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Valve Takes Optimistic View of Piracy
GameDaily recently spoke with Jason Holtman, director of business development and legal affairs for Valve, about online sales and piracy. Holtman took a surprising stance on the latter, effectively taking responsibility for at least a portion of pirated games. Quoting:
"'There's a big business feeling that there's piracy,' he says. But the truth is: 'Pirates are underserved customers. When you think about it that way, you think, "Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it." We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia,' Holtman says of Valve. 'The reason people pirated things in Russia,' he explains, 'is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television — they say "Man, I want to play that game so bad," but the publishers respond "you can play that game in six months...maybe." We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly,' Holtman says."
Attitudes like this seem to be prevalent at Valve; last month we talked about founder Gabe Newell's comments that "most DRM strategies are just dumb."
Finally some intelligent thought on this matter from game publishers. They should focus on benefits that will get pirates to switch over, rather than annoying DRM technologies which do nothing but hinder the use of the game by legitimate customers, while real pirates bypass them with ease.
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Common sense is a lot better than DRM. Glad to see that at least some companies are willing to spend a few hours to identify reasons why people pirate games and think of simple solutions.
From my experience in various Eastern European countries over the last decade, the reason people pirate is not because they don't get attention from publishers. It's because people don't think films and games should cost much more than the cost of their storage media. Who doesn't want to get stuff for almost free?
Many countries speak English, so release English versions same day everywhere, and localized releases shortly there after. And if people in China, Russia, whatever can buy a pirated copy of that game for $5, then you can't sell a legal copy for $60. In certain countries, they may just have to sell legal copies for $10-$20.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Steam allows you to get content online. They are leading the charge to remove boxes from shelves. Today there was mass chaos at some Circuit City stores, because their CEO ran that company into the ground and won the worst CEO of 2008 award - Philip Schoonover, possibly the worst businessman in retail history. And that's saying something.
Next up is Best Buy - do you really need to travel there to pick up a disk to have a game anymore? No.
Sony kinda gets it, you can download some games with a PS3 that are fun, esp. for little kids, without needing to go get something. Pretty soon all the consoles will realize the revenue stream in controlling the distribution channel for all software via broadband.
Do that, tie it to reasonable encryption keys, and alot of piracy will go away. PS3 games aren't up on piratebay for a reason, while Xbox games are. Just make it available, and make it easy - to the world, and the internet will take care of it. The loss of sales via the retail front won't be as bad as the suits fear, and mail-order is always available for the PC gamer living in an Igloo.
He'll have to retract his statement that game companies are the cause of some kinds of piracy.
I downloaded Team Fortress 2 via torrent and played on some cracked servers. But that was pain because the servers were changing daily, then had to manually download patches, update and then realize that the next day servers reverted to the patch before etc. But the game was excellent and I thought, those guys really deserve the money, and I would have a hassle-free experience. Then I went out and bought Orange Box (which includes TF2).
Now year later I'm still playing this excellent game and it was worth every penny.
But I see a problem though. I generally use Steam as the game updater, nothing more really. But take for example GTAIV. It requires three services to be active when playing: Steam, Games for Windows and rockstar social club. 3 separate registrations and 3 resource eating programs. That is way over the top.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
"Companies need to stop treating potential customers like pirates, and pirates like potential customers." That's exactly what Valve is doing, and has been doing, and will continue to do. That's also why I continue to buy their games, rather than pirate them (hi EA).
Finally, someone sees the light. Do they have Linux games? I might just sign up.
Also, tag suddenoutbreakofcommonsense.
Just so, at least in my case. And I hope that music and movie publishers will come to this sensible conclusion as well. I'd love to be able to download a legal "zero day" copy of movies direct from the studios... or go see the movie in the week of its release. Not wait until they finally get around releasing it in my country. As for music... the not-really-legal AllOfMP3 should be an example to the music industry. A wide selection of music, and more importantly, a wide selection of formats, from MP3, WAV, to OGG. Now there's "plays for sure" for you... And you could choose the bitrate as well, from small files to files without compression.
If publishers stop punishing their legit customers with crippled products and late releases, those customers might decide to not turn to piracy.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
That's all great, but it's just words. On the other hand, when I wanted to buy GTA4 on Steam from Russia, I found out that the release was North America only (and despite this, I've got bombarded by ads urging me to preload and save, etc - all also NA-specific). After seeing the ads and the trailers, I really wanted to have that game, and getting such a slap in the face on release date was... very unpleasant. I immediately went and downloaded it from the torrent, and I am not going to pay for it anymore. I wanted to in the first place, but they said "no, we won't let you". So be it, then.
I guess it's publisher policy really, not Valve, but still, Steam is and will be associated with Valve first and foremost, so maybe they should clean that mess up before speaking on this. Once I've got burned, I looked around, and I've found that there are many other games that are similarly released first only in North America, and then gradually elsewhere. There's even a Steam group, "Rest of World", that's dedicated to this problem, with over 10,000 members.
I think part of the problem companies have is they try and group everyone who copies games or music or whatever in to one group. They talk about "pirates" as though it is one homogeneous group with one mindset. That's not the case. There are important sub groups, and the question needs to be what do you do about each? For example I'd say you can divide people who copy along these rough lines:
1) People who want stuff for free and wouldn't pay no matter what. You write these people off and just don't worry about them. They are the kind that even if you made it impossible to copy your stuff, they'd just do without. You aren't going to get their money so just don't bother. Let them do what they do.
2) People who are doing a "try before you buy." In music in particular I've known people like this. They want to download albums to see if they like them and want to buy them. For these people you needn't worry too much, they are likely to buy if they like your stuff. Only things to do is make sure you are offering quality stuff, and try to offer a superior experience if they pay. For example in the case of a game maybe a nice online community and auto updater, that requires a legit copy.
3) People who pay for some stuff, but don't have enough money for everything they want. They are somewhat similar to the first group, but they do buy things, just not everything they get. Something like university students with little disposable income. This is the only group that tighter DRM measures might help you get more money. However if everyone is tightening DRM, well you are back to where you started.
4) People who would like to pay you, if only you'd let them. These are the people who either live in a country where you refuse to release your product, or people who have been screwed over by your DRM. They'd like to buy your stuff, but you won't let them, or your protection technology means it won't work. Thus they turn to copying it. These people the answer is less, not more DRM to get more money. Give them the ability to pay legitimately, and they will.
Ok well when you start breaking it down, you see that really there are a number of groups that you just need to write off. You aren't getting any more money from them, so stop worrying. Don't screw over people who want to be customers just to try and screw over those who don't. It really needs to be looked at as a profit maximization thing. Implement DRM only to the point that it actually helps you make more money. Don't just try and "punish" people for copying your stuff. I mean really, who cares? You are in it to make money, not to be a justice crusader.
I also think firms fail to take in to account the cost of DRM. It's never free. Most of it is purchased from a third party and there's costs for that, Macrovision isn't a charity, and if you develop it in house you are paying the development cost. Either way you pay the support cost. So if you spend $100,000 buying a DRM package, but it only gets you $50,000 in additional sales, it was a lousy buy because you actually lost money. If it then also loses you $25,000 more sales from people who can't play, well then it was a REALLY lousy buy.
I think the best thing companies can do it make it easy for people to buy things legitimately, make the legitimate buying experience better than the illegal copying, and provide things that are a good value for the money. That will get the most sales. The copying figures don't matter, what matters is getting the most sales you can. If you do something that increases copying by ten times, but also sales by ten times, well then that's a win. Doesn't matter that copying went up, what matters is sales went up.
this problem seems like it could also be solved, to an extent, with decent demos. I pirated Fallout 3 because I wanted to try it out before dropping $50 on this game all my co-workers were raving about, but there was no demo.
I was sufficiently impressed that I bought the game on Steam a few days later.
I don't know why demos aren't as prevalent these days as they used to be; perhaps the downloads would still be huge because of artwork, etc.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I never understood this editorial opinion in most posts here. I'm a software engineer and I'd be out on the streets if our customers illegally downloaded our software. Sure, there are underserved markets, but most pirates are people who want to listen to music, watch movies, or play games for free. I don't see what economic model is going to squeeze profit out of that.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If I ran a major gaming company, here's what I would do. (Internet Connection Required)
Make software CD's completely FREE. Yes, FREE. Lets take GTA4 for instance. You could go to Best Buy or whatever and walkout with the game but when you got home and wanted to play you'd have to make an account which you must log into before the game starts. In order to activate the account, you could either pay a monthly fee until the games fully paid for (you could stop payment at anytime if your not liking the game) or you could pay the total up front. And of course, only one person could log onto the account at a time.
Now lets say your friend decides he likes this game. You could lend him the CD and he could go make his own account ect.
It virtually eliminates piracy/DRM and makes everyone happy.
Please post thoughts/ideas to add on!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
Pirates are people willing to take a look at your game. But not pay you anything. This is a good thing. These are potential customers. Potential good word of mouth.
Really you're lucky they have any intrest at all in your game. And if they like it. Some might buy it. Some might tell their friends to buy it. Some might play it for free and never buy it... Can't win em all.
On the other side... Some might also tell everyone they know that your game has such shit invasive drm it's not worth fucking with for free.
Let alone paying money to deal with the hassle of activation, cd checks, blacklisted programs, online activation, expiration dates, hidden rootkit like programs. And other garbage.
It's sad when your game isnt worth paying for. And real sad when its not worth the price of FREE.
You game companys are lucky anyone bothers to take the time to pirate. You never lose anything you were going to get without piracy. You can only gain from it.
Game companys drive priacy. You treat everyone like a thief. Even the people who PAID YOU!
So why not pirate? It might be good. We might consider paying you.
Maybe.
If you're real good.
I believe Valve has one of the best stances on the issue and has put themselves in a great position to release games with a minimum of loss.
For one, they're realistic: They know piracy exists, but they also don't fearmonger and exaggerate the amount of it to a ridiculous degree. Piracy will never stop. As long as people want more for less, media will be pirated. The focus of the industry should not be "stopping piracy" so much as striking a proper balance between the security of their product and its usability. I believe Valve has struck a good balance with their products.
Secondly, Valve has (as was mentioned earlier) Steam, which is quite possibly their greatest asset. Digital availability, auto-updates, and a fairly solid program to allow interconnectedness of players is a huge boon to those who buy legitimate versions of the games.
The fact that Valve is generally pretty sensible about not having overly-draconian DRM policies and makes what I consider to be quality games will ensure that they will continue to receive my business.
Although I haven't used Steam in particular, I applaud this guy for being a realist.
Maybe people "shouldn't" pirate your content, but the fact remains that people can and do, and that it's nigh-impossible to stop, so you have to learn to live with it, hopefully being able to manage/control the problem.
Kind of reminds me of a lot of other things that many people find unpleasant that seemingly can't be stopped. Some people feel that way about firearms, other people feel that way about porn or drugs. [I do *not* mean to start a flamewar about *those* topics right now...]
Sort of reminds me of the spam checklist (http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt) whether technical, market-based, legislative or vigilante, there are all sorts of reasons why various approaches won't work well.
I'm not saying that *I* find moderate levels of piracy offensive...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Except rather than being criminals, until recently, iTunes customers were actually prisoners, tethered to iTunes and their iPods to play their purchased music. Fortunately with everything going iTunes Plus, this is getting to be no longer the case.
... because they have only effective anti-piracy tool in world: Steam.
This is some PR to embrace the pirates to join the Steam.
Second part of Valve's success is figuring out that every game has to have very good multiplier that is controlled from the central server, so that pirates can't do much beside play on some hacked high-latency server with bunch of losers.
First of all, let me say that Steam has offered some great bargains. And I have used Steam, since my original pre-Steam copy of Half-Life finally had to be updated with Steam. And I've used them for some free demos. But I absolutely never ever will buy a game that depends on my using Steam. If Valve and Steam go away (not that hard to imagine in a world of financial and auto company bailouts and even Circuit City going belly up), then I still want to own what I paid for, not be dependent on some server somewhere still running to let me play or even install something that I've paid money for.
When fools who endorsed and supported DRM schemes for low quality digital music loose access to their DRM controlled music because those who are enforcing DRM on them no longer want to run the server, I laugh and think "serves them right for supporting the DRM scheme in the first place". When the same comes around and affects the gaming industry as well, I'm not going to be a victim and a hypocrite by acting surprised.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
800Hz Pentium 3 is hardware old 8+ years. You can't use modern stuff with that ancient machine. 10 yrs old computer is like 100 yrs old car. Do you see 100 yrs cars on interstate? Minimum system requirements = game runs as crap.
Just ditch DRM,it annoys your best customer first.
Get the games easy to download from the internet. Put a low enough game/subscription price so is more of a bother to get the pirated game or play with pirate servers than the real ones.
Profit from merchandise, game events, championships, maybe even some advertisement.
Stop shooting your own feet,
Get off your high horse. He may very have written the Source engine, even if some of the code is partially used. Modifying existing code is... writing code! And by reading the comments on the link you gave, there was only 30MB or so leaked out. You can't possibly conclude that the entire engine is 30MB in size.
But in any case, to go off on such a tangent in a completely unrelated topic is well, off-topic. Gabe probably didn't write the entire engine. Some parts of it are obviously licensed. So tell us, what is YOUR agenda by going off the handle like this?
The goldsrc engine was a heavily modified quake engine, and the source engine was a rewrite of the goldsrc engine. This is not news. Everyone knew that during the release of HL2. The only thing the code leak showed us was that Valve rewrote the engine by replacing the goldsrc engine piece by piece; something that Valve told the public even before the leak. So yes, Source is Valve's creation with a structure derived from the work at id.
And secondly, "Gabe Newell is a total programming novice"? I guess it does represent the legitimacy of your rant quite well.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
I've never thought that "optimistic" could actually be equal with "realistic". Usually, I always thought it was the opposite of it...well, until I've read this story.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Everyone knows that the HL1 engine is based on Q1 and Q2 along with their modifications and that the HL2 engine is a heavily modified version of the HL1 engine so yes there is still Q2 code in the Source engine and I don't recall Gabe ever say that plus the fact that they've licensed the code from Id means that Carmack wouldn't have done anything.
Except rather than being criminals, until recently, iTunes customers were actually prisoners, tethered to iTunes and their iPods to play their purchased music.
iTunes Plus was released about a year and a half ago. It just took then non EMI labels a bit to realize that was a good thing, and that even using Amazon as a lever they still could not take down Apple as a powerful distribution channel.
Before then you could always burn CD's to play elsewhere with any purchased music, if the system had really only ever allowed iPods it would have failed from the outset.
And of course, since day one of iTunes you could always just rip CD's or import MP3's you got "elsewhere".
There was never much of a cage, which was the reason the whole system succeeded so well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"You can't possibly conclude that the entire engine is 30MB in size."
I've seen better physics engines in 64kB. Seriously.
30MB is a HUGE code base for what is essentially a simple physics and 3D engine. Now, I don't have much experience with D3D, but with OpenGL, you can get something very respectable from an engine (with test code) in well under 1MB using procedural texture generation. Even with complex textures, models and so on, 30MB is a *lot*.
Valve has once again proven why they're my favorite game company.
Doesn't matter that copying went up, what matters is sales went up.
In short, I agree wholeheartedly.
I'm posting these because you post made me remember the "Pirates don't count. Only paying customers count." part.
The reason people download tv shows in New Zealand is because kiwis are reading blogs and watching fansites - they say, "Man, I want to watch that show so bad," but the networks and distributors respond, "you can watch that show in six months...maybe."
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
I do not call optimizing code rewriting code from scratch. The theft of the "source" engine showed everyone how "modified" it really was, which is to say hardly at all when compared to the GPL Q2 source. Gabe tries to take credit for making some revolutionary engine, but it's not, it was mostly written in 1992 by ID, it's not the next big thing. The proof is in the relicensing of "source" to Vivendi and before it was even written! If Vivendi knew that "source" was GPL Q2 with a few tweaks I assure you they would not have signed up with valve, more likely they would have used ID or EPIC. Valve does not make game engines. They make some decent games, but calling "source" a game engine is a misnomer, it would be like calling Counter Strike a game engine. It's just a modified version of the quake 2 engine.
Of course, Apple still charges you for the key.
Actually, I'm going to serve them a request to provide me with unprotected copies of my purchased music for interoperability reasons. Because you can now purchase unprotected ones, they legally can't deny my request.
Hmm. I think I might come to like the new NZ copyright law (thankfully minus the absent S92A)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Time to trade in a karma point for this one, but the cue-in was too good to miss.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/1880/family-guy-sherry-and-the-anus#s-p1-st-i1
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It was a 30 Meg zip file which when extracted was about 150 meg if I remember correctly.
The rest of the GP's post is completely bullshit and you should ignore the troll.
Speak for yourself. In Thailand I can go down to the shopping mall (yes, you read that correct), buy a xbox, wii, PS3, whatever and pick from a fat book of printed game covers representing the games I want.
10 minutes later they're burned and I'm done.
Sure, and yours is one of the more thorough posts on this, so let's start with yours.
What *can* be added to purchased-only copies? what about those systems that the phone companies use that only activates phone services when you pay at the register?
Cross marketing deal for a free month's worth of minutes, text, and data at AT&T for your iphone?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Then why don't they get rid of DRM after those few weeks? That would be a reasonable compromise for me
Most id software games drop the copy protection in some later point release.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Spelling errors are from typing fails, not knowledge fails.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It fails for all cases where the user base is sufficiently small compared to the complexity driven development cost.
Enterprise software is not a game.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There's a colossal burgeoning computer retirement coming with XP capable machines that might struggle with Win7.
I'd think there's room for a whole under-grade gaming market with cheap older titles for $5 on cheap hardware.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Interesting example considering I got Bioshock for 10€ as a bargain bin edition (plenty of games go on the Pyramid where they cost a tenner each and come in unwieldy huge boxes). PC games drop in price really fast, console games tend to drop more slowly on average.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
TinyLauncher.
Not much use for online games, but for single player games, you're laughing.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Valve has actually shown very well what can be added. If I want to buy the Orange Box (and I did), I know I can find it on Steam, it comes with a set of high availability tools connected to a common server, I can get out my credit card, download it, and be playing within an hour or two. I don't need to worry about whether the download will work, I don't need to worry about seeds, I don't need to worry about whether the download is a rick roll, I don't need to worry about whether it's a trojan horse, and whenever I want to play the game, I can just install steam, enter my username and password and download it.
By contrast, if I steal a copy of spore, I have the same problems with the p2p download, but by contrast, a legitimate copy requires me to hunt one down in a store (very difficult where I live in the far north), is ALWAYS a trojan horse, and will ALWAYS restrict the number of times I can install it. God help me if I lose the CD or key.
Valve got my money. EA didn't. EA has published a lot of incredible games, but they fail miserably at making me want to buy them.
It's been a long time.
The DRM in Spyro the Dragon kept the game from being pirated for literally months. There is an article at gamasutra about how they managed this. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20011017/dodd_01.htm
What, exactly, sucks about Steam?
I was relucatant to install Steam on its initial outings (2003-ish?) because I was anti-DRM and I already owned all the games that were available when it was first launched. Eventually, however, I did it and the benefits far outweigh the costs provided you know what you are buying. You can't get much clearer than the press releases, support FAQ's and license agreeements on matters like that. The only thing that really worries me is having my Counterstrike being stopped from playing online (e.g. Valve going bankrupt, buggering up the banlists, me getting a virus that steals the account details, a chargeback via Paypal etc.) but the cheats have clearly had a much harder time since Steam's release, as most people who were around in the early CS days will attest to, so I can understand the reasoning.
Steam is a nice piece of work. The only problem I have is that there should be a command line option to start up in offline mode. For some reason, if Steam detects even a disconnected VPN connection, it will start up in online mode and try to do DNS resolution which makes it wait nearly a minute before it loads. I have to use a batch script to create an INI file with an undocumented line to make it forcibly start in Online/Offline modes. Compared to some programs I've seen bundled with games, that is *nothing*.
Purchasing is incredibly simply and virtually instantaneous (and works with PayPal, yay!). Downloads are as fast as they could sensibly be. When you're playing the games, the software can be set to not interfere at all and it doesn't. I don't use the friends network at all but I have in the past and it worked really well.
And the prices? Of course, some shops will sell off old stock at loss-making prices because they just want the stockroom space. It doesn't mean that Steam should undercut everybody. It's not a disadvantage that Steam doesn't have these prices, it's good luck on your part for finding a copy of the software which is cheaper than the sensible retail price. And if it's a major Steam title, you can usually just enter the CD-Key into Steam and benefit from perpetual storage for your games on any machine you ever use Steam on as well as important updates and up-to-date online play.
I originally had every Half-Life title in a box that I bought for £25 yonks ago, I owned every one of them at least three times over because my brother had a copy which he gave me and we had some of the extras given to us too (we were Counterstrike nuts, and still play it all the time, but we found it easier to buy the whole Half-Life pack at the time [pre-Steam] because for the same price as CS, you got all the Half-Life games plus we also both got copies of Condition Zero when it first came out etc. - we had small LAN parties at our house where each PC was already kitted out for CS), and I plugged the numbers in to make my first Steam account. Since then, I don't think I've ever touched the disks except to move them to my new house, and that must be, what... 5 years ago? They are all still listed in my Steam account and I just installed them all on my new laptop for the hell of it.
While I was there installing this stuff on my new laptop, I wanted to treat myself to a few small games at Christmas. I much prefer a handful of indie or old games over one big expensive title that will be £10 cheaper next week (plus, with an old game, I know I will enjoy it), so I just browsed through the Steam store. TF2 looked like a good laugh and was dirt cheap, so I happily laid down a few pounds and got it. Browsing the store I spotted a few other things and I already had Half-life 2 that had been a gift when I didn't have the PC to run it but I picked up the two extra Episodes for pennies and installed HL2 on my new machine. That gave me a crapload of extra software too. Then a week later, I bought a silly game that I could play with family - Peggle cost me literally pocket change (I then spotted it for four times the price in a thrift store)
So, lemmy see if I understand you:
I have an OSS codebase. It has a couple of functions:
MakeCoffee()
SexGirlfriend()
WashCar()
PrintMoney()
The original coder fucked up when he wrote these functions. Among the many bugs:
* MakeCoffee() actually makes very strong tea.
* SexGirlfriend() is dirty and tangled, and uses deprecated methods.
I decide to replace the guts of each function while leaving their signatures the same. This makes my code a drop-in replacement for the existing executable.
Your claim is that while I may have entirely rewritten the body of each of these functions, my work is still just a modified version of the original code?
Yeah, it's not like I can go to a Polish market and find any game for the xbox 360, Wii, PS3, PS2 etc. (works unchipped) for 3zl per disc. Oh wait, I can.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Consoles are a shitty idea for protecting your works.
All it takes is one hacked savegame, and suddenly every game for that console is hacked. My Xbox, which I hacked more for the multimedia aspects than any game piracy(the dvd drive is a thompson and thus doesn't work), can copy any game to the hard drive and play it indefinitely. I can download any game off the internet, copy it to the hard drive, and play it. If I were to hack my PSP, I'd have instant access to the entire psp catalog, and could play every game for free. If I were to hack my 360, I'd have instant access to the entire 360 library, and could play every game for free.
If I hack a PC game, I've hacked one PC game.
The solution to piracy doesn't come in an iron fist. It comes in providing value and building a positive relationship with your customers.
It's been a long time.
With all respect, there are some of us out here who are avid gamers who don't want to be playing "yet another car racing game", "World War 2 Soldier FPS v27" or "Yet Another EA Sports Sim".
Sure, we strategy gamers may be in a minority but the fact is you've no chance of playing "Galactic Civilizations", "Civilization" or, to change the pace, a decent flight simulator, on a console.
I'm sure you whippersnappers enjoy your "consistent" consoles but to many of us that just means "consistently forumulaic games".
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I must be imagining those console Civilization ports of Civ 1 to the SNES and Civ 2 to the PSone. It would be more accurate to say "unlikely to have the chance", because it's not like it can't be done, it's just that it isn't done.
Watch who you're calling whippersnapper, child. The first consoles came out over 30 years ago. No offense taken, really.
The consistently formulaic games exist for one reason... they make money. Game companies want to make money, so they want to make games that make money. Do you want them to go bankrupt making games that won't sell very well, like hardcore hexagon based wargames for all those bearded wargame grognards? Sure in the old days those folks were a larger percentage of the gaming market but now, they're nothing. If they're lucky some guy in a garage will make a game for them now and then, but the big studios with the real resources won't.
The majority of gamers when they play a game they like, they want more of the same but improved, and they want it soon.
I admit it's not easy to give sensible "added value" to content. But remember we're in the recreation market here. We're selling fun. We're selling immersion in a game world, so how about building on this?
There's also some other value you can add at no cost. Actually, it could help you save on expenses (or, rather, increase your revenue): Listen to those that buy your games not the ones that play your games.
What everything comes down to is exclusive access to areas for paying customers only, and exclusive content for them. You sign up with your CD key at the board and you're kinda a "premium" member. Keep the normal boards going, so people have little incentive to actually "hack" your members-only board, but when it comes to input, pay only attention to the "inside" board. Those are the people who paid for your game. Those are your customers. Not the hundreds or thousands others that also have it but didn't pay you for it. You may safely ignore them.
Then start listening to those that bought and offer them a preview for your sequel. Make sure you tell them that you read that they wanted this or that, and that you tried to fit it into the game, and ask them whether they like it. They will. People do not really want to admit that their own ideas are crap.
If you're more conservative, you can also go back to what has been done by game publishers before they started cutting corners. How about bringing back the printed manual, maps and posters? Or some other gadgets and trinkets? If you have a military game, how about some dogtags? Yes, that costs a few cents more per box, but look at it this way, if you sell 10% more boxes that way, you already recovered way more than what you spent extra.
I'm also really mystified why no publisher ever had the idea to broaden his horizon. How about hosting or at least supporting gamer conventions? I'm not talking about E3 or similar events, but cons dedicated to YOUR games. This is easier for companies like Blizzard who have WoW and Diablo as strong community based titles, but I'm sure EA could certainly succeed with something like this as well. There you could hand out some token of appreciation to those people who bought your game early on, or bought it at all. Again a chance to make your customers feel special and appreciated, you could give something neat to the ones that participate sensibly at your "members" board, or hand out trinkets to people who created maps or content for you. It's not even necessary that these handouts have any tangible value, what's important is that they make someone who has it "special" in some way because there's no way you could get it elsewhere.
Some of those ideas will fly, some won't, but just throwing your hands up and claiming there is no way to add value to legally bought content isn't going to work out. There are a few ways, and this is only the result of 10 minutes of thinking.
The "added value" doesn't have to be "valuable" in the sense that it costs you a lot of money. What matters is that your customer gets the feeling that he is important to you, that you appreciate his purchase. Most gamers want to be heard and want to give you feedback, I think giving them a board for "buyers only" would already mean a lot to most of them. Especially when they get the idea that you're actually listening and want their input.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can not spect to sell a 50$ game in a 250$ minimum salary country!
So, is you can sell a game in a 3rd world country at the same relative price than in a 1st world country, then, maybe then the problem will be solved
BTW, I live in a 3rd world country ;)
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Valve is the only game producer that has an effective, non annoying DRM system. I love steam, given the amount of times I format my drives per month, I can reinstall all my games by just queuing them with a high throughput download.
I was at my local Best Buy just last week, and was a little surprised at some of the things I saw there.
1. They no longer had ANY desktop PCs for sale. None! The computer section was filled with nothing but notebooks and netbooks. That's actually a pretty bold change for them, and tells me they're getting more aggressive about focusing only on the product lines that sell the fastest - rather than stocking categories of goods just because "we've always had them", or "people expect to see those here".
2. At the checkout lane, they had a whole wall of pre-paid iTunes music store cards. How could they possibly need a whole WALL for those? Well, apparently, the record labels have started marketing specific albums by specific artists - by selling you a card that auto-downloads that entire album when you enter its code. (This seems like a big step backwards, in one sense, but you also have to realize - this is an interesting tactic by the record labels from the marketing angle. By allowing stores to get rid of all the physical music CDs and going all digital, they risked losing all that advertising/exposure they got by people seeing the albums with cover art right there. This is a way to bring that back, while still taking up relatively little shelf space.)
3. Broadband speeds may be on the rise, but they're still outpaced by the amount of data that can be packed on something like a Blu-Ray disc. That's why people will still go to a store like Best Buy and purchase physical media for their PS3. And indeed, the Best Buy I was at had increased their space devoted to PS3 game titles, since last time I was in there,
It's possible Best Buy will die the same death as Circuit City, but I see them at least TRYING to avoid it. Some of their stores even have music stores inside them now - trying to take a cut of revenue traditionally reserved for chains like Guitar Center. Will that work? Not so sure ... but it shows, again, this is a chain that's not afraid to try new strategies.
HULU doesn't work for 95% of the world, you insensitive clod.
--
no sig for you. come back one year.
I can think of a few ways to add value to multiplayer games.
Public achievements system connected to 'legitimate' copies.
Requiring everyone to have a legitimate key/user login from a purchased copy and implementing a system to uniquely identify and verify each user - this makes it possible to ban people permanently from your server (if they aren't going to just buy new copies of the game), thus reducing the amount of griefers.
Downloadable content easilly available to legitimate accounts.
Extra DRM can be applied also that shouldn't effect the legitimate user experience, such as requiring legitimate keys/credentials to use any online server (also serves as a way to prevent cheaters/hackers from logging on servers with unlimited methods), preventing access to the server lists, kicking off any users who are playing with the same key/credentials.
There are ways to add value with DRM.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Yes, Valve's insight is good sense, but it's not common sense: the big publishers are still paranoid about "piracy". Too many senior executives are unable (or unwilling?) to move away from the ship-boxes-to-retail-stores mindset (which even the big Music Manufacturers are now starting to discard).
If I pirate, it's because of the price pr. product. Games are expensive when you're interested in a lot of them, and when they cost $86, you can only buy so many of them. Thus only the ones I'm absolutely sure are good are bought. In the end, no company loses, because my pirated games are games I would never otherwise touch. Either way, it still seems that EA would like to claim lost money on some random iteration of FIFA: A game I wouldn't play if somebody threatened to stab me in the face.
I love the fact that at any time of any day I can find hundreds or thousands of people to play games with. What I strongly dislike, and what keeps me from playing games online that often, is that enough gamers are jerks to ruin the experience for the rest of us. Maybe it's Penny Arcade's GIF Theory, or maybe it's the fact that there are no real-world reprocussions to namecalling, swearing, ragequitting, or otherwise rude and unsportsmanlike behavior. It is, however, those who in real life would receive a smack upside the head followed by a discussion with their mommy and daddy about how they are failures as parents, it is these people who ruin the online gaming experience for me.
On occasion, I get matched with people who are polite, good team players, and who are just there to have fun, learn from each other, or genuinely cooperate to make the whole team better. In the Texas Hold'Em game I wrote, it's tournament style, so the obnoxious guy will often bet out early. But more than half the time, I have people screaming that I and everyone else on the team suck, or clogging up the chatlogs with obscenities, or otherwise behaving in ways that no person would act if they were in physical proximity to the people they were insulting. And in lieu of a good, consistant way to select out those people (Gamer Zones on XBox Live is a good start), I play far less online gaming than I would otherwise.
The great personal irony is that I got into the game development industry as a network programmer.
no install media, no printed manuals, no feelies and no package, plus pay for the distribution myself through ISP charges
Then go buy it in a store and register the product on steam. No one's forcing to use steam to download everything. The reason there's price parity is for shelf space. No one is going to sell a game that can be bought online for much cheaper.
lower product quality
WTF? I'm sorry, but Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, and Half Life 2 are in no way "lower quality products". Those honors belong to the ilk of GTA4 or Saint's Row 2 for PC.
proper guarantee that Steam games will contiunue to work when the Steam service shuts down
They've already said thus.
I don't really know what your problem with steam is. The only valid point you make is no resale value.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
SexGirlfriend() is dirty and tangled
That's because the method was implemented unsafely. Try using the condom library to control buffer overflows;)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
No thanks. It's easier without.
I have often found myself having to hit up ISOhunt or other BT search engines to find an obscure or high-end application simply because I wanted to check it out and— best case scenario —getting a demo requires jumping through all sorts of hoops only to hear something like "We'd be happy to schedule a demonstration for you, where are your corporate offices located?" (Answer: A one-bedroom apartment in rural New England. Still interested?)
Between that, and demos that are so crippled as to be completely useless for evaluating the software, it's rather frustrating.
Oh well. Free semiconductor and specialty material samples more than make up for the deficiencies of the software industry in adapting to reality. :D
I don't think that will ever cease to amaze me...maybe I'm too used to not being taken seriously.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
http://www.hulu.com/watch/1880/family-guy-sherry-and-the-anus#s-p1-st-i1
Do you have a link for me that works outside the US?
I've heard several times now about the lack of foreign availabilty for Hulu. As AC noted, that shouldn't be a reason not to post the link at all.
However, I don't know of an *authorized* link that works outside yet. The clever guys have already talked about proxy bypasses, but I try to expound within the rules.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine