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Game Developer's Response To Pirates
cliffski writes "A few days ago, indie PC games developer Positech publicly called for people pirating their games to explain why, in an open and honest attempt to see what the causes of gaming piracy were. Hundreds of blog posts, hundreds more emails and several server-reboots later, the developer's reply is up on their site. The pirates had a lot to say, on subjects such as price, DRM, demos and the overall quality of PC games, and Positech owner Cliffski explains how this developer at least will be changing their approach to selling PC games as a result. Is this the start of a change for the wider industry? Or is this the only developer actively listening to the pirates point of view?"
As far as having a good "taster", Id did pretty well with this. With say DOOM, you knew up front that the game would have a total of three episodes. Id let you play pretty much the first third of the game free. Hell, their demos even had some replay value. As it turned out, their clueful use of shareware pretty much made them back then.
Of course, not all games are as episodic but it you could draw some rules of thumb from it. A first time player casually making his way through DOOM's first 9 levels will take about 1.5 to 3 hours to do it. So it seems you have to give a quality experience for at least that amount of time to start some buzz going and of course the paid portion of the game has to maintain that quality so you'll tell your friends and blogs that the rest of the game is worth paying for.
I'd also suggest not continually have the player running into physical barriers and what not that aren't present in the payware version. Just structure the demo such that the game can be experienced for that critically addictive amount of time. Building in nags and frustrations will keep your prospective customer from getting hooked and wanting more. Rather you need an end that takes some period of time to encounter whether it be "level 9" or a decently far extent of a game universe. A game using the hub and spoke system should supply a quest or two say.
We can draw a parallel from the serialized stories of yesteryear. A good solid first installment is what is needed to get the reader caring about the story and characters. The "gotta know" sets in so the rest are bought.
to claim that DRM is a reason to steal the whole game?
Y'know, I attended a talk by RMS in New Zealand about copyright law last night (13th), and he put forward the view that anyone should be allowed to make unmodified copies of a product (for non-commercial use). Also, he mentioned people should only have files protected by "Digital Restrictions Management" if they had the facilities available to bypass that protection using free software.
My interpretation of what he said was that software piracy is a fallacy. Making copies of things is human nature and should not be restricted.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Debunking Wine Myths
for those applications that do work and from a purely subjective point of view, performance is good. There is no obvious performance loss
http://www.winehq.org/site/myths#slow
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
So you're basically saying that people who buy on Steam are idiots and deserve what they get if Steam goes away?
Yes, people who buy anything that is protected by DRM, in a world where breaking the DRM is illegal, even if the company that made it is out of business and cant authenticate your purchase anymore is an idiot.
I'm not saying they deserve to be screwed. They deserve better.
Fuck you.
Seriously, its not =me= that's going to be responsible for your purchases not working one day.
If Valve goes away they are obligated to their consumers to provide them the products they bought. All of them, for free and forever. If that means a noCD crack, too damn bad for the creditors.
Perhaps you should look into the ugly world of failed businesses and see just what happens to their customers. Their intellectual property. I assure its VERY VERY VERY RARELY a happy ending for anyone. Hell, try these on for size:
How much longer do you think "Plays for sure" music is going to be usable, now that Microsoft has discontinued it?
"Microsoft announced that as of August 31, 2008, PlaysForSure content from their retired MSN Music store would need to be licensed to play before this date or burned permanently to CD."
Fortunately consumers were given permission to burn songs to CD, so if they act fast, they can burn it, and then rip it back in an unprotected format. What happens next month? Poof? Oh, sure there are tools to crack the files out there... but their legality in the face of the DMCA is pretty questionable.
How about another example? Major League Baseball changes DRM, and old content no longer viewable.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071107-major-league-baseballs-drm-change-strikes-out-with-fans.html
And these are both corporations that are doing well, that have said fuck-you to the consumer. You really think Valve is going to honour what you think their obligtation to you is in a bankruptcy scenario? HA. Seriously. Read the fine print of the terms of service. They have virtually no obligation to you at all.
If Ford goes out of business, you want them to steal your truck? I think not.
Isn't that cute, you think you -bought- Valve software. No. You just 'subscribe to it' (read the fine print, your a subscriber not a customer, you pay one time fees to subscribe to their games, you don't buy them). And when they go under, your 'subscription' ends.
Finally, this is the same Valve that today when its doing just fine, won't allow you to transfer something you claim you own to someone else. You can't move a title from your account to someone else. You can't transfer your entire account to someone else. Per the terms you can't have two people using your account.
Think about this: you can't even have two different people use two different online titles on one account at the same time. So, here you've bought 2 different games, and you can't use both of them online at the same time? Yeah, Valve really is honoring their obligations to your purchases NOW. Your on crack if you think they are going to suddenly honor them in their death throes.
No, they really won't. You will be unable to restore those backups until you've installed and logged into Steam (just try it, I did).
So, yes, you save yourself the download, but if Valve is out of business you're still screwed and have to rely on cracked copies.
"devalue assets by giving them away for free"? What a straw man.
No, speaking as a lay expert on company law, vux984 is right. A company in bankruptcy (or which can reasonably foresee bankruptcy in its future) is obliged to trade in the way that is in the best interests of its creditors.
In Valve's case, this would clearly be to keep steam running in the hope that it could be sold as a going concern to another company to raise funds to pay off those creditors. Any action otherwise could expose valve's directors to personal liability for the company's losses.
As we're talking about games here let's just say that
for those applications that do work and from a purely subjective point of view, performance is good. There is no obvious performance loss
is total bullshit.
Yes I know it's a wonder and everything that I can play selected DirectX games under Linux at all. But those people claiming they run Half-Life 2 (or any source based game) through wine and it runs "the same as in Windows" kinda piss me off.
Personally if I run Team Fortress 2 in wine I see a huge performance loss. I play with DX9, FSAA and full details in Vista and get about 80-100 frames average. Using wine the game will only allow DX8.1, medium detail levels and using FSAA is right out...and it still runs with less than 60 frames most of the time. All this at 1680x1050 with an 8800GTS and a Q6600.
If we're talking about apps then yes, performance loss is minimal. Or at least performance loss is not apparent since modern machines are overpowered for most applications anyway...
But games still run like shit a good deal of the time.
Developers are so fixating in using DRM to force pirates to buy their games that they ignore the number of paying customers who don't buy their games *because* of the DRM.
I'm a game developer; this is partially correct.
While some developers may want to use DRM, it's more commonly a publisher that forces a team to utilize the DRM solution they bought into. On a previous AAA project we had to utilize the DRM the publisher utilized
We hated it, my friends who bought the game hated it, but our hands were tied.
On top of that, a patch was recently released which appears to mainly have tightened the DRM. The result: my friends are extermely upset as their Daemon tools ISO solution no longer works; they now have to keep the CD/DVD in their computer to play the game, another DRM annoyance pushed on customers who paid for the game. Personally this is making the game more trouble than it's worth; if my friends didn't play this at LAN parties I'd uninstall the game.
I wonder how die hard fans feel.
But in the end this is what the publisher wanted. Our team didn't agree with it, but while they paid our checks our hands were tied by what their marketing team dictated was good to protect their IP and ensure no lost profits, "due to pirating".