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PCGA To "Take Up the Challenge of Piracy"
Ars Technica reports that the PC Gaming Alliance has declared themselves the "guardians of PC gaming," which includes finding ways to help gamers decide on gaming hardware, and to make progress on the issues of piracy and DRM.
"[PCGA President Randy Stude said,] 'The PCGA will take up the challenge of piracy, not to assume the responsibility that the ESA has taken on... rather the PCGA would like to address the methodology that publishers might be able to take to solve, or to do a better job trying to solve, the piracy challenge for their substantial investments in content.' The PCGA won't give a standard approach to publishers, saying it is much more likely it will release a series of recommendations to publishers, and track piracy on an annual basis to see if the problem is growing or shrinking. The PCGA is also working on methods for members to track how effective their antipiracy measures are once a game has been released."
lol right
Members include Microsoft and WildTangent.
I think I'm gonna be sick.
I'd prefer to have Penny-Arcade as the "Guardians of PC Gaming"
With simply needing a legit key to play online. Because even the primarily single player games you'll still want to play online for the occasional frag. But the DRM has gotten so nasty lately that I'm afraid to buy any games for fear it'll bone my PC. So hopefully they'll address the issue of DRM making the pirate version so much better than the retail. While I don't pirate I'd be afraid to play Spore or C&C 3 simply because the DRM is so nasty. So in those cases the pirates win because I'm afraid to buy them and the pirates get the game for free. So sorry EA,but the DRM is just too nasty to have your product anywhere near my PC.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If you can beat the pirates on the first 3 points, people are generally a lot more willing to pay.
I'd mod you down as flamebait but I'll humor you with a response (even though we're not supposed to feed the trolls). Wikipedia is not necessarily as reliable as another print source, but printed encyclopedias are susceptible to errors as well (and often contain more of them than Wikipedia itself) and are not as up-to-date.
Isn't that the standard body for chimp golfing?
Why do people still use PCs for gaming? PCs are business tools... Consoles are better for gaming because the game development company can rely upon a specific hardware configuration.
This isn't a troll, but an honest observation.
Claiming to lay property to a sequence of bits is hillarious. There is nothing wrong with creating yet another copy of computer game.
Keyboards and mice!
the difference here is if there was a mistake on a wikipedia page you see the fix now. If you stumble across an old magazine that had a print error you don't necessarily have the page 400 font size 3 correction printed 6 issues later laying beside it..
My brother and I recently started an independent video game company and I had seen the PCGA covered on Slashdot a few times before. Looking for resources to help us, I called them up asking what they could do for us as a Mac, Windows, and Linux video game developer. They basically straight up said, "well... nothing". To be 100% honest, I do not really know what they do. If I had not seen them on Slashdot, I would not have known they existed.
I look forward to the day when they can do something for us, but until then as a PC game developer, albeit small, I can let you guys know that these guys don't represent us in any way shape or form. However, I wish them luck on their anti-piracy endeavor.
Meanwhile, on our end, we are going to lay off the invasive DRM and instead rely on creating high quality downloadable content and other online features like multiplayer which provide a clear incentive to purchase our game.
Until games start coming with dongles, they will keep being released (cracked, for those not in the know) before even their street dates.
SafeDisc, LaserLock, SecuROM? Don't make me laugh. StarForce? You bet.
The less money a company invests in the scheme, the less money is wasted.
For comparison, a completely new dongle scheme like the ones seen in the 3D/CAD & audio industries could hold perhaps a week, two at max. Yet it doesn't change a thing for the sales of software.
"Did you know that "654", is a variant on "69", which is used by the editor Raul654."
Citation needed ^_^
This is the sig that says NI (again)
http://www.xkcd.com/488/
Steal it, and you're a criminal. Get the DRM locked media, something happens with technology that makes you have to try and remove the DRM lock just to use what you bought, and you're a criminal too.
Piracy will be way more popular now that every company is scrambling to DRM-lock their products (sort of like the Sony 'rootkit' happy fun time, companies have decided when we pay for something, they can stick whatever they want in their product and let us sort out the mess leftover).
wild tangent comes "pre-installed" on a lot of OEM machines (e.g. compaq, dell, hp)
i have cleaned it off many new machines, right after i took them out of the packaging.
i think its funny that wild tangent (freeware/spyware) would care about piracy as they get installed by default on a lot of machines.
This is all the copy protection Doom2 needed - And it was a heck of a money factory, in fact people still buy the doom collector's edition today because the wads can be used on the many ports (BTW id software GPLing the engine didn't stop them from profiting this way)
Well, I tend to miss those times...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
People decided they hated it 20 years ago! Nothing has changed there. DRM as a technology has continued to fail... just as it did 20 years ago.
DRM is nothing but a technological joke that costs consumers billions of dollars every year.
Let me coin a new saying, like "Git 'Er Done" or "Just Do It": "Just Get Rid Of It".
Actually, the existing "Defective By Design" is even better.
Because console games are dumbed down to fit "no keyboard and mouse".
I don't know of one game for Windows that recognizes extra keyboards and extra mice plugged into a USB hub. The working class usually can't afford to keep additional PCs around for guests in the home (such as the children that I babysit), and packing up a desktop PC, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers for a LAN party is a pain. Games that recognize gamepads have the advantage of working in a social gaming environment.
but i can't play my console on the bus :(
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd bet that a lot more people game on a Nintendo DS (84 million and counting) than on a notebook computer.
3. Meeces [...] 5. Cheaper games: People often point out that PCs cost a lot more than consoles. Very true. But, I'd be buying a PC anyway for non-gaming functions.
But would you buy four PCs: one for you, two for the kids, and one for their play date? That's what you would need for a four-player keyboard-and-mouse game. And even if your family is rich enough to buy a gaming PC for each player, compare one copy of a $60 console game to four copies of a $40 game. Games designed for gamepads, on the other hand, let four players use one PC, one larger monitor (such as an HDTV), and one copy of the game. It's too bad that virtually no major games designed for multiple gamepads ever make it to the PC.
my 2 CPU quad core 3 GHz machine with 8 GB of DDR and dual SLI GeForce BGX 1024 MB 8800GTX is pretty screamin' fast.
Seriously, 8 GB of DDR? How long would it take you to play through that much DDR?
I can pretty much play anything I want on it and I can emulate consoles.
How do you copy console game cartridges into your PC to run them in an emulator?
When the console can emulate other consoles, let me know.
Wii owners can download emulated games at $5 to $10 a piece in Wii Shop Channel.
and what's more, I can play at 2560 x 1600 on my $1,000 monitor without spending $$$ for an HDTV plasma (much less Mitsubishi LaserVue) screen that can't do even half that resolution.
But how many people can play on your PC at once? I babysit, and I don't want to have to buy a separate PC per child.
...make buying the game easier then pirating it.
Look at Steam for example. You can preload the game and have it the minute it releases instead of messing around with cracks, and if you ever want to play the game in the future you can redownload it with a click. With the new "Steam Cloud" feature you will even still have your savegames available.
Or you can go with a 0 drm system but many companies are not willing to do that. Still, Steam is better then Securom with its limited activations.
Point being, network connectivity is very pervasive today. For *most* games I'm going to play, I'll be sitting at my desk. If I'm in a hotel on my laptop, I'll have net access.
So? Well it seems that simply requiring a login to play the game (it would need to continue to check or do some form of server interaction) would solve a lot of the problems that DRM strives to do.
Seems like a viable alternative and I'd venture to guess that the cost of maintaining some login/minimalistic game servers would be less than the cost of DRM and DRM-related costs.
X years down the road, you patch the game to not use the server anymore.
Wouldn't work for some games, but seems like a good alternative that doesn't require anyone to pirate anything.
You mean the 10,000 or so idiots who still play that stupid "game" in their parents' basements.
... and it had to enter the loop at some point.
If there is one bit of pure entertainment to come from the whole piracy thing, it's the completely broken logic. At some point in time someone will say, or at least imply, that because someone can't afford it, it's okay for them to illegally duplicate it. Basically, if you can't afford everything, you pick and choose what you can afford, and then you're simply justified in copying the rest. If I have to explain the error in that logic any further then I'm not sure I can.
I find it quite hard to not get frustrated over peoples attitude to piracy. Everyone copies stuff, but not everyone talks about it as their it's the Cthuhlu-given right. And that's the most irritating part, and it's actually all I get really pissy about. People talk about piracy as though it's completely acceptable to pirate something with no intention of ever purchasing it, they even talk about it as though it's a 'cool' thing to do (at least mainly the kids on say, gamefaqs), and that inevitably leads onto the sort of logic I previously suggested.
This next part is my personal experience, and it doesn't appear to be as prevalent in online discussion, but the next stage is massive hypocrisy. I tend to discover, in most peoples cases, that while they are happy to copy games, they can't believe that anyone would copy music and not support the artists, or they will purchase all their music and stare at you blankly when you try and explain how you buy all your games for the same reason that they buy all their music. Are game companies too faceless? I personally know that I will have a bias towards specific devs and in some cases specific publishers (for their acceptance of smaller niche devs or genres), but even then I don't know much about the actual people involved as much as I do the name or logo.
You can't have a 'different attitude' to piracy, you either respect that people deserve to be paid for their efforts, or you think it's okay to take a copy without supporting the person responsible. If you can't afford it, you don't get it, welcome to Economics 101
And then the best part is that stupid companies decide that the solution is horribly restrictive DRM or painfully intrusive copy protection methods, and then the whole vicious circle starts again because suddenly THAT becomes the new validation for piracy. The circle had to start somewhere, and it didn't start with people DRM'ing things for no reason. Also, things have gotten so bad with piracy and sales expectations, and it's now become natural for publishers to assume that sales figures that don't meet forecasts are basically down to piracy. Yay for the beggining of the downward spiral that will eventually lead to nothing ever being sold, only licensed under DRM, and only available through specific players/servers that will become obsolete just in time for you to have to pay for the newest one to be able to listen to the same stuff you thought you already owned. It's already happening now.
Also, I get more sulky about this stuff because it's major impact is PC gaming. FPS's move to console, RTS's move to console (don't come back), and RPG's move to console and need 2 gigs worth of mods to be playable because the console version tends to assume you're too retarded to deal with anything more complex than PRESS HERE TO QUICK TRAVEL TO YOUR NEXT LOCATION FOR FREE.
There was no point to this post, I'm just venting, and in a nice co-incidence a friend of mine had told me this morning that I shouldn't "get my knickers in a knot over just because someone has a different attitude to piracy than you do. Not everyone has our level of disposable income so they will rank the personal value of the item being pirated differently." And that set me off. So I'm happy to throw myself at the altar of the karma gods just to vent my spleen.
"PCGA President Randy Stude "
Randy Stud? What, did he earn money for college doing porn movies?
More music, fewer hits
Two things that'll never go away.