Slashdot Mirror
LGP To Introduce Game Copy Protection
libredr writes "Phoronix reports that Linux Game Publishing have developed an Internet-based copy protection which will be used in their upcoming commercial game port, such as Sacred: Gold. Any user will be able to install the game, but to launch it he will need to provide a valid key and a password, which are validated against LGP's servers. The key/password combination will allow a user to install the software on different computers. However, an Internet connection will be required even for a single-player game, which might be a hassle for some users. This scheme has enraged some of the beta testers and LGP CEO, Michael Simms, responded he regrets he has to introduce a copy protection scheme, but has to do this since a lot more people download their titles instead of buying them, to the point they even received support requests for pirated version. But will every pirated copy magically transforms into a sale, or will this scheme just annoy legitimate users and be cracked anyway? One really wonders."
The CEO did say that, should anything happen to LGP, he and all of his dev team are authorized to distribute patches which remove the check.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Assuming you need to validate online EVERY time you play- this eliminates playing : in an airplane, on a road trip, when the internet's down, in class (some class rooms have wifi blocked), and at my parents house when visiting for the weekend.
I have a better idea, if I must have this game, I'll just crack it. But then why go through all that trouble to "fix" a game I purchased and put the security of my system at risk by running an unknown program?? Might as well steal the whole thing.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
The beta mailing list for Sacred had some discussion on the new key feature but I'd hardly call it an "enraged" exchanged. No chair throwing was observed. Any protection system is a thorny issue.
Pretty much every commercial game I've bought for Linux has some sort of activation system, key lookup or similar. Most of them have some system for authenticating once online and then going offline thereafter. DropTeam even offered a way to generate an authorization on one machine and use it on a non-networked machine.
Storm in a teacup.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Really, anyone who "Downloaded" the beta will have an internet connection. You can disconnect if you still use dialup or satellite after it validates you. So a few kb of data. It lets you install to as many computers as you want too.
Look at how many people use steam. It does a lot more than validate an account and people love it. It is also better than an activation based system where you get X installs and that is it. Again, this lets you play it anywhere.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
No, it won't, but it might get them more sales by slowing down the pirates.
Yes, there's that, too. But at least the legitimate users won't need to carry the CD as a dongle all the time. No whining about not being able to play on the plane, you willingly went through airport security!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
... from the community response to BioWare's Spore / Mass Effect 10-day re-activation check.
I'd post the details, but almost everybody here was part of getting it removed anyway.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
So, reducing market exposure via pirated copies is somehow magically going to translate into higher sales?
Honestly, who buys a game as a last resort when they can't find a pirated copy of it? Conversely, software piracy has introduced many people to games and game series that have directly led to sales.
It's amazing that some people still think casual piracy is detrimental to the video game market.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Copy protection that inconveniences the honest user will:
[ ] make some of your honest (and now inconvenienced) users walk away
[ ] make pirates come to you so they can pay and have a less comfortable (but legal) copy
Hint: Only one answer is correct.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Obviously it will be cracked like every other DRM attempt so far.
I think it's more of an issue that support costs a company money. This is normally fine, as it is factored into the cost of the game. If you pirate a game you really have no right to expect a paid employee to assist you in getting the game to run. You're on your own.
This sounds more like a statement of principle than anything else, but maybe I'm wrong.
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
That's sort of underhanded, but still, a good way to see how far reaching the piracy goes. Doesn't say a lot about your opinion of your actual customers if you complain about piracy after you do it.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Not a single copy protection scheme worked on a closed OS like Windows. How would this even work on an open system like Linux.
It will only annoy (legit) customers.
some "piracy" (unsanctioned demos) will be converted to sales, and some legitimate users would be annoyed by the scheme.
If there is a legitimate demo I might try it, and then if I like it I will buy it. If there is no demo I won't download an unsanctioned game; I will wait until there is a review from one or three sites I trust, and or good word of mouth about it, and only then will I consider buying it.
DRM/copy prevention/anti"piracy" schemes WILL annoy me, and no amount of awesome will get me to buy such a game. It's good to hear about these things before I consider a game.
Of course, I run a mac and an ubuntu rig, so I'm not in the target market for many game companies anyway.
More music, fewer hits
That seems like a stupid idea. It's very unlikely I'd steal a game, find it broken, and then go out and buy it after that.
I understand, I shouldn't steal in the first place- but I'd just assume it was horribly coded and that brings my likelyhood of purchase even lower.
*Disclaimer: I personally purchase all games I play- However, I do steal no-cd cracks so I don't have to bother, and I also steal serials some times to play a lan game of command and conquer.. I'm not purchasing two copies to play a few games against a friend in my own house. I'd say the only game that got that right was Sins of a Solar Empire (which I didn't even like), but there was no copy protection, and they even allowed multiple installs. It is a multiplayer game by design, and they accepted that. I didn't like the game too much, but am still happy I gave them my money.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
This is just going to annoy potential users, and reduce sales of the game.
Eventually it will cause less games to be ported to Linux/BSD/etc as the companies will assume that Linux users aren't interested in games (instead of realizing Linux users aren't interested in games that phone home and have irritating copy protection).
Those that do get a copy the game - one way or another - will probably crack the program (or redirect validation requests to a daemon which always returns a positive verification).
Instead of starforce-like apps creating instability in the system and fighting for resources, network-based authentication is really the way to go. It doesn't clog up your system, and it doesn't destabalize by hooking into low levels.
Hopefully it actually does function by turning some number of pirates into legitimate customers. Selling 30 copies of a game in a week is a really, really low number. I suspect that torrents will continue to exist (due to the simple fact of hex editing). But we'll see. Hopefully LGP will provide some before and after numbers for us to ponder.
The ______ Agenda
But will every pirated copy magically transforms into a sale, or will this scheme just annoy legitimate users and be cracked anyway? One really wonders.
A thief walks into a fine winery and takes a bottle without paying for it. Just walks out the door. Two days later, the thief comes back and asks what food might go well with the wine he stole. The store, shocked and appalled at how brazen thieves are becoming, puts locks on the cabinets and asks that people contact an employee, who is nearby and ready to help at any time, to get wine out of the case.
The author of this summary would respond that the store is so inconveniencing its patrons that it ought to be closed down. That response has nothing to do with software freedom or idealism or the right way to do things or being sensitive when legitimately protecting one's assets. This is utter detachment from reality itself.
The OSS crowd steals from its own. This story and the few comments already ("If they put copy protection on it that annoys me in any way I'll just steal/crack it") makes that very clear. I'm siding with the authors on this one. Linux advocates always seem to complain when games won't work with Linux. Then, if this story is any indication, when they do work with Linux, the same people who complain that games for profit never work properly run out and immediately steal the game. Do you really expect people to develop multimillion dollar games for Linux if that's how things work?
Put your copy protection on the game, man.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
this is the least intrusive, and very close to Steam, the main difference being that LGP games will have a different log-in for each of their games. However, either of those two beats Starforce and its ilk with ease.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Really, I think this is great for them. It's about as simple a plan as they could do. It doesn't install crap on the computers, you just have to log in before playing. OH well. No one thinks this is going to keep out the crackers... those people will defeat any scheme. But this will keep someone from burning it on a CD and distributing it to every single person they know...
And even if it doesn't produce one more sale, if it keeps them from supporting stolen goods, it's worth it.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
do you play on-line games? or do you refuse to play them because they require an internet connection?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Everybody always whines about the lack of linux games. We all know how much effort it takes to write a game, especially a good one. Now here is a company offering something that looks fairly decent, and includes a very minimal and polite way to ensure you actually payed for it. First thing everybody says, no I will not buy it, since it requires me to prove that I bought it ?? WTF ?? Are we really surprised there are not many commercial quality games out there ?
If you want linux games, you either make your own/help people make them, or you pay for them. It is that simple. Im buying this one when it is out of beta, just as I preferably buy hardware that has good vendor supplied OS drivers for them. Vote with your valet.
Complexity is a measure of our ignorance...
...economics catching up with technology. As anyone in the world can now create and distrubute any collection of bits to anyone else, a company attempting to prevent that is just wasting their time. As with most DRM, it only aggrivates their actual customers and poses a fun game to those who like hacking executable binaries.
While I have no solution yet, more attempts should be made to try new models of business i.e. Radiohead's pay if you wish model (while DRM is a "new" business model I personally feel it is on shady moral ground). Technology has the ability to enrich our lives, but when we try to just keep doing the same things in the same way as before, technology just gets in the way.
I think of MMO's differently, they're not often so much a single-player experience or a story as they are a romp in the park. Anti-hack's bother me though, I don't believe any of them really work and they're everywhere, especially in the free korean games I keep getting swept up into.
To require an internet connection just to play through a story, though not as incredible of a suggestion as it might have been ten or even five years ago, is still like... you know... Crap.
This makes me wonder, books have libraries, often you'll even find movies and music legally shared by a library. No one would DARE say a damn thing about libraries stealing from the authors, even though by reading a book you have effectively 'copied' it to yourself, even though it's not verbatim (except for some extraordinary individuals). Maybe we'll someday see games shared out the same way.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
This isn't specifically a Linux gaming issue. That it should be showing up in the Linux context just shows how serious the dilemma facing the PC gaming industry has become.
Before I go any further; I am a huge fan of PC gaming. I didn't own a console until I was 22. I grew up playing PC games like the Ultima series, the X-Wing and Wing Commander games and, later, the Westwood/Blizzard RTSes. I still buy and play PC games and the games as it's clear that, until developers start making better allowances for mouse and keyboard play, some genres (particularly RTSes) will never work properly on a console.
However, PC gaming is now hurtling towards an abyss. I know people have been saying this for years. But now, for the first time, I believe them.
We have now reached the point where, when a new first or third person shooter comes out on both PC and consoles, I will always buy the console version. Why? While I don't much like console controllers for playing fpses, I can tolerate them. The resolutions on my HDTV can't compare with what my PC can put out, but they are good enough. But, more than that, I know that with a console game, I do not need to worry about falling foul of a copy protection system which either means I can't read the disk (used to happen a lot... I had to go through 3 DVD drives before I found one that could run all of my games), have to remove some of my existing software to play it (can you imagine "Hey, it seems you have Gears of War game-data on your 360's hard-disk! No Halo 3 for you then!"?) or access the net every time I want to play it.
I can't entirely blame the PC gaming industry. Piracy levels are absolutely ridiculous. Of course, anybody with half a brain knows that not every pirated copy of a game means a lost sale. But there's no denying that more than a few people who would have considered a purchase will instead be lured by the siren call of bittorrent. I know a few people who work in the industry and a lot of these developers, outside of a few big superstars, operate on the thinnest of margins. Anything they can do to prop said margin up, they will.
I don't honestly know what the solution is. Between the traditional hardware hassles and the new copy protection woes, buying a PC game is starting to feel like more trouble than it's worth. Over on the consoles, the copy-protection mechanisms are invisible to the average end-user. With Sony deciding to get rid of region protection for games, I'm actually in a position where I have no complaints whatsoever regarding the extent to which my PS3 and PSP are or are not locked down.
Of course, this isn't to say that there aren't problems on the horizon in console-land either. My big emerging gripe there regards firmware updates. All three of the systems out there insist on these on a regular basis if you want to use any online features. The 360 version isn't too painful, but the Wii version is distinctly irritating and the PS3 updates are far too frequent, take far too long to download and fail to download far too often when the servers are busy.
After they introduce copy protection, they'll have to listen to bugs from people running the cracked version.
Stupid argument. Requiring an internet connection for an on-line game is rudimentary. You can't play "on-line" without the connection. Requiring an internet connection for a single-player game is draconian. I like to play games traveling down the road, in the air, etc. Internet connection is not always viable. I'm not going to purchase a single-player game that isn't available just because my Internet provider decides to crash.
Is this guy retarded? I'm not buying Mass Effect for this *exact reason*.
Meanwhile, Sins of a Solar Empire, a DRM free game, enters it's 6th month on the top 10 selling games list.
There is a war going on for your mind.
If they pirated your game are they really your customers?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I find it amusing that people still perpetrate the fallacy that piracy is just a way to try the game out before a purchase is made. Sure, it sounds good, like the habit of calling pirated roms "backups," but it's transparently bullshit.
It is becoming pretty clear from all these DRM articles lately that many Slashdotters are extremely arrogant. I say many because I have to assume that is the case when the majority of the comments that are modded up deal with people saying either: DRM is bad and will cost them more customers than if they left it open or DRM will cause the posting Slashdotter to pirate the game. I say this is arrogant because there is just some sort of assumption that what they are saying is factual without any thing to back it up. You may feel that DRM costs them more customers because you won't by it, but more likely it is the case that they ran the numbers and found that not to be true. Also, it is arrogant to think you are morally ok to pirate the game just because they do something you don't like.
I am fine with the people who buy the game than use a cracked version. But the people who just pirate and justify it are just nuts. I actually don't care if you pirate the game, just don't make up stuff saying that what you are doing is right. If people didn't pirate, there wouldn't be DRM. Yet Slashdot blames the companies for adding DRM and openly admit they will pirate the game. This just further justifies their actions. I just don't understand why some of you are so irrational about this. It is like a religious debate where facts and logic have no room to exist.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Blizzard also got it very right with Starcraft "spawn" installs (multiplayer-only installs, using the same CD-key, which could only play in games against the original CD-key). Everything needed to play in LAN or online games against a few friends, while still encouraging those friends to buy their own, fully copies to do anything more.
Omnes stulti sunt.
I was just considering that, in order to pirate the game, SOMEONE has to buy it in order to distribute it. If the company themselves is distributing it in illicit channels, then it makes the legitimate purchasers look worse. At least in my opinion
Check out my sysadmin blog!
If they pirated your game are they really your customers?
No, they're not, which is something most people on slashdot never seem to understand.
Right, I guess I will go ask all of the game companies I've purchased from for my money back then, since I just pirated them before them and was only bullshitting when I paid for them afterward. I ALWAYS pirate before I purchase. On the one occasion I made an except, I got burned by poor replay-value (Bioshock).
Actually, Lucasarts did that a year earlier, with Xwing Vs. TIE Fighter.
Any form of proctection is pointless. There's always a simple enough way to bypass it, its just technically impossible to completely defend software. The only question is whether the protection is bypassed in an hour of in a week. The entire discussion should be on the business model. Perhaps software companies should find a different model to work with, rathen then sell copies to private users. It worked for Google.
Uh. It was a bug only in the pirated version. From the article:
Point of example, we deliberately uploaded a broken version of one game onto a filesharing system where the full game was already present.
So yes, I think a bug report like that wouldn't be worth listening to.
You're pretty much right about a lot of those points. Except for the fact that you forgot about the biggest copy protection mechanism on Consoles. The console itself. Maybe its a dongle that accepts software. Maybe its a large pretty dongle that looks good by your TV. Maybe its even a dongle that does things other than execute software that was written for it. But in the end, the console itself IS a copy protection mechanism.
So you've had to worry about your DVD drive, at least you can change it yourself without voiding a warranty. Is PC gaming becoming a hassle? No, its really just about as much hassle as its been. Depending on the product you buy, its actually probably less than a hassle. Auto-configuring settings based on specs has replaced the horrors of EMM386 and SET BLASTER. Casual games are just as easy as browsing to a website.
On a PC, when something hardware related goes wrong, you have to dig a bit deeper to get the answers you need from the game's support team. With a console, when you have a hardware problem, you ship it back to the manufacturer hoping its under warranty.
I'm not saying one or the other is better, but its still a trade-off and I don't think its anywhere near as cut and dry as you think.
Also, about razor thin margins... Its caused by the same problem as the whole copy protection issue. Its not the developers. Its the publishers. Go look at any relatively small indie studio and their anti-piracy measures. More than likely its a key that's emailed to you after you buy the game. Just like the whole music debacle, rarely are you hearing the artists crying out over piracy. Its the same thing for the video game industry but instead of artists and labels you have development studios and publishers.
As someone looking into the industry I have a couple ideas on "fixing the problem." Unfortunately, it doesn't fit with the big publisher/investor model. If you want to look at why some companies have razor thin margins, look into the whole "shotgun" approach to financing a video game project.
"Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
but its hardly a huge inconvenience, if you will buy an online-only game, then clearly that sort of restriction on a game does not upset you in practice.
You are refusing to buy it out of principle, which is fine, but which is why nobody makes single player games any more.
You are killing off games you would like to play, despite the fact that you have proved its really no big inconvenience to you.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I'm 100% with you there, buddy! Bioshock was the only game that I haven't pirated before buying since I was about 14 10 years ago, and it was the first game I've ever called a support line on, and one where I had problems with incompatibilities with my system. Not only could I not play the game, but the game was non-returnable after my purchase. I feel screwed.
... would be: "Irrelevant game publisher finds way to become even less relevant."
Read my blog.
That piracy on linux is so rife that this is neccesary? If it really is the case that linux users are pirating games for the platform then shame on you. If we want linux to be taken more seriously as a gaming platform then you have to be prepared to put your wallet where your mouth is and support those companies that are putting the effort in.
N.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Copy protection is just plain useless! It's a hassle to anyone who can afford to buy the game, for the reasons already posted - having to carry the media around, internet connection, serial numbers. And if you enforce your right to use and enjoy the work for which you have already paid for, free of this annoyance, you have to rely on third-party software, non-code-free - as much as we may salute the authors oh these.
So, just drop copy protection! It's plain DRM for software : installs unwanted software and deprives the user of choice.
Of course i won't be buying this if the trend goes on. But then again, as with Music and Cinema, would everyone who downloads a "cracked version" be buying the game? I don't think that a reasonable argument.
Instead, the try and buy - wich is also a discourse present in the "cracking scene" - seems more plausible.
No, but some will. Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Let me make sure I understand this correctly. You will not pay for a game that has DRM. That is, you will vote with your wallet and refuse to give money to companies which protect their games with DRM copy protection. Excellent use of free-market economics.
But, you reserve the right to download it, find a crack, and play the game without having paid for it. This is like saying you refuse to buy things from Walmart because they put small stores out of business, but then turning around and stealing things from Walmart because "I can't find this in the smaller stores."
Is DRM a Bad Thing? Undoubtably. It prevents people who have purchased a product from using it while providing a temporary hindrance to people who intended to steal it all along. Vote with your wallet. It's a business strategy and, if it lacks support in the market, it will fail. Be proactive about it. Write the company and say "As interesting as this game is, I will not support a company which prevents paying customers from using what they are paying for. Therefore, I will not play it."
But, when you then decide, "You know, I am really interested in that game." If you download it and crack it, you have broken the law. And, you have sent the company the wrong message. Because you have told them, "I refuse to pay for something I can steal for free." Their only logical response is to make it more expensive to steal. Because they are beholden to their stockholders to produce a profit, which makes giving the game away for free problematic.
No you're just being remarkably simpleminded.
There are a number of non-evil motivations for acquiring the pirated version of a product.
Even if the intent is evil today, it might not be so tomorrow.
Regardless, fixating on the pirates is bound to take your focus off of
where it needs to be and will likely cause you to just annoy the paying
customers you do have.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I understand where LGP is coming from, but I can't support a game where you can't even play single play disconnected from the network.
LGP has the right to protect their game and their work, and I have the right to say no and ignore the game's release.
To pirate the game is only going to give LGP more reason to come up with more inconvenient copy-protection.
I want to support those who make games for Linux, I would even buy them, but something this inconvenient just is too much to be worth MY money
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
And what are the chances I'm watching a friend play a pirated copy? Pretty high, but that's still marketing. I may decide I want the game and go get it. But not if it doesn't even work properly...
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
There are a number of non-evil motivations for acquiring the pirated version of a product.
Name one. The only thing I can think of is if you bought it previously, but for some reason (lost the CD key, lost the disks, etc.) your copy no longer works.
The solution is quite clear to me. It's the same solution that the music industry needs to try and incorporate.
Change your business model.
Games that are making money today, are multi-player games. The only way gaming companies nowadays are going to make money is by providing services, services that you can't simply "pirate". For example, look at the Xbox 360. There is so much support and information for modding the console, that almost anyone could do it and just pirate all Xbox 360 games. But what has Microsoft done? They have created a service called Xbox Live that no xbox user would want to risk by modding their system.
Specifically Halo 3. The amount of multi-player features and functionality is exceptional, and thats what drives Microsoft's real revenue.
The PC game industry needs to take note of this (and a huge portion has already), and create these services that users will pay for. That is where I believe they will find real revenue. Its just too easy to pirate offline games, just as its too easy to rip and share music. There just is not viable solution to that (at least for now).
I thought you couldn't patch that up to the newest version, though. That was always a problem.
However, you can install the game with a key like 123-4567, so..
(And no, I'm not kidding, but I don't think that's the real one, either. Either it's a few numbers longer, or starts at zero, don't remember.)
Here's an easy way to circumvent the copy protection: Get the Windows version running on Wine.
I'm not sure that going effectively multiplayer-only would necessarily be in the industry's best interests. Yes, there is a large and growing multiplayer market, but the singleplayer market is still, I suspect, bigger. Halo 3 sold wildly, but it had a singleplayer mode as well.
Japanese RPGs continue to be among the most profitable games around and they are, for the most part, defiantly singleplayer-only experiences. I'm currently playing through Lost Odyssey (yeah, I know, I'm behind the times here) and it's a very impressive achievement. However, I think of the development costs that must have gone into this and I just can't see too many developers wanting to take the plunge and develop something like this exclusively for the piracy-riddled PC market.
they're called online games.
All games will be online games before long. Just for that reason. The only hold up is the actual ubiquity of connectivity.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
I suppose I didn't make myself clear. Multi-player is not necessarily the only way of "changing your business model" (however, the best solution IMHO). To me, what they need to do is provide services that cannot be "pirated".
For some products, this is support. For others, downloadable content (although it can be argued that this can be pirated as well), general online features (like hosting stats, content, etc).
Stuff like that could seriously improve a customers reason to buy the product instead of pirating it.
I'm looking over at my PS3 games, and they all have a little region 1 logo on them??
I suppose Steam is starting to move in this direction on the PC. I logged into it for the first time in 6 months the other night and was pleasantly surprised at how much the list of games available had grown.
That said, while I don't follow such things closely, I believe steam's copy protection has been broken for quite some time.
(nt)
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/press_releases/200806241.txt
How our copy protection works
Our copy protection is an online protection system. There is never a need to have a disc in the drive, or to have the hard copy of the game with you.
When you install, the system will ask you for the key that came with the game, and then for a password, and, optionally, your email address.
Once the key has been verified on the LGP servers, and the password registered then you are good to go, you never need to worry about the system again. It will call to the LGP servers each time the game starts, to verify its details. It does all this in the background. You do not need to enter anything when you start the game.
If you wish to install the game on multiple personal machines, you may do so, using the same password and CD key. This is explicitly allowed.
If you ever lose your password, you can request to have it emailed to you using the key management system, which is readily available. This is why we ask for your email address during registration, your email address will never be used for anything else.
If your machine is not directly connected to the internet, or for some reason your internet connection does not allow direct connection to our servers, the game will allow you to continue to play for a certain amount of time before requesting you re-verify with the LGP key server. If your machine is unable to do this, for instance it does not have an internet connection, or it is firewalled in such a way as to block the connection, or perhaps you are on holiday and are nowhere near an ethernet socket for your laptop, then you may verify your game using a web browser or WAP phone browser. This can be used to indefinitely extend the time that a game may be played on a machine with no direct internet connection, as long as you have SOME internet access.
"A patron walks into a fine wine shop, and buys a bottle. As he leaves, 5 employees walk out the door behind him, almost close enough to smother themselves in his hair.
They follow him home, and every time his child goes near the refrigerator they shriek and whip out their cellphones to call the police for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Shocked and appalled by this trespassing and blatant invasion of privacy, the patron calls his lawyer only to find out the store had bribed local legislators into letting them do this.
The following night he sneaks into his fridge while the 5 employees are asleep on the couch in the next room and pours the wine into 3 unmarked bottles, then places the original bottle in the recycling bin.
That morning the 5 employees give a speech to the legislature, detailing how the previous law they bought did not insure proper conduct with "their" alcohol, and demanding neural implants which would incapacitate anyone who approached the wine while they were asleep."
There, I fixed that analogy for you.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Whether or not I'd like ads in my game depends on how the ads are executed. There are good and bad ways to put products into a game. Some examples:
Coca Cola is inserted into a Deus Ex-workalike.
Good: Soda cans are now Coke cans; there are a few Coke vending machines throughout the game.
Bad: Characters talk about how much they'd like a refreshing can of Coke Zero - full taste and zero sugar, yum.
Subway advertises in a multiplayer FPS.
Good: Billboards around the map show the "eat fresh" slogan; a downtown map contains a Subway.
Bad: Subway baners in every loading screen; every urban map contains a Subway; the Subway Muppet is seen anywhere near the game.
Dunkin' Donuts sponsors the next GTA.
Good: There are several DDs sprinkled throughout Abstract Concept City, acting as cop magnets; one mission can be made easier by distracting a cop with a box of donuts.
Bad: Every single cop in the city and half of the underworld have no other discussion topic but which kind of donut they love most; every problem can be solved by tossing donuts around, Hostess Fruit Cake-style.
In general, if the product placement is done tactfully and unobtrusively I entirely agree with it and am happy to have my games subsidized. If it's blatant and in-your-face I want the corp in question to piss off and take their product with them.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
It is an inconvenience. Imagine every game requiring an Internet phone home. Tomorrow, a storm blows through and your internet provider gets knocked out of service. One week without games? Two? Three? Sorry. My single-player experience should be available in every instance except a complete power failure. Thank goodness for Stardock because as long as they keep pumping out games like Sins and Galactic Civs then I'll keep I won't have to support DRM.
However, some people have no shame.
Q: "I cracked this demo to have unlimited playtime and now it crashes when I jump on the foozle!"
A: "Buy the game, then you won't have that problem."
Q: "I downloaded this game from a torrent and one of the files was broken, can you provide it for me?"
A: "No. Buy the game, you won't have this problem."
Q: "I just got this game and it has a huge bug in it at the end of level two! Your company is a terrible game company! I will never buy from you again! I hope your entire family dies in a fire!"
A: "That bug only existed in the private beta-test version and was already fixed in the very first version of the game that was on sale. Buy the game, you won't have this problem."
Q: "This game is hard! Can you spend the next few weeks providing a slow step-by-step walkthrough of exactly how to win the game and answer all of my questions about it?"
A: "... got a receipt?"
Pirates reporting bugs isn't a problem. Pirates taking your hard work for free and then demanding that you do even more work for them personally, for free, deserve a head-booting.
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
I have many legitimately purchased games on my Linux box. I bought games from Loki, back when, specifically to encourage the developers to bring games over.
I will NOT buy any software with a "phone home" requirement. I just deleted LGP's bookmark.
Wow.
How about running the game under emulation? It used to only be a complaint from the WINE and classic gaming crowds, now that MS is shoving Vista down everyone's throats, it's going to be a lot more common. The same for a "key" disk. Nothing pisses me off to no end like a game which won't run without a having the CD in my drive. Nevermind that as a sysadmin, I would much rather have a second battery in my expansion bay rather then the DVD drive.
There's two very good, real world reasons for you.
Software pirates are assholes.
Because support requests are always about bugs. Oh, wait...
Seriously, this is sad. I remember clearly how a type of request kept reappearing on Peach Princess' BBS in the Help forum. It was about Brave Soul, a bishoujo RPG. It was "How do I save in Brave Soul?".
Most people who asked this question turned out to have pirated the game, and hence did not have a manual to read their answer in.
Eventually it became policy to answer this question with: "Read the manual, page 10.". Of course this was always followed with the user complaining that he/she (most likely he) did not have a manual. Because they had pirated it.
A CD isn't required. Score 1 for us. The product can be installed on more than one PC at a time. Now we're 2-0. The CEO said that they'll release a non-DRM fix if the company ever goes under so your purchase has future guarantees. 3-0! So what are ya'll bitching about?
Hmm...you got modded down because it's an old gag, but honestly I think you breathed new life into it :D
One way 'Free' software can be profitable. Free software, paid support. That is, the software itself is a 'loss leader' to get people to pay for support. But then those pesky user-communities start supporting each other...
A conveniant online distribution system and unobtrusive copy protection are two features that'll see a dramatic decline in PC game piracy. Steam is the best game distribution system I've used to date. The games are cheap and it's actually more conveniant than downloading a torrent or dealing with the idiots and poor selection in a traditional store. I have no problem with online verification. Two things I do want to be able to do though is install multiple copies and run single players games in an offline mode. I think LGP is a possitive step forward for Linux gaming and the copyprotection will ensure game publishers are more confident with the platform.
Dear Mr. Simms,
We aren't looking for a crack if we know how to use our property to the fullest extent possible without any further intervention. If you didn't want to sell software to us, then you are required by law to give us notice persuant to the Misleading Titles Act under Negotiable Instruments Law that the sale is actually a limited-time rent of the property and at most a DEMO that is quite shy of the full use of the title (that is assumptively reserved by its true owners). Did you get me, or is it for sale now?
Sincerily,
Crusader (Linuxgames.com admin)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
But will every pirated copy magically transforms into a sale
... or will this scheme just annoy legitimate users and be cracked anyway?
... the dude issued a challenge to the world's crackers just by announcing this) it'll be cracked forthwith. I buy all the games I play, but only if the vendor respects me as a customer. Doesn't matter how good your product is, if you treat me badly you won't get my money. You still might get my money if a solid crack is available though. Either way, I insist upon maintaining control over my property.
Nope.
Duh.
This approach invariably torques off paying customers, especially if they aren't made aware of the protection before they plunk down their money. Worse yet, if the game is any good (or even if it's not
Now, having said that I don't have a problem with a game company wanting to keep non-paying users off their gaming network, but don't go overboard with security. Also, if I want to run the software single-player I absolutely should not have to jump through hoops, need to keep the damn CD in the drive, or maintain an active Internet connection for Chrissakes.
Get over yourselves.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
From your link;
For the music industry, there is a dark side to Apple's ascension to the top of the charts. Buying patterns for digital downloads are different, as customers are far more likely to cherry pick a favorite track or two from an album than purchase the whole thing. In contrast, brick-and-mortar sales are predominantly high-margin CDs. For 2007, that translated into a 10 percent decline in overall music spending according to the NPD Group, and it's a trend that's expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
The iTunes Store leads the pack with 19 percent,
This dollar amount is part of the overall market shrink even though the capacity and quanity of personal players have exploded. The market expanded, the sales shrank. Where is all the music on these devices from? More important, why can't the industry meet the market to sell into it instead of being bypassed by the new freeway?
There are more players in the hands of more people able to contain entiere libraries of music, but sales are down 10% even though the market expanded several times as those who used to carry no music and only had a stereo at home shared by the family now have personal players. Neither Apple nor any other retailer has been able to sell into the expanded market. DRM, High prices, and the ease of piracy all contribute to the undisputed fact that the great vast majority of music on iPods is NOT from the iTunes store or from the owner's personal CD collection. iTunes sales is only a small niche of the overall music out there.
Again, on a typical 30 or 60 Gig iPod sold, how many songs on average are from iTunes? I'll wager money this is less than 1%. Having 20% sales of the less than 1% purchased music out there is niche in my book.
If you see someone with an iPod, start an informal survey. How many songs are on it? How many are from iTunes, How many are from your CD's you ripped yourself, and how many are from "other sources" trading, sneakernet and P-P. Be sure to ask kids as this is the largest demographic. I know the ratio on my 2 kids players. I backed one up befor sending it in for repair. Of the 20+ Gigs, none were from an online store, several hundred were ripped from borrowed CD's and the rest traded with friends. Only about 3 CD's were from ones they own. This is typical of middle school kids. No credit cards, no accounts, limited spending money better spent on concerts and parties, and lots of friends to swap with. By the time they reach college, the pattern is already set.
My legal collection is larger as I already have a CD and LP collection. However, none is from P-P, none from online stores, and some is from sneakernet. My player is only 1 Gig. It plays MP3's and unprotected WMA files only, thus almost all online stores sell incompatible formats.
MP3's work. They are everywhere, most places don't sell them. Any questions?
The truth shall set you free!
From here;
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070508-indie-labels-revolting-against-emusics-low-prices-hardly.html?rel
"the average iTunes user spends only $12 per year at the store"
Not every iPod owner is an iTunes user. How many songs are on a typical kid's iPod? Only an average of 12 songs/year and only for those who use iTunes.
iTunes is a niche boutique next to the freeway where most don't bother to even look.
The truth shall set you free!
That was sarcasm, btw.
Hence we now have this great new thing called a DEMO. So if you don't trust the plethora of free game reviews on the internet, magazine- and newspaper-based reviews, word of mouth in both online and offline gaming communities, friends who already have the game (or friends at all), teasers and trailers, screenshots, predecessors (in the case of sequels)...then you can use this new idea of the Demo to actually try a portion of the game for yourself, free* (at the cost of bandwidth or a gaming magazine), and completely legally, and see for yourself if the game is worth purchasing, without having to resort to illegal activities and inventing new ways to rationalize your immoral and illegal behaviour.
How about Transgaming ?
That compagny don't implement phone home on Cedega, but you have to own a valid active account for upgrades.
By the way, they have not much enhanced their software during the last two years. Now a day, I can get much working games with the open source Wine than with Cedega. Their support forums are full of angry customers leaving the ship.
Even though I pay a monthly subscription since at least four years, I slowly consider ending that because every new game I install, has better performance and much less trouble with the plain Wine software environment that with the commercial Cedega. The last one is Everquest II Runes of Kunark pack.
Hey guys from Transgaming, wake up! Please do the job I pay you for. Fix these bugs and support at the very least, same level of quality than in the open source Wine.
Léa Gris
according to their logic http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/press_releases/200806241.txt
***********
It is estimated that many more pirated copies of LGP games exist, than do original copies. We obtained this estimate by seeding the download sites with a number of broken copies of our games, and monitored the number of requests for technical support that referenced the known bug we had inserted.
***********
So they gave out a free copy of the game and effectively made it available to many millions of people, and were _shocked_ when people downloaded it?!?
Who would of thunk it? If you make it available people _will_ take it!
It's a moot point anyway... it'll take some enterprising thief about 3 hours to figure out how to crack it and re-release it to the web. When will these people realize that the tools you use to lock it down are the same set of tools thieves have to unlock them.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
No doubt Brad Wardell (of Stardock and Galactic Civilizations) has already come up in this discussion. His position is eminently more sane than anything to come out of the monolithic distributors. In one line, it is, "pirates don't get a vote." Idiots take that to mean "yeah, we need to stick it to the pirates as hard as we can!" The rest of us should be able to see Mr. Wardell's original intent.
Most forms of piracy countermeasures, even the classic "must have disk in drive" stuff, create a condition in which legitimate paying customers are given a less satisfying product. Yes, vast sums are spent trying to make these defenses less obtrusive. Yet this is like spending vast sums to make a race war less brutal when the alternative is to simply stop fighting a race war!
Copy protection is fine for making games less fun, but there is zero credible evidence that it makes games more lucrative. Far worse than television advertising, people in the DRM industry engage in wholesale fabrication of data to justify bold claims about consumer behavior being influenced by their achievements as career nuisances.
There may also be no hard evidence substantiating the claim that copy protection measures serve as a gateway to expand the scope of software piracy as a subculture. Still, that pontification supported by precisely as much legitimate empirical data as any half-baked speculations that rationalize the continued existence of these economic parasites manipulating game publishers into charging at the windmill of piracy curtailment.
Adrift with insufficient evidence, the best thinking comes from sound analysis. I believe sound analysis supports the position that people who steal games will continue to steal games even if bypassing piracy countermeasures requires switching from no-cd cracks to some other method. Always there will be eager and capable people stepping up to make piracy both safe and virtually effortless for those with a modest amount of security savvy (since P2P networks, serial code searches, et al. require a touch of sense to avoid malware exposure.) A 12-year old online in 2008 shouldn't be challenged by the effort.
Unless someone is gullible enough to buy into the bluster and falsifications used to support huge expenditures to incorporate DRM into commercial releases, there is no reason to let a single decision, right from conception to distribution, be influenced by the existence of software pirates. On the other hand, from the dimmest business school instructors to the brightest minds in management, there is little dispute that paying customers should get a "vote."
Chucking the entire DRM industry would be a win for honest consumers as well as game developers. The user experience would involve fewer hassles, and game budgets would no longer involve one common counterproductive expenditure. Also, it can't be helpful to force collaborations between the honorable hard-working people adding value to electronic entertainment products and the sleazebags who would take a paycheck for sucking the life from a creative industry.
Would this be a win for pirates too? Certainly not in any complete sense. Perhaps the childishly simple task of pirating a game would become a little more simple. However, the demand for unauthorized executables designed to circumvent copy protection would vanish overnight. Dedicated game crackers would feel the loss of a satisfying hobby. (Speaking of which, I know from my own much-belated successes that devising a method to defeat copy protection on past Sacred games was an especially fun brain teaser.)
So, I suppose if the big boys in the gaming industry were driven by the usual petty motives of corporate America -- the desire to compete by tearing down others, a preference for destroying things rather than letting them be appreciated without proprietary authorization, and a general obsession with marking every little bit of turf with foul odors -- they mi
Maybe a Steam type system for Linux is whats needed. That has a nice balance between checking online for user authentication and ease of use. Though the fact you have to say you'll be offline before going offline is a minor annoyance.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
If I buy a game on CD, and it has a singleplayer mode, I should not require an internet connection at all, for any reason. If I download a game from the web, it should not require an internet connection after the download. Multiplayer gaming requires a connection by default, and can use online connection when users log in to play. Subscription based games require no authentication beyond logging in since their money comes from the subscription.
I also appreciate online updates, as long as they can be configured to be "upon request" and not automatic.
If we buy these products with all these elaborate copy protection schemes that break the game and even our OS, then we are to blame for encouraging these schemes.
One time authentication by email would be a good method. Have a key generator on your computer that generates a key based on your computer's SID. Email that key to publisher. They create a matching key and send it back. It's good on your computer until your SID changes.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
Hah, you say that as if nobody has ever been burned by a good demo and a mediocre game. If I'm spending the money, I will try out the actual product, thanks, not just what the company wants me to see before they have my money.
Well, I don't know anybody who's complained that a demo didn't give an accurate depiction of what the game is like. But I know plenty of people whose pirated version wasn't an accurate depiction of the retail copy. And I know of plenty of people who, after already going to the trouble of getting their warez, wouldn't go out and pay money for it no matter how much they liked it. But then, I suppose not being content with taking a car for a test drive, you'd much rather steal a car and drive it to its fullest for 20 years, before deciding it may or may not be worth shelling out the money for. Which I'm sure you'd totally be willing to do, out of the goodness of your own scurvy heart, after already having your way with it.
I love the solution. These days Internet connection is everywhere(wired/wifi/mobile). No more excuses. Its about damn time. The companies who implemented these kind of solutions first time, 10-15 years ago have grown beyond belief (e.g. Blizzard Entertainment).
Well, maybe its not perfect, but at least they are trying to do something about it. I see a lot of people whining about it, but how about coming with a solution? Unless you think there is no problem - in that case you are a software pirate and don't try to pretend otherwise hiding behind long words/thoughts.
While I'm sure you enjoyed your little rant on car theft, it's not the same. Stealing a car involves taking something away. Pirating a game to test out costs nobody anything, since I wouldn't buy the game without trying it out anyway. As I said, I've been burned enough and my money is worth something.
Oh, no, I do write companies and tell them all the time exactly what I do and my reason for it. Sierra replied to me with a boilerplate linking to steampowered.com after I told them how I felt about the SecuROM in Homeworld 2.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Ah, I see. You're one of those "stealing takes something away, piracy doesn't" criminals. And I suppose "depriving the authors of renumeration" isn't a very good argument, because you probably wouldn't have bought the game anyway, and they wouldn't have got paid anyway, am I right? Kind of like how stealing a car is ok, because the dealership probably wasn't going to get someone to actually buy the car anyway. I mean, you're actually doing them a favor, now they have extra floorspace that they wouldn't have had if it weren't for your superior moral principals!
And the idea that your theft devalues everyone else's legitimate copy, I suppose doesn't bother you at all, because after all, you never had a legitimate copy, so you've got nothing to devalue. Because it's all about YOU, right? As long as you're better off, screw everyone else. And what would you say if I were to, oh, print my own (counterfeit) money? Why would you complain, it's not like I'm taking away your money, am I? And what if, say, I decide to print massive amounts of this money and give it away to everyone except you? Sure, everyone except you is now a billionaire. And sure, a loaf of bread and a carton of milk now cost $3 million. But you'd still be ok with that, yeah? Or has it finally hit you that the world doesn't revolve around your pretentious, greedy little criminal self?
I suppose you'd rather that developers release their full games for free, than relied on the honor system for people to pay them only if they liked the game? Because pirates like you are all so trustworthy, right? I'm sure developers would trust their customers enough to do that.
Bullshit. You want a company to trust YOU? From 3 posts I personally know you better than any game company ever would. Hell, I don't trust you, and I don't even have anything to lose on you, let alone if I were expected to rely on people like you to decide whether I get to feed my family tonight.
Hey Einstein, you think maybe there's a reason 99% of business relies on the customer's payment before, or at the same time as, the goods or services are delivered, and the remaining 1% have enough info on you that they could track you down if you decided to do a runner? It's the goal of EVERY market to pimp their product as much as possible, it's called doing business. You want developers to put the WORST parts of the game in the demo? What do they do if they've only built 2 levels when the demo is released? Just what exactly the fuck is it that you want from them?
Ahhh, who am I kidding, thinking that there's anything a company could do that would make you content with not breaking the law to get what you think you deserve. You've already convinced yourself that what you're doing is just, I doubt there's any better demo of cognitive dissonance at work on the simple minded. But I suppose we can't decide anything until we've pirated the full version, right?
You sure do go on interesting tangents when you get mad! No worries though, it's clear that you have no intention of actually considering anything I say (as evidenced above, you only read the sentence where I said piracy takes nothing away). I am done with this. You may think me dangerous for being a pirate, but closed-minded people are more dangerous than I could ever dream of being. ;)
Actually, I would rather that they put their two worst levels in the demo! That would keep them honest! If their worst levels are good enough to make me want to buy the game, that would be very impressive. It wouldn't be likely that only two levels are even built, since demos generally are made backwards from release candidates, and very few are released THAT far in advance.
I laugh at this idea of what you think I "deserve". I spend more money on games in a year than most people do in a lifetime, whether I pirate it first or not. What I deserve is to make sure I'm not getting screwed. Your idea of "doing business" is what allows weak developers to continue releasing weak products.
I assume you're implying that I should play a friend's copy. Yeah, I do that if I can. It's easier than pirating.
You sure do have a funny way of admitting defeat. "You're talking crazy talk, stop talking crazy talk!"? More like "Hmm, better refuse to rebut any more points before I dig myself even deeper".
So your solution to the problem of developers over-representing their games, is to have them deliberately under-represent them. Yeah, that's sure going to work. Dumbass. The worst parts of the game are no more representative of the game as a whole, any more than the best parts of the game are. Of course, if you were actually thinking rationally, you'd realize that.
You're also assuming that the whole game exists when the demo is out. What if it isn't? Are you going to go pirate the game because the developers failed to forsee that there were going to be levels that weren't as good as the ones they currently have? What if they choose the worst stuff, but make it better after the demo's released? Or even with a patch after the retail release (eg. Bioshock - Widescreen, Vita Chambers)? Or if they remove it altogether, precisely because they've recognized that it is, infact, the worst part of the game?
And what is exactly is a "worst" level anyway? By who's opinion? Your whole theory relies on there being some of metric by which one can subjectively measure the worst parts of a game and have it universally agreed upon by all potential buyers. Which of course means, if such a universal metric existed, you would have no trouble basing your purchases on game reviews. Epic fail.
Another assumption is that games actually still come in "levels", a concept which has barely existed in games for about 10 years now. The first levels of games are bad? Really? Which levels of Company of Heroes didn't you like? Battlefield 2? World of Warcraft? Sorry, your theory doesn't hold. I know it, the developers know it, the gaming community at large know it. The only person who hasn't boarded the clue train yet is you. But of course, we should still listen to you, because you're just an impartial observer with a totally objective, unbiased view, who I'm sure isn't bitter at all about making poor buying choices, and I'm sure has absolutely no ulterior motive in justifying their immoral and illegal activities.
You might enjoy the TV show Dexter. It's about a guy who spends his days serving the community as a crime specialist. Which of course totally earns him the right to go around killing people, if we are to believe your logic.
Now little Jimmy's playing point-making! You're so cute! I just wanna pick you up and squeeze your little face until you squeak!
Thanks for the complement, but unfortunately I don't bat for that team. However if you'd care to attempt a valid rebuttal to any of these or these arguments, perhaps we can talk. Though if you are unwilling, or (more likely) incapable of actually providing rational debate, please stop wasting my time.