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Stardock Declares Victory Over Demigod Piracy
We recently got a look at some hard numbers related to the piracy of Demigod , a new game from Stardock and Gas Powered Games. Now, two weeks later, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has essentially declared the game a success in spite of the piracy, and reaffirmed the company's stance that intrusive DRM is a bad thing. The game's sales figures seem to bear him out. Quoting:
"Yep. Demigod is heavily pirated. And make no mistake, piracy pisses me off. If you're playing a pirated copy right now, if you're one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you're a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way. The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games and people who don't buy games. The focus of a business is to increase its sales. My job, as CEO of Stardock, is not to fight worldwide piracy no matter how much it aggravates me personally. My job is to maximize the sales of my product and service and I do that by focusing on the people who pay my salary — our customers."
He isn't gloating. He isn't saying they've beaten the pirates. He's saying the game is selling well despite them, and it is. There's a big difference.
Hey, come on now - he's a visionary standing up for our rights!
I don't care about the personality of the CEO, as long as he's providing me with DRM-free games I can play on any computer any time, without fighting with SecuCrap, ShitForce, or requiring a DVD.
The only thing I care about (as a gamer) is whether the game plays (excluding obvious stuff like the game should be fun :P ), and lately a lot of games just don't run. :/ I can't tell you how aggravating it is to buy a game, install it, and find out it crashes instantly with some error code related to the DRM.
Damn you EA. You suck.
Won't something like Metcalfe's law also apply to games. The more people that play the game the higher the worth of the game. So while losing customers to pirated versions is bad (but I'd argue not too common and entirely unstoppable by DRM), gaining non-customers to pirated versions is actually good (not very good as you don't get any money) as it adds value to your game. In the case of multiplayer games this value is obvious (even if they can't play against legit version, they will help augment the community) and for single player games they may tell friends and eventually somebody they know who likes the game may pay for it.
It would be interesting if somebody could put a monetary value on pirated version (other than stupidly assuming every pirated copy is a lost sale)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
What should we be focusing on? Maximizing profit or maximizing game development? or in other words - producing games to live, or living to produce games? I know which future i want ... and i want it now!
Games are easy to make. Gpogle for 'flash games' and you'll find 100,000 crappy little card games and Tetris clones. Good games are HARD to make. It costs real time from people with real talent who need to be paid in real money. The problem is that the costs of developing a game are not connected to the cost of replicating the game. The first copy of the game costs 5 million dollars. the second copy costs 4 cents.
Piracy isn't an issue until it's so rampant that those with the money choose to pirate anyway.
Would you pay 4 dollars to see a matinee? Would you buy a scifi novel for 6 bucks? Try comparing the time you spend enjoying each of these to the time you spend on a video game, and you'll find that the 40-50 dollars spent on a good game is surprisingly cheap!
I bought GTA San Andreas a long time ago. (years?) I picked it up again this last weekend and got another afternoon of fun out of it!
Don't be at all hesitant to buy a good game, even if you have a playable pirate copy - it's insurance for more fun in the future!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If you like what he's done, you ought to contact the company and let them know how you feel. We complain enough here on slashdot, sometime it's nice to be positive for a bit as well. We ought to encourage those who do cool things.
Qxe4
His argument for a long time has been that copyright infringement sucks, but it happens protections or not. However protections piss off your legit customers. Thus, since they don't stop copying and do piss off the people that pay, don't do them.
I think this is quite a good attitude. I mean yes, people copied the shit out of Demigod. People copy the shit out of most anticipated new releases so that shows nothing other than people are interested in the game. The interesting title to compare it to would be Spore. Spore was much more highly anticipated, however it had real whiz bang copyprotection: SecuROM 7 including online activation. To hear the talk on it, you'd think this was your 100% anti-copying solution. All sorts of nifty encryption and obfuscation and you have to connect to an online server! Ha, beat that shit pirates!
The result? A torrent with 5 digits worth of peers active on it on the Piratebay when it came out. Ya THAT was real effective.
So Demigod got copied all over, but still sells well and they spent $0 on copyprotection and didn't piss off legit customers with it. Spore got copied all over, and they spent a non-trivial amount on protection and pissed off customers.
I don't know how it'll all play out in the end. What I know is that I do own Demigod, and I do not own Spore. SecuROM 7 games can get fucked IMO. I don't play the limited activations thing. I like to be able to upgrade and reinstall my system, and I like to be able to play my games 10, 15, 20 years later (I still play Xcom).
> the "copying = theft" mistake
From the definition of steal, courtesy of dictionary.com:
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance
Def #2 makes illegitimate copying theft pretty much by definition, but even if you want to interpret that as only "ideas" and not "intellectual property", then #3 will cover it with its fairly broad "to ... get ... insidiously".
So yes, copying is, in fact, theft. Maybe not in the same way as stealing a car is theft, but I don't see him saying it is.
> The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games
> and people who don't buy games.
Thats what always puzzled my about filesharing haters: Why _do_ some of them bother at all, if they make enough money, that somwhere on the other side of the world, maybe also on some other planet, two people he never knew and will never know shared their stuff?
> accept that you're a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way.
And promptly, he delivers the answer himself. Just another delusionist trying to shoehorn the planet into his business model. Copying a piece of information from your neighbor is not a theft. Yes, you do get something for nothing, but thats the whole freaking point of a copying machine. Endless supply for everybody. It does not automatically imply (although he would undoubtely like the thought) that you suddendly owe the creator of the original "as if" the piece was a physical product which cost money to produce. You first have to bend your mind heavily, internalize this "as if" concept almost religiously (which happens automatically if "as if" would make you money) in order to overlook the difference. The copying machine works only one way. Yet, the delusionists still think that the money (i.e. the wealth) they should get in exchange for providing input pieces to the copying machine has either to be multiplied at the same rate (i.e. an astronomical one, no less), or else the copying machine has to be smashed in order to _not_ bring wealth to everybody.
"after 20 years of experiment, practically all arguments are now against the internet."
The quote (that didnt fit into the subject line) is a conclusion from a recent article by one of germanys largest newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine), which is usually known for lobbying heavily for tougher IP laws. I always knew our grandgrandgrandfathers were right back then! General Ludd was the man! Lets finally get breaking some damn copying machines again!
As I see it, pirating a game is only excusable if you're doing it to try it, after which you either buy it or stop playing.
Just recently I did this with Galactic Civilizations II - I downloaded it, played it for a while, liked it, went out and purposefully bought the game: Stardock got another sale when, had I not had a chance to check the game, they would have gotten nothing (I don't trust the industry - been burned once too many by some of the over-hyped turds they put out)
Way too many games out there come out not working well or not at all. The game reviews press is no help at all - they'll give glaring reviews to games which are pretty enormous turds, and conveniently forget about the bugs and lack of long term playability.
In my view, it's not at all morally reprehensible to pirate a game for testing - as long as you buy it if you keep playing it.
Bears don't do 'business' in the woods.
Bears do, however, shit in the woods.
Just, y'know, when people start cringing from /language/, then we truly are doomed.
He used the term thief:
thief, noun,
a criminal who takes property belonging to someone else with the intention of keeping it or selling it.
which by it's definition doesn't apply in this situation.
I'll accept the use of the word piracy as it has widespread use as relating to copyright infringement but I do think it's rather ridiculous to compare copying data to theft and murder on the high seas.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
Seriously, this stance on DRM is like the RMS stance on openness "Unless everything is 100% my way, no compromise it is WRONG!"
No, Demigod isn't DRM'd. The DVD is a standards compliant DVD with no trickey shit. The game installs and runs with no checks of any kind.
Online play requires authentication and use of an online server? Oh well stop the presses I mean that hasn't happened with except, well, maybe every online game ever. As to if something like that is DRM is rather a semantic argument. Sure it does require a legit copy, but then the anti-DRM stance was never supposed to be about being allowed to illegally copy things, now was it? Needing to log in to a central server to play is a feature many games have simply for player convenience. Heck I remember when Gamespy first got started it was because the whole decentralized server thing with games like Quake was a problem. How did you find people to play with? So there was a 3rd party "central server" created that all the distributed servers talked to. Newer games are just having their own central service.
Finally no, you needn't run Impulse to run the game. Impulse has it's little "Impulse now" thing that it likes to run, but all that does is check for patches. Shut it down if you like (there's an option to tell it not to load on startup). You can run the game without Impulse, or without a net connection for that matter.
The point here is that if you are going to cast things like having a CD key and using a central matching service in the same category as SecuROM and such, then you are effectively making you definition of DRM meaningless and running off in to zealot territory. The reason you should, as a gamer, be anti-DRM is because it makes games not work. Like you take these recent games with SecuROM that you can only install 3 times, ever. After that, you are done. THAT is DRM and that is a problem. Wanting you to have an account on their online play service to play online is not DRM.
Gamers need to be a little reasonable here because remember, as with all things, there is a balance of rights. Yes, you should have the right to buy a game and play that game for as long as you want in the way you want. You shouldn't have some DRM program getting mad because you installed it too many times or because it doesn't like your CD drive. However the developers have rights too. They have a right to try and make sure people aren't illegally copying their game, and they certianly have a right 0ot make sure those people who do illegally copy it can't make use of the services the company provides for it. It shouldn't be an all or nothing situation on either side.
I'd liken it to freedom of speech. Yes, you have the right to freedom of speech, however your right to freedom of speech can't interfere with my right to freedom of association. What that means if you are free to speak your mind, but not in my living room if I don't want you to. I am free to ignore what you say. Yes, that does limit your rights in a small way. You don't have the right to force me to listen to your views, however that is a necessary limit on your rights to preserve mine and one I think we can all agree is reasonable.
So you need a balance in games rights too. Demanding no DRM is fine when DRM means "Shit that interferes with rights I should have." Demanding no DRM is not fine when DRM means "Anything you do that I don't approve of."
Because a feature of a game is broken justifies pirating it?
You did exactly what he stated, you used whatever inane reason you could find to justify being a thief.
In other words, you declared yourself a victim and decided upon restitution you deemed appropriate, which apparently is that stealing other people's property is ok if it has a bug. What's next ? Unacceptable box art?
Game companies, actually any software company, do not have to attain a defensible position in regards to not wanting to have their products pirated.
What it really comes down to is that thieves will always find some justification. As soon as the their condition is met they will invent a new offense and thereby justify their continued thievery.
sorry, but your post sucks and that it was rated insightful is a disgrace to those of us who do programming for a living. I can't meet your high standards because they don't exist in any form that can be quantified thereby meaning anything I produce you want you will just take.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
No, Demigod isn't DRM'd.
And in the very next paragraph:
Online play requires authentication
You're full of it.
If the game requires any form of authentication to unlock any significant functionality then it's DRM'ed. End of story.
It has nothing to with RMS. Nothing to do with zealotry. It's DRM. That's "Digital Rights Management".
You can try rationalizing the DRM all you like whilst pretending that somebody can still "buy" the game but you know full well that when somebody doesn't have control of their own keys it's just another form of rental.
Some people are happy to rent. Many aren't, no matter how hard the marketers and assorted astroturfers try to dissemble.
---
Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.
Huh? What?
You (or someone) thinks a game has a horribly broken feature A and therefore thinks it's ok to pirate the shit?
Excuse me but just as the quote says, you're trying to rationalize your thiefing.
If you think game is broken piece of crap, don't buy it. It doesn't give magically give you right to ignore copyrights and pirate it.
because it's likely to attract flames?
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
#3 is bullshit, since it more depends on the definition of a right, not on the definition of theft itself.
Using the logic that ignoring someone elses artificial (its not natural nor consensual, remember) "right" on something _you_ already possess you then could also argue that William Wallace was "stealing" when he refused to hand over his wife to get fucked by the english occupying forces who installed themselves an exclusive artificial right "ius primae noctis". Also a slave running away from his owner would be "stealing" because the slave obviously does not have the "right" to run away. Marital infidelity also could be "stealing" of someones exclusive "sex right" in jurusdictions where extramarital sex is not allowed.
The right to share information with other people is inherent, it doesnt have to be explicitely granted. Like your right to have sex. You dont first need somebody to "allow" you to have it. The right you think of, the copyright, is not a real right, but a _removal_ of other peoples rights to freely exchange information (or bodily fluids) with each other, ie a communication ban, i.e. censorship. Ignoring censorship "rights" isn't stealing, no matter how much you'd like to call it so.
According to that definition, when I was given a free Nintendo DS and 10 games because I won a raffle, I stole it - "to take, get or win [...] by chance"
For completely not-creepy reasons, the local teen center turned me into a criminal!
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
1. "I bought GalCiv ... they were not copyprotected."
okay, got it, what you bought was not copyprotected... you can install it, play it, and nothing gets in your way.
2. "Later on they snuck online-hardware authentication into the game."
I suppose that's by means of an update or something of the sort... okay, with you so far...
3. "So if they go out of business, and I upgrade to a new computer, I lose the games I bought."
and here you lost me, at least on technical grounds.
If at point 3 you can no longer play the game from point 2, could you still play the game from point 1? I presume that you can.
You'd have to argue that the game at point 2 is still the game from point 1 - and I'd argue that it isn't ; what if the developer went bust immediately after launch? you wouldn't have gotten any updates for point 2 to exist.. but you could still play the game from point 1.
So if point 3 should happen, nothing happened to the game you bought - you've still got it from point 1. You can't play it with the updates from point 2, but presumably you didn't buy those updates*.
Doesn't make what you mention any less troublesome - but in terms of what would happen to the games you purchased, in this case? Presumably not a whole lot.
=====
* Though more and more it seems that an implied part of the cost of purchasing a game is the 'privilege' to download major bugfix patches, often through some major gaming portal that will ditch that patch after a year or so and you have to hunt around to find the patch elsewhere.
You're right that if copyright infringement is wrong, something like bugs at launch don't suddenly override this. However, if one doesn't believe copyright should even exist, then nitpicks like this have more force.
And yes, it's perfectly possible to make a decent living as a programmer without the existence of copyright. I don't feel personally aggrieved by copyright infringement. I try to stay out of businesses where a company depends on copyright for its existence.
3. "So if they go out of business, and I upgrade to a new computer, I lose the games I bought."
and here you lost me, at least on technical grounds.
If at point 3 you can no longer play the game from point 2, could you still play the game from point 1?
I bought the game as an electronic download. I also bought the expansion packs via electronic download. This all goes through the Stardock package manager.
At some point the protection was added (I don't know at exactly what date). Since it wasn't announced and no permission was asked, I have lost the version without copyright protection.
I also believe the expansions require a certain patch-level of the main game, so if I had a backup of the main game somewhere, I still be locked out of playing my expansions.
The point is, part of the reason why I _bought_ the games was the lack of any DRM. In their current FAQ about this issue it's stated somewhere along the lines "Aw c'mon.. it's not like we're asking a bloodsample or something. Our DRM is non-intrusive and easy. C'mon guy!". But my point in losing my games in care of bankruptcy is still valid as long as they keep using DRM.
Though more and more it seems that an implied part of the cost of purchasing a game is the 'privilege' to download major bugfix patches, often through some major gaming portal that will ditch that patch after a year or so and you have to hunt around to find the patch elsewhere.
This is an interesting point. However, most games only release bug fixes. Usually any substantial real content is released as a pay-for expansion.
Combine this with the attitude of most software companies that the user is now a glorified beta-tester, ("Aw, we'll fix it in a patch, lets release now and start raking in the cash."), and suddenly the argument of expecting free bug-fixes seems very reasonable indeed.
As a sidepoint. I also bought "King's Bounty: The Legend" because I loved the old "Might and Magic Heroes" games..
The damn disc won't even read in my computer! My laptop's drive reads it ok but lacks the hardware to run it. The disc it not scrathed or anything but it's the damn DRM they're using that locks me out. I had to wait for a crack to be release to play it because on the official forums the advice was "Your DVD drive is broken, go buy a new one", which is bullshit because all other discs I own read just fine. It's not even an obscure brand drive.
In short DRM is evil incarnate. I don't buy any games with DRM that is too restrictive. The fact that Stardock snuck it in later sucks balls.
Take Unreal Tournament as an example. After a reasonable time, they release unprotected executables via the regular patches.