DRM vs. Unfinished Games

Rod Cousens is the CEO of Codemasters, and he recently spoke with CVG about how he thinks DRM is the wrong way to fight piracy. Instead, he suggests that the games industry increase its reliance on downloadable content and microtransactions. Quoting: "The video games industry has to learn to operate in a different way. My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games — and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience. That would create an offering that is affordable at retail — but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games. If these games are pirated, those who get their hands on them won't be able to complete the experience. There will be technology, coding aspects, that will come to bear that will unlock some aspects. Some people will want them and some won't. When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."

Comments

hmm

[nomadic]

That was how the shareware market did it, back in the day. I know Doom was fairly successful that way, though I don't think a lot of other games really succeeded that way.

Re:hmm

[CannonballHead]

And still does it, to some extent. Shareware games still exist, but they usually have some sort of "DRM" thing ... like registration codes...

Re:hmm

[CannonballHead]

Hence the "somrt sort of" and "thing" and quotes around "DRM."

The idea is the same; somehow make it so that you can't play the full version without paying for it...

In this case, it's easily cracked typically and isn't really all that annoying and you can move it around, etc. I don't mind the registration code thing at all actually.

Re:hmm

[eiMichael]

To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.

Re:hmm

[Lunix Nutcase]

The idea is the same; somehow make it so that you can't play the full version without paying for it...

Except it's not. DRM is about preventing you from copying or using content in ways or on devices that the copyright owner doesn't want you to. It has no relation to having to pay for something as you can stick DRM on content you give away for free and never charge for.

Re:hmm

[orasio]

To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.

Not really.
You buy a code, and that code unlocks your game, forever and ever, the transaction is finished. It's true you couldn't use the full game before the code, but you hadn't paid for it yet.
The problem with DRM is publishers retaining control on stuff you already paid for, after the fact.

Re:hmm

[Kepesk]

I've noticed lately that previews of games are heavily restrictive. I like to try out a game before I buy it, but lately, if previews are offered at all, you have to jump through all kinds of hoops from signing up for mail lists to finding a friend who has buddy codes to actually paying money. And that's just to try it out! Due to this, I rarely buy games anymore.

This solution is alright, but I preferred the previous paradigm of being able to download and play the first level/world/week free to check things out before buying it.

Re:hmm

[Snowblindeye]

My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games

Isn't that what they are already doing? Definitely most MMOs ship in that state.

Re:hmm

[CannonballHead]

It does, somewhat, try to prevent you from copying/using the content in ways or on devices that the copyright owner doesn't want you to, though. I am not supposed to give you my registration code.

Now, it doesn't very strictly enforce this, obviously... it's quite weak and keygens are quite readily available... but I would argue that the idea IS the same. I would cede the point that someone else made, that it's doesn't limit it in the same way like encrypted exe's or encrypted cds/dvds.

I guess it depends on what you mean when you say "DRM." Digital Rights Management. It's a generic term... according to wikipedia though, it does not generally refer to serial numbers/key files, so I guess you are right. That's considered "copy protection" still, though.

My terminology was apparently significantly looser than how it is generally used, but it appears that many people think "DRM" == "Copy Protection" ... including you, since you seemed to refer to DRM as being something that prevented you from copying it.

Re:hmm

[spazdor]

Yes, and you could give out registration codes for free on your website. Registration codes are no more or less than a technological measure to give the distributor control over who can use the product.

Re:hmm

[ByOhTek]

Yes, and like DRM, it will not prevent piracy.

I know of a program that follows this model. Every month they release new content for free. You just have to log on with your official account, paid.

Someone, every month, creates an updater, that will allow you to patch your machine, without having to log in.

Re:hmm

[tophermeyer]

Yeah, but MMO's kind of inherently fit that model. Players enter into an MMO expecting the game will grown and change with the needs of the community. As the community grows larger, and develops specific interests in certain gameplay aspects, it is fitting that the developer continue to develop the game to meet that need.

Other games don't necessarily lend themselves to this. As a consumer, I can say that I am nervous that I will wind up paying more money for incremental delivery of content that should have shipped at release.

Re:hmm

[grumbel]

Except for that little difference that shareware was free. Paying full price and getting half a game is something very different then paying nothing and getting the third of the game as in the case of Doom.

The one thing I don't really get is why there is so much focus on tons of tiny pieces of DLC. I don't want a game to be splintered into a dozen pieces that I then have to buy each on its own. For Mass Effect 2 for example I have no less then seven DLC things that I have to download and install manually on the PC and that is just the free bonus stuff, not even counting the pay DLC. How am I supposed to keep track of all that stuff? Not only have I to know that it is released, how to get it and how good it is, I also have to figure out how to access it in the games and then even figure out if it is game braking or not (bonus armors or items can screw up the games balance, so one might want to avoid them on first play through). What happened to those things we called add-ons? Where you would buy one big additional piece of content and then be done with it, instead of so many tiny little and often badly integrated pieces. I never had much problems with the quality of add-ons, but some of the DLC that BioWare has put out is of rather questionable quality, that you are wondering if anything of the core team was even involved in that or if it was created by an untrained intern.

Having a good gaming experience matters and that certainly doesn't improve by all management overhead that you get with DLC.

Re:hmm

[Obfuscant]

It's true you couldn't use the full game before the code, but you hadn't paid for it yet.

Uhhh, WTF?

If I go into a store and see a product hanging on the wall saying "Game X, $10" and I buy it, I PAID FOR IT. If I get home and find out I need to buy a "code" to play this game, I'm pissed.

And that's exactly what happened with some games I bought through a local Office Max. SD cards with some old arcade games for the Palm. Heavily discounted/closeout, like $5, but nothing on the outside said anything about having to buy a code to play anything. I get the games in the Palm, wham, thanks for buying us, here's 10 seconds of demo, now go to this website and get the registration code for $x. Fuckers.

The problem with DRM is publishers retaining control on stuff you already paid for, after the fact.

Yeah, like those games.

Re:hmm

[CannonballHead]

So the real issue is semantic. DRM doesn't usually refer only to copy protection and usually does not refer to serial-number-type copy protection. Registration codes are a form of copy protection, but not usually lumped into "DRM."

Re:hmm

[poetmatt]

actually, no. Shareware actually come out in a working format, even if limited in form. This guy is talking about releasing things before they're done, which is already pissing people off immeasurably. As it was stated elsewhere, when was the last time a major release of a video game was anything other than completely horribly at first?

Lots of games can and do fail because they're released before they are ready in many ways. This doesn't just mean programming completeness but also being able to handle the massive influx of players.

Re:hmm

[poetmatt]

really? can you play without said registration code?

Re:hmm

[HeckRuler]

I have to disagree. I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but saying that managing the digital content of the game based on who has the rights with a registration code ISN'T DRM is bullshit. Mailed registration codes, code-wheels, codes in manuals, all of these are forms of DRM to keep pirates from casually sharing stuff. This conflict has been around longer then you, and didn't start with Steam and Battle-net. I remember that we were essentially locked out of "Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator" because we lost the booklet somewhere. That's DRM restricting the use of a program I paid for. ok, a program my father paid for.

Without web2.0, the internet, the cloud, dongles, or the latest buzzword, doesn't mean it isn't DRM.
The problem with DRM is that it makes using the content a pain. Finding the booklet is a pain. Running steam is a pain. Registering software on each new peice of hardware is a pain. Submitting to a full body search is a pain.

It DRM was painless, for now and forever, then I really wouldn't have a problem with it. Well... I'd argue that the poor need to be able to steal it easily.

Re:hmm

[bzipitidoo]

Indeed, and that sort of shabby treatment of customers ended my game buying days.

In the mid 90's, network play was just beginning. Two different games I bought then trumpeted networked play on the packaging. Friends came rushing over to try them out almost before I got home. And neither worked. But the designers weren't about to admit it, so I got to waste of lot of my time and everyone else's time trying to figure out whether it was some problem with my network or computers or OS, before finally concluding that they lied. Spoiled the LAN party in a big way. In one game, that part simply wasn't finished. 3 months later, they released a "patch" to fix the "bugs" with network play. And it turned out their implementation was a networked hotseat. Other players could not do anything but stare at some cheesy wallpaper with a "please wait for your turn" message.

Re:hmm

[nomadic]

The one thing I don't really get is why there is so much focus on tons of tiny pieces of DLC. I don't want a game to be splintered into a dozen pieces that I then have to buy each on its own. For Mass Effect 2 for example I have no less then seven DLC things that I have to download and install manually on the PC and that is just the free bonus stuff, not even counting the pay DLC.

While I agree that the game shouldn't be splintered, isn't Mass Effect 2 extremely long and in-depth on its own? You don't have to get the DLC.

Re:hmm

[grumbel]

While I agree that the game shouldn't be splintered, isn't Mass Effect 2 extremely long and in-depth on its own?

It is, but that doesn't stop the "What am I missing?" question from popping up and to find the answer you download all that stuff and install it. Of course, afterwards its easy to say that one could have just ignored it and it would have been fine anyway, but thats a question that isn't easily answered when you haven't yet played the game.

The whole DLC mess simply distracts from the overall experience, instead of having a single well balance experience, you have one with a whole bunch of optional bells and whistles. And finding out how good or bad each whistle is takes time and effort that I would prefer not to waste time on. Having games like Dragon Age: Origins constantly reminding you of the DLC you haven't yet bought of course makes things even worse.

Re:hmm

[Monkeedude1212]

It's still a form of DRM. Essentially, some people find it within their "digital rights" to share a purchased game with a friend, and so they can play against each other online. Most games that require a code to unlock are built in this measure to say "This registration code is already in use by another user".

If it were a simple matter of just needing a registration code, that same code would be distributed with every second-hand copy of the game, thus completely circumventing the need for a registration system in the first place (making the DRM useless) - or if there is any reason why your game cannot run multiple copies at once, thats a form of DRM.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom was easily the most widely pirated game at the time. The shareware model wasn't a way to beat piracy, it was basically viral marketing.

DLC is just digital distribution, i.e. what Steam does, i.e. DRM.

Re:hmm

[WaroDaBeast]

With Sierra games like Half Life, you could input "33333333333333333333333" (just a lot of threes, actually) and that'd let you install and play the game.

So there. :D

Re:hmm

[Mgns]

As a consumer, I can say that I am nervous that I will wind up paying more money for incremental delivery of content that should have shipped at release.

I'm worried that a n$ game I expect to keep me interested for maybe 20 hours will be delivered in bits and pieces

Re:hmm

[Quirkz]

You buy a code, and that code unlocks your game, forever and ever, the transaction is finished.

Well, unless you need to reinstall and can't find the code years later. For some reason I could hold on to the installers, but I could never manage to keep track of the documentation. Particularly when it's sold separately, it can be hard to keep track of that information. I remember getting locked out of Lemmings in college after needing to reinstall the OS. It's frustrating to own software but not be able to play it. Same with my old Forgotten Realms games, though in that case I could sometimes fudge it by just guessing E a lot, since it seemed to appear frequently on the code wheel.

Re:hmm

[Thinboy00]

It's true you couldn't use the full game before the code, but you hadn't paid for it yet.

Uhhh, WTF?

If I go into a store and see a product hanging on the wall saying "Game X, $10" and I buy it, I PAID FOR IT. If I get home and find out I need to buy a "code" to play this game, I'm pissed.

What store? We're talking about shareware here.

Re:hmm

[Machtyn]

The micro-payment and upgrade issue is why add-on and expansion packs are made. Many games make excellent use of this practice. If, however, I purchase the latest Elder Scrolls:Oblivion game and it contained all but 2 necessary cities and 4 oblivion portals, I would be ticked off. I just spent $40 on a game and now you want me to hand over another $20 for the extra content just so I can open the final few bosses?

Of course, I am the type of person that waits until all expansion packs are released and the game is sold as a bundle, which is generally the same price or cheaper than when the game first came out. Which is also the reason that Valve's deals are a major drain on my wallet. (I get 9 games for $80! Count me in!! -wife: But you already have 3 of them...)

Re:hmm

[toastar]

Serial and Registration codes weren't really DRM.

What was DRM was Requiring you to type in the 5th word from page 27 of the manual.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what the summary is referring to is not simply to give you level 1, then ask you to buy level 2, level 3, etc., I think the summary is suggesting that a game come with the world, a player model, a physics model, a basic set of items, and some content in the world (NPC's, story, etc).
If you want to have alternate characters -> buy it.
If you want to go to that other (previously unbuilt) cave/world/zone -> buy it.
If you want expanded items in game -> buy it.
Companies building 'mod-able' games would have a good starting point, with their mod community having tested the waters for add-on content. They could lock out (and piss off) the modders to restrict free add-ons; they could try to out-compete modders based on quality; the could have a market like Apple with a mod-store for their games.
Game writers might have to cut down on the constant influx of new game engines, but even that may be upgradable content (new texture or physics add-on for $5, anyone?).
Do you see where I'm going with this?
I think it would be simultaneously awesome and supremely annoying.

Re:hmm

[stonewallred]

Damn if I know what the hell they are nattering about. I have never had to deal with any codes, registration or copy protection. The publishers must leave them off of the copies they load onto the torrent sites.

Re:hmm

[CannonballHead]

E-mailed registration codes are awesome... if your e-mail is easily searchable and will last a while. :) hehe.

Re:hmm

[morari]

Shareware games, like Doom and Quake, were offered for free. They were essentially super long demos. You could purchase the last several episodes and have the complete game. That's fine. That's a great goal. Sadly, it sounds as if the article is talking more about charging a typical retail price for half of a game and then nickel and dimming customer for the final few boss battles.

Re:hmm

[swilver]

How is that the same as a publisher going out of business and taking everyone's copy of the game with it? Not just your copy, because you lost the booklet... with current games, WoW is the perfect example. Not only can Blizzard terminate your account at a whim, they can dictate what software can and cannot be run on your system and could pull the plug anytime they wish (ie, as soon as it is no longer profitable). It is beyond your control, unlike having made a copy of the booklet for safe keeping.

Even if you bought a new original DRM'd copy still in the store for sale, it wouldn't work anymore, unlike games with code wheels, codes in manuals, etc.

It is not the same by a long shot. They aim to cure the same problem (as publishers see it), but DRM is much more devious. Painless DRM will never exist. Companies are greedy fucks that care little for their public image if it means more profits. If it benefitted Steam/Blizzard/Sony to screw over their entire userbase, they would.

Re:hmm

[Svartalf]

Not even that was DRM.

DRM is like Steam where they can revoke your use of the game by remote the next time it connects up to their servers.

DRM is like the BS that got done recently where the game won't let you play if it can't phone home.

Re:hmm

[Kalriath]

Starcraft 1 accepted "123-4567-890123" as a valid registration code too.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true you couldn't use the full game before the code, but you hadn't paid for it yet.

Uhhh, WTF?

If I go into a store and see a product hanging on the wall saying "Game X, $10" and I buy it, I PAID FOR IT. If I get home and find out I need to buy a "code" to play this game, I'm pissed.

And that's exactly what happened with some games I bought through a local Office Max. SD cards with some old arcade games for the Palm. Heavily discounted/closeout, like $5, but nothing on the outside said anything about having to buy a code to play anything. I get the games in the Palm, wham, thanks for buying us, here's 10 seconds of demo, now go to this website and get the registration code for $x. Fuckers.

The problem with DRM is publishers retaining control on stuff you already paid for, after the fact.

Yeah, like those games.

Hmm. I think he's talking about the modern version of the old-school shareware model where you download the whole game, and you can only play the first episode until you pay the game devs, then they give you the registration (un-lock) code, and you're good to go. Not after you already bought it (in a store).

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"The one thing I don't really get is why there is so much focus on tons of tiny pieces of DLC."

Consider the price vs expenses portion of the equation as seen by the eyes of an average suit.

Their argument is that it is more profitable to cut pieces of the original product out and offer them for a small fee than "lose" that money by inclusion in the first release.

Also, 2-3 hour playtime pieces are far less expensive to make than the initial game system, as they are simply content updates rather than a work on a full-blown product.

Most DLCs nowadays are still test-cases and "ground-preparation," since the Western market does not have a history of like the Asian market that proved it as financially viable alternative to full-blown expansion packs (as well as micro-transaction model for MMORPGs). Actually, we still run on the impression that when a product is offered, it should be as complete as possible at the time. "This should be remedied."

Given the current prevalence of profit-above-all, I am not looking forward to the result.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

My last transaction supporting the games industry was to buy AI Wars from an indie developer. Good game, the transaction went smoothly over Steam.
I've gotten quite a few good hours out of the game, but it seems that the indie developer has had such success that they are no longer able to answer customers requests / complaints, and instead direct you to a forum where there's such an influx of content that one can't really hope to have any interaction. I was going to ask if there was any way I could have a guest slot so I could take advantage of the multiplayer capability of the game. So far, I haven't been able to do that as I don't know anyone else who likes the game at all. It seems like it would be really fun to play it with someone else. *sniffle

Re:hmm

[frozentier]

Leisure Suit Larry did that, I believe. At least in one game.

Re:hmm

[ShakaUVM]

>>While I agree that the game shouldn't be splintered, isn't Mass Effect 2 extremely long and in-depth on its own?

If you call about 20 hours of gameplay for 100% completion on Hard difficulty long, then yes. Replayed it a little bit in the hardest difficulty until I got bored with, well, replaying the exact same game again.

The problem with the DLC for the game is that it doesn't really do anything for me. Why would I want a shiny new weapon or new character or whatever when I've already beaten the game?

So if TFA is right, you either get a game that you literally can't beat (which will make the consumer want to kill you), or release content for a game the consumer has already beaten, and therefore won't buy it.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was on an SD card, chances are that what you paid for is in fact the storage media. It's a common practice for some manufacturers (Verbatim et al.) to include demo versions of games on their merchandise, just like the installed crap you get when you buy a new computer.

Re:hmm

[Tom]

except that shareware was $10, not $60.

You did notice how conspiciously absent words like "cheaper" or "reduced price" are from the phrase "selling broken games" ?

Re:hmm

[Lonewolf666]

Good point. That's why I either
-wait until a decent bundle appears (not necessarily with all expansions, but it has to be playable to the end of the main story)
-or buy the game only at a discount that offsets the lack of completeness

Considering MMOs, I've never bought one for the typical retail price of 50 Euros. 10-20 Euro are acceptable, and the publisher can damn well earn his money from the monthly fees.

Re:hmm

[AmiMoJo]

It might not be DRM but it has many of the same flaws.

- You can't re-sell downloaded games
- You can't re-install once the developer turns the servers off
- You can't lend or borrow them
- You can't make backups
- Often the online requirement is just as bad as DRM (e.g. Rockstar's Social Club)

Worse still is that some companies seem to think they can sell the download or the same or even sometimes more than the boxed version. Retailers do much better and earlier discounts.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Rights Management - not code-wheel rights management. They're different animals.

Re:hmm

[HeckRuler]

And here I thought it was managing the rights to digital content.
So if a lawyer kicks down your door and takes a shotgun to your infringing computer, that's not DRM? Cause it's the means isn't digital?

Re:hmm

[BikeHelmet]

You buy a code, and that code unlocks your game, forever and ever, the transaction is finished. It's true you couldn't use the full game before the code, but you hadn't paid for it yet.

Until you reinstall/upgrade your OS! Then you need to contact them to get a reactivation code. Better pray they haven't gone under.

Got a laptop, and want to play on it as well? See above.

Re:hmm

[Joker1980]

Couldent agree with you more, but even single player games ship unfinnished, im actually quite terrified by what an 'intentionally' unfinished game would be like, perhaps the main menu and and a wireframe tutorial level.

Re:hmm

[Joker1980]

Its being swamped with accounts thats driving me mad at the moment. Ive got an xbox live account and a steam account...thats all good. However because of DLC and free bonus's i now have an xbox live account, a steam account, an EA account, A bioware account, a ubisoft account, an atari account and the list goes on and on. It completly defeats the point of steam/live/psn.

Ok Rod....

[Jaysyn]

Yeah... you let me know how that works out for you. I mean I'm already not buying your games because they are overall pretty shitty, but let's just throw one more reason onto the pile.

Re:Ok Rod....

[ArhcAngel]

Oh, I'd say it's working out quit well for at least one company.

Re:Ok Rod....

[Jaysyn]

Last time I checked, CodeMasters wasn't Zynga, their target audiences weren't the same & the only similarities between their products is that they are both computer entertainment.

Re:Ok Rod....

[Mongoose Disciple]

All that being true, it's still an interesting / instructive contrast.

If (as a result of piracy), games like Mafia Wars (or an MMO, another model that is essentially unpirateable -- sure there are pirate servers, but the vast majority of players for various reasons do not want to play on them) can provide a company with a much higher ROI than makers of 'traditional' games, then that is the way the market's going to go.

I don't see a good solution to the problem, but I wish someone would come up with one because I prefer to play (and buy) the kinds of games that ultimately are pirateable.

Re:Ok Rod....

[ArhcAngel]

You forgot to tell me to get off your lawn.

Re:Ok Rod....

[Jaysyn]

Really good rebuttal there, Spanky.

Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[localman57]

Maybe I'm naieve or not understanding, but what will stop the pirates from unlocking/breaking/pirating the downloadable content? Aren't you just moving DRM from the front end to the back end?

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[SquarePixel]

Maybe I'm naieve or not understanding, but what will stop the pirates from unlocking/breaking/pirating the downloadable content? Aren't you just moving DRM from the front end to the back end?

It will make the life harder for pirates. Every little push helps. Personally I enjoy the easiness that Steam offers.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[natehoy]

Yes, it's the "DRM of a thousand cuts".

It not only ensures that DRM is fully active, but that the user must pretty much be online to play or at least access content, and that the licenses pretty much cannot be resold.

Oh, and that the "warez" versions will be ever more valuable to the end user than the legitimate versions, of course.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing at all, the pirates will release a convenient all-in-one pack with the base game and all the DLCs, for easy download and installation.

This guy is either incredibly naive, or it's really an attempt to make further milking of their paying customers more palatable by obscuring it as "fighting piracy"

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is akin to sending an unencrypted, sensitive file over the internet in little pieces... Security by obscurity doesn't increase security at all. It, generally, just makes things more obscure and difficult to follow. This is something that a true hacker would have no problem spending the time to figure out, and would probably, ENJOY doing.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[SquarePixel]

It seems to be working for Ubisoft. There still aren't a good cracked version of the newest Silent Hunter. The one you see on torrent sites only contain the tutorial. This is almost half an year later now.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Walkingshark]

It will make the life harder for pirates. Every little push helps. Personally I enjoy the easiness that Steam offers.

Not really. The pirates get off on the challenge of cracking this stuff, and prestige in the community is directly linked to difficulty of the crack and time taken to crack it. This kind of stuff will just get them off even more.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[bytecrafter]

Yes, it seems like this guy is committing an act of double-speak. "DRM is not the answer to the piracy issue". Except then he then details a system that could only be described as DRM. This guy is either lying or uninformed.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[webheaded]

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing. This guy is an idiot. It's like he hasn't considering that um...duh...people can still pirate that DLC. Is he really that retarded? Or is he implying that maybe some people will be more willing to pay for things that are cheaper or something? I really just don't get it.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[SquarePixel]

This is akin to sending an unencrypted, sensitive file over the internet in little pieces... Security by obscurity doesn't increase security at all. It, generally, just makes things more obscure and difficult to follow. This is something that a true hacker would have no problem spending the time to figure out, and would probably, ENJOY doing.

And in turn here in the real adult life people have better things to do than mess around with all kinds of tricks, spend time on it and then think if it really works. Note, I have been on both sides, but then I grew up. Now I enjoy just buying the product with a click of a button, see theres extra value in the product when you actually own it, and I also understand that people making these games wouldn't be making them if everyone were stealing from them like you.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[SquarePixel]

It will make the life harder for pirates. Every little push helps. Personally I enjoy the easiness that Steam offers.

Not really. The pirates get off on the challenge of cracking this stuff, and prestige in the community is directly linked to difficulty of the crack and time taken to crack it. This kind of stuff will just get them off even more.

What pirates are you talking about? Crackers, sure. But most people, the usual pirates, just want free stuff. When it's enough hard and complicated, they just buy the product. The casual users anyway, and that is what matters most to the game developers.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Except then he then details a system that could only be described as DRM.

Except that DRM doesn't mean what you apparently think it does. DRM is about preventing someone from making unauthorized copies or restricting using content on devices the copyright holder doesn't want you to. Having to pay something in order to get access to it is not a DRM scheme.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[commodore64_love]

I'm okay with Little Pieces of DRM if the game is like Firefox where you buy a stripped product, and then pay micropayments to get various addons. The product would still be "complete" and usable but minus the optional features/sidequests.

What I would Not be okay with is if I was playing Final Fantasy 12 or Zelda Twilight Princess and suddenly a popup says, "If you want to enter the final dungeon, please type in your credit card number. It will be charged $10." That would piss me off.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[v1]

the basic idea is when your installation connects to their servers to download the content, it sends your registration key. They run the same sort of keyservers as do online activation. If the key is burned, it just won't let you download the update.

The "fix" for that of course is to intercept the download off a legitimate installation, and package it such that you can download the update via torrent etc and run it locally to get the new content. But that's a lot more involved than simply shutting off a SN check with a tweak of a line or two of code.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, but that's only because the game is targeted at a niche audience and not that good. Assassin's Creed 2 uses the same basic DRM system and has been cracked. It's not a 'universal' break to that type of DRM though, a lot of work has to go into it, and nobody willing to do that work really care's enough about Silent Hunter.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[natehoy]

Judging from the reviews I've seen based on a quick glance, there isn't a good UN-cracked version as well. Maybe people saw what it was like and decided that even free was too expensive.

Before you go all flamey about the fact that I don't even know what the game is... It's a joke, son.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[kenshin33]

You buy where you see value indeed. If you don't see value you don't buy. But if you find why not take. The publisher can't lose what he didn't own to begin with (your money). And in the end you might end up buying the thing b/c you saw some value that you didn't see before.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[orasio]

Now I enjoy just buying the product with a click of a button, see theres extra value in the product when you actually own it, and I also understand that people making these games wouldn't be making them if everyone were stealing from them like you.

You don't own it legally, because you just get a license, if anyone, the public domain owns copyrighted works, and authors have a monopoly on distribution.
If you are referring to the practical aspects of "owning", you don't own stuff that has DRM, because it can be taken away from you at the whims of the publisher. It's more similar to a rental. If you got it as an unauthorised copy, chances are that you get to keep it as long as you like.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[bytecrafter]

There is an assumption that I am making. From this quote: "My answer is for us as publishers is to actually sell unfinished games - and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience." I'm assuming that he plans to protect the downloadable pieces with DRM. I mean, if he's not planning to protect the downloaded parts of the game, how does this do anything at all to impede piracy? Unless the real issue isn't piracy at all. Maybe they just want to charge more for games, and need some way to convince consumers that this scheme is in their best interests.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Moridineas]

I'm not really sure that's true...

I thought of some of the fairly recent games that have had downloadable content...a few spring to mind. Oblivion, Fall Out, Dragon Age, etc.

A quick search on any torrent site will show you distros all packaged together of the game plus downloadable content.

Meanwhile for those of us who did buy the games, you can't move downloadable content around in some cases. For instance in Dragon Age, my copy came with Blood Dragon Armor and Shale. If I resell / lend / etc the game out, nobody else gets access to those without buying them.

 

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[icebraining]

First, parent *never* said he downloads stuff illegally - he's pointing out the flaw in the DRM system.
Second, good for you if you don't pirate, but that's irrelevant for the discussion, isn't it? We're discussing how this new system can stop "pirates", not if "pirating" is good or bad.

Illegal downloads exist, regardless of the morality of such actions. We're discussing a new system to stop them. If you're not interested in discussing that, why have you opened the story?

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Moridineas]

Again, I'm not sure you're entirely right. I definitely and strongly agree with you that as most people grow up, they don't want to fuck around with things as much when things should "just work."

However, I don't really think pirating games is that difficult. I will sometimes still install no-cd cracks for instance. That's simple enough just about anybody can do it. And from looking at torrent sites, the warez/cracker groups do still take some pride in putting together bundles of games that "just work."

Having said that I've had no problems with Steam and only a few minor annoyances with other DRM / protection systems. I have absolutely no problem with game developers trying to protect their goods.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Dan667]

You like Steam because it is a service that does things you want, not because of DRM

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[icebraining]

But only one (or a small team of) crackers needs to do the job once and assemble the all the files in one RAR, and then all the "usual pirates" will just pick it on their p2p networks.

Just like Securom: if each person needed to crack it individually, illegal downloads would be non-existent. The problem is that it only needs to be cracked once for all the other to use it easily, by copying a file or whatever.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

What about the approach Ubisoft took in Assassin's Creed 2? Out of 14 Sequences (roughly equivalent to chapters), they shipped with 1-11 and 14. 12 and 13 aren't critical to the plot line, and they wrote around them ("These memories are corrupt, we'll skip to the next non-corrupt memory," which happens to be the final mission). 12 and 13 were later offered as DLC for about $3-4 each.

I played through the game before they were released, and the gap was a little weird, but given that they often skipped a year or two of game time between sequences, the gap was nothing new. There's never a pop-up in game, but once the DLC was released, they notified you on the initial menu; if you reached the end of sequence 11 without the DLC it did the "memory is corrupt" bit and skipped you to 14, but if you bought the DLC, it just transitioned to it with a brief mention about needing to fix the corrupted memory. Would that bother you?

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[icebraining]

Only if the pirates that bought the game because of DRM compensate the consumers who didn't buy it because of DRM and the free games Ubisoft had to offer because of DRM problems.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[slater.jay]

Considering that the campaign runs from 1939 to 1943 with a single submarine type and mediocre mechanics, and the previous entry in the series (focused on the Pacific war instead of the Atlantic one), has been modded to feature a German campaign from 1939 to 1945 with better stability, more submarines, and more realism, I'd say that even though you claim not to know what you're talking about you're actually pretty close to spot on. Cough. I may be a little bit bitter.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[icebraining]

That depends on whether those parts you pay for using micro-payments can be transferred to another PC or re-sold. If they can't, it's effectively DRM.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[icebraining]

The "addons" part already happens - plenty of games have extensions and DLCs to add more content.

He specifically says unfinished games. I'm betting it'll be something like your second scenario.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Kaboom13]

Presumably pirates will not have internet access on their long plundering trips across the ocean, and not be able to access the new content as it is released.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

General rule: You can only be sure to find cracks for games that are actually good.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[TOGSolid]

That approach would be ok if they initial price of the game was lower. You can't sell a stripped game and then have the balls to charge full price for it (and put the most oppressive, buggy DRM ever made on it). Now, if they want to do it old school where you pay less for your stripped game (let's say 25 bucks) and then via DLC let you unlock the rest of it (let's say another 25 bucks worth of content) then I don't see the problem here.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[h4rr4r]

Makes me wait for the game of the year additions. I will not pay again and again. If I have to wait till the end of the year, that is fine. I am not a 12 year old.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[geminidomino]

DRM is about preventing someone from making unauthorized copies or restricting using content on devices the copyright holder doesn't want you to.

Part of something is not necessarily the whole of something, and what you describe is not the whole of DRM.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[sqlrob]

Exactly. I was originally planning for getting AC2 right when it came out. I'm still waiting for the full version.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

The battle isn't in the crack teams' favor these days:

The PS3 has been shown to be 100% secure after the years it has been out.

I believe GeoHot might disagree with you in that regard

HD satellite is still unbroken.

Really? Which satellite network? BEV is cracked, as is N3 (So Dish) - Google "N3XT"

FairPlay for movies still has not been cracked, and no, using the analog hole or a program like SoundTaxi to "record" the played movie is not a crack. That is a transcoding.

I'm sure the QTFairUse guys would have done it, had not Apple C&D'd them into oblivion.

HDCP has been out for a while, still unbroken.

Really? Are you sure about that?

Recent iPhones are still not jailbroken.

Really? Ask PlanetBeing about that.

Windows 7 activation has yet to have a reliable bypass that doesn't turn the desktop black.

Really? 'cause I'm using This release (For educational purposes only, of course), and have no black desktop on either x86 and x64. As long as you don't install KB971033 (Which can be blacklisted in Windows Update), you're just fine.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

What would there be to crack in this case?

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Archangel Michael]

Nothing will stop pirates from being pirates. PERIOD.

Assholes will be assholes, dicks will be dicks and so on.

The point is, MOST people don't want to be a pirate, asshole or dick. MOST people are mostly honest(nobody is perfect).

Compare the following two scenarios, each game is a high end game, with lots of beautiful graphics and a great deal of development time.

Game 1 is DRMed to death, codes, secret communication to server. Basically assumes most people are thieves and have illegally downloaded the game from PirateBay etc. The Retail cost of the game is $75. Company has a history of screwing people or having problems on its end that prevents play due to failures in DRM. Cracked versions are available on Piratebay that function just fine, and don't have the problems that DRM causes.

Game 2 is practically given away at $10-25 (or perhaps even "free" (as in beer). But it has a "enhancements" that you can download free (custom avatar, upgrades, etc). Each enhancement is $5 or so. As the game continues, updates, upgrades continue to roll out each $5 (or whatever).

WHAT is the draw of a "PirateBay" version, other than knowing you're just being a cheap thief by "stealing" it? Of course you can "steal" it, but why would you?

Basically the PirateBay version would be for thieves only, and not a refuge of purists and DRM fighters. We'd have a lot less sympathy for people getting caught with pirated versions.

If you're going for 100% no piracy, you're going to lose. There will always be pirates. If you're going for customer satisfaction and continuing revenue stream, going the small payment way will be much more satisfying for both you, and your customers.

Remember, thieves are not your customers, you have no obligation to them whatsoever.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[ultranova]

The "fix" for that of course is to intercept the download off a legitimate installation, and package it such that you can download the update via torrent etc and run it locally to get the new content. But that's a lot more involved than simply shutting off a SN check with a tweak of a line or two of code.

No need for that. The new content has to be stored somewhere, so all you have to do is check the contents of the game directory before and after the update.

DRM is, to put it bluntly, a scam perpetrated on game manufacturers by DRM manufacturers.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Sir_Sri]

It's a bit different because every game will have it's own DLC system. Right now there are only a handful of drm systems, (perhaps with several versions), used across multiple titles, compromise said DRM once, and you've compromised all of the games that use it. DLC is a whole other ballgame. Want to install it? (Or activate it for that matter), you need to be logged into your account with the publisher, want to use it, you need to log in, or maybe it installs from within the game, or glues into the game in a particular way. If each game installs, and or activates its own DLC in a different way then ya, sure, the big titles will probably still get cracked, but no one will want invest the effort in the smaller titles. Just the same as no one is going to spend dozens or hundreds of man hours figuring out how to rip a CD made by my highschool band, but they will for the latest taylor swift album (she was best seller in 2009 after all), and if you run the same program to rip both disks, well, you get the idea.

Believe it or not, it's not really Halo they're trying to save here, although COD, and the Sims get the big numbers for piracy it probably isn't going to kill those franchises, the smaller titles, alpha protocol, metro 2033 the guild, hearts of iron, conflict reign of nations, sword of the stars etc.. guys were 10 or 15% lost sales (which I distinguish from number of copies pirates) can be the difference between profitability or not.

So ya, on one hand you're moving the problem of where the DRM is, but if each game is different then it's raising the barrier to entry for hacking quite a lot. Not that it will do much good, but they might be able to generate more revenue, sell a 'game' for 10 bucks, sell 4 more chunks of it for 10 bucks each and you'll might get less pirates, some converts who pay for the first part, decide they don't like it and don't buy the rest, than the current crop of 'I'll buy it if I like it after I've 'demoed' it crowd', at which point you definitely get nothing.

It has the dual benefit of going after used game sales at the throat. Since your DLC will be tied to your account you cannot 'resell it', and they can can still sell DLC to the next guy who buys your boxed copy, so long as they bother making boxed copies.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Archangel Michael]

What if instead of the popup before going into the final dungeon, the popup was afterwards that said something like.

"You've finished Elf Lord IV! Congrats! If you like a new quest, please visit www.elf-lord-IV.com for more quests!"

And when you go to website it offers additional game plays for $5-10 ea. Or offers co-op play for $25 for 1 year (or whatever)?

If the game sucks, then you won't be back. If it is fun, you'll come back over and over.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[poulbailey]

What I would Not be okay with is if I was playing Final Fantasy 12 or Zelda Twilight Princess and suddenly a popup says, "If you want to enter the final dungeon, please type in your credit card number. It will be charged $10." That would piss me off.

Buy a copy of Dragon Age: Origins (regular edition) and you can have just that! Today!

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[stewbacca]

Ah yes, Steam. That program that wouldn't let me play Half-Life 2 when my Internet was out. Mind you, I purchased the CD version, installed it from the CDs, and yet Steam felt compelled to not let me play it because it couldn't verify I owned it over the Internet. So I uninstalled Steam and played Half Life 2.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[badboy_tw2002]

Right, but usually (if its done right) there's a delay in the release and the crack (barring of course, someone leaking it prior to retail). If that release is long enough, people can become impatient enough to buy the product outright. If this happens every time you put content out, you'll pick up the "gotta have it now" customers who would have just gotten it free but will now pay because they're so hooked.

That's the theory anyways. No idea if it works.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[bill_kress]

Pirates generally only steal if the cost + inconvenience of buying beats the inconvenience of stealing.

I buy a lot more game on Steam because I don't have to deal with the DAMN CDs. If manufactures would sell a good game for $15 and not require the CD to be in the drive, I'd have been buying them all along instead of piarating them (I haven't pirated for years now, I just gave up on computer games.) I buy them on my iPhone all the time though.

If someone finds the work of finding the ripped game, risking the viruses and not having the updates worth more than the $10 to download it on steam, I say let them have it--I'd encourage them to steal it rather than go without--it would probably STILL increase profits in the long run (exposure to friends, playing as a group and the guy will probably purchase it when he has the money).

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[raodin]

What? Which DLC are you calling the "final dungeon" exactly? The fight with the primary antagonist (the Archdemon) was included in the regular edition of the game.

Having an in-game ad for the Warden's Keep add-on was pretty cheesy, but it is not even close to withholding the final dungeon and selling it later.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[White Shade]

That's exactly what I thought when I started reading this ... If $25 worth of the content from a $50 game is stripped out and offered as an expansion, no gaming company is going to charge $25, they're still going to charge $40-50, and then charge $25 a pop for the expansions. In a perfect world it would work fairly and it would be nice, but that's not how it is.

Plus, what about the millions of people with poor or no internet? DLC is all well and good but if it takes a month to download 2gb of data for your game, what good is that? I know most/all of us here have nice internet, but for example a good friend of mine lives in a relatively remote area and he actually has to use a crappy microwave link to get internet, and if he had to download gigabytes of game expansion data, that would suuuuuuuuuck...

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[meerling]

Nothing, it's already been done many times. Look at Oblivion, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, Fallout 3, even Sam & Max seasons 1 & 2 among many others. If your machine can run the code, it can and will be made available to unauthorized users, period. (Even the much maligned mothership technique in Assassins Creed 2 has been defeated.)

You can keep wasting money on developing more and more restrictive and intrusive DRM that rarely lasts 3 weeks before being broken while inconveniencing and pissing off your paying customers, or you can give up on the dick waving contest and just use something simple and unobtrusive to prevent the average user from illicit copying.

And one final note on the article, IMO what Cousens said sounds to be skirting over the edge of douchebaggery "let's milk them for everything they've got" talk. Something I don't like, but it may just be a false impression, so I'll wait until he says or does something to clarify that. (I'm not against DLC, just what I'd consider improper use of it.)

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[TOGSolid]

The only solution to that would be to have boxed copies still act like full games, but then we're right back at square one. Granted, it's not like game companies care about people with slow, dodgy internet or even no internet at all. Think about Ubisoft's bullshit and the stupid activation crap that's out there.

The fix to their problems isn't going to be a new selling scheme, but for companies to just ditch DRM entirely and accept that DRM just does not work. If they want to do something productive, they need to release demos on a regular basis again. If they want to do somethng productive they need to stop releasing bullshit, overhyped games. If they want to do something productive they need to lynch Bobby Kotick and Yves Guillemot. Maybe then they'll start seeing some improvements in sales.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[CS_Snapple]

Odd, I've never had a problem playing Steam games without a network connection. Once in a while it'll sit there trying to connect when I start a game up, but it'll eventually kick over to offline mode. There's probably even a console command to start it up in offline mode, though I've never looked into it.

Unless you're talking about initial game activation right after installation, in which case, sure. Way less intrusive than most DRM schemes, though, IMO.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[poulbailey]

He was talking about a blatant in-game popup soliciting money to give you access to extra content. The Warden's Keep thing is pretty much exactly that. It'll probably only get worse in Dragon Effect 2.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[dangitman]

And in turn here in the real adult life people have better things to do than mess around with all kinds of tricks, spend time on it and then think if it really works.

And as we all know, only adults play computer games and not a single minor would be interested in such a frivolous activity. Equally as true, we all know that there's not a single unemployed adult in the world, and every adult has access to an ample stream of income.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[stonewallred]

I find that a click of two buttons usually lands the game on my computer, ready to play, with no encumbering DRM or other fucktarded shit interfering. Top sites if possible, torrents if not. Better quality and much better price.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[ChrisDevine]

This is what confuses me the most. A quick search on TPB shows Mass Effect 2, all of its DLCs and various cracks and whatnot for it. What exactly is pissing off honest customers like myself going to accomplish if the pirates can still get what they want?

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[stonewallred]

Tard, yes you are. The people who crack it are not the ones who pirate it. Usually the crackers have a legit or close to legit copy. They break the bitch down, and break the bitch in, then send her ass out to turn free tricks for the pirates. Learn a little or as the bros say, "Lurk moar faggot!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[stonewallred]

Lol, you slapped the parent in the face with a donkey dick. Very few things remain unbroken. And many of them are semi-cracked, just not yet to standards for release. The crackers pride themselves on the DL and play model with no buggy shit.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[sitkill]

Or, you could simply turn off the internet reliance of steam.

I check out what's on sale on Steam on their website, see something good, boot up steam, en-able steam's internet connection, buy the game, start the game up once, then immediate set Steam to offline mode.

Though, I've heard that not every game can be played offline, the majority can.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[stewbacca]

Or, Steam could tell me that's an option. How in the hell am I supposed to know? I just assumed it wouldn't work without a connection. Call me a cynic.

I was trying to play Half Life 2, from the same people who make Steam, from a CD I bought before there ever was a Steam (on my computer at least, maybe it was out when HL2 came out on day 1, but I can't remember), and Steam wouldn't let me play it offline.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Walkingshark]

Sorry, I should have specified I meant the cracking community.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[v1]

No need for that. The new content has to be stored somewhere, so all you have to do is check the contents of the game directory before and after the update.

Things like that are easily defeated with signing. They just sign the update with a bit of license key, update key, and a bit of random salt made during initial installation. Prevents you from copying purchased content to another installation.

Not too far off from how say, most any music store purchases can't be just copied to another computer and played.

There are ways to use that with the server you download the content from, but that tends to increase the overhead on the server end, which they usually try to avoid. But for example the ITMS rolls in purchaser info to the mp3 before encrypting it and then sending it to you, so they don't always mind a little extra work to make your life a little more difficult.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Eskarel]

Steam is tolerable because it offers you something in exchange for the lack of control given you by DRM.

Log into Steam, and you can download and play any game you've purchased or activated. You can do it on as many computers as you like, as many times as you like, from pretty much anywhere in the world where you can get internet. You get the downsides of the license instead of a purchase(like needing an internet connection to play it), but you get the upsides as well. It's a problem if Steam goes off line and they don't provide a work around, but there's some fairness in the system.

That's generally where a lot of companies go wrong, they want to have the best of both worlds for themselves(all the rights, none of the responsibilities), which doesn't go over well with their customers and encourages them to behave the same way(all the game, none of the cost). The idea that if you break a CD you're stuffed or at least substantially out of pocket, but that you can't give that CD to someone else is the problem.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[totally bogus dude]

Firstly, the people spending their time breaking the copy protection are the ones already doing that. It's not something you'd have to do yourself.

Secondly, it's pretty interesting that you say you're willing to pay for a product that "just works" without having to faff around. Because that is actually a large incentive for people to pirate games and other software: the pirated version just works. If you buy it then you have to at best keep track of a license key; at worst, you have to activate it online (hoping their activation servers are working at that time), maybe even have to be connected to the internet every time you run it, potentially run out of activations if you change computers a lot or they have a low limit to start with (and then you have to contact their support asking for more activations for something you supposedly "own").

So with this model, you get to periodically buy new content from them. You have to hope they have sufficient bandwidth to deal with the surge of customers also buying the updated content. You have to hope their payment system doesn't have any problems -- not to mention that many of Codemaster's target market probably don't have credit cards or an easy way to make online payments in the first place. Then you have to hope their copy-protection system recognises your right to play the new content, etc.

The pirate on the other hand downloads a complete, working game with all the added content likely built-in; or if they're getting the content later the activation stuff will be removed. So it will in fact "just work". They aren't dependent on some company keeping their authentication servers running, or having enough bandwidth for the initial rush when new content is first released.

Additionally, there are still a lot of people who refuse to buy things online, which I think is going to make things interesting for companies basing their business model on DLC. I see this a lot on various game forums I visit.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[PitaBred]

If the game doesn't sell well enough, they just stop developing on it, no new episodes. Gives people who like the game a powerful motive for purchasing it.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Pentium100]

Game 2 is practically given away at $10-25 (or perhaps even "free" (as in beer). But it has a "enhancements" that you can download free (custom avatar, upgrades, etc). Each enhancement is $5 or so. As the game continues, updates, upgrades continue to roll out each $5 (or whatever).

WHAT is the draw of a "PirateBay" version, other than knowing you're just being a cheap thief by "stealing" it?

Getting the complete game at once?

Also, it's OK if the updates are sensible and so on, but under this scheme the manufacturer will most likely try to release tons of minimal updates so that it could take even more money than the $75 for the first option.
The companies hate to lower the price for any reason. You'd hope that if some part of the production costs was reduced then some of the saving would be passed to the customers, for example, a download version is cheaper to make (no need to make the CD and box, hip it to wherever it is sold etc), so it should be sold cheaper, but that is not always the case.

This is like the gas stations in my country. When the price of oil/gas increases, the price of gas to the customers increases immediately with the stations explaining that they do not ave any reserves of the cheaper gasoline. Fair enough. However, when the price of oil decreases, the price of gas to the customer stays the same because suddenly the stations now have huge reserves of the more expensive gas.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Scaevus]

Team Fortress 2 is a nice example. They offer new content and updates totally for free. (They indicate that the game cache size double over two years with additional content.) Although it's been released long ago, people still purchase the game because it's kept alive with these updates. And since the updates are free for current users, they do keep their current customers satisfied. Instead of making the current users pay for additional content, they prefer to increase their customer base. I wish all game developers adopt a similar model.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[ultranova]

Things like that are easily defeated with signing. They just sign the update with a bit of license key, update key, and a bit of random salt made during initial installation. Prevents you from copying purchased content to another installation.

Unless the another installation has been cracked, so it no longer checks the signature. This reduces this system back to regular DRM, which is routinely cracked.

This only thing any DRM system does - the only thing a DRM system can do - is hinder paying customers. That's all it's good for. A pirate is not bothered by disk checks, phoning home, signature checks, or any assorted crap, because it has been stripped away by the crack.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[rolando2424]

I believe GeoHot might disagree with you in that regard

Actually GeoHot quited a few days ago.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Loiosh-de-Taltos]

Steam did not include an offline option when it launched. You could not play HL2 without steam. Even if you got the CD version you had to install steam to authenticate it and then have steam running to play it.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[v1]

Unless the another installation has been cracked, so it no longer checks the signature. This reduces this system back to regular DRM, which is routinely cracked.

of course there's always a way. but my point was that it's not just a snap of the fingers to do. they tried to make it more complicated, and as you point out, they succeeded.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[stewbacca]

Oh yes, now I remember! I remember it took like 6 hours to update and authenticate before I could play it. Thanks for the (unpleasant) memory.

I like Steam now...wish they had more demo downloads though.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[BronsCon]

I don't get all the "If you buy it, it 'just works'" arguments, either.

Thanks to DRM, if you buy it, enter the right code, keep the CD in the drive, and have a constant internet connection, it MIGHT work. If you download the pirated version with DRM removed, it 'just works'.

Case in point, my fiancee is an avid gamer. She's going to go freakin' insane for 38hr on the road in 2 weeks. We're moving from OH to CA, and the only place she'll be able to actually game, even in single-player mode, is likely to be hotels, because our internet connection doesn't follow us, so her games' DRP can't phone home.

Fuck. That.

When she mentioned playing her games on the road to keep occupied, I pointed out why it probably won't be possible; having paid good money for these games, she was probably the most pissed of I've ever seen her. I'll find pirated copies for her before we leave so I can keep my concentration on the road, rather than her complaining about being bitten by DRM (she's never complained before because she's never noticed it before).

Once again, DRM is contributing to piracy, rather than preventing it; that's how it's gone for me for the last 10 years.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

When it's enough hard and complicated, they just buy the product.

Or they play something else.

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[Joker1980]

For me though thats EXACTLY THE POINT. Steam is cool i have no problems with its drm because it is dual sided, it provides something to the devs and the publishers while also providing something to me, the customer. Its all about give and take, as are most things in life. All DRM outside of steam is about REMOVING things from the value equation to benifit the dev/pubs.

Please insert coin

[nomorecwrd]

I have several funny and interesting posts in this matter

Please insert coin to see the first of them.

Re:Please insert coin

[Anonymous Coward]

I have several funny and interesting posts in this matter

Please insert coin to see the first of them.

I put a quarter into the slot on the side of my iMac a few minutes ago, but nothing's happened yet. Did you get my money, or should I call the help desk?

Re:Please insert coin

[StuartHankins]

Try it with a Windows machine. At least if it doesn't work you can double its value!

<ducks>

Re:Please insert coin

[StikyPad]

You idiot! Everyone knows the iMac only accepts bills -- specifically crisp $100s. People like you are the reason vending machines are always broken.

Re:Please insert coin

[Anonymous Coward]

I have several funny and interesting posts in this matter

Please insert coin to see the first of them.

I put a quarter into the slot on the side of my iMac a few minutes ago, but nothing's happened yet. Did you get my money, or should I call the help desk?

Maybe your computer has reception problems?

No.

[Pojut]

No no no no no no no. Microtransactions are NOT the way to go.

There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy. Most DRM schemes make things bad for paying customers, while pirates just play cracked copies that have less problems than the legit versions.

That being said, a $10 drop across the board for new console games would go a long way. $60 is WAY too much for a console game. Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.

Standard "only my opinion, no guarantees to work, etc." apply.

Re:No.

[MrEricSir]

"There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy"

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

Re:No.

[Americano]

No no no no no no no. Microtransactions are NOT the way to go.

Why not? I get that you don't like it, but I don't understand your reasoning, you just make a flat statement that "microtransactions, they r teh devilz!" I'm genuinely curious, there's no "HA! IN YOUR FACE!" waiting, just curious how you're coming to the conclusion that it won't work.

I'm not certain it'd be effective, but I do see that it might raise the bar for people trying to pirate the games, which might be "enough" of a solution that it discourages casual piracy. As you noted, you'll never fully defeat piracy - so maybe the goal is to simply make it hard enough that only really dedicated pirates will bother?

Re:No.

[Lunix Nutcase]

offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.

Which proves in many ways that the people who claim they don't buy games cause of DRM or that they're too expensive or just BS excuses. World of Goo never used DRM and yet you could see it being shared all over the place on torrent sites. It boils down to people just not wanting to pay people for their work.

Re:No.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

Microsoft tried this. It didn't work. :)

Re:No.

[nine-times]

Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.

At the same time, the Humble Indie Bundle also showed that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for something that they could easily pirate. You had DRM-free games being offered in such a way that people could simply pass a link around and everyone could get free downloads, yet they still made over $1 million in sales.

And those people would wouldn't even pay a cent for those games-- do you really think they'd all rush out and buy the game if it were DRMed?

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

.Microtransactions are NOT the way to go.

Of course Microtransactions aren't the way to go. Macrotransactions are! Just look at Starcraft 2, 1 game split into 3 purchasable parts. It's exactly what this guy is proposing except on a macro level.

Re:No.

[Pojut]

Why not? I get that you don't like it, but I don't understand your reasoning, you just make a flat statement that "microtransactions, they r teh devilz!" I'm genuinely curious, there's no "HA! IN YOUR FACE!" waiting, just curious how you're coming to the conclusion that it won't work.

For one thing, there is still nothing to stop pirates from collecting the game as it's released. Remember, if it can be engineered, it can be reverse engineered.

My primary concern is what happens if the game studio goes belly up prior to the "full game" being completed and released?

I'm not certain it'd be effective, but I do see that it might raise the bar for people trying to pirate the games, which might be "enough" of a solution that it discourages casual piracy. As you noted, you'll never fully defeat piracy - so maybe the goal is to simply make it hard enough that only really dedicated pirates will bother?

The "true" pirates are the ones who actually crack the games...and the more of a challange you make it, the more they will want to do it. It's just like the crackers from the 70's and 80's...their fun is in overcoming the challenge and gaining access. They didn't care what happend once they had it, they just wanted to know that they could. Making things harder will just encourage them.

Re:No.

[Bengie]

I think the way BC2 was released was fairly decent. They have two server modes, one where it connects and validates against EA's central server and the other where it doesn't.

But... if you don't validate against their server, you lose all the automated anti-hack abilities, which is updated by their central server anyway.

So, this means on servers where people can play illegal copies, there are lots of hackers and the play experience is reduced.

I'm not saying that everything is perfect, but it does "deter" pirating and/or "encourages" purchasing the legal version.

Re:No.

[Mashiki]

Microsoft tried this. It didn't work. :)

Funny, it worked for me. The last MS game I bought was Freelancer, and despite how much I enjoyed it I know that it wasn't anywhere close to what CR was hoping to actually release.

Re:No.

[kyrio]

You're right about the Humble Indie Bundle. They only made $1.3 million, that's shit!

Re:No.

[Dan667]

there is also a problem with perception. There were great sales with the Humble Indie Bundle (over $1 million in sales). If like the riaa you think that every copy out there would have been purchased if there was no other way to obtain it, that is just stupid. Many people are not going to buy it no matter what even if they can get it no other way.

Re:No.

[nine-times]

Which proves in many ways that the people who claim they don't buy games cause of DRM or that they're too expensive or just BS excuses.

Not necessarily. The Humble Indie Bundle essentially provided free downloads and worked on the honor system, and some people downloaded without paying. That proves that no matter how cheap and convenient the game is, some people will not buy that game. However, some of those people who will not buy that game will pirate it anyhow.

That doesn't mean that there aren't people who will avoid buying games because they're too expensive or have terrible DRM. I bought the Humble Indie Bundle (for higher than their average price), which I wouldn't have done if it included DRM. I think I paid $20-$30 voluntarily, but I wouldn't have paid $50 for it. If it included DRM and/or was >$30, I would have been included in the group of "people who will not buy that game", but if I found a pirated copy laying around, I may well have played those games.

Re:No.

[tophermeyer]

But it would be difficult to make in impact on piracy with coming close to completely defeating it. As it stands now I can just go to pirate bay and find that any game I want to play has already been pirated by one of the big pirates. The pirated version will come with detailed instructions on how to install and run it. Casual pirates don't need to put a lot of effort into playing these games. It's the dedicated pirates that make it easy/possible for the rest of us.

Personally I think microtransactions are little more than a method of milking more money for the same content. But I think they will continue to catch on. I make a point not to buy additional content, because as a consumer I am not ok with this. I'll pay $60 for a new game, but I'm not going to pay another $15 in 6 weeks to play additional missions that were probably already ready at the time of release. But alas, I am just a small drop in a very big bucket.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.

Yes, it's such a terrible, terrible shame. The HIB authors must be weeping into their keyboards.

http://www.wolfire.com/humble

"The Humble Indie Bundle experiment has been a massive success beyond our craziest expectations. So far, 138,813 generous contributors have put down an incredible $1,273,613."

Huh.

I wish my life had more of that kind of "doesn't even work" and less of the "HP printer driver" kind.

Re:No.

[FrozenFOXX]

"There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy"

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

That hasn't stopped Microsoft Windows being a resounding success.

Re:No.

[Americano]

For one thing, there is still nothing to stop pirates from collecting the game as it's released. Remember, if it can be engineered, it can be reverse engineered.

But if it's not there in the game files waiting for a single code or crack to unlock everything, it limits the usefulness, or at least the scalability, of a hacked version, doesn't it?

I don't think anybody is foolish enough to believe that "nobody" will ever crack the game, but if it's sufficiently difficult or inconvenient, and you have an easy & cheap way of doing it in an officially sanctioned manner (see iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, other online music retailers), you do cut down on *some* of the piracy. And in a way, online music sales which have been so successful are exactly microtransactions - you don't buy a "CD" anymore, you buy parts of the CD - 1, 2, 3 tracks in many cases, rather than the full 10-12 tracks that you would've gotten in the model of the physical CD purchase.

My primary concern is what happens if the game studio goes belly up prior to the "full game" being completed and released?

That's certainly a risk to this model, I can't argue that it's not... however, consider that if the game studio is really going to go belly up mid-development, the game very likely wouldn't have seen the light of day, or would have been an unusable train wreck... so you got half the levels they expected to produce, instead of none of them. There's certainly pricing implications that studios would need to take into account here, but I don't think that this argument would necessarily preclude some sort of phased / downloadable content.

The "true" pirates are the ones who actually crack the games...

Sure, these people will always exist - it's just a puzzle for them to figure out. But there are not "millions" of these people out there, while there are "millions" of people willing to simply grab a copy of the unlock key or a cracked copy of a game if it means they don't have to spend a few bucks. The solution to dealing with this group of people is two-pronged: price it reasonably, and make it more difficult to crack than most people are willing to spend the time on.

The argument I've seen others use that "people who would pirate wouldn't have bought it anyway," is fallacious - everybody loves something for free, and if there is no real penalty or effort required to get it for free, lots of people will take advantage of that method, even if they know they "shouldn't."

Re:No.

[Pojut]

My point was that people pirated games that could be had for a single cent, with no DRM. Short of giving it away for free, that is proof positive of people that simply refuse to pay for games.

I never once said that the bundle wasn't successful financially, I said that the bundle wasn't successful at keeping pirates away.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always boiled down to people wanting shit for free. A pirate could come up with the best, most compelling excuse that justifies his crime and how the world is a better place for it. But guaranteed that's not what he was thinking about when he downloaded it.

Re:No.

[apoc.famine]

On top of that, it was $1 million in ADDITION to their previous sales. Not the only money they made. I don't know where all those games were financially beforehand, but if they were already making a profit, that's quite a lot on top. If they were in the red, it most likely put them in the black.

I was already thinking about half of what you said:

To prevent piracy, you need to to two things:

1) Produce a decent game, for a decent price, and not lie to and abuse your customers.
2) Ignore the douchebags who don't ever want to pay anything for anything.

If you fail to do #1, you create pirates because people don't want to pay a lot of money for garbage, and don't like being treated like shit. This ties into #2 - if you spend all your time worrying about pirates, and adding DRM and other idiocy, you end up producing more pirates.

Re:No.

[Americano]

It's the dedicated pirates that make it easy/possible for the rest of us.

And if those instructions get much more complex, would "most" users bother? Sure, the crackers will continue doing it for the fun and challenge of a good puzzle, but if you have to download half a dozen different pieces and go through 15-20 minutes of work to get everything working... I think a lot of casual users will simply go "God, not worth it."

Look at the online music retailers' model. You buy the pieces of the album you're interested in, and they've collectively sold billions of tracks to people who could have easily pirated that stuff instead.

Perhaps it wouldn't make much of a dent in game piracy, but I think there's a lot to suggest that it would help reduce the frequency of piracy.

Re:No.

[icebraining]

The real question is: should they make their current customers' life more difficult to try to sell your game to people who just don't want to pay people for their work? Because that's what DRM does.

Re:No.

[Yvan256]

And that's why I won't be able to play SC2 for a very long time. I'm not interested in the campaigns for Terran or Zerg, so I'll have to wait who knows how many months before I can purchase the Protoss campaigns version, which is supposed to come out last.

Unless I misunderstood their whole idea, in which case their marketing department hasn't done their job properly.

Re:No.

[Lumpy]

They already try DLC... it sucks... Mass Effect II has DLC and ALL OF IT is utter crap. It does not add to gameplay at all.

Modern Warfare II, the DLC is also crap. the added maps are a joke for the price you pay.

Make the DLC worth while at a reasonable price, Or make the game Free to begin with.

A $80.00 game that I then have to buy DLC for does nothing but piss me off and not buy any other game your company manes.

Re:No.

[Americano]

Nope, but it would be a lot harder for the freeloaders to hand around their free copies of the game to anybody else, wouldn't it?

Re:No.

[nine-times]

Not much harder. Not enough harder to stop people.

Re:No.

[abigor]

$60 is too much for a console game? I disagree - I think it's an excellent value.

Let's say I play the game twice, then sell it for $20 (I think that's a pretty common use case). So now I've spent $40. Assume I'm really fast, so my two playthroughs come to a total of ten hours.

That works out to $4 per hour of fun. I can't really think of too many purchased entertainment activities that are that cheap.

Let's say I love the game and don't sell it, and play it a few more times - say, 20 hours in total. That's $3 per hour.

And if the game has an online component, well, pretty soon the per hour cost becomes very small indeed.

Re:No.

[Lunix Nutcase]

I would have been included in the group of "people who will not buy that game", but if I found a pirated copy laying around, I may well have played those games.

Or how about just skipping the games entirely? This would send a real message to the game companies. Continuing to download games for free does nothing but further encourage them to come up with worse and worse DRM schemes.

Re:No.

[Lunix Nutcase]

No, they shouldn't. I'm not for DRM, but I'm very much against these cheapskates who make up constant bogus excuses for why they download games especially when some of the games they are downloading have never had DRM and have sales where they are practically given away for free. These are the people who claim to be making some sort of moral/ethical point but then go off and download the game and make the lives of those of us who don't believe in taking things we haven't paid for more miserable.

Re:No.

[VTI9600]

There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy.

Yes there is...one word: Persistence

Most people (particularly on /.) tend to think that when an organization goes after pirates, it's a case of them taking on the world. The reality, however, is that there are a relatively small number of crackers, rippers, uploaders, webmasters, etc. that make piracy possible for the masses. Pursuit of these individuals is hampered by international boundaries and various legal technicalities, but for years we have seen the slow but steady dissolution of those obstacles. The process is slow, but make no mistake...progress is being made.

The list of pirate sites that have been taken down only to be replaced by others is a mile long, but for each site that gets axed, the challenges facing its potential successors become even greater. Its naive to think that this could go on to infinity. The Pirate Bay, for example, found a loophole that it was able to exploit for many years, but eventually that loophole was closed. NinjaVideo and its ilk had their domain names seized by the federal government, coincidentally dispelling the illusion that the USA does not control the Internet. For every clever trick and technicality exploited by the piracy-enablers, there is a rebuttal. Don't be fooled just because the process is slow.

And then there's DRM. Because there have been so few forms of DRM that have not been cracked, people assume that there will always be a way to crack the next one that comes out. Again, this is very naive. Your average Joe may have the willingness, but not the ability to reverse engineer software while top engineers have the ability but not the motivation. Both traits are needed, however, and the combination of stronger DRM and social engineering (including law enforcement action) makes it increasingly difficult to produce persons willing and able to crack.

It's entirely possible that copyright-holders will stop pursuing pirates and piracy-enablers once piracy falls down to acceptable levels. Still, this would be no less of a victory for the industry. Their victory is inevitable, and sadly, the arms-race that precipitated it will leave the rest of us with far fewer personal liberties than when it all started.

Re:No.

[nine-times]

This ties into #2 - if you spend all your time worrying about pirates, and adding DRM and other idiocy, you end up producing more pirates.

Yes, I think that's true. The more you tighten your grip, the more pirates will slip through your fingers. There are people within the industry who recognize this.

Stop trying to punish your customers into giving you more money.

Re:No.

[tepples]

Or how about just skipping the games entirely?

Then which games should I not skip? All console games have DRM, and few PC games support HTPC-style multiplayer or spawn installations.

Re:No.

[h4rr4r]

I am thrifty. I downloaded games as a kid then I grew up. The reality is most of these folks are kids that just want free stuff. When I want free stuff I use FREE stuff. I will not buy these DRM fest games, but I don't play them either.

Re:No.

[h4rr4r]

That was not it's objective. Nothing will stop pirates. Wasting money on trying to stop them is just that, wasting money on trying to stop them. Plus with the added bonus of lost sales from paying customers.

Re:No.

[PerfectionLost]

League of Legends (http://www.leagueoflegends.com/) is free to play, with micro transactions that provide cosmetic updates only. They seem like they're doing fairly well with this model--at least they are consistently hiring employees on all parts of their business.

Re:No.

[nine-times]

Well up until I bought the bundle, I had skipped them entirely. I don't really pirate anything anymore.

But I think there are people who don't buy games because they're too expensive or because of overly-restrictive DRM. In my experience, pirates often come out of this group of "people who aren't going to buy the game anyway" rather than representing lost sales.

I don't pirate, but it's not because I'm trying to "send a message". I don't think not-pirating sends much of a message. I don't pirate because I don't have time to deal with the inconveniences of pirating, and so if a game vendor makes buying the game even more difficult than pirating it, I'm certainly not going to buy it. Make a really good game, and make buying it super easy and convenient and reasonably priced. That's your best shot of getting me to buy a game. DRM? You're shooting yourself in the foot.

Re:No.

[stewbacca]

$60 is WAY too much for a console game.

That's why I'm playing Dragon Age: Origins now. $19, as opposed to $60 when it came out.

Re:No.

[PrecambrianRabbit]

Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.

I don't understand why people bring up the Humble Indie Bundle experiment as proof of anything.

(a) "Lots of people only paid 1 cent for these DRM-free games!" Well, duh, it was a pay-what-you-wish scheme. To me the fact that the average price wasn't 1 cent indicates a surprising generosity. A purely rational economic being would have paid only 1 cent.

(b) "People pirated the games anyways!" Well, yeah. If you didn't see that coming, you think the world is full of fluffy bunnies, rainbows, and unicorns, and no one would ever do anything slightly bad ever.

Here's an experiment that I think would be interesting. Put a game up for sale, sans DRM, at some fixed price point (you know, the way everything else is sold), and just see how sales are. Does it do better or worse than the DRM-ed version? How does that change as you adjust the price?

Re:No.

[ConceptJunkie]

Ditto. I'm also cheap and stick to old games that I bought in the past, free software and older games that have been discounted (GOG.com, etc). As a side-effect of this, I don't really have to deal with DRM much and I don't need a killer gaming machine. Warlords Battlecry, Stronghold and Master of Orion 2 run great on a netbook.

I have enough stuff I've bought in the last 20 years that I could be happy never buying a game again, even though discovering a great new game is much more exciting than replaying an old one, even if it is also a great game. Of course, discovering a great new game is very rare for me as well, which is another reason I'm unwilling to blow $50 or more for something I may not care for much.

Re:No.

[Americano]

Explain, in light of this logic, the success of retailers like eMusic, Amazon's mp3 store, and iTunes then? DRM-less alternatives always existed - p2p networks and the like. And yet they've collectively sold billions of tracks.

It's not a binary situation, where everybody pirates, or nobody pirates. It's a matter of degree - if you make the product convenient to purchase, price it reasonably, and have DRM that's reasonably nonintrusive (remember, iTunes did not eliminate DRM until long after they had achieved a substantial degree of success) - you discourage many people who might pirate from doing so.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy"

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

Didn't work for Adobe.

Re:No.

[B1oodAnge1]

if you have to download half a dozen different pieces and go through 15-20 minutes of work to get everything working...

This is ridiculous.
No matter how many separate sections you come up with a halfway decent cracker will be able to put it all in a single rar and write a script to do whatever installation chores need to be done in a few minutes.

What exactly about having multiple parts of a game makes it harder to do this?

Re:No.

[Pulzar]

That works out to $4 per hour of fun. I can't really think of too many purchased entertainment activities that are that cheap.

Really? I can't think of too many that are that *expensive*! Other than movies, theater, concerts, and others that have strict time limits which are usually a couple of hours, just about everything else is much cheaper. Books, music, board games, sports equipment, fishing rods, a new barbecue :), etc. etc. all end up with much lower price per hour of entertainment.

Re:No.

[Americano]

And if they have to re-crack everytime a piece of DLC is released, and update all of their scripts, and re-upload the whole bundle every time a piece of DLC is released... you don't think that would get a little tedious, and become less attractive for a pirate to keep doing? And even if the pirate keeps doing it, having to re-download the entire game, reinstall every time a piece of DLC is released... won't get tedious for players?

Just because something is "technologically easy" doesn't mean it's not annoying, tedious, and simply not worth the effort.

Re:No.

[ultranova]

Yes there is...one word: Persistence

Piracy predates PC, as do measures used to fight it. It doesn't show any signs of lessening in the slightest. There comes a time when persistence becomes a synonym for stupidity.

Most people (particularly on /.) tend to think that when an organization goes after pirates, it's a case of them taking on the world.

Yes, it pretty much is. The number of people actively fighting DRM outnumber the people fighting piracy a thousandfold, if not millionfold.

The reality, however, is that there are a relatively small number of crackers, rippers, uploaders, webmasters, etc. that make piracy possible for the masses.

"Relatively small" number here means mere millions, rather than billions.

Pursuit of these individuals is hampered by international boundaries and various legal technicalities, but for years we have seen the slow but steady dissolution of those obstacles. The process is slow, but make no mistake...progress is being made.

No, pursuit of these individuals is hampered by the simple fact that it's impossible to track a small file back to its origin, and cracks are small files.

The Pirate Bay, for example, found a loophole that it was able to exploit for many years, but eventually that loophole was closed.

The Pirate Bay is still up and serving pirated content, you know.

Because there have been so few forms of DRM that have not been cracked, people assume that there will always be a way to crack the next one that comes out.

No, it's because there is no way to simultaneously make content readable and not readable by the same person. I trust that any DRM scheme will always be cracked because the opposite would require the DRM maker to have absolute omnipotence, that is, to be able to break the laws of logic. As it's debatable whether God himself has this kind of power, I think we can safely assume that a gaming company won't be pulling it off anytime soon.

Your average Joe may have the willingness, but not the ability to reverse engineer software while top engineers have the ability but not the motivation. Both traits are needed, however, and the combination of stronger DRM and social engineering (including law enforcement action) makes it increasingly difficult to produce persons willing and able to crack.

And yet pirate groups seem to have no trouble finding people both willing and able to disinfect software of various DRM-related annoyances. Your assertion that it's becoming "increasingly difficult" doesn't seem to have any basis in reality.

Still, this would be no less of a victory for the industry. Their victory is inevitable,

What world are you living in? The "industry" - various protection rackets, actually - are losing, and losing badly. Just why do you think they're resorting to such desperate measures?

and sadly, the arms-race that precipitated it will leave the rest of us with far fewer personal liberties than when it all started.

The "rest of us" will have more personal liberties due to the techniques developed by people needing to keep their identities secret. For example, Freenet can handle large files nowadays, even if it's still not as fast as BitTorrent.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid this has already happened, software developers are miles ahead of you.

Re:No.

[B1oodAnge1]

2 minutes on Google found me these:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5312494/Mass_Effect_2_DLC_Pack_%5BPC___Multi6%5D
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5652679/Dragon_Age_Origins_-_DLC_Pack_%5BUpdated_18_May_2010%5D

tedious AND annoying, eh?

Re:No.

[Pluvius]

I never once said that the bundle wasn't successful financially, I said that the bundle wasn't successful at keeping pirates away.

So you're saying that you know for a fact that none of the people who bought the bundle would have pirated the games if the bundle hadn't existed?

That's a nice crystal ball you have there; can I borrow it?

Rob

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

A joke I know, but scene groups actually take pride on their ratio of titles released that month.

If say 10 games are released in a month (I know, that's not really realistic) then all the scene groups will be bragging "We released X/10 of July10 apps" and each group is competing to get the release first. (It is generally considered wrong of you to release something already released by another group)

They do it to be first, for the numbers, and the pure facets of being in the scene.

The game app doesn't even have to work! It will get released on schedule none the less.

So even making a crappy game, or one that crashes 10 minutes into it 100% of the time... It WILL get pirated, garenteed at least by one group, if not rereleased again later after the krackers fix the software as much as possible to be more playable than the 'retail' version.

Re:No.

[nine-times]

Explain, in light of this logic, the success of retailers like eMusic, Amazon's mp3 store, and iTunes then?

Are you saying that their success was because DRM succeeded in making it a lot harder for the freeloaders to hand around their free copies?

I'll try to give you an explanation, but you'll have to be more clear about what you want explained.

Re:No.

[Americano]

No, I'm saying they were successful in implementing a solution which included a fair degree of DRM to prevent handing around copies, despite the fact that there was an entrenched "free way" to get it.

That DRM, coupled with convenient shopping & a reasonable price certainly helped reduce the number of people sharing - it raised the difficulty of sharing, and people bought through an official channel, rather than pirate the music.

I don't see that this is a bad outcome, even though it didn't "eliminate" piracy, and I think this is a useful model for the game studios to consider and adapt (e.g., Steam, XBox Live).

Re:No.

[nEoN nOoDlE]

a $10 drop across the board for new console games would go a long way. $60 is WAY too much for a console game.

I don't believe this to be true. A $10 drop across the board might give a slight increase in sales in the short term, but after a short while, people will consider $50 too much for a console game. Again, the solution consumers will propose is "Just drop it another $10 and we'll buy it!" Games today are a ridiculously good value for the amount of entertainment you're getting out of them. A $60 game will usually give you at least 20 hours of gameplay on top of the infinite amount of time you could (usually) play online. Just taking the base single player experience, you're already getting 13 times the amount of entertainment at only 5 times the cost of a movie ticket (calculating 90 minutes/movie @ $12/ticket).

My issue is that games give you too much value. I'm a 28 year old with a full-time job and a limited amount of time on my hands and can play a game for a few hours a week if I'm lucky. If game developers gave me a game that can be completed in 6 - 10 hours and cost half as much, I'd be purchasing more games because I would be more confident I can actually finish them and get my money's worth in entertainment. As it stands, I usually purchase a $60 game and don't have a chance to complete it until the next AAA title comes out, so it makes me more hesitant to purchase more of the big titles. This is something movies do well. When I'm sitting down to watch a movie, I know exactly how much time I need to invest in order to feel the satisfaction of finishing it.

My demographic doesn't seem to be one that the game industry gives a crap about. They just keep cramming more and more stuff into the games and making them longer for higher budgets, and at the end they only appeal to the 13-17 year old who has 6 hours a day to spend in front of a television/computer for recreation. Usually the only games I actually get to play these days are the casual ones that allow you to play 10 minutes at a time. I want something in-between and I'm willing to pay for it.

Re:No.

[nine-times]

I don't think the DRM did much to stop piracy. (not that I have data to back it up) eMusic and Amazon never had DRM, and dropping DRM doesn't seem to have hurt iTunes any.

I think the key thing about iTunes is that they made the whole process (finding, downloading, managing music, and then copying it to your iPod) much easier than pirating. The metadata was better, the album art was better, the quality was more reliable. You didn't risk getting a virus or spending an hour finding and downloading an album only to find out that you'd downloaded the wrong thing. Plus, no fear of getting threatening letters from your ISP or getting sued by the record label.

In short, I think that iTunes provided a better service. The fact that the files had DRM may have stopped some casual copying, but mostly the people who wanted free music and wanted to be able to pass it around just downloaded unprotected infringing copies.

Re:No.

[Mongoose Disciple]

What world are you living in? The "industry" - various protection rackets, actually - are losing, and losing badly. Just why do you think they're resorting to such desperate measures?

I don't know, I wouldn't categorize anything that's come so far as all that desperate in the grand scheme of things.

Hypothetically, if a handful of the top game crackers somehow were sent to prison for it each year, do you think that would change anything? Certainly, games would still get cracked, but would it be every game, as reliably, as fast?

Along those same lines, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to consider the assorted industries protection rackets, or maybe it's a testament to how far the rule of law has come -- I feel reasonably confident that, say, a hundred years ago, someone would have disappeared or gruesomely executed the Pirate Bay principles. We're lucky to live in a time in which not all of these problems are solved by violence and intimidation.

Re:No.

[ceoyoyo]

Interesting. I got exactly the opposite impression from the indie giveaway. If you make a quality product available at a reasonable price MOST people will pay for it, even if there is no advantage to them for doing so. They made over a million dollars, far beyond their expectations, giving away their product and asking for donations.

Re:No.

[icebraining]

A PC games magazine we have here is nice, because they offer a free game in each edition. Sometimes is something useless, but they've offered two Rainbow Sixes, Just Cause, Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia 3, Kane & Lynch, etc.
Getting a nice game + magazine for 5E is a nice deal :)

On the other hand, if everyone was like that, games development wouldn't be profitable either. If publishers had to depend on casual sales from GOG to develop their games, they would stop making them.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there is, just make games for the PS3.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yeah. Let's see...

Gish has awful controls, and wasn't any fun.

World of Goo is simplistic and tedious, and it's extremely difficult to select the gooball that you actually want.

Aquaria is pretty, but the gameplay is shallow.

That rabbit game is a series of badly-animated fights in featureless terrain with extremely limited opponent diversity, doesn't have any feedback about health, and progression is a matter of quick reflexes rather than skill.

Penumbra confuses making things dark with making them atmospheric, and relies on the tired cliche of a scientist's logbook plot.

Quite frankly, I feel like paying five dollars for this load of shit was a ripoff.

Re:No.

[ultranova]

I don't know, I wouldn't categorize anything that's come so far as all that desperate in the grand scheme of things.

Really? A DRM system that requires a constant Internet connection for the game to run is not "desperate"?

Hypothetically, if a handful of the top game crackers somehow were sent to prison for it each year, do you think that would change anything? Certainly, games would still get cracked, but would it be every game, as reliably, as fast?

"Hypothetically" is a nice word. It allows one to make assertions about imaginary worlds - assertions which, because they are about imaginary worlds, are impossible to prove either way.

Bt no, any game that anybody bothers playing would still get disinfected, simply because DRM is annoying. A no-DVD path is pretty much a requirement to hassle-free gaming.

Along those same lines, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to consider the assorted industries protection rackets,

They are. The standard operating procedure for a copyright enforcement organization is to pick random victims and threaten to sue them unless they pay a few thousand dollars to the organization; since lawsuits are beyond most people's financial means to defend against, and because there's always the possibility of being stuck with a hundred million dollar judgement against you - after all, it's "just" a civil court so you need to prove your innocence - people have little choice but to pay. That's how a protection racket operates.

or maybe it's a testament to how far the rule of law has come

Having a protection racket use law as their extortion tool makes mockery of the whole concept.

I feel reasonably confident that, say, a hundred years ago, someone would have disappeared or gruesomely executed the Pirate Bay principles.

Really? Because as I recall it, everyone from Edison to Disney was busy adopting - pirating, if you will - everything from technology to movies. Yet I don't recall any stories of anyone being "disappeared".

We're lucky to live in a time in which not all of these problems are solved by violence and intimidation.

Instead, they are solved by bribery and extortion. A big improvement.

Oh well, I guess it doesn't really matter. Copyright is effectively pretty much dead, thanks to the abuse of copyright organizations, and the resulting total lack of respect by the general public. The only real question is how long it takes for the legal system to admit this fact and let it go.

Re:No.

[VTI9600]

Piracy predates PC, as do measures used to fight it. It doesn't show any signs of lessening in the slightest. There comes a time when persistence becomes a synonym for stupidity.

So, what's more stupid for a game developer...using the best available (albeit flawed) methods to prevent illicit copying, or abandoning all efforts to earn a profit because they are unable to prevent a small fraction of their user base from playing the game for free? I couldn't find any statistics specifically on game piracy, but I did find this article that confirms a recent decrease of business software piracy in 54 countries. Note that unlike games, business software does not normally include heavy-handed DRM, so it stands to reason that games (especially the console variety) would have an even lower piracy rate. Also note that the BSA has a more to gain by claiming that piracy is increasing than the alternative, which lends additional credibility to the statistics.

Most people (particularly on /.) tend to think that when an organization goes after pirates, it's a case of them taking on the world.

Yes, it pretty much is. The number of people actively fighting DRM outnumber the people fighting piracy a thousandfold, if not millionfold.

You seem to think that there exists a massive guerilla army of crackers with ninja-like acumen working tirelessly to...I don't know...get people free stuff? What are you basing this on? The miracle of the Internet is such that the work of a single cracker can be easily distributed to the millions of script kiddies and end-lusers who do the actual pirating. There's a big difference between those who pirate software and those who enable the pirates. The former outnumber the latter a millionfold to be sure.

The reality, however, is that there are a relatively small number of crackers, rippers, uploaders, webmasters, etc. that make piracy possible for the masses.

"Relatively small" number here means mere millions, rather than billions.

I would guess hundreds but with the absence of a pirate census, the exact number can't be known. I do know, however, that whenever I visit a torrent site, I see the same uploader nicknames popping up on every torrent. "millions" is nowhere close to realistic.

No, pursuit of these individuals is hampered by the simple fact that it's impossible to track a small file back to its origin, and cracks are small files.

There is little need to track game cracks all the way back to their origin. All that is needed to stop piracy is to cut off the means of distribution. But if you did want to trace these back to their authors, it could be done with proper intervention by law enforcement, such as when hunting virus authors and other cyber-criminals. But in the case of piracy these efforts are hampered by politics and matters of international law.

The Pirate Bay is still up and serving pirated content, you know.

Oh well...*shrugs* I must have been foolish to assume that the imprisonment of the founders and a $3.6 million fine would prevent their freinds from continuing the site. Regardless, there's a graveyard of other sites that weren't so lucky. TPB can't last forever.

I trust that any DRM scheme will always be cracked because the opposite would require the DRM maker to have absolute omnipotence [wikipedia.org], that is, to be able to break the laws of logic.

That's like saying cryptography is useless because, given enough time and hardware, any code can be broken. The goal of any security scheme is to make it so that the labor and resources required to crack the system drastically outweigh the potential reward to the attacker. There is no divine intervention criteria for security.

Re:No.

[VTI9600]

The "rest of us" will have more personal liberties due to the techniques developed by people needing to keep their identities secret. For example, Freenet can handle large files nowadays, even if it's still not as fast as BitTorrent.

One more thing...I checked FreeNet's "About Us" page, and nowhere does it say that FreeNet was created for the purpose of enabling piracy.

Re:No.

[VTI9600]

The "rest of us" will have more personal liberties due to the techniques developed by people needing to keep their identities secret. For example, Freenet can handle large files nowadays, even if it's still not as fast as BitTorrent.

One more thing...I checked FreeNet's "About Us" page, and nowhere does it say that FreeNet was created for the purpose of enabling piracy.

Oh, nevermind...I didn't scroll down far enough :-}

Re:No.

[damnbunni]

$60 is not 'way too much' for a console game.

If anything, it's too little. Console game prices have NOT been keeping up with inflation.

They've gone up ten bucks in the last... what, 16 years? There are people playing these $60 games who weren't even born before the usual price was $50.

Pitfall! for the Atari 2600 was, I recall, $29.99. Adjusted for inflation, that's $67.80.

Now that I think of it, Pitfall! may have been $39.99. I recall it was very expensive and a major family purchase at the time.

On the other hand, if you don't want to pay $60 for a new console game, get a Wii. Most new Wii games are $50.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I am far more willing to pay $60 for a full drm-less game, than I am to pay $60 split in 60 micropayments or worse $60 for each "micro"-payment which is what they are trying to pull off.

If anything it pushes people who would actually like their game to thepiratebay.com and get a version with fewer rootkits and inconvenience.

I don't pirate but DRM is what moved me away from Windows first and ultimately from commercial games. The little stuff I still get to run on Wine, I crack it myself, this also means that the harder your protection is the fewer chances I buy the stuff.

Re:No.

[Eskarel]

Micro-transactions are probably the right solution. The problem is that micro-transactions don't actually exist, because banks take so much of a micro transaction that it's not worth it. This means they either have to price the new content too high, or you need to buy blocks of points which are far more than you need.

Back in the old days, $US20-30 was the price of a full expansion with a totally new story that generally was at least half the length of the original story(sometimes more), new printed manuals and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

Now they want to sell us a five minute story line and a couple of new models in exchange for $US3-5. That's not value for money, the campaign is probably more likely to be worth between 50 cents and a dollar, and would probably be more profitable at that level(due to more people buying it) than it is at the higher price. Unfortunately they can't sell them at that price.

Again, that's not saying that it is acceptable to deliberately release a crippled game(and if you have a cohesive story arc from which you excise a significant portion it's crippled), but if you want to add stuff to an already completed game with an adequate price point and an easy way of doing the purchase, that's not at all unreasonable. It's not really a way of combating piracy though, more a way of increasing revenue.

Re:No.

[Pentium100]

Maybe they couldn't do a good (bad?) enough job?

On the other hand, if you make a game too bad, people will pirate it jut to laugh, I am sure there are a few pirate "Big Rigs: Over the road racing" copies available.

But the most effective way to prevent piracy is to take all copies of the game and lock them up in a safe or to just never release it - I'm sure there are no pirate "Duke Nukem Forever" copies available.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy"

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

What about vista?

Re:No.

[Shadow of Eternity]

You mean like Ritual did with SiN: Emergence? The answer is you're fucked end of story, hope someone cracked the game for when the Auth servers go down.

Personally I'm reading this and wondering if the guy is really THAT DENSE that he doesn't get that this sort of thing is one of the major motivations of politically motivated pirates, or whether this is a deliberate move to piss those guys off even more and then have even more excuses to bitch bout piracy and screw the end user out of their rights even further.

Re:No.

[julesh]

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

Don't think it works. I found a Vista torrent the other day. There's even a Windows ME one, too!

Re:No.

[julesh]

The game app doesn't even have to work! It will get released on schedule none the less.

Hell, at least it means you'll always get at least one customer...

Re:No.

[brit74]

At the same time, the Humble Indie Bundle also showed that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for something that they could easily pirate.
That was proved long before the Humble Indie Bundle - since virtually every game with DRM was cracked and there were games sold without DRM (i.e. both of those cases illustrate that "there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for something that they could easily pirate").

You had DRM-free games being offered in such a way that people could simply pass a link around and everyone could get free downloads, yet they still made over $1 million in sales.
To be fair, it works out to about $150,000 for each game company. That's enough to pay for 2-3 developers for one year. Not a whole lot of money. Fortunately, it wasn't the totality of their sales.

Re:No.

[nine-times]

Well also just to be fair, the humble indie bundle is a bundle that was released after all the games had been on sale for a while. If anyone knew about these games ahead of time and really really wanted any of them, then they would have already bought them.

Me, for example: I'd played the demo for World of Goo a while back and thought, "well that's kind of an interesting game, but I'm not sure I want to buy it." And I didn't for a long time. I hadn't heard of the rest of the games.

So the Humble Indie Bundle got exposure for games that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. Otherwise, it took the people who knew about these games but hadn't bought them already, and it gave them the kick in the pants to buy them. If the issue was money, it let the buyers name their own price. Finally, some of us were probably only after 1 or 2 games, so that makes the purchase price a little more reasonable.

So yes, it only works out to ~$150,000 for each company, but that's probably $150,000 more than they would have made without the bundle.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy"

Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.

Do that and call it "Shitware".

You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[PhrostyMcByte]

Right? Not $60 for an unfinished game, then two or three extra $10 for addons?

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[ThinkWeak]

Don't you usually pay $60 for an unfinished game anyways? What's the last game you purchased that didn't require at least 1 or 2 updates to fix things that were broken from the start?

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[Theoboley]

My thoughts were exactly this when i read the headline. 60 Bucks for an incomplete game is absolutely asinine. And what about those poor souls who don't have the Web? how are they supposed to get the "rest of the game"

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[natehoy]

Why would they go and do a silly thing like that?

For years, games have worked through the sale of the initial game and then the sale of "expansion packs" later on to keep the game fresh. This will be sold to you as an improvement because the expansion packs will be available for you to buy more often.

Look at WoW. How much does the game cost? I didn't buy it, so I don't know. But at the moment, the "Battle Chest" version is around $40 on Amazon. Plus there are a few $30 expansion packs that seem to have come out since the "Battle Chest" version (which is itself the original WoW plus an expansion pack). How much gaming do you get for your $40? From the packaging, 15 days' worth. Then your guest pass runs out and you need to pay $15 a month thereafter. Plus at least a couple more $30 expansion packs, then a couple more new ones each year to stay current.

I don't begrudge them their money - it's a game, fercrissake, and people can decide whether they want to spend the money on it or not. No one's holding a magical Sword of Incantation to your head. You want what they got, you pay what they want. Otherwise, find better uses for your entertainment dollars.

It's not like it's a necessity like a Big Mac or Cable on a big flatscreen TV or a $10 Starbucks Triple Soy Latte Mocaccino with toasted Madagascar Cinnamon or something.

But this is hardly a new business model.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[hedwards]

I'm now in the habit of waiting to see if there's a GOTY edition coming out. Fallout 3 had all the DLC included in the GOTY, and Batman: Arkham Asylum was in 3d. Both were significantly cheaper than buying it earlier on.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[bertoelcon]

Don't you usually pay $60 for an unfinished game anyways? What's the last game you purchased that didn't require at least 1 or 2 updates to fix things that were broken from the start?

Everything on my DS. The most recent being Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[FrozenFOXX]

Don't you usually pay $60 for an unfinished game anyways? What's the last game you purchased that didn't require at least 1 or 2 updates to fix things that were broken from the start?

Not really. Here's a few that I'm thinking of off the top of my head I've paid $60 for and are perfectly finished (though some offer extras if you like, but the game itself is still complete): Crackdown 2, Halo 3: ODST, BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, Super Street Fighter IV, Assassin's Creed II, Splinter Cell: Conviction, God of War III, GRID, Singularity, Uncharted 2, Gears of War 2... All of those for $60 offer a complete package, many of them with free updates and all of them with optional additional content that is unnecessary to "complete" the $60 game I bought. I can go back further if you like but that'd take more time. Interestingly every one of those is a massive blockbuster with the possible exception of Singularity (though I think it is).

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[slyrat]

Don't you usually pay $60 for an unfinished game anyways? What's the last game you purchased that didn't require at least 1 or 2 updates to fix things that were broken from the start?

No. If I do get a new game at full retail I'll get the pc version for $50. Usually I can get it through a discount for pre-order and that drops to $45 or less. It isn't much but that does make a difference. Otherwise every game I've gotten for a nintendo console has been complete without the need for updates or dlc to make it more complete.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[stewbacca]

All software ships with bugs. The question is how severe are they? In 25 years of gaming, I can't think of a single game I've played that was so bug-riddled that it was unplayable. Wait, never mind, I just remembered ET for the Atari 2600.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[stewbacca]

There have only been two expansion packs for WoW in six years. It's not like they are cranking out "a couple more new ones each year to stay current".

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[parliboy]

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[nitehawk214]

Don't you usually pay $60 for an unfinished game anyways? What's the last game you purchased that didn't require at least 1 or 2 updates to fix things that were broken from the start?

There is a difference between unfinished and broken.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[natehoy]

Confirmed on Amazon. My apologies - I stand corrected.

Apparently the press coverage of them was so high that I assumed there were a lot more of them. :)

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[stewbacca]

They do put out updates a lot though, and they do add server-side events around holidays and other times.

The third expansion is due sometime soon.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Stargate Resistance (http://www.stargateresistance.com). Game is $20, and it has a few add-ons that are $4.99 each. They are adding new levels and weapons, some free, and some they will charge for, but mostly free.

Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right?

[LeperPuppet]

The pricing becomes more of an insult when you play through your new $10 DLC and realise that it's barely 20 minutes of new content. Gamers won't mind buying DLC if they believe that they're getting value for money. However, if developers insist on shipping minuscule pieces of content for high prices, then gamers will soon learn that all DLC is a waste of money and should be avoided.

One condition

[Perseid]

This is acceptable IF the base game is free. If the Koreans can do it so can Codemasters.

Re:One condition

[hedwards]

Half life was going that direction, but seemed to get mired in the mud. It's not as bad when it's more like a series of smaller sequels then when it's horse armor. In my view, if the original is fun and plays well, and the add ons increase the value enough to justify the purchase, then it's fine. The problem is when they're buggy and effect the rest of the game, like say Fallout 3. But it gets to be a real huge headache when the game is multiplayer and the items are somehow useful in the rest of the game.

Re:One condition

[apoc.famine]

League of Legends has done this fairly successfully. (It's a clone by the original coders of the DoTA mod for WC3)

The game is free to download and play. You can play the entire game for free, but characters are limited on a weekly or monthly rotating basis. If you want access to your favorite ones all the time, you need to pay. Skins are pay, and some items you can purchase with in-game-earned-points are cheaper and easier to purchase with real money.

The end result is a game that's plenty playable for free. If you want to be a hardcore player, you're probably going to have to fork up some cash just so you can tweak your customized builds.

This is the sort of game I'm likely to "pay" for.

Re:One condition

[fhuglegads]

Actually, with LoL you don't ever have to pay money, not even to get Champions you want. As you play a game you earn points that can be used in the store. You can unlock every character with these points. You can spend money to unlock them more quickly and buy skins to make them look different.

Two things that you cannot use money for is runes and ability points. Runes are bought from the store with the points you earn by playing. Runes make your Champion a little better. Ability points are earned by gaining levels. These too help make your champion better.

I think they have a great business model and there is no pressure ever to buy anything. The game is fun and if you like it you'll spend the money on the champions so you can save your points for runes. Hours of fun for free so far. Will be dropping $20 soon to get more champions and to show support.

Not too different from shareware / demos

[WillAdams]

And okay, so long as the company is up-front about it and prices the add-on content fairly in relation to the additional amount of playtime which it adds and works it in in a way which doesn't disturb the gameplay experience:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/11/6/

William

Re:Not too different from shareware / demos

[Qzukk]

You get bonus points if the DLC is awesome .

FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[PurplePhase]

Companies are considering officially releasing *worse* and *less finished* products?? They call them MMOGs, bub.

I've always hated that, whether through DLC or episodes or... well I put up with DOW and Civ4 releasing expansions but...

Please, god, will someone release a finished game? When's the last time that happened?

8-PP

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[SquarePixel]

Valve has released DLC's and patched TF2 for the last 3-4 years, since it's release. They have added content and maps and tweaked the gameplay. Blizzard has done the same with WoW, as have almost every other game company on the planet in the form of patches. Do you also bitch at them for releasing an "unfinished" game just because they add content later on?

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[Americano]

A lot of games simply don't lend themselves well to multiple replays - I find FPS titles *especially* difficult for this - Halo, etc. Once you've gone through "Campaign" mode, it's pretty goddamned boring playing through it again more than once or twice. At that point, with no DLC or online multiplayer component... how are they at all interesting? That $50-60 game disc might as well be a beer coaster at that point if the game studio says, "And that's it... no more stuff at all ever."

And even many networked games would get boring as hell if you were playing the SAME game on the SAME maps that you've always played on.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[VGPowerlord]

Do you also bitch at them for releasing an "unfinished" game just because they add content later on?

I'm going to address these two separately.

Valve has released DLC's and patched TF2 for the last 3-4 years, since it's release. They have added content and maps and tweaked the gameplay.

In this case, no. The game was complete as it was. Not only that, but the new updates are free. For those not in the know, the most recent patch was the Engineer Update, a week ago today. It added 3 new Valve-made maps, 1 community-made map, 3 new Valve-made weapons, 1 new community-made weapon, a new game mechanic (Engineer buildings can now be picked up and moved), and 38 new achievements. The Polycount update has already been announced, but without a date and containing an unknown number of community-made weapons.

Blizzard has done the same with WoW, as have almost every other game company on the planet in the form of patches.

In this case... still no. World of Warcraft was relatively complete, if a little buggy.

Blizzard has two kinds of updates. The first type is incremental updates. Those are funded by the subscription fees people pay (in addition to covering hardware/bandwidth costs). When WoW first launched, there was no Dire Maul. Or Zul Gurub. Or Naxxramas.

Now, you do end up paying for expansions, but each expansion added a new area to the game that is 25% of the size of the existing game world. They also added two new playable races (and their respective starting areas) in the first expansion, and a new playable class (and its starting area) in the second expansion.

The third expansion is going to feature a complete makeover of the old world, even for people who don't buy it, as well as new areas, and two new races (and their respective starting areas).

No, what people bitch about is things like, iirc, Fallout 3 (which I haven't played), where the end of the game itself is sold as DLC.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference in at least Valve's case is that all the DLC for TF2 was free.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[Xeno man]

Apples, Oranges and Bananas.

When Valve released TF2, for all intent and purposes, it is a finished game. The complete experience is there and you get your monies worth, amusing you enjoyed the game. The fact that they patch errors and give additional content later by no means makes the previous version unfinished. If you do think that way then the game is never finished and by definition only finished when they decide to stop working on it at all. That style of game can always have something added to it, a new map or new weapon, it's almost unlimited.

Wow is different all together. You pay every month to play this game and if errors weren't patched and some new content wasn't added every so often, then payments would stop pretty quickly. The business model relies on it.

What were talking about is playing Super Mario Bros. and clearing castle 4-4 and getting, "Thank you Mario, but the princess is in another castle. To continue please enter your credit card number." or playing 1 period in a hockey game and being asked to pay to play another period.

In the end this has nothing to do with pirates and lost sales but everything with extracting more money from consumers and getting more from used game sales. Even if you buy your copy used, they want you to still buy the other half of the game from them so they can sell the first half of the game on CD once, then sell the second half 1 to 4 times depending on how much the game is loaned, sold or traded.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there's a subtle difference here. If you buy a game, you should expect to have an enjoyable and satisfying experience with it. If you buy a game, and it feels incomplete, then you're going to be dissatisfied with the game.

If you buy a game on release day or shortly afterword (buying it when it's half the price 6 months later doesn't count) and you immediately see DLC and it's not something cosmetic, you're going to feel like you got gypped. Especially if that content is required to finish the game! A side adventure like in Dragon Age isn't a huge deal since it's not required, but I still found that pretty annoying.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[VGPowerlord]

I forgot to mention, this is either the 10th or 11th major Team Fortress 2 update, depending on whether you count the Halloween update as major or not... and not counting the community weapon updates.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends. Do they expect me to pay for these updates?
Hint: free updates/map/bugfixes = good
compulsory* updates for $$$ = bad

* If you don't update, no Live for you!

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[e2d2]

Please, god, will someone release a finished game? When's the last time that happened?

I happened this year actually, when Torchlight was released by Runic: http://www.torchlightgame.com/

This is what a small game should be like. The best $10 I ever spent on a game, hands down. I want more of these type of games. It's just very refined. I don't need the Epic Tale of Games to have fun and Not every game has to be a blockbuster release to make money.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[Anonymous Coward]

But Valve hasn't charged me a dime for their TF2 DLC and the game was fun and functional at release without the DLC, so no I don't bitch about them extorting money from me to fix or finish the game they sold me.

Re:FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)!

[Dullstar]

I hate it when companies release unfinished games.
Only two reasons exist to allow for unfinished games being released.

One of them is testing releases. These, however, should probably stay within the company.
The other are pre-release demos.

I have no problem with releasing extra content later. It's removing it from the final product and then adding it in later, for a charge, that bugs me.

DRM on DLC

[Supurcell]

But the DLC will still have DRM, and what's to stop the pirates from just cracking it just like they'd crack any other?

As of today, I can't think of a single DLC for any game that is actually worth it. They are almost all just quick cash ins.

Re:DRM on DLC

[Jaysyn]

Shivering Isles for Oblivion.

Re:DRM on DLC

[BradleyUffner]

Shivering Isles for Oblivion.

Shivering Isles was a full on expansion pack, not DLC.

Re:DRM on DLC

[Jaysyn]

Really? Ok, Knights of the Nine, maybe? How about the Fallout DLCs?

Re:DRM on DLC

[slyrat]

As of today, I can't think of a single DLC for any game that is actually worth it. They are almost all just quick cash ins.

Beyond the sword for Civ 4 had as much content as the game itself. It fixed some problems with the tech tree, added new civs, added unique buildings for every race, several very unique scenarios that were almost like playing new games themselves. And that isn't even everything, the game is just that much better for having the expansion.

Re:DRM on DLC

[Anonymous Coward]

nah dude. I downloaded that.

Yep, that totally works in practice

[joe_cot]

Yep, totally worked for Dragon Age, for example. You can't get the DLC if you have a pirated copy of the game, so you definitely can't download giant bundles of all the DLC that can be decrypted and plugged into the game. Said DLC isn't up on torrent sites 2 days after the release.

If you're going to release DLC with micro-payments, don't "punish" pirates by forcing them to also not pay for your DLC.

Only way to really combat piracy is to have an online element that only works with a valid CD key. That won't stop piracy, though; it'll just make it less useful.

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use pirated DLC with a full copy of the game.

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[joe_cot]

Correct, but you can't use the normal DLC with a pirated copy of the game, but you can use pirated DLC with a pirated copy. So you're "forcing" pirates to also pirate the DLC. The old "Cut off your nose to spite your face" strategy still doesn't work very well for downloaded content.

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[nine-times]

Only way to really combat piracy is to have an online element that only works with a valid CD key.

I think the best way to combat piracy is to build a relationship with your customers where they like your games, like you as a company, and many of them would feel proud to pay a reasonable price for your games, ashamed not to.

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Dragon Age is a good example of how horrid it is, if you don't have a reliable internet connection. If you got the DLC from Dragon Age, you HAD to have an internet connection to play it. Of course they didn't tell you that. As more games require internet access, the less new games I buy. Yes I realize I am in a small percentage of the market group, but I still enjoy loading and playing older games I purchased 10 years ago. Don't think you will be able to do this with the all the newer games. If the company or DRM server go away, you are SOL.

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not allow pirates to buy DLC ... all the company wants is money anyways! They are so greedy they want 100% or 0%, but not 50% of the money?

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[snarfies]

Oh, except that you actually CAN get the pirated DLC for Dragon Age, every bit of it. Check Pirate Bay. I did, and I'm running it. I have a legitimately purchased DVD version of the main game, and a legitimately purchased DVD version of Awakenings, but I flatly refuse to pay for something that is not issued to disk and that will only work if some server says I can run it. Now, if they issue all the DLC to a disk later, I will certainly be happy to purchase it (see Knights of the Nine for Oblivion), but...

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. I hated that I had to log in to play a local game.

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[The_mad_linguist]

Woosh!

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, except that you actually CAN get the pirated DLC for Dragon Age, every bit of it. Check Pirate Bay. I did, and I'm running it. ...

whoosh

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh.

Re:Yep, that totally works in practice

[metalwheaties]

As much as I want the model proposed in the article to be successful (it would be the best scenario AFAICT), remember Cyan's Uru? That was precisely the model, and they failed miserably because there wasn't enough adoption to keep them afloat.

Heading the wrong direction?

[Alcimedes]

Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?

It's always about crippling something then fixing it later.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[adeft]

Well said. I like certain products, and I will obtain them in their most convenient pleasant form.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?

Because people show that they are still unwilling to buy something even if it's DRM-free and you can purchase it at any price you want (even as little as a penny)? Just look at how widely shared World of Goo is on torrent sites and it has never had DRM and it has had a number of "pay what you want" sales.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[Americano]

Because even if YOU are willing to pay for it, there are a lot of freeloaders out there. See Humble Indie Bundle.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[TheoCryst]

Because that doesn't work. Cheapskates are cheapskates, and nothing will change that.

Example: The good folks responsible for World of Goo ran a special "Pay What You Want" promotion for a little while. And you know what? The largest single datapoint was one penny, with the vast majority of people paying less than two dollars for a fantastic game. And of course, since the game was distributed DRM-free, an untold number of copies were downloaded via TPB and never went through this channel.

No matter how good a game is, if you offer people a choice to get it for free (or nearly for free), they'll take it.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[CannonballHead]

X% are willing to pay. Y% aren't. Y is usually significantly greater than X, apparently.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[nine-times]

Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?

Because that's hard, and requires you do a really good job. Most people aren't willing to bet their paycheck on whether they do a good job.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly]

hear hear

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[Attila Dimedici]

Because that doesn't work. Cheapskates are cheapskates, and nothing will change that.

Then why are they spending lots of money to prevent those cheapskates from pirating games that you just admitted those cheapskateswon't pay for anyway? If you are a company, the only people who matter are the ones that give you money. Basing a business strategy on making life miserable for those who try to use your product but won't ever, under any condition, pay for it is just wasting money.
Offering a game for "pay what you want" is not the correct answer because when you do that you signal that you don't care if people pay for it or not. Set as low of a price as you can afford to sell it for. Recognize that pirated versions are free advertising. Maybe even put a splash screen that comes up every time someone opens the game that says "this game can be downloaded from www.foobargames.com for $X".

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[spazimodo]

Steam and Valve have figured this out. I've spent more on games in the past few months on Steam than total on games for the previous 20 years. I suspect that they've been gathering all kinds of information on how putting games on sale affects buying patterns which will prove extremely useful in the future. Hopefully they win out vs. publishers going the rootkit/unfinished games/online access required route.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[stewbacca]

Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?

Because there is a douchy segment of society who have terabytes of cracked/pirated software that they'll never use anyway.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?

It's always about crippling something then fixing it later.

Because that's totally the reason most people choose not to pay for games; in fact, I'll bet that the first bug free game to be released will have a 0% piracy rate!

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[Alcimedes]

Were they ever going to be your customers? If not, who gives a crap?

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[Quirkz]

Well, there's one potential benefit--if I'm not sure about a game, I tend to skip it. Being able to pay half price for half of it before deciding if I wanted to shell out the rest for the other half has a small appeal to it. I might try out more games that way, and if it's a horrible game at least I'm only burned for half of the purchase cost. Assuming the pricing and playability actually worked out that way .... not that I'm optimistic about that.

Re:Heading the wrong direction?

[Pentium100]

Steam is OK, I bought some games on it before they started ripping off the EU customers (that include me).

Dear game industry

[cowscows]

Folks have been telling you this for years, but many of you still don't seem to get it, so I'm going to repeat it yet again. People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games. Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.

The average age of the gamer has been continuously increasing, and a bunch of us who grew up playing games are adults now and still playing. We're out of school, we work for a living, we have some disposable income, and we're willing to spend a portion of it on games. There are more people able, willing, and interested in spending money on video games than ever before. Worry about us more than you worry about the people who aren't interested in paying for your product. You'll never make any money off of them.

Now if the industry has grown itself too fast, or you've let development costs get too high, or whatever you've done to make your businesses unprofitable...well that's your problem, not mine. Blaming it on people who don't want to pay for your product will not get you any sympathy or extra profits. Sorry.

Re:Dear game industry

[Maarx]

I love you. No homo. Mod parent up.

Re:Dear game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

we work for a living, we have some disposable income, and we're willing to spend a portion of it

Not in the Obama Economy.

Re:Dear game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember back in the late 90s I was too young to work and my parents didn't believe in allowance. I couldn't afford the $30-$40 for a game. I had to resort to alternative means. To the industry I wasn't a customer. They didn't lose my sale, because the sale was never there in the first place to take place.

Now ten+ years later I have a disposable income but games cost $60 and with DLC can quickly add up to $80 or even $100+ a game.

Do I still purchase games? Yes. Am I now more cautious about purchases? Fuck yes, when a game can quickly turn into a $100+ investment I am going to hold off on the impulse purchase of a game.

Re:Dear game industry

[CannonballHead]

People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games. Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.

This sentence does not quite make sense. You assign two traits to a hypothetical person:

1. Do not want to play game X
2. Find game X for free

Why would this person not want to play game X and then spend the bandwidth and time to get a pirated copy of game X?

I think this is more realistic: Person wants to play game X but is not willing to pay for it. Whether or not you feel that is a justified unwillingness is up to you, but saying a person pirates a game because he doesn't want to play it is ridiculous. You don't play games that you don't want to play. And there are a lot of people that play games they want to play, but pirate them anyways.

I am not arguing that said pirating is bad or good, I am simply arguing that your ascribed motives to said actions are a bit contradictory. I've never met someone who played a game that they did not want to play. I have met many people who did not pay for the game they were playing. :)

Re:Dear game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

If you re-read the post you replied to you'll find that you agree with it.

Re:Dear game industry

[natehoy]

You need to reread the snippet you quoted, very carefully this time, and go for comprehension of what was said.

People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games.

People who want to play the game but are unwilling or unable to pay for it are very much included in the "people who don't want to pay to play" category.

The problem with DRM is that it takes a lot of us who were formerly in the "willing to pay to play" category and, because of the restrictions imposed by draconian DRM solutions, puts us in the "no longer interested in risking spending more time getting the game working than we spend actually playing it" category.

I have not purchased a game in some time (Myst: Uru was my last game purchase), and after having to go out and find and purchase an old DVD player because the game refused to play on a DVD drive capable of burning (lest it be copied, I guess), and dealing with SecuROM and a reinstall of my OS so I could burn music CDs from music I had purchased, and God only knows what other dumbfuckery I've had to cope with over the years, I decided I had had enough of having my system fucked with every time I wanted to spend $60 for a few weeks of entertainment.

I'd love to try a few games out here and there, and my wife and I used to be heavily into puzzle-type games (Myst series, Obsidian, Sanitarium, etc), and I used to enjoy an occasional FPS LANFest, but eventually I decided I pretty much needed a separate computer from the one that did my finances and email so I could reload the OS after each game to wipe out the latest crap introduced by the DRM. And, of course, that meant buying another $175 copy of Windows XP because, guess what? It had DRM too.

I decided bicycling and kayaking sounded like more fun.

Re:Dear game industry

[DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly]

hear hear again!

Re:Dear game industry

[cowscows]

You're misunderstanding what I said. Say someone wants to play a game but doesn't want to pay for it, for whatever reason. Maybe they're a kid with no money, maybe they're just a cheap bastard, or maybe they think that by pirating games they're somehow 'sticking it to the man'. Whatever, doesn't matter, they've got three options. They can:
1)Decide to pay for it.
2)Decide to pirate it.
3)Decide to not play it.

If you take away option 2, then that does not force them to choose option 1. I would argue that they're much more likely to take option 3 before they take option 1. Factor in the fact that it's really hard to actually take away option 2, and as a developer/publisher, you're pretty much just throwing money away by trying to take away option 2.

So yeah. Some people are going to play your game without paying for it. Get over it, go worry about something you can actually control, life goes on.

Re:Dear game industry

[cowscows]

Agreed. I'm at a point where I could probably afford to drop $60 on a game every two weeks, but it doesn't make sense for me to do so. Because there are so many games coming out, they tend to drop in price rather quickly, and if you don't mind being about a year or so behind you can save a ton of money.

And this works out doubly well for me, because I just plain don't have the time to plow through a game in two weeks anyways, so I'm perfectly happy lagging behind. Occasionally a game will come out that I'm so excited for that I get it at full price, but it's rare these days.

That being said, digital distribution makes it much easier for game companies to make money off of a consumer like me. They had that big summer steam sale a couple weeks ago, and I bought a whole bunch of older games, some of which I'll probably never find the time to play. But they were individually cheap enough to become impulse buys, and now I'm out another hundred bucks or so.

Re:Dear game industry

[sweatyboatman]

well said!

Re:Dear game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.

As a developer, the latter would sure help me sleep better at night, knowing my product isn't benefitting some punk-ass Generation Me self-righteous little shit who refuses to pay for anything they can get away with. Between that and preventing casual piracy, DRM is more than worth it.

Re:Dear game industry

[cowscows]

Well unfortunately I don't think you're going to win that battle. Even if that little punk-ass can't crack it himself, someone else will figure it out and post it online. The harder you try to stop them, the more it makes some people want to figure out away around it.

But hey if it helps you sleep better, then go for it.

Re:Dear game industry

[stewbacca]

Back then, we had to wait a month for a magazine review, and then make a decision to spend our paperboy money on a game. Now, I can get metascores for any game on any platform ever, which lowers the likelihood of wasting money on a bad game.

Re:Dear game industry

[nlawalker]

Worry about us more than you worry about the people who aren't interested in paying for your product.

I believe that they worry about you as least as much as they people who aren't interested in paying. If they give up the fight, essentially making the game easily available for free, they are worried that there will be a lot of people who have no problem paying for the game that also suddenly have no problem not paying for it, because it's just as convenient.

Despite what most people here say about the convenience of piracy, people who don't care about technology and don't know how to torrent stuff find it much more convenient to buy a box from a store shelf, put a disc in the slot and accept the DRM that comes with the game.

Re:Dear game industry

[stewbacca]

They can:

1)Decide to pay for it.
2)Decide to pirate it.
(they'll probably take #2)

They can:

2) Decide to pirate it
3) Decide to not play it.
(either one, the company makes no money)

In both cases, a game company makes very little money. The only money they make are from honest people, or people who don't know how to acquire pirated copies.

I think the business logic is, by adding DRM, you theoretically make it harder to pirate, leaving only the following options:

1) Decide to pay for it
3) Decide to not play it

The chances that somebody will pick #1 are now much higher than the other two scenarios. The trick is in balancing how many people you will put off with the DRM scheme and how hard it is to crack. If it's hard to crack, but interferes with legal ownership, that sucks. If it doesn't interfere with legal ownership, but is easy to crack, then there's no point.

Re:Dear game industry

[cowscows]

I agree that that is probably the business logic that is being used, but I think the assumption that option 1 becomes much more likely if you remove option 2 is false. The vast majority of those people are not going to become paying customers, they're just going to turn their attention elsewhere.

Re:Dear game industry

[Heed00]

Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.

As a developer, the latter would sure help me sleep better at night, knowing my product isn't benefitting some punk-ass Generation Me self-righteous little shit who refuses to pay for anything they can get away with. Between that and preventing casual piracy, DRM is more than worth it.

I'm glad you posted because you're pointing out the real core issue with piracy that the people hell bent on fighting it have -- and it's not about economic loss at all. It's that some people just simply can't abide the notion that someone else is getting something for nothing -- even though that someone else isn't costing them money in the process. It's the gall felt at the thought of someone getting all the same benefit as someone else, but being able to side step the economic transaction -- this is why DRM makers make their money.

Re:Dear game industry

[dissy]

What he is saying is, as a gaming company, you should pay attention to paying gamers like me who will gladly drop a couple hundred dollars a year on entertainment. I have money to give you for great games.. just do that, and sell them to me, and you will have money.

There are more people than just me like this.. SELL TO US

Currently, the game companies do NOT do this. I, and those like me, get a teeny sliver of their attention time and effort, and it shows.

They spend all their time money and effort on people who clearly will never give them a dime.

The parents point is those people wont PAY for games. Your point is those people will PLAY those games.

If you as a game company only have one desire, to not have any pirates play your games, then just don't release software and you will have your wish.

Spending money on pirates to keep them from getting your stuff, just means less money left over to actually make games, which generally translates to crappy and broken games that just dont work.

Re:Dear game industry

[dissy]

As a developer, the latter would sure help me sleep better at night, knowing my product isn't benefitting some punk-ass Generation Me self-righteous little shit who refuses to pay for anything they can get away with. Between that and preventing casual piracy, DRM is more than worth it.

It's really easy to do. Don't write software, and no one will be able to pirate it.

Granted, you won't like that option as it is incompatible with selling your game to make money, but fortunately that should be alright since you didn't list that as a requirement...

Re:Dear game industry

[CannonballHead]

Doh. Insert stupidity icon. I misread and thought you said that people who don't want to play won't pay. Sorry about that :P :)

Re:Dear game industry

[CannonballHead]

Hehe, you're right. I missed the "pay to" in the first part.

Re:Dear game industry

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up +5youbetcha

I saved up three months to buy the first DOOM release, after thoroughly enjoying the first FREE levels and realizing it was really, really fun. The game wasn't UNFINISHED; just locked after the free levels. If you mean "give away some free content so people can check out your game engine, hardware handling and GAME PLAY ELEMENTS (not eye candy; real game elements) and then pay for the remainder of the FINISHED GAME, I'd go for that model. I mean, the original DOOM was 70USD or so (a lot for that time) but I faithfully saved up for it over a whole summer...

I hardly ever purchase new games now, but I have an entire floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with games. All of those games were legally purchased. Many of them I still play. That is, unless despite a full-disk install which gobbles mega- and gigabytes I still have to put the cd in the drive. CDs which are many years old in some cases. CDs I don't wish to scratch, lose, suffer disk errors on read or any of the other problems plaguing long-term storage on the media (had to copy my DOOM disks many times over the years).

I do download "pirate" stuff... like nocd patches for games I already own. I also download some trainers or previews. I am quite willing to pay for a legitimate game that I enjoy, but I have also paid for crappy, half-finished, borky-drivers, system-crashing bugs "games" that were all pretending to be dvds with their flashy 50fps water reflections (ooo shiny!) and were completely bankrupt in terms of actual game play, storyline, engaging material and all the real game elements that began me on my sad and sordid journey into GameLand. Honestly, if the game sux rox, I'd be deleting it anyways and not "stealing" it. If the game is good, I want all the goodies, as well as the install media and materials (BRING BACK FUN GAME MATERIALS! fsk pdf documents)

Make a great game. Let me play a little bit of it, with options to explore. Let me hook myself. Make it so if I legally purchase it there is some way to reinstall it; let me burn a backup (img or whatever). I could do all that in 1993. You do that, with a great game, and I will buy it.

But I won't pay for crap now, or hose my system with a craptacular installer or buggy, half-finished drivers, plotlines, characters and etc. And I WON'T pay $60USD for a sight-unseen game anymore.

The game industry, of which I have funneled thousands of dollars either directly or through new hardware to play the titles, has definitely let me down over the last 5-7 years or so. I've been bitten badly enough many times to trust game studios now.

Show me the superior product (a GAME, not an imitation of an hd dvd) and you'll get my money.

Re:Dear game industry

[bat21]

But the fact is, option 2 will always be there in some form or fashion. It may take a few months but there will always be someone willing to spend the time to crack games; especially when the companies keep touting their "foolproof solutions". DLC won't even solve it. Borderland's and Dragon Age's DLC has been pirated ever since they released it. Borderlands and Overlord 2 were both obscenely stupid examples of DRM in that they used securerom but didn't require a unique key for online play. They could have skipped the securerom but without requiring unique keys they might as well have given it away for free. Steam isn't the best choice, but it's a far cry from the alternative. When it became easier to just wait for a good sale and download the game (with auto-updates), I stopped pirating games. Given, I have a lot more disposable income than I used to, but I don't think that my gaming habits would change much even so.

When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[zero_out]

When I buy a game, I buy the game. I don't buy a license to play the game. I don't buy a piece of the game. I buy the game. This is why I avoid all games that involve microtransactions, limited activations, etc. There is a reason I chose to save my money to purchase my first game console 20 years ago, rather than drop quarters into machines at the arcade down the street. It's also why arcades are dead, despite the video game industry ballooning into what it is today.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[ddegirmenci]

Damn, I really wish I had some modpoints...

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[sabt-pestnu]

Agreed. If the game that comes in the box isn't up to snuff, I'm not going to buy it. Put as many fancy bells and whistles on DLC as you want, I'm not going to see it. Particularly not at first.

You only have one chance to make a first impression.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[StuartHankins]

I see your point, and that's why I went from PC to console for the vast majority of my gaming also. If I don't have the hassle that's required of PC gaming, I'm perfectly fine with "dropping some quarters" into someone else's machine with the understanding that I won't get anything permanent in return. That's why Dave and Buster's makes so much money, at least from me.

While I really enjoyed playing WoW, it cost insane amounts of money in the long run. I assume other MMORPGs are the same way.

I guess there is some kind of line there -- with an online game, they have to host the servers, which they can't do indefinitely with a one-time payment. But not all games require this, and for those I would resist having to pay a monthly fee when there is nothing obtained in return. Don't hook into online DRM crap for a game that's not played online.

Most of my games are now on the Wii, and while they're not cheap there are no ongoing costs once purchased except for all the AA batteries.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[Daetrin]

When I buy a game, I buy the game. I don't buy a license to play the game. I don't buy a piece of the game. I buy the game. This is why I avoid all games that involve microtransactions, limited activations, etc.

How does this make any sense? Avoiding games with limited activations is understandable, but a blanket statement that you won't buy games that have microtransactions/DLC just seems strange. Do you not buy games that are part of a series? What about books or movies with sequels? Do you not buy a season of a tv show because there's another season after it?

There are certainly ways to do DLC/microtransactions badly, but the basic theory of splitting something large up into smaller parts and selling them separately is perfectly sound and can be beneficial to all parties involved if the pricing is done correctly. I don't want to have to wait ten years (if i'm lucky) for an author to finish an entire series so i can pick the whole think up at once before buying the first book. And unless it's an author i know really well i probably don't want to put down the cost of the entire series all at once without having read any of it first. Likewise i wouldn't mind buying a smaller chunk of a game and trying it out before buying the rest of it if the pricing was amenable to doing so. I'm willing to gamble $7 or $8 on a book to an extent that i would never consider for a $50 or $60 game. If books only came bundles in "complete" series for $50 then deciding which books to invest in would be just as much of a pain as it currently is for (most) video games.

Your examples make it seem like you're confusing DLC with rentals. You would still own what you bought, you'd just be buying smaller chunks of it at a time for a smaller amount of money. (In the cases where the idea was implemented in a successful manner anyways.)

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[Grandim]

Arcades dying in North America is also caused by the convenience of gaming at home compared to going out to an arcade. Arcades are still popular in Japan and Korea has PC bangs, I would attribute some of that success on denser urban area making them more accessible. League of Legends revenue is fully fueled by microtransactions and the game is blooming. Most mmos are now based on microtransactions and you don't see a lot of them going bankrupt. The microtransaction model can work.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[calderra]

Mostly correct. I'm all for episodic content- Commander Keen and DOOM were great for this back in the day. (Yeah, episodic content was totally invented in the late 2000s by Valve). But there is, and should continue to be, a proper place for actually buying a game and owning it. The new trend of being able to digitally purchase and download games, for example, is great- but once I own the game, the company shouldn't be able to take it back at a later date, for any reson.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[eht]

Insane amounts of money? 200$ a year is insane amounts of money? (14$ a month*12 month + 34$ a year for each expansion pack(an expansion pack is usually around 50$ and gets released less than once every two years)) for a game that is continually updated with new content. That is less than the cost of 4 new A title games that you will probably spend maybe 20 hours each on. WoW is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment around.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[stewbacca]

The Valve episodic content works (for me) because it is cheap. Maybe prices were higher when they were new, but I just bought episode 1 and 2 for something like $9.99 combined. I'll buy the next one as soon as it comes out.

I think working adults can appreciate episodic content as well, since we don't often have 8 hours blocks we can devote to plowing through a full game.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[StuartHankins]

It isn't merely the cost of the subscription, which is expensive to me (not to you, I get that). It's constantly having to up your hardware because if you don't you can't compete in arenas, you can't see the graphical effects for timing events in various raids, you can't DO some of the raids because of the heavier loads, events such as the Lich King expansion are frustrating because you're endlessly ganked by those who have lower latency, smoother screen refreshes etc.

As content is added there is a load that seems to require more PC gear to compensate. THAT is the cost of which I refer, and playing WoW over a year's timespan I saw the effects gradually reduce my online experience.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[hhedeshian]

For me it works like this: I only buy games from gog.com. They are DRM free. It's the complete game.

I've tried a couple different tests on the installer packages and found that the SHA1 sums match when purchased by different people; we can safely conclude that the files are not salted.

The other thing I do is look for open source games. If you like RTS games, then look at the spring engine.

On a different note, the spring engine suffers from OSS syndrome: it has waaaaayyyy too many configuration options. Some will see this as a bad thing, some will see this as a good thing.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[Ash-Fox]

When I buy a game, I buy the game. I don't buy a license to play the game. I don't buy a piece of the game. I buy the game.

Then you better be paying your property taxes (DLC) too.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never and will never pay $200 for any video game... period

It is an insane amount of money.

I wont even spend that much on the console itself.

Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, though, the licensing bull that half of the games you think you buy state that the game is not actually yours, you're just permitted to play it.

Crystal ball time...

[jason.sweet]

Gamer: This game is crappy.
Game maker: Just give us five more bucks, and it won't be so crappy.
Gamer: That's a little better, but it's still pretty crappy.
Game maker: Oh! We fixed that. Five more dollars, please?
Gamer: WTF?!?!? There's DRM on this download.
Game maker: Oh yeah. Pirates figured out how to pirate our DLC. Sorry about that. Five more buck and all the female NPCs will be topless.
Gamer: Sweet! Keep the change!

Re:Crystal ball time...

[VGPowerlord]

Gamer: This game is crappy.
Game maker: Just give us five more bucks, and it won't be so crappy.
Gamer: That's a little better, but it's still pretty crappy.
Game maker: Oh! We fixed that. Five more dollars, please?
Gamer: WTF?!?!? There's DRM on this download.
Game maker: Oh yeah. Pirates figured out how to pirate our DLC. Sorry about that. Five more buck and all the female NPCs will be topless.
Gamer: Sweet! Keep the change!

Up until the "all the female NPCs will be topless" it sounds like you're describing Borderlands.

Call a spade a spade

[Necreia]

This is simply "Demo that costs money, and still has other DRM". When you buy a game, you're buying a demo in which you have to buy the real game after. And in order to tie the download content to the demo you just bought, you need an authentication system. Likely online activation.

The only thing Rod is saying is that game companies should double-dip to ease the DRM impression.

Re:Call a spade a spade

[Quirkz]

Another angle: this lets them capture half of a sale from used games, rather than nothing. If I pick up a used copy from GameStop, I've still got to pay regular price for the second half of the game. I'm 100% sure they're drooling all over that scenario, too.

NO

[Anonymous Coward]

with the insane costs of internet
with the caps
with the throttling

YOU want me to be online for a game to be played.....
NO
NO
NO
and i suggest you do it anyway so you can go right out of business and we can be done with twits like this.

Re:NO

[lxs]

Your post took me right back to the heady days of 1998. We were beautiful back then *snif*

Not "feature complete"

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that, in the United States, a company cannot consider the income from sales of a product that is not "feature complete". They might as well give the product away.

I don't know.

[sheehaje]

How about I buy a game. I install to my home computer, and to my laptop. I have an experience I can complete, and don't have to connect to some server to verify so if I bring my laptop somewhere, lets say to New York City for an extended business trip where the Hotel internet is intermittent at best and my air card won't work because I sandwiched between two high rise buildings, I can still play a game that I bought.

Ok, maybe my circumstances are a bit extraordinary, but I want what I pay for.

It was refreshing to actually buy a game recently (Dragon Age: Origins) and have a complete game to play without having to worry about authenticating to outside servers. I also appreciate that there are expansions that are optional, but there is no wall I will hit leaving me unsatisfied with the original game.

I do play EVE-Online also, and I don't mind the subscription, but I don't just play MMORPG's. There are just certain games that I want that I feel I can put back on the shelf someday with the satisfaction of completing it, and also the option to play the game no matter what my circumstances are. Am I asking too much for my $50?

I guess as an 80's generation gamer, I have different expectations. I still like going to the store (gasp!) to buy games. Hell, if there were still arcades around me, I might even go and drop a few dollars there.

Re:I don't know.

[mjwx]

I guess as an 80's generation gamer, I have different expectations. I still like going to the store (gasp!) to buy games. Hell, if there were still arcades around me, I might even go and drop a few dollars there.

With you there, except today the store is a web page and I don't go to the store, it comes to me courtesy of my ISP and FedEx (which is horrible, why does everyone in Hong Kong use FedEx).

at least civ 5 will be mod open and steam drm that

[Joe The Dragon]

at least civ 5 will be mod open and steam drm that way better then most of the other drm carp.

There is another model out there that fits this

[grasshoppa]

The BOOK publishing industry has had a model similar to this in place for a while, and I would love to see video games follow this. Most of the books I read are parts of a series, so I buy the first book ( the starter ), and then the next books ( DLCs ).

Just like with book publishing, you could do DLC packs with price reductions after they've been out a while.

As long as they deliver value proportional to the cost, I'm good with this.

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[Anonymous Coward]

We can call it episodic content! It'll make BILLIONS!!

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[Superdarion]

... so I buy the first book ( the starter ), and then the next books ( DLCs ).

Just like with book publishing, you could do DLC packs with price reductions after they've been out a while....

You mean like the countless games that later have expansion sets and sequels?

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[Radtoo]

No, books sell as a whole unit. They may not be as good or make as much sense without the first book in the series, but they are sold independently and without restrictions on reselling or anything like that.

DLC is both a restriction on reselling as well as (usually) introducing a dependence on having one or more books of the series already. And you can't buy it used from anyone else in most cases.

Besides, most DLC that actually exists right now is more like a tenth of the next book. That sort of unit is too small, only the comic and manga industry has had long-lasting success with it, and only because it helped them to keep their audience entertained better by leveling off an otherwise fairly much fluctuating output per artist group. And you still could buy these comic/manga magazines and compilations independently and resell them.

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[grasshoppa]

Most of the fiction books I read are a part of a series.

I don't know many people that pick up a series at book 5.

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they deliver value proportional to the cost, I'm good with this.

And that's the question isn't it?

You only get to find out the value of the product after you've paid for it, and there are no refunds. For companies working on a sustained business model like an MMO, you can trust the value of the content. For companies working on rubbish serial releases, the value of the content is poor and continuously diminishing. And MMO's are the only shining light in this tunnel which has been persisting for more than 20 years.

How do you stop piracy? By making something worth paying for.

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that more how SEQUELS work? I buy a game/book a few years later game/book number 2 in the series comes out and because the first was so good I feel I have to have it.

with DLC that would be like if you buy a book and then 3 months later the publisher comes out with chapter (last+1) of the book that you can buy for another $5. or maybe an optional cover for the book that you can spend $3 on.

also, when I am finished with a book, I can give it away or sell it back. with a game, i cant even lend it to a friend to get them to buy it for themselves.

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[LethargicParasite]

Just... imagine reading Harry Potter and being told you have to pay for the Ron character. Would the book be as good without it? Would your enjoyment of the non-DLC'd version be hindered by the knowledge you don't have the full version?

Personally, I would prefer not to have Ron at all rather than being given the privilege of paying for him.

Re:There is another model out there that fits this

[grasshoppa]

One might argue that you already have an idea about the quality of the DLC; you purchased the base game afterall, so it's not like you are going into it blind.

Let's take fallout 3, for example. When I finished it, I still wanted to play more. Even after wandering the waste land, doing every possible mission, I still wanted more. Then I saw that brotherhood of steel would allow me that "more", so I forked over the cash for it.

Good games stand to make more money from this model, while bad games will probably lose more. I know I think I spent close to $100 for fallout 3, and feel it was money well spent.

unfinished games

[Sinn3d]

""My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games...""

So all he is really saying is ... Business as usual? Every game published is gonna end up like a beta (or mmorpg) .... a bunch of patches with a sidedish of content.

Sounds like a plan, till the "bad guys" start cracking/releasing patches/DLC. Oh wait they are already doing that...

Oh goodie

[SmallFurryCreature]

Just what gamers are waiting for. Unfinished games. Forget paid beta-testing, now they are going to ship alpha products. Nice engine, where is the content, oh just 10 bucks for another hour worth...

NO THANKS.

And as for it stopping piracy. one word "The Sims 3". Oh okay that is two words and a number.

That game has a horribly overpriced item shop, where you can download inferior custom content that you could just as easily get for free 100% legit, but all the payed content can be found on any filesharing network along with all the official expansions.

Same by the way with all DLC for any game.

If game companies want to combat piracy they got to give PAYING customers MORE. Not less and most certainly not charge more for less.

I used to buy every game from Bethseda. Then they attempted to nicke and dime me with the horse armour debacle and voila. I pirated every game of them since. Bioware? Same deal. I only get burned once. These companies have no hope of every restoring confidence with me again. Ever.

Codemasters? Those run Lord of the Rings Online in europe. Where they awarded NEW players with a free low level horse, while people who had beenwith them for a long time, paying for the game when nobody knew if it was going to be any good at all with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I still play the game since I got life, but will not buy anything else from codemasters EVER AGAIN.

LEARN about BASIC customer satisfaction. It ain't hard, thousand, no millions of businesses do it all the time. Why is the software industry in general and the game sector especially so in capable of building and maintaining customer loyalty.

Re:Oh goodie

[StuartHankins]

Where they awarded NEW players with a free low level horse, while people who had beenwith them for a long time, paying for the game when nobody knew if it was going to be any good at all with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Yep. WoW did that type of thing and more, when I quit playing they were allowing people who joined together to instantly transport to where the other player was, and there were all kinds of special bonuses. They they gimped Druids even more, giving the lvl 30 mount ability to others, etc. Let's not even talk about the Druid tree changes.

What was so frustrating was scheduling a raid, having people logon, and their trees were BLANK. Most didn't have a copy of their build handy or couldn't memorize all the options they chose, and the new options just made it even more disorganized. Builds you knew by heart were all of the sudden no good. Oh, and the armor you raided for hours on end to get is now inferior to greens obtained from 15 minute quests.

Nope, not bitter at all. The sad part is if I had the time and a decent internet connection at home I would probably play WoW again. I miss some of the Vent chats we had while questing / raiding, and some of the people I met.

Re:Oh goodie

[CannonballHead]

Then they attempted to nicke and dime me with the horse armour debacle and voila. I pirated every game of them sin

I feel that it is people like you who I have to thank for having to go through the DRM and copy protection that I have to go through to play a game legitimately.

Same deal. I only get burned once. These companies have no hope of every restoring confidence with me again. Ever.

And apparently, vice versa. They have no hope of getting pirates to play/pay legit games. So they are forced to try to beat pirates with DRM. It does'nt work, it makes paying customers annoyed. This appears to be a cyclical problem, and those that respond in the way you do ... are not appearing to help the situation whatsoever. You could just refuse to PLAY Bioware or Bethesda games... but apparently, you DO want to have the content they offer, but simply refuse to pay because you don't like the company? That's just as unethical as what you accuse the company of...

LEARN about BASIC customer satisfaction. It ain't hard, thousand, no millions of businesses do it all the time

It's hard to satisfy customers who think they should be allowed to play for free and refuse to pay even for games they like.

Re:Oh goodie

[HubHikari]

I used to buy every game from Bethseda...I pirated every game of them since... Bioware? Same deal. I only get burned once. These companies have no hope of every restoring confidence with me again. Ever.

Re: Your Bioware silliness. Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins. Consider your confidence restored, you're very welcome, thank me later.
Re: Bethesda. Fallout 3. Again, consider your confidence restored, you're very welcome, thank me later.

Re:Oh goodie

[0123456]

Re: Your Bioware silliness. Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins. Consider your confidence restored, you're very welcome, thank me later.

ME1 is one of the worst 'games' I've ever played, and the ME2 demo seemed even worse. I have to use the quotes because I can hardly call it a game when it mostly consists of a few minutes running from place to place and the occasional poorly implemented combat sequence between interminable and unskippable cutscenes; ME2 did all that and also eliminated any need to think because whatever you were supposed to do next was indicated by a big flashing box.

Re: Bethesda. Fallout 3. Again, consider your confidence restored, you're very welcome, thank me later.

Fallout 3, one of the pioneers of stupid DLC tricks?

Re:Oh goodie

[HubHikari]

Haters gonna hate, eh? You use the quotes because you're the kind of guy who thinks he is the arbiter of games. "A few minutes running from place to place" is the worst description of the game you could have ever devised, right above Jack Thompson raging against it for the "alien sex extravaganza" (paraphrase mine). The combat sequences in ME1 could have been done better, I will freely admit, and ME2 solved it. It also did not eliminate the need to think, as you claim.

Fallout 3, one of the pioneers of stupid DLC tricks?

Tell me more. I'm not sure I quite follow you. What "stupid DLC tricks" did Fallout 3 present?

Re:Oh goodie

[HubHikari]

Oh, right. The GOTY edition (which rankled me). I withdraw approximately one-half of my objection.

Re:Oh goodie

[0123456]

"A few minutes running from place to place" is the worst description of the game you could have ever devised

No, it's a very accurate description of the game.

You start the game, and have to sit through thirty-second animations just to get into the character creation. You create a character and have to sit through about ten minutes of poorly-acted, poorly rendered unskippable cut-scene in order to get to a point where you can actually control your character and make any kind of decision about what's going on. You go to a planet where you spend a minute or so running around before the game goes into another cutscene where you're forced to watch one of your Artificial Stupidiy squad-mates (who was obviously going to die from his laughable dialog on the ship) do something really stupid that you'd never have let them do. You get another couple of minutes of walking from that place to another place and shooting a couple of things with horribly consolised combat system (why do I have to press a special key to use cover when I could just, like hide behind the cover) while your AS squad-mates happily stand out in the open while the bad guys are shooting at you. Then you have to sit through another long, tedious, unskippable cut-scene before you shoot a few more guys. Then you have to watch another long, unskippable cut-scene where your character does something stupid that you would never do before you get sent back to the ship to sit through another long, unskippable cut-scene. Then you get to spend a couple of minutes walking around the ship before you're subjected to the next long, unskippable cut-scene.

A couple of minutes walking around between each tedious cut-scene is not a game in any sense that I understand; if I wanted to watch a bad SF B-movie I could buy one for $3 from the bargain bin and it would be over much faster without the tediously bad shooting sequences and, unless Tim Hines directed it, with far less walking.

Re:Oh goodie

[HubHikari]

Big giant block of text, most of which is only tangentially related to reality

Okay, buddy. I'm going to assume you're merely trolling for reaction, one I am not going to give you. Your description of the game is so ludicrously off-point w/r/t FMVs opposed to gameplay that I am forced to conclude you played the game with the intent to pick out every little niggling detail you hated. The rest of your post is so out there that I will not engage my brain to give you a rebuttal; instead, I will simply purple monkey dishwasher crank handle.
I am forced to further conclude that you hate good literary works, as "a bad SF B-movie" is far from accurate. At least, if you're playing a female Shepard. Male Shepard's voice-acting, I will admit, is thoroughly horrid.

I think Steam already figured it out

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam does it in the "if you pirate then all the games your purchased can be forfeit" approach along with the benefits of having no disks, no activation, and generally no problems along that front. The key is to give decent features for the DRM tradeoff to sell it as being a valuable thing to participate. True, you loose some (ability to sell games for instance) and you gain some (never have to worry about disks or loosing the games) but it is better than the DRM other folks offer (you are inconvenienced and the pirates aren't really bothered).

Besides, the microtransaction route, if used, would lead to, for example, Doom 1 Episode 1 being sold for $50 and episodes 2 and 3 being $30 a piece. In short, it wouldn't help much and you would likely get annoying DRM for episodes 2 and 3 anyways.

Re:I think Steam already figured it out

[geminidomino]

1.if you pirate then all the games your purchased can be forfeit

2. along with the benefits of having no disks...

Line 1 nicely explains why many people do not view Line #2 as a "benefit", especially considering you can replace "if you pirate" with "if we go out of business", "if you cuss on the forums", "if you bang your girlfriend in a position we don't agree with," or even just "if we don't like you."

Great idea!

[CAIMLAS]

That's a great idea. Sell games like the ones we find on the shelves today (ie uncompleted games) for $15-20, and charge an extra $5 or whatever if the user wants to play a single player game for more than 2-3 hours, or another $10-20 for functional multiplayer.

Wait, what? They plan to sell a fraction of the existing games for less, and the 'additional content' may add up to the existing games (which are, more often than not, incomplete/complete crap)? :-|

Depends

[uvsc_wolverine]

I'm actually okay with this depending on how it gets implemented. If I've got to pay money to go to the next level (for example) I want the game to cost less to begin with. Maybe I buy a new PS3 game for $20, but to actually finish the game I'll have to pony up an additional $30-$40 by the time I'm done. This could also have some real interesting repercussions for the used market. Considering that you would be buying the basic game, but a someone buying a used copy may still need to buy all of the DLC in order to actually complete the game.

cut the game price and add on price!

[Joe The Dragon]

cut the game price and add on price! $40-$50 + $30 is to much.

Re:cut the game price and add on price!

[Xugumad]

I'd have to say... if you're not doing PC gaming yet, start. Steam has now had 2 massive sales that took many games down to the $10-20 level, with older games frequently lower. Yes, sure, you have to wait 6 months between sales, but if you want your games cheap, that's one way of doing it.

Option Multiplayer

[thewb005]

Of the games I play, I like the single player aspect of it. I would like to pay less for the original game and have it exclude multiplayer. Only if I felt the itch to play multiplayer I could pay for it at a future date.

say it all you want

[v1]

When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."

but the vast majority of publishers still won't get it. But that's one of the most insightful comments I've ever read on the subject.

so this model

[nimbius]

works for content providers because customers are either locked in or there are no other viable choices. this does not work for game developers because if your game is annoying enough, hard enough, or crashes enough i can always find another game.

Like STALKER

[vbrtrmn]

Or you could just release unfinished games like STALKER and STALKER 2 and just never fix them.

Don't get enough buyers or have some financial trouble? No problem, just screw all the customers who purchased the special edition pre-Alpha version and who you've tricked into doing free QA for you.

Here are some better ideas.. Release good completed games and continue doing so. Stop trying to nickel and dime your customers.

Re:Like STALKER

[stewbacca]

If they never finished STALKER, then why would anybody have bought STALKER 2? /rhetorical

Ha!

[RyanFenton]

That's right. Instead of having at least the semblance of a positive retail end-user experience, you sell a game that you know won't provide a good enough experience, then require they go online to get a chance of eventually getting a good game.

Sounds like an invitation to folks to not buy the game while they wait to find out if it is good enough to buy. The folks who torrent it will delete it without finding out if the game would be good, leaving no chance for converted sales. If there's no way to know which games are good or bad, until by chance a "make the game good patch" comes out, then there's no reason to buy any of them until the good patch is released. Of course, by that time, your opportunity for a really good marketing push is mostly over - and the name of your game is diminished greatly, meaning competitors who just released an actual good game have a huge advantage over your patched-good game.

What is it about industry insiders and basic logic that just doesn't seem to mix? Is it just raw anger that they could be making marginally more money? They're selling a product to a customer who has a choice between products - making your own product worse and more annoying does not help you convince your customers to buy your product. DRM or other intentional bugs only loses you money in this regard, along with any advertisement those happy users of your product would provide.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Ha!

[Aphoxema]

That's right. Instead of having at least the semblance of a positive retail end-user experience, you sell a game that you know won't provide a good enough experience, then require they go online to get a chance of eventually getting a good game.

If you can't charge 'em, cheat 'em. Though, you are completely right and I see a poor future for anyone who plays this shit.

Uh, too late

[argStyopa]

"My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games...."

Funny, it seems that the industry has been doing this for at least 10 years already.

we're already there

[themib]

This type of software schema has been in effect in MMO's for years... Although the microtransactions that you are referring to are usually called "expansions" (sarc) ala EQ, EQ2, WOW, GW, etc.

Re:we're already there

[Aphoxema]

This type of software schema has been in effect in MMO's for years... Although the microtransactions that you are referring to are usually called "expansions" (sarc) ala EQ, EQ2, WOW, GW, etc.

EVE Online doesn't toy with you like that. You pay for game time, not for a boxed copy and then monthly and then for expansions and then for every little fucking "mount" and shit.

As a dude who wastes copious amounts of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

playing video games, The idea of cheaper base games with lots of DLC is fine, so long as the DLC your paying for isn't already coded into the game ..cough..capcom..SSFIV..
Its actually a good idea when you think about it. Paying less and having the choice not to buy content you weren't interested in the first place.
The idea that it will combat piracy is vague. There's no guarantee that DLC isn't hackable.

It will have the opposite effect

[Rix]

I've pirated several games that I would have otherwise, and quite wanted to pay for, because they wouldn't let me just *buy* the damn thing.

I play video games to escape the constant buy buy buy money money money of the real world. Even with MMOs, you pay your monthly fee and it's done. So if I'm going to play a game, I'm first going to make whatever arrangements necessary so that I can do so without being interrupted by requests for my credit card.

With games that have DLC, my only option is piracy. I have to track down a torrent for both the game and DLC, and cracks for both, but once that's done it's done. Give me the option to pay for that, and I will (so long as you're reasonable about it; $60 is still the price cap). If you want to hold the DLC back and release it all as a reasonably sized expansion pack, that's great too.

But stop bugging me and let me play the fucking game.

Re:It will have the opposite effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me the option to pay for that, and I will

You won't. You are a cheap lying bitch!

Re:It will have the opposite effect

[Confusador]

With games that have DLC, my only option is piracy.

No. You always have the option not to play. That's why my LAN parties are dominated by 10 year old games. I own the copies, and can still play them regardless of whether the company is still in business. I would like to have some newer stuff in the mix, but too much of it can't give me the same guarantee.

Re:It will have the opposite effect

[Nadaka]

yes. When I get the chance to play with my friends we still fire up Starcraft or TacOps over any of the newer titles.

torrent

[DIplomatic]

Here is a link to the torrent: DEMOLITION-CODEMASTERS-NORARS_Full_Game_+Ep1+Ep2+Ep3+Ep4_+CDKey+KeyGen+CRACK

double-dip

[JustNiz]

This is not about getting rid or DRM, this is about the games industry figuring out how they can get more money by double-dipping. We all know that the price of games won't drop even though you now also need to pay residuals to get the full functionality.

Blizzard already trail-blazed that model with WOW and demonstrated that many people are stupid enough to pay full price up-front for a game that also requires monthly subscriptions.

Assuming the game is not fundamentally tied to playing on-line, such as an MMORPG, whats to stop pirates just extracting and distributing the extra downloadable content too (after they've got it once)?.

Re:double-dip

[kiljoy001]

WOW didn't trailblaze with that, SWG did, justified as recouping the development costs. Sure they make more money off sub's - that's the point, but in order to generate more income, those upfront dollars are great just make sure they have enough money to keep the servers on until the server population stabilizes.

Re:double-dip

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard already trail-blazed that model with WOW and demonstrated that many people are stupid enough to pay full price up-front for a game that also requires monthly subscriptions.

You're an idiot. The MMO subscription model:
1)Wasn't pioneered by Blizzard.
2)Doesn't suggest "stupidity" on the part of its customers.
3)Isn't anything like what's described in the article.

Re:double-dip

[FrozenFOXX]

While it's a very small example it IS worth noting that not all serious blockbuster games, even on consoles, sell at $60. The new BlazBlue: Continuum Shift is being sold for $40 when released. Why? Well, they won't make quite as much money per unit sold, but they'll sell a HELL of a lot of units of a fabulous game (yes, we already know it's fabulous because of the arcade scene and the previous title that it builds upon). That's important when your competition is Super Street Fighter IV.

There's a few others over the years as well, like Phantom Dust on XBox. It was a critically acclaimed title, sold great, cost only $40. I'm not able to pull many others off the top of my head but there are others as well.

Re:double-dip

[rsborg]

This is not about getting rid or DRM, this is about the games industry figuring out how they can get more money by double-dipping. We all know that the price of games won't drop even though you now also need to pay residuals to get the full functionality.

As much as I would agree with you here, I think the CEO of Codemasters is saying is that the App and Feature model of gaming is coming and it's going to completely upend the "blockbuster" gaming model. Either the console/PC game manufacturers are going to move pre-emptively, or they're going to get whacked by Apple, Microsoft, Blizzard, and others who are already moving towards both DLC microtransactions as well as subscription-based gaming. Take a look at Steam... which helps developers smooth that transition, and they're not exactly doing poorly.

Finally, there is a social gaming trend afoot that will also (unfortunately, IMHO) upend the whole gaming market, as people play more networked and subscription/micropayment style games (see Zynga's FarmVille or Blizzard's WOW as two viable business models).

The times they are a-changin' and if you don't change with em, you'll get left behind.

Re:double-dip

[twoallbeefpatties]

Well, they won't make quite as much money per unit sold, but they'll sell a HELL of a lot of units of a fabulous game (yes, we already know it's fabulous because of the arcade scene and the previous title that it builds upon). That's important when your competition is Super Street Fighter IV.

And while we're on the topic, don't forget that Capcom wisely decided to release Super Street Fighter IV as a $40 title instead of trying to fleece people out of a full $60 dollar price tag again (the way they did with the old SNES releases), knowing that people would be double-extra pissed to have to pay for a full update of the game that came out only a year later.

Re:double-dip

[Micahsa]

First of all, Blizzard didn't trail-blaze anything. They took the EQ model and made it better. EQ took the UO model and made it better. (rinse, repeat.)

Secondly, the subscription model has had more influence than most people give it credit for. Virtually every gamer who has played their favorite game is a little sad when that experience ends once they [beat dragon/rescue princess/slay demon/save earth/play perfect song/etc.]. The DLC model in Fallout 3 for example is simply a revamped subscription model but the upside is that you don't have to pay a fee to play your original game. (subscription fees pay for servers, maintenance, etc., not the point) So you don't want to continue the adventure, don't purchase the DLC. But there are a TON of players who DO want to continue and will happily (or begrudgingly) pay to continue their adventure, just like they're used to doing in EQ/WOW/etc., and those players should recognize that DLC is actually a pretty efficient method of buying a game.

Re:double-dip

[StikyPad]

WOW didn't trailblaze with that, SWG did

That's probably the most unintentionally funny thing I've read all day. Thanks for that.

SWG wasn't even close to the first multiplayer online game (let alone software) that required a subscription, or a pay-as-you-go model. In the 80s, online services like Q-Link, CompuServe, AOL, and GEnie charged pay-by-the-hour premium to play multiplayer games on top of by-the-minute connection fees in most cases. In the mid 90s, Kesmai, the developer of most of the games available on the aforementioned services, launched its own website, GameStorm, marking perhaps the first time a game developer was also the distributor and host of its own product. GameStorm charged a $10/mo subscription for unlimited access to all of its games, which significantly reduced the cost of online gaming. In the late 90s, games like Ultima Online and EverQuest followed suit, except they charged a monthly subscription for an *individual* game rather than a collection; a step backwards for consumers.

SWG was probably the first MMORPG that tried to expand the genre to a more mainstream audience, but it was just one of many, many "me too" games that were developed in the early part of the 2000s to try to capitalize on the burgeoning multiplayer market; a market that now dominates the PC gaming industry, much to my dismay.

Now get off my lawn!

Re:double-dip

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW didn't trailblaze anything. WoW just got the MMO formula at such a point that the unwashed masses took notice.

I'm tired of people thinking the world began with WoW.

Yours sincerely,

Retired EverQuest & Asheron's Call Addict.

Re:double-dip

[Anonymous Coward]

At Blizz you do get support from in-game, and theres new content released afterwards. You also do realize administrating game servers costs money, and that the montly fees cover these? If its a 1 time payment, then eventually the costs of the administration of game servers is higher than the profit made from selling a license to the game.

Not a hacking solution

[lymond01]

But it's a good marketing ploy. I'm not paying for a demo -- say less than an hour of playtime. But I'll pay for a good game and expansion packs. I'll also pay very little for a known few hours of playtime (I would have bought the Doom demo -- it was long enough -- if I'd had my own computer back then...I would have paid $5 or $10 for it). None of this will stop hacking, but it may get me to buy more games.

Sell $10 versions of the games on Steam -- readily downloadable, you can play them as soon as you can download. It's like eBooks -- everytime I browse Amazon and see there's an eBook version of a book I *might* want to read, I'm more tempted to just get it. But all I've got is an iPhone right now and I won't read a novel on that.

Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[raving griff]

As a member of the gaming community, I have come across a large number of discussions concerning DLC, and the vast majority of gamers I've seen online have been very vocal against this idea. The community as a whole doesn't care what the price of the game is--in this case, a game that would normally retail for $60 could be sold for $30 with DLC making up the other $30--they simply will not support a game that feels unfinished.

Ultimately, the gaming community feels (unrealistically) that video game publishers are trying to milk them for all the money they are worth and that DLC that feels like it should have been included on the disc (or that was included on the disc and then unlocked via purchase) is one of the greatest sins conceivable.

Personally, I think that the gaming community is largely built of alarmists and that these changes wouldn't seriously hamper gaming at all (especially if the retail price was lowered), but the community as a whole simply will not stand for this, and any attempts to roll this out in the near future will fail.

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[kiljoy001]

I don't think it really matters - if developers can (for once) say upfront we will make x amount of DLC minimum, I for one would be all about it, just as long as they do in fact release the amount of content that they promised and perhaps make avaik. I don't care if they have to raise the price to cover costs, just as long as it's fair for what I get. Now, that being said, what I hate the most is that developers that over promise, and the game turns out to be either nothing like it was described to be, or bug ridden to the point it's not really playable or they never deliver on.

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[sigmabody]

As another member of the gaming community (who actually buys games), I go back and forth on this argument. On the one hand, it's a transparent attempt to milk even more money out of people like me for producing shoddy content, and will likely substantially degrade the game quality and experience. On the other hand, there's something to be said for gaming companies not needing to produce a meaningless "sequel" just to sell more content, and for having all the content integrated together instead of in separate games. Also, the capitalist side of me says they can do whatever they want, it's up to us (the market) to tell them if they are wrong.

I look at Dragon Age as a recent example (for me). I was really looking forward to purchasing the game: a genre I liked, the game looked good, and I was excited about it... right up until the point where I learned that it was actually being released in chunks of DLC for extra money, and some quests were literally of the "insert credit card to continue" variety. I ended up buying it, a year later, on sale, when I could get essentially all the current content for under the price of the original game. I enjoyed the game, but I won't be buying the sequel: the whole greedy money-leeching aspect of their game design/release philosophy has soured me to the company, and my initial excitement has turned to disgust.

Ultimately, the companies which produce products which people will continue to purchase will survive, so the market will decide if this strategy is right. I'm just doing my [small] part to influence that decision.

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[thepotoo]

Huh. I don't think you're seeing a representative sample of the gaming community. I think the majority of gamers, even on the PC, are willing to fork over cash for DLC. (Slashdot is not a representative sample, and neither are the modding forums I frequent. Visit some Steam forums, or Fileshack, or pretty much any non-technical gaming forum, and you'll see that the overwhelming opinion is that people are willing to pay for DLC, as long as it's more elaborate than horse armor.

Oh, you'd probably like a source for this. Go here, click on top sellers. That's right, the best-selling game at the moment is the one where Activision charges suckers $15 for 5 maps. Factor in the cost of bandwidth, and that works out to be, oh, a pretty freaking good deal for Activision.

P.S. I wish you were right.

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[Xugumad]

Yeah... there's a lot of vocal people saying how evil DLC is, and yet Blizzard sold $2mil of sparkle ponies in the first four hours: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178849 . Methinks you're only hearing people who hate DLC, everyone who likes it is off handing their credit card details to Blizzard & co....

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[StikyPad]

First of all, your caveat (that retail price would be lowered) is far from a foregone conclusion. None of the current games with DLC have significantly lower prices than their competitors at launch. That includes Half Life 2, one of the pioneers, and a markedly short game by itself. (And notably, the available DLC doesn't seem to make it feel any more complete.)

Ultimately, the gaming community feels (unrealistically) that video game publishers are trying to milk them for all the money they are worth

That's not unrealistic at all; it's basic economics. Each side of a transaction has an intrinsic desire to maximize its gains, either by maximizing profit for the seller (bleeding the customer for all he's worth), or by lowering expenses for the buyer (paying the minimum possible). Typically these interests balance to a reasonable middle ground, but the profit margin for some games -- particularly subscription-based games, can be massive.

That said, the fault doesn't lie with the sellers here, it lies with idiotic buyers who have shown that they're willing to part with large sums of cash to play games. The game industry, like all others, is essentially a giant auction, except gamers don't know when to stop bidding. "Well, it's only $5 more than the last game.. that's not so much."

To be fair, the other factor that's supposed to balance out prices -- competition -- is non-existant for games. There's no equivalent game in a different package the way you can pick Coke vs. Pepsi vs. Sam's Choice. Imagine if you could only drink soda with your friends if you were drinking the same brand. That's the video game industry.

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[Radtoo]

Well, Gamers don't care about what might happen. Fact is, most games with DLC haven't been cheaper. DLC couldn't be resold. These two already make DLC very unattractive, but all the hassle with installing it and such that may occur and being nagged to buy more inside the game world (as some games with DLC do) also reduce enjoyment of the actual game.

So, plain and simple, we haven't come close to any sane form of DLC so far and you'd first have to show that it has significant advantages for the players, before you can label people "alarmist". At the moment, it is just an undesirable thing from the perspective of a consumer.

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[nine-times]

I think it depends on the DLC. Some DLC is the sort of thing where they release a good full game, and then after it's released the developers create new content. Some feels more like they made a game, cut a bunch of stuff out, sold you the incomplete game for full price, and then are selling the rest of the game for additional money. And then some DLC is crap like, "Buy a slightly different skin for this character for $3!"

Some DLC is good, but some of it gives gamers good reason to be cynical.

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[Anonymous Coward]

You think the price will be lowered because of DLC? Who's being unrealistic now, eh?

Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community...

[spleendamage]

I think it depends.

Personally, I have never bought anything labeled as "DLC" for a game I had previously paid full price (or close to full price) for because I never felt like I absolutely needed to have that extra set of armor, or quest or whatnot.

However, I have purchased "expansions" to many games. Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency was quite possibly the best game expansion I have ever purchased.

How this is differentiated even in my own mind is not immediately clear.

I also have purchased "unlockables" in games that asked for no money upfront to play: Like Riot Games' League of Legends.

So I guess I am saying, the presentation matters (to me, anyway) and also the amount invested up front or in total for one set of collective game experiences probably has some kind of perceived value maximum IMHO.

what about later?

[Anonymous Coward]

assuming this works, what would it mean when you want to play the game 5 or 10 years down the line, and can't find or access the content anymore?

Re:what about later?

[WillyWanker]

THIS. And it's the fundamental problem with DLC. You never really own it. You can't resell it. If you need to reinstall the game you have to download it all over again. Sorry, but this is lame. I have boxes of computer games from the last decade and beyond. Any of them I can pop into my computer and play, in full, at any time. I don't need to worry about the authentication servers. I don't need to worry about if the DLC download server is still up and running. And the game is MINE. I own it. I can sell it, or keep it, or do anything else with it I want. Try doing anything with DLC. You can't.

Why should paying customers have to lose all their rights to games they buy? It's retarded. And I won't have any part of it. If you try to sell me an unfinished game with DLC I'm not gonna buy it. I don't care if it's the best game ever made. It's as simple as that.

Better strategy...

[Anonymous Coward]

If your company is losing money, try these 3 easy steps:

1. Stop spending money on anti-piracy strategies that will never work
2. Try lowering the price to what the consumer will actually pay for it. Cuz it ain't $60 for an 8 hour game...
3. If your company is STILL losing money, then you're clearly in the wrong business. (maybe try writing DRM software lol)

already doing this... badly

[DaveGod]

They're already doing this, in the wrong way that they can only be expected to implement it: selling half-finished buggy crap at full price then charging for patches + content that they took out from the original game and calling it "DLC". I'm not against DLC in principle, it has excellent potential IMHO, but rather how it is often being implemented in practice.

Also, I'm not going to buy half a singleplayer game unless I can get the second half as soon as I've completed the first. Just like I don't watch half a movie or read half a book. I get "into" a game and play it a lot, then drop it and maybe have a run around a year or two later. The games that I'll pick up for long sessions with long breaks are few and far between (only one I can think of is Civ).

Multiplayer games however, this could work. I find:

- MP games often come out with too much content for people to get properly into, resulting in a long lead time of people being inexperienced with the levels.

- related to above, many people tend to pick a few favourites and just ignore other maps, even if they're still quite good. These maps may offer more value if introduced when they are adding freshness as the old favourites are getting a bit tired.

- the high initial price puts people off because MP games are "high risk" - good balance is hard to achieve.

- related to above, enjoyment of a MP game isn't only related to the quality of the game itself, but the quantity (and quality) of other players.

Most of the MP games I've got really into have stagnated from lack of fresh content as the game gets "old". Often these games go on for years longer thanks to some good modding, though fan made maps rarely fare so well.

Re:already doing this... badly

[VGPowerlord]

Multiplayer games however, this could work. I find: ...

Most of the MP games I've got really into have stagnated from lack of fresh content as the game gets "old". Often these games go on for years longer thanks to some good modding, though fan made maps rarely fare so well.

Strangely, Valve has combated this in Team Fortress 2, but Valve hasn't try to monetize it. The latest (11th major) update came out last week with 4 new maps, 4 new Engineer weapons, and 38 new Engineer achievements. This is the last of TF2's nine class updates. Also, fan made maps are quite popular, and some even make it into the base game distribution during updates (ctf_turbine, cp_fastlane, cp_egypt, cp_junction, arena_watchtower, pl_hoodoo, cp_frieght, and cp_coldfront are the ones I can think of).

- MP games often come out with too much content for people to get properly into, resulting in a long lead time of people being inexperienced with the levels.

TF2 only started with only 7 maps comprising 3 (4 actually) game types, and no unlockable weapons or items.

TF2 today has (if I'm counting right) 34 maps (26 Valve-created maps, 8 community-created maps) comprising 7 (8 actually) game types, 34 unlockable weapons (27 Valve-created replacement weapons, 7 community-created replacement weapons (Medic and Spy don't have any yet)), and 49 hats/misc items (30 Valve-created hats/misc items (3 per class, and 3 generic), 19 community-created hats/misc items (2 per class, but Medic has 3)). Note: I'm ignoring the 10 specialty hats/misc items and 2 reskinned weapons that aren't randomly dropped.

Valve is also planning on adding the winners of the Polycount Contest to the game... they were supposed to announce the winners sometime this week, but that announcement was subject to Valve Time.

- related to above, many people tend to pick a few favourites and just ignore other maps, even if they're still quite good. These maps may offer more value if introduced when they are adding freshness as the old favourites are getting a bit tired.

Certain maps in TF2 are disliked. tc_hydro seems like a good map on the surface, and is one of three maps that has a developer commentary. Valve clearly put a lot of effort into it. However, it is easily the most stalemate-prone map in the game, which in turn makes it unpopular.

As for the new maps, the people on the OCRTF2 servers, which I'm an admin on, have already chosen maps they like and maps they don't. For instance, plr_hightower is disliked by some... it's a relatively small map and has this tendency for one team to steam-roll the other. pl_upward seems to be well liked. cp_coldfront is a map that we already had on our servers in its release candidates (Valve adds community maps in some updates, cp_coldfront was added in this update), and it... can be good or bad, depending on the teams. pl_thundermountain, I'm not sure about as we don't seem to play it as often as the others; I thought it was interesting, though, even if the map does sometimes get stopped before it reaches the final stage.

- the high initial price puts people off because MP games are "high risk" - good balance is hard to achieve.

TF2 has the advantage of being part of the Orange Box. OB had an MSRP of $50 at launch in late 2007, and has an MSRP of $30 today. It also includes all of HL2 (original plus both episodes), Portal, and TF2. On Steam, TF2 alone sells for $20... but a boxed copy from Amazon sells for $9.99. The boxed copy needs to be registered to a

Re:already doing this... badly

[VGPowerlord]

I forgot to mention, TF2 started with 10 achievements and now has 364 achievements.

Re:already doing this... badly

[DaveGod]

Yeah I've got >250 hours sunk into TF2, and it's nearly the exception that proves the rule, so to speak. But, I didn't refer to it due as personally I think TF2 just about always makes for a bad example - it's just freakishly exceptional.

It came out in a ridiculously good deal (Orange Box), standalone version seemed to be very cheap on Steam quite quickly and Valve have given away a crazy amount of free content. I can only assume Valve either see the game as valuable to the Steam platform (so making a "loss" on it, or less profit than they could, is worthwhile as indirectly making even more money through other Steam sales), or perhaps their devs just love it and do stuff in their free time.

I just don't think it is reasonable to use it as a standard that other devs should try to attain. My point was devs could do similar but charge for the extra content, it's not really fair to back that up by pointing to the success of TF2 where there was no charge.

Is it so hard?

[agent_vee]

Make a good game and sell it at a reasonable price and people will buy it. Don't worry about those "lost" sales from people pirating the game, most of them wouldn't have bought the game anyways.

Re:Is it so hard?

[Ash-Fox]

Don't worry about those "lost" sales from people pirating the game, most of them wouldn't have bought the game anyways.

You'd be surprised. Effective copy protection can make it more difficult to pirate and thus easier to get it legitimately. See how Egosoft did it with X3: Reunion, pirates had to physically disconnect their optical disc drives to get it to work, meanwhile legitimate users could download it from steam and play or purchase it from a shop.

Prince of Persia: Epilogue

[Aphoxema]

They're already pulling this shit. The new Price of Persia game doesn't really end and it is painfully obvious it's that way to sell you the "DLC", which is essentially the ending of the game. I got the game for 14, I would have murdered someone if I paid 60 and had to pay another 10 to witness the climax. For the PC version you can't even buy "Epilogue".

Fucking whores.

Get more comments... $.035 ea

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading this, the bottom next to "Reply" says "Get 42 More Comments... For a Price"

I think they need to accept piracy.

[fredjh]

Don't get me wrong, I think piracy is wrong and I have never heard anyone give me a valid justification for pirating games, but it seems to me that it's more worthwhile to concentrate on providing the best content than it is to screw the honest customers with annoying DRM schemes that sometimes limits the honest users ability to enjoy the game.

I think, like the recent RIAA article pointed out, it's not worth the time or effort.

On top of that, you have to ask who, ultimately, pays for the lawyers and the DRM technology? I've always hated the thought that I'm paying for the technology that limits what I can do with the software I've legally purchased.

DLC gets pirated too

[Flentil]

I can see by his picture that he's an old dude and by his statements he seems pretty out of touch with this century. Someone who works for the old dude should inform him that every bit of DLC ever released, like any software, is made available by pirates immediately, so that people with pirated copies of games can easily 'complete' them with the missing DLC bits. Horse armor for Oblivion, Dragon Age expansion areas, new towns and dress-up clothes for The Sims3...these are just some examples. All DLC gets pirated, What this man plans to do, really, is just annoy the paying customers who expect to get a full game when they pay for it. If he really wanted to improve gamers experience and build goodwill, he should go the opposite route and abolish DLC for his games, releasing new content at intervals for free, like they did last century before DLC-for-money caught on. As usual, he should look at what Valve is doing. They are doing it (mostly) right, and always have.

Re:DLC gets pirated too

[Dan667]

Value went the make their Customers happy route with Team Fortress 2 and the game is still selling today.

Re:DLC gets pirated too

[stewbacca]

As usual, he should look at what Valve is doing. They are doing it (mostly) right, and always have.

Ironically enough, when my internet went out last week, I was unable to play Half Life 2, because it couldn't connect via steam. But I bought the game on cd and installed it from that. I shouldn't have to have a steam check. So if that's "good" drm, I don't want to see bad drm.

haha

[Charliemopps]

Check out the latest Dragonage torrent with all the down loadable content and expansions included. The only way to prevent piracy is to make and MMO and actually charge for the service of using the servers. Give the game away for FREE (omg) and then actually provide services in return for money. *GASP* There are dozens of indie games out there right now making money this way. It's good for everyone involved, because if the developer gets $15 for every month the consumer plays their game, they are certainly going to try and make sure there are many months of game to play.

Re:haha

[stewbacca]

Actually, I wouldn't feel that bad if I were to get the PC version off of a torrent, because I already own the PS3 version. Not saying it's right, just feels less wrong.

Oh god.

[HalAtWork]

I'm so glad I kept all my games (including my pile of shame), I have a good stockpile to keep me going until this crap blows over.

Yes, Shareware was the same sort of concept, except in that case you downloaded a third of the game, and then had a choice of a physical or digital copy. What they're proposing here is they sell you 1/3rd of the game on physical medium, and then tie the rest with DRM to a console that could possibly fail and an account that could possibly be inaccessible in the future when they shut down support for "legacy hardware".

I'm just glad I can still get to world 8 on my copy of Super Mario Bros 3, and the second castle in Symphony of the Night isn't going anywhere either.

Wolfenstein Enemy Territory

[Anonymous Coward]

I still play this game on an active server, every week. That is how an un-finished game should be released.

Unfinished games?

[CherniyVolk]

I just recently got an iPhone. Took a look at the app store, saw a cool gun application. It allows you to disassemble the weapons, fire them even has an Uzi with a setting that resembles x-ray so you can see the internal parts moving. I thought it was a cool app, bought it.

It only comes with one crappy gun. The other guns, cost another dollar each. I felt cheated, had this been a physical product from WalMart, I would have immediately drove to the store and returned it and got my money back (IT industry needs to do something about this, products need to be refunded if the customer is not satisfied.). I bought one or two extra guns, but I won't anymore... mostly curious about my new iPhone, mostly curious about this new environment is the only reason I did it... the new guns were nothing "new".

I recently stopped playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The game sucks, even if it were "k-rad", I still wouldn't be playing it. They want to charge me for a handful of new maps. I already bought the game, it's their business to keep me playing and recommending it to my friends. I'm not going to foot the bill of keeping their game on the top of the charts... not only do they want me to play more, they want me to pay more to do so? Seems underhanded to me, the audacity of those guys. It works like this, I'll buy the game initially but it's your expense to encourage me to continue playing it, or buying sequels. Because they wanted to charge me for those new maps (two of them weren't even new but ported from old CoD releases), I promptly uninstalled the game and threw the discs in the trash.

Now, subscription games are different. There's continuity, longevity and immersion justifying perpetuity with most subscription games to date, MMORPGs for all I'm aware of. Most importantly, it's understood that the game is in continuity and so we agree to pay a subscription fee to participate in the virtual reality. There is no continuity or longevity in most First Person Shooter games, specifically Call of Duty MW2 which is a classic FPS game. Most importantly, it's understood that we buy the game and that's it, the clock starts ticking before boredom sets in. First day I installed Call of Duty MW2, I beat the single player part... the multi-player part got boring less than a month later because the maps are few, and no one seemed to be customizing anything like in the days of Unreal Tournament and Quake. I didn't like the network architecture but that's a different thread.

So initial conditions of agreement and what I expect plays a major role in whether I will "purchase" additional content for a peace of software.

Re:Unfinished games?

[mjwx]

I recently stopped playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The game sucks, even if it were "k-rad", I still wouldn't be playing it. They want to charge me for a handful of new maps.

That's why Activision got so upset at the PC. This just will not fly with PC gamers and we invented the expansion pack. Sell us a full game, if it's good enough we'll pay a little for a lot of extra content (ye olde expansion pack), Battlefield 1942 and 2 had two expansion packs which added quite a bit. When I bought Starcraft Broodwar, it had 25 extra missions, days of entertainment for A$30 in 1999 dollars.

But console players are a different breed. They will pony up $10 in proxy MicroSony points for a single map and maybe a shiny bauble without a second thought. That is the cause of the DLC problem, Microsoft will not let you give away content for free over XBL. Valve tried to give Xbox players the same free content as PC players but MS shot that idea down pretty quick and said they had to charge 400 MS points for it. So essentially your being done three ways, 1 for an unfinished game, 2 for the DLC to finish that game and 3. for XBL to download the DLC.

The idea the codemasters is talking about is already here, embedded in the very notion of DLC.

Game Infarcer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ship an unfinished game?

Game Infarcer (a parody run in Game Informer's april issue) actually ran an article on this a few years ago.

I think it was something about the next Madden game offering DLC to allow the ball to be inflated, also I think they offered an 'offensive line' pack, in case your center couldn't keep the defense off your QB.

Works for online games not local/console games

[Anonymous Coward]

More then half the console systems are not on a network or have HDs large enough to support unfinished games. No one wants to keep installing new games, or replacing old ones because they have so many. Good idea for computers, bad for consoles. it will not work.

Re:CmdrTaco is a cheap hooker...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's only applicable if he was paying to suck cmdrtaco's dick.

It depends

[DeadDecoy]

I think it depends on the genre. Telltale Games does pretty well with their games, but that's because the point-click adventure genre works well when split across multiple episodes. For shooters or mmo's on the other hand, I'd be kind of annoyed having to shell out 2$ a weapon with a different skin and tweaked stats. Ultimately, I'd have to evaluate it based on how much entertainment I might get for my buck. That's why I might shell out 10$ for a DLC episode that has 5-10 hours of content but ignore all of the gear or map addons. This is probably why people flock to mmo's too. They are essentially paying 10$ for a large dynamic world/dlc and getting their entertainment out of it; albeit obsessive compulsive level-grinding entertainment.

On a side note, I find books are the most cost effective form of entertainment.

Do this instead :

[unity100]

Sell us an ENGINE with one storyline/episode, in FULL.

put out new storylines/episodes as time goes by, and sell those to us, as DLCs.

do not sell us half finished, half assed games to rip off money like base swindlers.

Re:Do this instead :

[Radtoo]

Theoretically right, but we will not have any way of assessing if the engine is worth the money unless it is open to 3rd parties for development as well.

If that's not a thing that works out for you, instead of DLC, sell us games, as you always did, because we don't want to pay in the hope future games for a certain engine will be good.

ORLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be working for Ubisoft. There still aren't a good cracked version of the newest Silent Hunter. The one you see on torrent sites only contain the tutorial. This is almost half an year later now.

You need better torrent sites... Silent.Hunter.5.Battle.of.the.Atlantic.PROPER.READNFO-ViTALiTY

Not really

[Sycraft-fu]

The amount they paid was pathetically low on average. Under $10. that works out to a couple bucks a game. All the people patting themselves on the back for that are silly. Hell I bought World of Goo when it came out for $20 and considered it money well spent.

The humble indy bundle actually proved what a bunch of cheapskates people can be when given the option. Many people thought they were being generous, but didn't bother to think about how little they were really paying in.

Re:Not really

[nine-times]

The amount they paid was pathetically low on average. Under $10. that works out to a couple bucks a game.

That's probably a couple bucks a game more than they would have made without the bundle, and a couple bucks a game can add up. So by running this promotion, these developers walked away with a couple of hundred thousand dollars that they probably wouldn't have made otherwise. Not much to complain about.

Game devs WILL sell me what I want, or I won't buy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've gotten tired of the industry's whining and sneaky tactics. I can't go buy a game without worrying what kind of fucking malware will be installed, whether it be hidden device drivers or mandatory phone home software. This is not a compromise. You game developers/publishers will sell me what I want: complete games that don't contain malware and are optimized for my platform. If you cannot do this, I will not buy your game. If it is a "must-play", I will buy it used to specifically avoid supporting you. I do not give a shit about you, or your ill-conceived right to control everything forever, and I won't support the third-party malware venders who infect these games with software that I (the customer) do not want.

If you want to score points with me and encourage me to buy your future products, you will release the source code to your older games after some time.

That is all.

Downloadable content is the way to go.

[jim03]

Downloadable content is definitly the way to go. By breaking a game into chapters and giving it to users a piece at a time you could help deter pirating. By having the game broken apart into episodes you force pirates to do a lot more work. Each episode has to be cracked, uploaded to pirate area, then distributed to users. A user will then have to install it on their system, hope then it won't bring a long any unwanted nonsense and won't have any conflicts or overwrite their saved games. where is a user getting it from a place like Steam would have it downloaded automatically as soon as its available. I think that this convenience factor could do to games what iTunes did for music. On another note I also think that having a game in chapters might make it more enjoyable. I know that when I get a new game that I savagely jump into to it for hours on end until I finish it. This leads to me not really get the most out of the game. I don't take the time to fully enjoy it. Usually some where around hour 18 I really start to hate it (because no one can enjoy doing anything for 18 hours straight) and my only goal becomes to beat it as soon as possible. Having it spread out will give it to me in nice size doses that I am able to savor.

Shutting off multiplayer

[tepples]

Do you not buy games that are part of a series?

If the old game's multiplayer server gets shut off once the sequel comes out, then yes.

If books only came bundles in "complete" series for $50 then deciding which books to invest in would be just as much of a pain as it currently is for (most) video games.

Textbooks tend to run for such a price.

Re:Shutting off multiplayer

[Daetrin]

"If the old game's multiplayer server gets shut off once the sequel comes out, then yes."

Congratulation on presenting an argument completely orthogonal to the discussion at hand. If multiplayer is important to you then you're not going to be any multiplayer game whose sever has been shut down, regardless of why that happened or whether it was part of a series or not.

"Textbooks tend to run for such a price."

And that would be reason #2, or possibly reason #3, as to why i don't buy textbooks for recreational reading. For people who actually have to use textbooks, ie students, i'm sure they'd love a system where you could buy each chapter independently for (1/# of chapters) of the original price, at least if the prof could be convinced to provide a list of which chapters were specifically needed for the class. Or if it was delivered digitally and they could just download the chapter they needed as soon as the reading from it was announced. Again, you're providing counterarguments that seem to have nothing to do with the theoretical value of splitting a large item up into small chunks available for a fraction of the price.

Re:Shutting off multiplayer

[tepples]

If multiplayer is important to you then you're not going to be any multiplayer game whose sever has been shut down

It's not that the server has been shut down as much as that the server may soon be shut down. And the "may" is a "will" in the case of several well-known franchises that I've avoided for this reason, such as Madden NFL.

Re:Shutting off multiplayer

[zero_out]

You never know. Someone might create a server emulator. Take Everquest for example. It's a game that is still around today, with new expansions being sold, yet a friend of mine recently told me about a group of people developing a server emulator (www.eqemulator.net). The game servers haven't even been shut down, yet people have been developing their own servers for years.

On a console, you don't own the game

[tepples]

There is a reason I chose to save my money to purchase my first game console 20 years ago

On a console, you don't really own the game because the console cryptographically blocks you from applying a mod to the game. This means you can't play online once the publisher has switched off the matchmaking server, and in a lot of games, you can't even make new maps to play on.

Fuck you and your shitty games

[X.25]

Dear game companies, when you make a game worth paying for, people will stop pirating it.

I've been playing games since ZX-81/Spectrum days. I will never forget the first day I've played "Another World" on Amiga. There were like 7-8 people in front of TV at the end, everyone was yelling and screaming about ideas on how to get over some obstacle. Everyone wanted to try playing it as well.

That was a fucking game.

You are not making games now. You are making special effects.

Just donated 4 US$ for a Firefox add-on, that does nothing special, but I often use it. I wouldn't give 4 US$ for one of your new shitty games, like "Prince of Persia" that I saw at friend's place. But I used to pay 30 US$/month for 2 EVE online accounts for more than 2 years, and never complained. Guess why...

Re:Fuck you and your shitty games

[stewbacca]

Dear game companies, when you make a game worth paying for, people will stop pirating it.

=

That's just stupid. The playability of a game is dictated by its cost? A game is more or less fun depending on if it costs $60 or $30?

You'd play a pirated version of a $60 game that wasn't worth paying for? If it wasn't worth paying for, then why would you waste your time playing it in the first place???

What will this do the the Rental community?

[Anaerin]

Things like GameFly, BlockBuster and the like, have a very lucrative trade in renting games, and for a very good reason. Most games these days can be completed within a few hours. The better ones are more like days (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Borderlands), or have much greater replay value ("[/w/s]*Rock Band[/s/d]" or "[/w]+ Hero([/s/d]", for example), but the rest can be dealt with in a day or two and put up on a shelf never to be seen again. For these games, it is much better value to rent the game, as you pay 1/30th of the price of the retail copy, but get 100% of the enjoyment. But doing these kind of shenanigans will only break that market, and make purchasers much more picky about what they buy and play.

Getting published?

[tepples]

Most of my games are now on the Wii

So if a developer has finished a PC game, how do you recommend that the developer find a publisher to make a Wii port?

Re:Getting published?

[StuartHankins]

Well, there's no simple answer for that unfortunately. That's one of the reasons consoles' offerings define the platform. There's no way (of which I'm aware) of migrating code easily from one system to another.

In addition, the licensing fees / different coding environment etc that make coding a game challenging present hurdles for someone wanting to release on multiple platforms. It seems a lot of the developers (unless they're huge) have to choose a single platform.

For some people, the convenience of a console is more important than having the absolute best graphical experience, having nearly unlimited input options, customization / hacking, etc, and those "islands" their platform creates causes developers to have to choose their target platform wisely.

Now if there were a smoother way to translate a game from PC / platform to another, THAT would bring in a pretty huge surge of gaming options which would enable more publishers to reach larger audiences. Whoever does this is going to pocket some serious money.

Re:Getting published?

[tepples]

Now if there were a smoother way to translate a game from PC / platform to another

It's not the smoothness that I'm concerned about as much as the fact that the console makers tend to frown on micro-businesses in the first place. Slashdot user CronoCloud likes to recommend making a PC game as a "pilot" and shopping it around to publishers, much as a TV production company makes a pilot episode in hopes of getting a series picked up by a network.

When a game gets like 5 to 8 years old

[Orion Blastar]

just open source the engine that runs it, because quite possibly you wrote a new one.

Look at the Doom and Quake engines, etc Doomsday is a nice example of that and you can take the WADs from your old ID games, even if they only played on DOS with a PC and Doomsday can be ported to other platforms besides Windows. eDuke32 is a Duke Nukem engine and you can buy the DOS Duke Nukem program for $5.99 if you lost your old floppy or CD, or if you are new to it, just pay the $5.99 and use the data files to play under eDuke32 then.

I bought my son a Sega Genesis 40 game collection for the Playstation 3. He likes them. Heck on the PC and other platforms there are emulators but you need to buy the ROMs. This Sega Genesis 40 game PS3 sounds like such a good idea it should be sold for Windows, Linux, and the Mac OS X systems. This way old games can still be played on modern systems. So even if the company does not open source it, they can still sell the old version to modern systems and use an emulator or something and then a whole new generation of fans enjoy it.

I grew up with the Atari 2600, a member of the IMagic Numb Thumb club and won an Activison Chopper Command contest at a local store and got a poster for it. I was so close to beating the Swordquest series until Atari canceled it for some reason, otherwise I would have qualified for the main contest to see if I could win the prizes that are objects used in the game with gold, silver, and gems to make them. I heard a rumor this was one Jack Trermiel left Commodore and bought out Atari and then to save money canceled the contest. I had an Atari 2600 ready to buy an Atari 800 computer until I learned how Atari treated their programmers and fired a lot of them and they formed IMagic and Activsion, and some went to Mattel and others to Coleco to make a system to compete with Atari. So when the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga 1000 came out I bought the Amiga 1000 and never regretted it. I got an Amiga 500 that replaced it and run my Bard's Tale on it, and hope Western RPG games like that make a comeback as every RPG (or most) are Eastern based Japanese Anime stuff, so when I ask Gamestop for Nintendo DS games that are RPGs based on D&D and stuff, does not exist they claimed. Man I want to learn Nintendo DS programming and write my own RPG using Western European and US themes in them. Paladins, Warriors, Bards, Clerics, ect. :)

Right idea, bad interpretation

[Anonymous Coward]

We're more likely to see this in the PS4/Xbox720/WiiToo

The premise is simple, pick a game, any game that you want to try. It will download for free and give you the "demo" mode which the actual game binary will only contain enough for roughly an hour of play.

If you are bored and hate it after an hour, you don't feel like you wasted your money.

Do you now how many times I played the Warcraft 2 demo before I bought it? Lots. Same with Doom, Duke3D, and a few other shareware titles.

If you want more you go "Purchase the next installment" and it will again download the next chapter in the game. It could wholesale replace the demo, or simply download new content into the existing game.

If you get bored then, you're not committed to keep buying. If you still like it, keep going.

However there is a small problem with this.

This is only suitable for long-form play. eg MMORPG, RPG, Action/Adventure types of games where there is a storyline to follow. This wouldn't fly for things like Sports titles (NHL/NBA/NFL,etc) since the games never actually change from year to year, only the names of the players and a few quirks of the game engine.

It wouldn't work for non-story driven sandbox games since there is nothing to actually keep buying. eg, Simcity, The Sims, Spore. In these cases it just makes the game look utterly unpolished, incomplete or buggy as hell. You can get DLC for these games, but it doesn't add any value to the game. They're simply "expansion sets" which add a bunch of content that should have came with the game in the first place. You can create GOOD DLC for these games, but there has a to be a phenomenal improvement. Not just "look more clothes and chairs." The Sims 2 was better at this than the first Sims (which was largely just more-of-the-same.)

To put the shoe on the other foot though. MMO games already do this.

They need to get more organized, but there's really three classifications in MMO's of DLC:
1) Game-Story-World
Where purchasing this expansion opens another area. This keeps bots and pirates out.
2) Premium/Cash shop
Things like pets/mounts, character customization, clothing, etc. Unfortunately these types of DLC's are fake. The content is already in the game and the company just chooses to gauge you for more money to be able to use them. This is fine where the additional content consumes more server resources (eg pets being "another player" essentially,) but asinine when it's for simply player customization. God who wants to play a fricken game where 90% of the players have the same default appearances.
3) Subscription fee/service fee
This is for use of parts of the game that cost the company running the game effectively zero, but are value-added to the player. In Pay to Play games, this is the subscription fee. In Free to play games, this is often a "premium" service that takes off some abuse controls. eg, paying for the service lets you level twice as fast, store twice as many items, open shops, etc. Basically not paying for this service only gives you half the game.

Nothing wrong with making money, however if you nickel and dime the player too much(5$ to change your eye color WTF,) they will just boycott any further purchases. As mentioned on other forums, if you can't buy it with the in-game gold/points/cash that you can earn inside the game, then it should be something that actually is of significant value to the player that is OPTIONAL to enjoying playing the game.

In the one game I play, a (premium cash shop) mount is optional, but the goddamn quests have you walking (about 20 real minutes) from one side of the game continent to the other. You can't buy mounts in the game otherwise.

Unfinished games = suck

[uremog]

The problem with this is that companies will see: "Sell unfinished games", "charge micropayments" and sell their unfinished game for $50, then charge you extra for the finished game. Then complain about piracy. I think anything that promotes selling an unfinished game is not a good idea. No one will want to buy a crap game and hope it'll get better when you finish and sell the rest of the content.

Rod Cousens doesn't fully understand the issue.

[Dr.Boje]

My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games

I'm pretty sure that's what most of them are doing now. Things certainly are nothing like they were in the 8-, 16-, and even 32-bit days; back then, it was a little hard to find a truly shitty game and even the mediocre games were worth at least one play-through. Nowadays, they are so focused on fighting these different wars ("piracy", second-hand market, etc.), making games look good, and turning an easy profit that I actually think they forgot what goes into making a good game. There are still some truly great games here and there, but overall the bar has been lowered.

Personally, I don't think people really started pirating until after getting burned too many times by greedy publishers looking to milk their cash cows. So, instead of being smart and going back to making games that are actually worth paying money for, they waste all this money on stupid shit. As a result, people are a lot more careful with their money when considering purchasing a game and a lot of them don't see a problem with trying before buying, even if it is technically illegal, because they no longer have good reason to trust these publishers..

Long story short... MAKE BETTER GAMES!

Re:Rod Cousens doesn't fully understand the issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

I totally agree. Used to be games required imagination and creativity. Now its all about how good it looks on the latest graphics card. They figured out how to make games LOOK good. Now they need to get back to basics and make them fun/replayable/deep. etc. Make games good enough to make pirates buy a copy AFTER they finished playing it. Thats when you know you have made a good game.

Re:Rod Cousens doesn't fully understand the issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Things certainly are nothing like they were in the 8-, 16-, and even 32-bit days; back then, it was a little hard to find a truly shitty game and even the mediocre games were worth at least one play-through.

And just what are these kids doing on my lawn anyways?

I grew up in the SNES era, and I really haven't seen any real drop in quality. If anything, games are MORE consistent in quality. Maybe not as innovative, but that's largely a product of the times. I.E. when gaming (or any format) is new there's a lot of easily mined creativity available. As the years pass, it is harder to come up with something novel, since more stuff has been done before.

But the mindset of "X was better in my day" is almost always false.

Re:Rod Cousens doesn't fully understand the issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having to incrementally download content would also kill the immersion-factor, and I ditto the comments that say you will end up paying more for what you would originally have gotten. e.g. Doom under this system - have a pistol, want a shotgun? Pay for it...

Re:Rod Cousens doesn't fully understand the issue.

[Chowderbags]

There were plenty of shitty games for the 8, 16, and 32 bit eras (The Angry Video Game Nerd site has quite a few). The difference is that many reviewers have gotten cozy with the game publishers and will review unfinished games and trust all the assurances they get that the games will be fixed up before release. Look at Empire: Total War as an example of a game released with not just minor bugs here and there, but game crashing bugs, abysmal pathfinding, and an AI that couldn't transport troops over the ocean at all (which sort of matters when dealing with an era called "The Age of Sail"). Reviews in magazines were almost all over 90%. It seems like the only people that are willing to review a game negatively are people who do nothing but review negative aspects of a game (Zero Punctuation), which is also not very helpful. I'd prefer a magazine that actually went out and bought a retail copy of a game and played that. None of this trusting it to get better, just accurately document if the game that actually happens is shit or not.

Dungeons and Dragons Online works well

[greyfeld]

I don't know that Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) really fits the description, but I've found the model to be very interesting. Basically, you can download the basic game for free and create two online characters from a limited number classes. If you want additional content, characters, bank slots, potions, etc, you can buy them at the online store. If you want to pay the monthly subscription fee to get it all, you can do that too. The game is pretty cool too. To give it a try, go to www.ddo.com.

re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about factoring in the time-value of money. Paying $60 for a game today costs you more than paying 12 installments of $5 over the course of the year as you can take that $55 saved in the first month and gain interest or put it towards other uses. So in the end if a developer does manage to extract lets say $80 from you over the course of 2 years it could end up being cheaper or equal to paying $60 initially.

The other benefit is if you have grown tired of or would rather put your money towards another game you can stop at any point. If you are happy with your value at $30 you can put the other $30 towards a new game. This would also solve developers problems competing with the used game market.

However, the problem that I see is a developer will give me, lets say, $15 worth of content and then make me wait 2 months before anything new comes out. If I finish that $15 in a week or two and it's a game that I really want to spend more money on, it will become frustrating to have to continually wait for new content.

He's just now coming up with this idea?

[Ceseuron]

My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the concept of selling unfinished games has already been put into practice. That collective group of shitwizards over at EA Games has been churning out unfinished games for a long time, charging full price for them as well as charging for DLC.

Arcades

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, I highly doubt that you've ever spent $60 on an arcade game. Paying a quarter for 3-5 minutes of entertainment seems like a pretty fair trade to me.

Arcades are dead because people don't want to travel away from their living rooms to go to crowded, noisy places. They also don't want to touch the messy joystick that other people have abused, and they don't want to risk getting punched in the face in real life by the guy that they just creamed at Street Fighter 2.

Honestly, it's a shame. I really miss arcades :(

Where did I hear about that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I heard a similar idea some years ago.
It would include a physical device that would detect insertion of actual coins,
and only offer restricted gameplay in exchange for those;
further extension of the game would require additional coins.

The game would also sometimes promote itself by displaying encouraging messages, like

*** INSERT COIN ***

Dear douchebag,

[ravyne]

I don't know if this guy is really that arrogant, or whether he simply chose the most unfortunate phrasing possible, but the notion of selling an "incomplete" experience is complete BS. If you want to sell an expansion, fine. If you want to go episodic, fine. I don't even have a problem if you want to drop an expansion or episode day-and-date with your product's release, but *don't you dare* to hold out on a complete experience when you've just chaged me a full retail price; and *no* you may not sell me 2/3rds of the content for $40 bucks, and the rest as a $20 download -- I know its the same price, but If I buy a box I damn-well better find the whole thing inside.

Sell me new content, sell me new bling, that's all well and good; but don't try to double-dip by selling me content that should have been there in the first place, and don't sell necessary goods or unfair advantages. Heck, sell multi-player access to the pirates as long as you've got some kind of voucher in the box for the first purchaser, as long as Its tied to my account (for travel) and my box (so that the family can play). Bonus points if I can go to your website and release it so it can be transfered to someone else upon sale. Sell online access through download and as little gift-cards at Gamestop, and let users have more than one such "character" account if they wish, just like most MMOs do.

Change yourself

[Internetuser1248]

The great thing about not being interested in any of the things that make game development expensive: flashy graphics, big name publishers, flashy graphics, flashy graphics, is that this debate suddenly becomes a non-issue. As far as I am concerned the games industry can just lie down and die. People in their basements can make excellent games and demand very little money. People with a passion for games make them for themselves to play and then give them to the world for free. I am happy to make games in my basement (well my basement is disgusting, ill use my bedroom) with only the small amount of money I can get from social welfare to keep me alive. Games can be free and DRM can be forgotten about. It is not hard to train your mind away from this magpie like obsession with shiny graphics and lighting effects. It just takes a bit of practice. Join me, forget the DRM debate, forget gaming revenue. On the other hand simply charging a reasonable price for games like steam (specials) works just fine too.

Paying customers - pay more!!

[Rsriram]

Looks like he is suggesting that paying customers be made to pay more while restricting non paying customers from playing the game. That is the only way revenues can increase. But collect more money in small amounts rather than one large transaction.

I am not sure this will "convert" non paying customers to paying customers.

The piracy argument cannot be confused with more revenues. There are arguments for piracy (not me) that it increases the exposure to the game and actually leads to more revenues. If more of your friends are playing pirated Quake, some of you will buy it.

League of Legends

[Anonymous Coward]

League of Legends: Everything gameplay-related is 100% FREE. In fact, you can't even buy the things that make you more powerful directly. They made it so that the only way to buy those things is by gaining points through playing games. You download the game for FREE on their website. There is no subscription fee, and to date I still haven't bought anything. I'm thinking about it, though.

How do they make money? You can buy SKINS for characters only with microtransactions. You can also buy characters, but if you don't want to spend money on them you can just play for a few weeks and buy them with points accumulated from games. The game itself is so good that they probably could have charged for it, but their strategy was consumer-oriented, not profit-oriented.

WILDLY SUCCESSFUL. I am forever going to support Riot Games for making League of Legends.

(Oh, and it's basically DOTA.)

Re:at least civ 5 will be mod open and steam drm t

[mjwx]

at least civ 5 will be mod open and steam drm that way better then most of the other drm carp.

But one unit per tile.

I know we have to deal with the old stack o doom issue but seriously this is insane. It's like saying that because one German turned out to be Kaiser Wilhelm we have to get rid of all Germans.

sex, stupidity and greed - without the sex

[Tom]

Here is a totally new, revolutionary idea: How about you think about the customer first, and your profits second?

What the industry is currently doing is devising new ways to scam people. Plain and simple. They sell you a game that won't even work out-of-the-box? Yeah, that is a certain way to improve your brand recognition. That is a great way to play bait-and-switch, and you can be sure that someone will, even if the original ideas was not to.

By now, I have become very reluctant to buy games, exactly due to all this DLC and extension crap. A long time ago, you could buy a game and play it, and have a full experience. These days, you buy a game but you don't know how much extra you need to do in order to get an actual game. At the very least, these days, you have to download a few patches. Quite a lot of the recent games didn't even work from the install CD, a patch was required just to play the game.

I, for one, am looking forward to the first class action lawsuits following from this, when people buy a game that they can't play because they need to also buy something extra. That's called fraud, plain and simple.

Just like physical books are DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had some books that I really liked, then I lost them, and couldn't read them without buying them again. Bastards!

Dragon Age Origins

[Anonymous Coward]

Dragon Age Origins relies pretty heavily on downloadable content. I got all of it for free when I downloaded the game via bit torrent.

Seriously???

[zerocool6900]

Maybe these bozos should worry about making a descent game before worrying about pirating...Operation Flashpoint was way ahead of its time when it came out...Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising was the worst game I've bought in the entire past two years. Whether your games are being pirated or not is no reason to make a game that bad. Hell the pre-order price was 59.95 within two months I could buy it on Steam for $10. As far as the scheme for DLC is concerned they didn't have any. I still boot it up every now and again to see if they may have done something right but now they have even completely stopped supporting the game. Why should people purchase a half finished game from a company who has shown that instead of finishing a game and providing DLC for it they just give up and move on?

It can if you pirate it

[Rix]

Which, really, I take as the publisher telling me they'd rather I do that.