm fed up with Stardock attitude. They say they do not use DRM while using, the worst kind of DRM, in my point of view : online activation. ...
Sure there is a twist : when you buy the DVD, yes, the game on the disc has no DRM whatsoever. BUT, if you update the game, you are REQUIRED to activate the updated version online. Version 1.0 has no DRM, but version 1.0.0.0.1 which could fix whatever critical bug must be "activated". And with online activation comes all the usual what-if problems : what if the activation servers are down for whatever reason, what if the activation server denies the authorization because of whatever "reasonable use" rule implemented on it,
Stardock attitude is typical of all the others DRM defenders : trust us, our DRM is not really a DRM, 100% compatible, no problem ever. Like all the other, they do not tell the whole truth...
That's his point: we consider these markets "niche", because of the number of people who play them. But when viewed in terms of the number of people who buy the game, they're not niche markets.
So, in other words: fighting piracy with intrusive DRM is an expensive and risky undertaking: you reduce the value of your product in the hope that you'll succeed in staving off the pirates a couple days at retail, and you often fail at that.
So, factoring piracy in, what does your market look like? That's what you build games to.
Another sideswipe: much of the DRM out there is designed to prevent zero-day (or even pre-release) cracks hitting P2P. A lot of people seem to like to download their games. So why are some companies still releasing games to retail only?
What really irks me about the software industry, especially games, is this.
Why do pirates get the better copies of games, which have NO CD checks, no "Hey I think you mightn't have brought this game, GO AWAY" bullshit, and NO problems playing online amongst themselves.
The legitimate users, hopefully, get a slightly larger base of people to play multiplayer with.
I mean, whats the real benefit? Its GOOD when gaming companies take a leap of faith and at most leave in the basic CD Check and CD Key. That means they're willing to trust their fanbase and people who may well like the game.
Oblivion is a great example. It sold well, it was a decent game (not amazing, just decent), and it had minimal copy protection.
Basically, what I'm getting at is this.
Pirates get their games for free, and they're of a higher quality.
Consumers get shat on, and have to hand over their cash.
Now, what I'd like to know, is why the fuck they think that making people who brought generic game X suffer through a whole bunch of crap to play their game which they're not even that happy with, while pirates get to play the game just fine and can decide "Hey, it wasn't worth paying for" and just delete it.
The problem with that of course, is what happens when you want to close your account, and give the game to someone else because you've finished playing with it, or simply don't like it? What if you want to play the game again after a few years, but have removed the account and password and can't remember what they are? What if your interent connection is down for the evening - you cannot play your game in the meantime...I have these kinds of issues with HL2. And because of this, I will NEVER buy another valve/steam game ever again.
-- Fuck Beta
No the biggest problem plaguing most PC releases is that the typical gamer is barely smart enough to hook up a 360 much less set up a proper PC.
PC hardware and software developers are to blame, they've skimmed along for years depending on all the "Hard Core" types to educated their friends, set up their games and machines, and troubleshoot problems. How many times have you bought something only to have to dig through the forums because the Dev's can't be bothered to actually host it in the download section of the games website and their Update function in the game doesn't work, or piece of networking gear that has almost no instructions, and they wonder why people gravitate towards consoles. This type of behavior can be seen in all aspects of the PC industry.
PC gaming isn't dying, its just shrinking back to the niche market its always been since their original core group of gamers have all grown up and have better things to do and the younger generation find the consoles good enough in a McDonalds sort of way and a hell of alot easier to deal with.
PC games are trying to compete where the consoles win throughly and that is going to be a loosing war. You don't fight a war where your strength is at it's lowest.
As you say the consoles win in many areas and will continue to do so for A LONG time. The companies have a huge amount of control over them and software just works. Graphics wise it is nearly impossible to keep up with them in a general purpose computer - mine also has to run applications that are VERY much not games, and run them well, for me to even begin to think of purchasing said PC. It is first and foremost a work machine, a gaming secondly. You are 100% correct in that analysis.
All that being said the PC has some real strengths. At one time this is why people played a PC, but they aren't as safe (from a companies return point of view) as console games and, while they can have great profits they can also have great losses.
One is cost in development - SDK's are fairly easy to obtain and many are even fairly open. You don't *have* to pay a fortune to MS, Sony, or Nintendo to get your stuff out there and this should allow a greater amount of innovation. To some extent DirectX has hurt this because many feel they have to pay Microsoft and if doing that they might as well go all 360 - however there are other nice 3D packages out there.
Another is expandability (though being able to ship poor products and patch later is one of the things that really hurt PC games) - Neverwinter Nights, Half-Life, and a few other RPG's are a *great* example of this. Unfortunately too many companies see this as being a competitor instead of an asset as they would prefer to sell their game engine for a few tens of thousands to a single company instead of to a few tens of thousands gamers (though as the above games showed - lots of money in the latter case).
And, while the last big win listed not really the last one over all, we have interface. FOr many styles of games a keyboard/mouse offers an unparalleled gaming experience - RPG's come to mind. To a lesser extent FPS are so also, but that probably ends to be overshadowed by the whole "control the hardware" thing from a developers standpoint.
*Shrug* PC's died as a gaming platform when they decided to take on consoles on their own turf instead of doing what they do best. Games like Half-Life, Neverwinter Nights, and quite a few others would *never* have done what they did on consoles. Unfortunately game companies
For myself gaming has been on the down slide since around the late 90's, I'm a puzzle/RPG fan with a side interest in strategy games. Consoles do bad there, though a few CRPG's do stand out (Final Fantasy VII for instance) and some of the tactics games have done well. While my genre has never been one of the large multi-tens of millions profit centers we are fairly dedicated and have nowhere to go as there has been VERY few games released that are decent (not a MMO fan - I'm not going to pay a monthly fee for other user to create crappy content).
I still expect games to slowly move back into that sector as they mature (just as other entertainment forms matured back into story/fun driven modes) but unfortunately I will most likely be in my 40's or even 50's by the time this occurs though I still expect to be gaming then. I find it sad that the current pinnacle of those games occurred in the late 90's early 00's as those games weren't really that good compared to what is possible - just that gaming companies abandoned them as it had better margins to produce flashy graphics (though I also admit I like those graphics and have a few games just because of them). Flashy graphics are reaching their limits and hopefully within the next 20 years will shift back towards fun gaming - which the PC is very well suited for several genres.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
I downloaded the first release of GC2. The first release of GC2 had some usability problems... for instance, when flying my constructors around, i didn't see their area of affect - so i was never quite sure where to place them for optimal play. First update came out, and it included a feature to show that... Granted, I probably could have found a pirated version with the first update. But at that point I had already determined that it was a great game, so I went out and bought it. I'm not saying that everyone did as I did, but I was really hoping to convince the company (with my money) that there were lots of reasons to make more versions.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
someone pirates your music, repackages it to make it look legit, then tries to sell it to your customer base? Like bootlegs and knock-off from Asia.
With Red Alert 2, they came up with a great way of making that CD Key Experience even more fun. If you entered it wrongly, it would still install, but all of your units would explode about 4 seconds into the game. There was no way of fixing this other than to reinstall, which took about 15 minutes. Oddly enough, that's the last Westwood game I bought.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The kind of copy protection that people put on CDs won't stop that kind of piracy, because someone who has the resources to package music or games by pressing new CDs in a plant in Asia has the resources to pay for a high school script kiddie to crack the software before you make the master.
You need to make the game into an online service to effectively protect it, and if you've done that you don't NEED to protect the game, because the copy of the software itself isn't where you're making your money any more. Look at Second Life: Linden Labs has made the actual software open source under the GPL. They're making their money from fees, like people renting virtual land on the Second Life grid.
I don't buy that premise, either. However, labels have traditionally served as imperfect filters - screening out TONS of really bad music, and also screening out some good music. What they actually sell is selected based on perceived commercial viability, which may include a musician's appearance and stage presence and touring record as much as the quality of their songs - but musical quality IS a factor.
In many cases, big-label music is merely adequate in quality. But being an indie musician and having swapped CDs with a lot of other indies, I can tell you that there are ways of sucking, musically and lyrically, which do get effectively screened out by the labels.
Labels are dying, or at least shrinking. As that happens, more of the burden of listening to every wanna-be musician's stuff and screening out the crap, trying to find the diamond in the rough, falls on die-hard music fans. It's probably a better system, but if you're on the front lines of it, you'll quickly let go of the notion that "indie" = "better."
Your point about WoW is exactly what the article makes. Blizzard makes their money from the subscriptions. It's only in their interest to worry about people that crack the game and ruin it for paying customers. If a small percent want to crack and run their own servers, then what is the benefit versus the cost of stopping them... what is the COST to the good will from the PAYING customers if you put stuff like StarForce on their machines that trashes the CDRWs of the HONEST people? What the CEOs are saying is that the "perfect" protection anti-piracy companies are selling is a scam, more about proving THEIR software works and not increasing YOUR sales. Tt's often counter to your HONEST, PAYING customers intentions.
Note, Stardock has a login system to get patches, you may get the game, but you won't get official patches or updates unless you pay and register. Because they don't have to pay for protection per copy, they can charge a much lower price for the game than the other titles. Also, they aren't "betting the farm" on sales either. They have a diversity of products and only spend time and money on a game they feel they can recoup REASONABLY. They budget 100,000 sales as good, if they make more money, it's all profit, but most importantly they don't LOSE money up front. That's the REAL key he's not saying... they are not putting the company in hoc to make the "best game ever" like 20 other companies are. They don't need to have the best graphics, just really good, they don't need massive amounts of content pre-generated. Keep the games simple and replayable.
Compare to say Doom 3, big, complex, a financial drain on the company and investors, loads of highly specialized content that's not reusable, VERY short actual gameplay and not replayable, etc. Doom3 cost armies of artists and developer time for what? (it was a tech demo for an engine for games, more than an actual game anyway) Because so much money is sunk, the investors demanded putting nasty copy protection that trashes machines and upsets HONEST customers, etc. Of course you can STILL find it cracked before it ships! The Stardock guy is saying why bother, and release what you can Afford and make customers happy... then they'll come back and buy another!
I own at least (bought and payed for) 5 Civilization CD's (including expansion packs). Because of the new 3D hardware requirements I downloaded Civ IV and played it for half a year before buying it. I never installed the bought version and the first thing I did after buying each expansion pack was downloading a cracked .exe to avoid having to have the CD in the drive. For me, the lessons are:
.02 etc
- your core audience will pay for the game, whether you have copy protection or not. The fringe (which is almost always bigger than the core) might well be more inclined to buy a game if they can't easily download it.
- requiring the CD in the drive is annoying and stupid (eg my subnotebook does not even have an optical drive and can still (barely) play Civ IV)
- having to go to a store and buy physical stuff is really annoying. If a game is decent, I would never download it "illegally"* if I could download it from the company web site for a reasonable sum (which is lower than 20$).
*) of course, being in a civilized country there is no such thing as illegal downloading, and pirating has something to do with ships and bloodletting... maybe "downloading from an unofficial source" would be the best euphemism...
"You need to make the game into an online service to effectively protect it"
I for one sometimes *like* playing single-player, non-online games. I play plenty of online games too. But, well, maybe my Internet connection's not working, or maybe I just don't feel like interacting with other human beings. Or maybe I want to play a game at my own pace. Many great games of many different genres would not work well as online games (for example, there are certain types of games where timing is critical (think high-speed racing games, platformer games, etc) where making it online doesn't work as well because of lag issues. Certain types of story-driven games where making it online doesn't work well either, because you want every player to start 'at the beginning' of the story and work through it at their own pace, instead of dropping into the middle of the story. Or games where player actions have actual real, meaningful impact on the story (something quite possible with single player games, or even networked games where a small group of people works through the story together - e.g. Neverwinter Nights, etc, but that doesn't work well with most online game models).
Also, as a customer, sometimes I don't want a game that I have to keep paying for forever. The online model usually also is based on the premise of companies making me pay perpetually to play the game (2nd Life is, of course, a little bit different in that regard, but it's also not exactly a game in the traditional sense; more of just a virtual space for people to hang out in). I kind of like the model of paying 20 or 30 bucks, then being able to play the game whenever I want without paying additional fees.
Valve did something really simple (old school HL fan here) that other's didn't. They actually kept a DB of the shipped keys. So you weren't just authenticating against the idea that a key COULD be valid, you were authenticating against the unique existence of a key. That's much stronger than most cd-key strategies out there, which is why it was so good at getting folks to purchase their (IMHO) really good multiplayer FPS's.
My Babylon
I for one sometimes *like* playing single-player, non-online games.
So do I. There's a big market for offline games. It's huge. I didn't mean to imply that companies shouldn't develop for the offline market. I entirely agree with the original article: companies that develop for the offline market are wasting their time with copy protection, because they can't get effective control over their product without abandoning that market.
is when the pirate is producing knockoffs that your real customers are deceived into buying, thinking it is the real thing. That kind of pirate you have to stop. Your customers are buying authentic copies from you instead of downloading/accepting free copies from a stranger for a reason. Commercial pirates are taking away that reason.
So the CEO of one of the most successful minor game companies out there "doesn't know anything about business"? You are aware that software pirates have NEVER been deterred by DRM? And that it's whether to put in legit-user-annoying DRM or not that is the subject at hand?
On Linux and OSX?
I will not even respond to that because of obvious reasons but I will put my own story in.
I played Steam perfectly on my home Windows desktop and than when I was going to watch the college games at my buddies place I thought I would back-up Call of Duty 4 to a DVD with Steams backup option. Sure enough I installed steam on his computer, put in the 2 backup DVDs and installed within 10 minutes.
The game ended and a buddy of mine saw that I was playing it, he was interested so I gave him my steam ID and password so he could go home install steam and redownload it there to play because by than the DVD disc had a big scratch already from some drunk buddies.
I long the days when people predicted Steam would be a big failure, all the threads on how bad Steam was on WON for CS and all the DRM fear mongers around here claimed it the devils mark. Well the WON system is gone for CS and now everybody uses Steam perfectly fine with their library growing in size almost daily.
Some of you Atari fans should be happy they imported a big collection of those games.
Compare to say Doom 3, big, complex, a financial drain on the company and investors, loads of highly specialized content that's not reusable, VERY short actual gameplay and not replayable, etc. Doom3 cost armies of artists and developer time for what? (it was a tech demo for an engine for games, more than an actual game anyway)
Maybe that's the problem. I still play Doom 1 & 2 on a regular basis, because they're great games. I'd love to be able to pay for more episodes of Doom that are as well designed as the original. As it is I have little interest in Doom 3, even now that I have a computer that can play it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The copy protection for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory did its job quite good. If i remember correctly it took around 6 months before a cracked version was out on the scene. You could play it earlier but usually it was a bigger hassle that it was worth.
And it's not that they hate these cheap games, either. If they thought the cheap games were crap and not worth paying for, then pirating them makes no difference to the seller. But if you read their posts, they LOVE these casual games. They're eating them up. They whine and beg for someone to steal more of them. They talk about how much their children love playing these stolen games they're providing. They don't seem to feel that ANY price is worth paying, even the $8-per-game of a membership at BFG.
Most restaurants do not have problem with patrons running off without paying the bill.
Read Customers Suck on livejournal sometime. They don't have too much trouble with running out, because that's easily catchable. THey have a lot of trouble with bastards coming in, ordering a bunch of expensive food, bothering the waitress with special requests, and then inventing a 'problem' with the food they already ate and demanding that they get their whole meal for free. People suck. :)
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
PC devs can design practically anything that is capable of being run on a top-line computer. So right now I have two PCs I built that outdo anything consoles out there can do, but what happens when the consoles fall far behind? You wait until another one comes out and you can shell out another $300-500 for it, maybe even more. But all I have to do is possibly purchase a new gpu.
You also fail to see that most people who do have a console will also have a PC. So why spend $500-1000 on a PC or laptop, plus $300-500 on a console when you can invest in a superior PC that will outdo both of those?
But like I said earlier, my biggest gripe is that the console is physically limited with what you can do. You can't upgrade, you can't use it for anything else than what it is designed for (with the exception of modded consoles). People like me like flexibility with what they can do. That's why pointing out one or two PC games which your specs aren't capable of reaching doesn't signal that the PC gaming market is dying. PC games which are outperforming console games are still the same price, if not less, than those console games. So I wouldn't say either one is dying, they just have a different market.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
The problem with ignoring pirates and piracy is that the pirates have an agenda - prevent others from paying. Sure, there are some isolated pirates out there that are just collecting all the software they can without any agenda, but in my experience this is a rarity.
The problem that pirates pose is their desire to "spread the wealth". They believe they have obtained something of value and their personal value (reputation, karma, whatever) will increase if they are able to spread this around.
It also must be understood that there are pirates and people that benefit from piracy. The pirates would like to think that there are no users, just pirates. They call the people benefiting from their efforts leeches but make few real attempts to prevent leeching from happening. The result is there is large ratio of benefiters (leeches) to pirates. The people benefiting from piracy probably wouldn't ever think of themselves as pirates. They just aren't the sort to turn down a free meal. Or movie. Or software.
Look at The Pirate Bay. Their sole reason for existance is to provide a means for others to benefit from the piracy of others. They derive their repuation and some level of revenue from providing a distribution channel. Now the consumer has a choice - they can visit Amazon and order a DVD or they can visit www.thepiratebay.com and download the same movie. This puts The Pirate Bay as a direct competitor to Amazon and believe me, there are individuals that want to spread the word.
This works the same way with software, for identical reasons. The piracy movement is evangelical, with the goal being the elimination of commercial distribution. When it is all available for free, what purpose does Adobe serve? Or Warner Brothers? Or some struggling shareware developer that actually does have a better application?
Secondarily, if I know about a great pirate software web site then I can get things that other people cannot. After a while, I can increase my value (reputation, karma, whatever) by telling others about the web site and educating them that they can stop paying and start downloading.
No, I don't believe for a second in "try before buy". If I go to McDonalds and get a free hamburger would I then buy one? No. After I have a high quality movie download and watch it why would I then run out to buy the DVD? The problem used to be that pirated materials were of inferior quality and you could get much better buy paying. This is no longer the case - most pirated media is from digital sources and is flawless. In fact, with the stripping of commercials, it can be said the pirated media is of higher quality than the original. So once I have a flawless movie or a working version of a software product, why would I buy the "original"? Well, I wouldn't. As for buying because of some sense of guilt, well, no. I was originally raised Catholic but that much guilt just didn't stick.
So sure, plenty of people making use of pirated materials are just collectors and not real customers. But the goal is to eliminate the revenue from the equation, and the pirates are currently winning. With higher broadband speeds more and more people will become digital "haves" thanks to evangelical pirates and people benefiting from piracy.
Can pirates be ignored? I don't think so. They are a economic force to be understood by anyone involved with entertainment or software. Discounting them is foolish and will lead to nothing but bankrupcy.
Heh, so in your words you are a "unrepentant software thief" yet when you pirate something good, you "felt shamed for stealing such a great game". If you had no qualms with what you were doing, you would never feel shame. On the other side, there is obviously some protection on the game or you could have played whenever you wanted to. So basically, the same could have happened to you with any software as long as the cracked version did not give you some functionality that you really wanted.
In any case, your friends can let you play WoW for free for a month with a friend invite, many games have demos, and you can always find a game reviewer you trust and base your purchases off that. Any magical "piracy made me buy this game" is just a justification for doing something you obviously know is unethical. I am not trying to change your ways...I honestly don't care. I just don't think that you buying sins because you pirated it really proves his point. You just couldn't pirate the full contents of the game.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Soldat is a sub-$20 game that is fully, entirely, playable just fine if you don't even pay for it.
If you do pay, -you- get the extra of customizing the player character (which is only two dozen pixels high) and you get a minimap (overview of the full map with your team players indicated on it, etc.). If you do pay, the developer gets some $$$ and is more likely to keep developing.
Just playing regularly at a major 'realistic mode' server from time to time, I know that more than half of the people who showed up as 'registered' didn't pay for it - but just wanted e.g. 'red jet flames' and didn't feel like spending less than $20 (I think the price back then was $9 and it went up to $13?) for it.
Pirates don't pirate because something is too expensive - they pirate because no matter what the amount, it's "not free". Nevermind that most of them go out on a beer binge every friday night that would have paid for it. Oh well.
The biggest problem plaguing most PC releases nowadays is that in order to keep up with the high power of most console games, a huge amount of PC horsepower is required; Hell, the X-Box 360 is more powerful than my PC. The Wii probably is, for that matter.
...
So, why should I, stuck with my crappy old Radeon 9600 Pro, go out and buy Crysis, even if I really wanted to? The answer is: I shouldn't. There's no possible way I could even squeeze 2FPS on that one.
You really don't know what you're talking about here. Your Radeon 9600 Pro is orders of magnitude faster than the Wii graphics chipset (which is basically just an update from the GameCube. If you think that consoles are even remotely close to being as fast as a baseline PC with a decent modern video card, you've been drinking the marketing Kool-Aid that's been around since before the "Emotion Engine" was supposed to be so powerful that it would render images that would make you cry when you played PS2 games.
The reason that good games run decently on consoles is the small group of really smart programmers who spend several man years optimizing each game plus you have another team of really talented artists who massage the hell of out the content. All of the "wow" in console games comes from knowing where to cut corners plus a lot of sweat and hard work.
BTW, if you want a glimpse of publicly available CELL code (no NDA info) that shows just what sort of hoops actual console game programmers are willing to jump through for a couple extra clock cycles, check out Mike Acton's site.
On the contrary, it failed terribly at its job. While it's true that it took forever to crack, it also dragged countless legitimate customers in with it. Many people who bought the game were *unable* to play it due to StarForce and its paranoid level of "protection".
"Ignore Pirates, throwing money at them is a waste of money"... best concept voiced by a game industry professional I've seen in over a year. However, I don't think the Nine Inch Nails parallel completely fits. In the case of Radiohead and Reznor, they're allowing you, without remorse, to download their albums for free. If I didn't have much interest in helping the artists (which I, personally, do), I would be completely conscience-free to download the albums without any donation.
However, game sales are a little different. Simply removing all copy-protection doesn't say, "here, have my game for free." If it's still sold in stores, and downloaded off of corporate web-pages for money (even if you theoretically could borrow it from a friend and rip it), is psychologically very different from the Radiohead/Reznor model.
What it is is the traditional audio-CD model. Audio-CDs have no DRM, they can be freely borrowed, ripped and passed around, but for the most part, the audio-CD model works. And that's what the game market should be based off of. It's about convenience and level of security. For example: say there's a little shop in Seattle that has a sign "take what you want, donate what you want". Now, many people will pay, but some wont, and probably the owner won't make as much as they would in a traditional market, because most people will only donate the bear minimum enough to satisfy their guilt. Then there's another shop that has armed guards with AK-47s posted at the entrances, and a security checkpoint. People are going to stay the hell away from that because it feels like an invasion of privacy and a complete lack of trust/respect for the consumer. The best is something just to the right of the first example, where there is very strong encouragement to pay, that will make people feel horribly guilty if they don't, but don't scare them with guards. Make it clear that you expect compansation, but that their is room for negotiation and personal exchange.
Radiohead and Reznor may have been very successful with their model, but that's partially only because they are some of the first. People are currently very quick to support artists who have taken these kinds of revolutionary strides, so they're willing to donate quite a bit. If their model were to become common-place, though, people would likely just take advantage of it. Down the road, if corporate whores like Garth Brooks & Maddona were to do the same, people would be just as quick to say "fuck you" and bleed them dry, even if they like their music.
I very much respect the Radiohead model, but I'm unfortunately very skeptical that its really a viable solution for an entire market, or two. As much as I say it, I think this guy's just a big NiN fan (for Radiohead actually pioneered it first), and having fun spouting Reznor's name... which is cool cuz Reznor's a great musician. But I don't think that what he's really proposing is going to look much like the Radiohead/Reznor model.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
PC gamers are people who like to take on challenges on their computers, and feel a sense of victory and accomplishment when they use use their wit and skill to defeat a difficult level. The last thing you should do is turn the act of stealing your game into another challenge for them to conquer.
If you employ DRM, gamers will feel disrespected by your company, and they will feel pretty cool when they manage to defeat it. If you use no DRM, the gamers will feel that you trust them, that you "get it," and stealing from you would make them feel like cheapskates.
I call BS to this whole supposition also. Personally, there's more to the story in my opinion. Game developers are alienating their users, but the only way the users can really strike back without ruining their own enjoyment is going to affect the retail channel. I was not enamored with digital distribution- especially since they're charging the same price with a negligible cost for their distribution channels. But then I began to see that I don't need to put the DVD in the drive- without having to hack my legitimately purchased game! Now I only buy digital, and have decided not to buy a few new releases because they don't have a digital option. And the National sales figures suffer as a result- you *have* to buy console releases from B&M so they all get included- digital distribution channels are *not* included in the sales figures.
you know once you activate hl2 you can just disable steam's online mode, right?
Publishers, and sometimes even retailers, require some level of copy protection also. Sure, Galactic Civilizations is a huge famous video game with no copy protection... but where is it sold? I've never seen it at Target or Fred Meyer. (Admittedly, they have a small game selection.)
Comment of the year
I dunno about you, but if I were of a pirating mentality, I'd just download a DS ROM, slap it on my microSD card, put that in my R4, and play it. Thankfully for Nintendo, I generally use my R4 as an mp3 player, along with some snazzy homebrew apps like DSorganize.
so fucking what?
How much of that 10-20 million did you get personally?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I know as a game developer that I certainly see many, many, many more pirate downloads than I do sales. I try not to stress too much about it, because giving myself ulcers really won't help. But most people do NOT pay. Which is thoroughly annoying when they then whine about, say, a lower art budget in the games they're ripping off. If more people /bought the games/ then it would be practical to spend more money on them... otherwise, as a tiny independent producer, I can't waste more money making a game than I'm likely to get back from selling it. I like having a roof over my head, thanks. :)
The pirate may be able to steal the game for free - I can't steal the custom content needed to make it. :)
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
Next thing you know, you'll ask them to start making movies/songs that don't suck! Oh the nerve, the nerve!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
To you, Microsoft might appear to ignore piracy. To me, it does not. Otherwise, the maker of Xbox video game consoles wouldn't have joined Sony in the lawsuits that brought down Lik Sang.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This has to be slashdot for an actual video game developer gets modded down as offtopic while the response that's full of technical errors about pc vs console performance gets modded "+5 insightful".
Sigh... oh well, that's probably why there are so few posts from actual people in the industry here.
>Sure, The ones I like only account for c.5% of the music I've downloaded,
>but I was never going to pay for that stuff anyway. The other 95% have lost no revenue.
Yes, but the *reason* you weren't going to pay for them is that you could pirate them. Therefor, piracy *has* cost lost revenue. Unless of course, you are as I suspect, one of the DOLIMBs (Drop Out Living In Mom's Basement), who has no money in the first place to buy music with.
Hoards of college and high school drop outs living in their mom's basement seem to believe that society owes them a free ride, free music, and everything they want without having to pay for it or work a day. Additionally, they are also convinced that they are unappreciated "computer geniuses" because they know how to install Linux, and becuase they troubleshoot their mom's Windows install (does this sound familiar slashdot?). Those of you expressing these views should be aware that in the real world, outside of your Vampire the Masquerade LARPs, and furry fetish clubs, you are held in contempt.
On the internet, you can pretend to be highly skilled professionals, but no one buys it. I'm calling you all out, and letting you know that I can tell the difference. No professional software developer I have ever met has told me that they "deserve" to steal free music, or software. Nor have many of the complained about the one dollar fee for purchasing music legitimately on Itunes. Thus, you complainers are revealed as the jobless fucks that you are!
So, DOLIMB's, feel shame that you have been unmasked. Please leave the internet (which is serious business!) and spend the rest of your life masturbating to furry cartoons and reading 4chan in isolation. Or, maybe, just maybe, stop feeling sorry for yourself, get off your bum ass, and go back to school and get yourself a job. Then actually paying for music and software won't seem such a burden!
so fucking what? How much of that 10-20 million did you get personally?
It's not all about the money but to answer your question, Midway actually does have a royalty plan and higher selling games do get royalty bonuses for the team. The team splits a fair share of the profits after development, marketing, and distribution costs are covered. Games right now have a larger development cost so royalty expectations are more modest but there's nothing that would keep the team members personally from taking home wheelbarrows full of cash for their share of royalties if the next game is one of the top console sellers (and the chances of that happening on a console game are quite a bit higher than PC games right now).
However, like I said, it's not all about the money. It just feels GOOD to have your game be purchased and played by over two million people. It's something to be proud of on a personal level. And it's a lot harder to get all that excited in developing new content for the PC market where the only games in that range is WOW. The next PC contender for 2007 was pushing merely one forth of that which was a Sim's add-on module. This years top PC game according to other posts in this thread (although slashdottter posts are hardly a reliable reference) is doing 1/10th as well as the game I work on.
I may misunderstand you, but I recently just moved and was without an internet connection for a week and decided to play HL2. "Sorry, Steam cannot connect to the network." Couldn't play it.
The article is essentially correct, copy protection is basically a waste of the game developer's money.
I'm tired of having to keep a CD/DVD in the drive, as I tend to end up playing several different games each month, or going back to old games. Since I am swapping discs, I sometimes end up leaving one laying on the desk, and it can go unnoticed for a bit. I've had 2 game discs ruined by that, which is admittedly my own fault. But the game was already installed on my HD, so I should have been fine. I wasn't.
The only copy protection that I've seen be effective against pirates is what I like to call the "zero day release protection" that seems to happen. All games these days are released too soon, with little to no beta testing or Q/A. So, bad bugs are present when the game hits the shelves, and often times the bugs are fatal issues to the game. Without a patch to fix those bugs, the game is basically a demo disc. Unlock the full game by getting the patch that was miraculously available a few days after release, and the game works much better.
Really, I would much rather have to register my copy of a game so I can patch it, than have to keep the CD/DVD in the drive. Once validated, I'm good.
It's why I've played so many MMOs over the years. No discs in the drive, the game gets patched all the time, and I get new content frequenly in most of them.
I was really disappointed with Hellgate:London, as they made you keep the DVD in the drive for solo play, but for multi-player, they didn't need it. Why? Because they wouldn't let you play on a LAN, it had to be on THEIR servers. I found myself playing solo on the multi-plyaer servers so I didn't have to keep a disc in the drive.
Most copies released on Usenet and through torrents are zero-day releases, so there is no patch available without a valid/registered CD key. Pirates get to play a "demo version" that will crap out within 2 hrs of starting gameplay in most zero-day releases. They get to see if the game is crap, without having to use the real demo that is usually so spit-polished that nothing ever goes wrong. That's the only advantage I can see to pirating a game. You know more than the flawless demo shows you, which is often some of the best of the game.
I personally will not buy any PC game that I haven't played. So, the publisher has two options.
1. Release a demo.
2. I pirate it.
I normally purchase any game that I play for more than the first hour. Take it for what it's worth.
I pirated both games and only purchased one. The fact is, I felt Stardock deserved my money since it was a quality product.
You may not be reading, but I meant playing hl2 after installing and verifying the copy. I installed hl2 on this laptop (the windows partition) and a desktop. I played hl2 one the desktop while underway on a submarine--most definetly not connected to the internet. :) I'm not sure if they have changed it since last august, but steam can be run in offline mode AFAIK.
IMO, steam isn't the best solution (Stardock's actually is pretty nice, but isn't as far removed from steam as they would have you believe), but it is a good one. It beats cd checks, which are stupid anyways (GG morrowind cd check crashing the game).
Ok, so you don't want the large-scale bootlegger to sell half a million copies of your game. But does copy protection ever actually do that? I can't think of a game that was never cracked, and usually they're cracked 0 day or earlier. If even one person on earth can crack your game and put it into the warez channels, the bootlegger got the copy anyway. All they need is one. Does paying all that money for copy protection slow down the bootlegger? Of course, if you ask the copy protection people you are paying money to, they will say "Oh yes, it's working great!"
Glad to hear him say it, I always respected what Brad Wardell's said in previous interviews I've read. I have been saying pretty much the same thing since the 1980s. Every game that came out for the Apple ][+ back then was cracked, without exception. Some people spent a brief amount of time putting in some existing copy protection technology. I saw other people I worked for spend immense amounts of time putting self-encrypting/decrypting disk access routines into their code. Didn't make any difference in the amount of piracy as far as I could see. The pirates loved that kind of stuff, it was like a new puzzle to solve.
When one of my employers asked me to hook in the copy protection supplied by the disk duplication firm we used, into a Commodore 64 game, I hooked it in with one call in the bootstrap loader. Knowing that the average user trying to copy a disk image would be defeated, and the serious, assembly-tracing pirate (or anybody who got their games from one) would not be. Same result as if I'd spent extra hours, days, or weeks peppering more protection calls & other tricks through the code. (Plus more disk checks would slow the game down.) I spent the minimum amount of time needed to get the job done, and I went back to programming and designing "fun", which is a game developer's job. Not working on annoying copy protection technologies that don't even boost sales much.
It always bothered me in the 80s and 90s when the Software Publishers Association would report the amount of sales lost to piracy by calculating it as if 100% of the pirates would have bought a legal copy if they were unable to obtain a free one. That's just clearly untrue. But then, overestimating numbers ludicrously to support your point is a time honored human tradition, isn't it?
I'm in online games now, where piracy is mostly a non-issue anyway. But I was always glad a lot of people played my single-player games. As an artist, amongst those billions who would never want to buy my work, wouldn't I rather some of them see it and experience it, rather than none of 'em? Of course I do. I could wish they'd all give me money - but then, I could wish the Flying Spaghetti Monster would give me magic jellybeans that grant wishes, too. I'm a pragmatist, I try to shoot for things I could actually get to happen in this world.
-- Dr. Cat