So that's $100 in sales they've lost right there between you and I.
I can't ever go to consoles as consoles don't run the games I like well. (Decent race sims, turn based strategy games like Gal Civ II, sports sims like Front Office Football etc...)
It's not that hard to keep up to date with system specs. I can run any new game, and my graphics card cost less than $100 a few months ago. My system is 18 months old. While I certainly can't run Crysis at full detail, I can run it at medium, and I'm not really a graphics whore anyway.
But the DRM position is making PC gaming more and more aggravating. I figured with the rise of Steam we'd see an end to Starforce, Securom etc... Instead they're getting more aggressive AND infecting Steam based games as well.
Valve need to seriously stand up and say "NO" if they want to maintain any credibility. The whole point of Steam was it removes the need for the copy protection, because Steam IS the copy protection.
Instead Valve seem to be capitulating to the industry more and more.
Slashdotters are probably more fastidious (not every day I get to use that word) about their systems than most, and are more likely to not want Securom on their systems. So really, if you want GTA IV, but want to keep your system in a known state, then your only option if you want GTA IV is to pirate the game.
When SA came out, my PC wasn't capable of running it. It's very frustrating now I have a PC that can run all current games, that the Securom decision has made GTA IV go from "must purchase" to "never purchase".
I let it slide with Spore and really shouldn't have. (Especially given how disappointing that game was.)
From what I gather GTA IV is a LOT less free than GTA SA was. I've heard that stuff like the sky diving etc... Is no longer in it. So really they've stripped it of a lot of stuff that was in the older version. (NOTE: This is only what I've heard from people with the PS3 and X360 versions.) I get what you're saying with the whole sandbox thing, but ironically the sandbox play is the part that DOESN'T cost them a fortune. The actors, the script etc... That's where the money goes.
And I'm not sure I buy 85 million as the budget. 8.5 maybe.
The fact is though the price point alone is going to deter a lot of users. Now they've saddled it with a DRM mechanism that is garnering more and more notoriety, which will result in even less sales.
I think a lot of it is appeasing idiot shareholders. "What are you doing to stop piracy?" they'll say. Rather than say "nothing" they can say lots of cool sounding words and said idiot shareholder gets a warm fuzzy feeling, unaware the schemes are a joke and completely broken.
In fact I wonder if there's any sort of correlation between choosing draconian DRM and the publisher being a publicly held company?
Still, it'd be nice to be able to make tens of thousands of dollars selling something that's broken like Sony do with Securom. What a business! Have people lined up around the block to buy your broken product.
Yes, I realized after I hit submit the error I made, but really, the developers need to stand up to this crap. I mean the suits may have the power, but without the developers, they have nothing to sell.
On the plus side, in the current financial climate, I should thank them for doing this since I've saved well over $100 this year that I would have otherwise spent on software had it not had ridiculous copy protection.
There is no reason for this crap to be on the Steam version. Nadeo bundled Starforce with Trackmania to start with but ultimately removed it.
Treat me like a thief? Then I'll be one. Piracy offering the better alternative again, as Securom will be neutered on the Reloaded (or whoever) release which will probably be out before the game is in all markets.
When are these idiot developers going to get their heads around this? DRM DOES NOT WORK! All it does is force people who value the contents of their PC to not buy their titles.
I wonder where the tipping point is? Because it's going to come soon I think. Where the number of sales LOST due to the DRM becomes an issue.
If you were going to buy GTA IV, and on this news now won't, please post. I mean they've lost my $50.
"Software Piracy: The friendlier, safer alternative."
Exactly. When a character, in ANY medium, acknowledges the person, whether they be controlling them, merely watching etc... That's breaking the fourth wall. Many games do this. Sonic was one. I've had other games where the character "taps" on the screen.
Just like in movies (first one that springs to mind is Affleck and Damon in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"), if it's done well, it's funny.
I'm just really not sure what the author of this article was trying to get at. It seems like they are grasping at some straws for something to validate some bogus theory they have, missed entirely, and then wrote the article anyway.
If I had mod points I'd mod you purely for the Amiga Power reference. God I miss those guys. Only completely honest games magazine to ever exist. Team 17 once tried to sue them for giving a bad review, their entire argument being "Everyone else liked it".
I don't mind loading screens too much. I remember spending 10-15 minutes loading stuff from tape. I had one game ("Ace" on the Commodore Plus 4) that took 30 minutes to load.
A minor loading delay these days doesn't bother me.
I really don't see the big deal, but then perhaps I don't get as absorbed as some people. I never sit there and when assaulted with a loading screen think "SHIT! I'M PLAYING A GAME!!"
I wonder if it is some guide to how the individual perceives reality, or separates reality from fantasy? Now THAT would have been a much more interesting article than the worthless gibberish linked in the story.
It's all a bunch of pseudo psychobabble anyway. Plenty of games break the fourth wall, but as this poorly written nonsense says there IS no wall. Which is of course nonsense.
Unless the participant is actively acknowledged, that is a fourth wall.
Metal Gear Solid, Snake never looks out of the screen at you and engages you. I can think of plenty of games where the character you play does. Just like there's a fair few movies where a character breaks the fourth wall.
I mean really, what the hell is the point of the article? Writing for the sake of it offering no real insight or cogent, intelligent thought.
The more I think about it, the more I'm amazed that this made it to the front page. Clearly the key is writing an article that appears intelligent but really isn't is the key.
And I've now spent all this time commenting on an utterly worthless and pointless article that serves no purpose other than to give some random guys opinion. An opinion which is utterly ill-informed, ill-conceived, and totally irrelevant to anything.
Ridiculous isn't it. The RIAA are one of the most despised groups in North America now (I want to say the world, but don't know how true that would be), and it's like the software industry looked and thought "WOW! We MUST get a slice of that juicy animosity pie!"
Steam is also broken as well and stuff that is exclusively on there is pirated.
And I bet dollars to donuts Left 4 Dead will be pirated and on torrent sites in under a week to prove that, once again, while Steam IS a great service (I have about 20 titles I've bought from there myself), it's not the ultimate lockdown many seem to think it is.
I "pirated" World of Goo. I downloaded it when a friend raved over it, tried it for five minutes, thought "Is this it?" and deleted it. I wonder what percentage of this "piracy" is actually people just trying the game after hearing about it, since I wouldn't have bothered had someone not raved about it. (I don't even know if there is an official demo available.)
I wouldn't have kept the game even if it had been free.
Far too many companies assume one pirated copy is one lost sale. (Unless you work for Starforce who once claimed one pirated copy was MULTIPLE lost sales.)
My attitude to stuff I've created is so long as you don't pass it off as your own work or make money off it, go nuts and copy it all you want.
I guess a lot of the attitude depends on why you create. Do you do it because you enjoy it? Or for the money? Sure, you can do both, but which is your primary motivator? I think attitudes toward piracy will be influenced by which side of the fence you fall.
No, you are playing a REMAKE of a game. NOT the original. Any SWOS fan I know has no interest in that cheap cash-in on a legend. It's the original game we want. Not some watered down remake. (Just like I'd rather see the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre than the remake.)
And as for Vista... Well all I can say is there is a lovely DOSBOX version packed up with multiple configurations, team options etc... You can download for the PC, and gamepads work just fine with it and it's awesome.
And having played both the PC and Amiga versions, except for the opening music, the PC version is easily as good as the Amiga version.
The sort of games I like (sports sims. As in PROPER sims like Out of the Park Baseball) just don't work on a console.
And FPS and RTS only work well with mouse and keyboard, and if you're hooking them to your console to play them... You may as well just buy a PC.
Not to mention the PC is open. I write a game, I can release it, dead easy. I want to release it for a console I have official hoops I have to jump through.
And finally, I can still play Sensible World of Soccer and Cannon Fodder on my PC. (To name but two classics.) Can't do that on the consoles.
I'll give you the raids, but if killing a boss is something you feel you need to be able to share with someone for some sort of validation as if you've actually achieved something of worth, note or merit...
Saying there's "no reason to play"... Yes, there's no reason to play the thousands of quests designed to be soloed in the game, or simply for the enjoyment of seeing everything you've paid for without paying constantly to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
So that's $100 in sales they've lost right there between you and I.
I can't ever go to consoles as consoles don't run the games I like well. (Decent race sims, turn based strategy games like Gal Civ II, sports sims like Front Office Football etc...)
It's not that hard to keep up to date with system specs. I can run any new game, and my graphics card cost less than $100 a few months ago. My system is 18 months old. While I certainly can't run Crysis at full detail, I can run it at medium, and I'm not really a graphics whore anyway.
But the DRM position is making PC gaming more and more aggravating. I figured with the rise of Steam we'd see an end to Starforce, Securom etc... Instead they're getting more aggressive AND infecting Steam based games as well.
Valve need to seriously stand up and say "NO" if they want to maintain any credibility. The whole point of Steam was it removes the need for the copy protection, because Steam IS the copy protection.
Instead Valve seem to be capitulating to the industry more and more.
Slashdotters are probably more fastidious (not every day I get to use that word) about their systems than most, and are more likely to not want Securom on their systems. So really, if you want GTA IV, but want to keep your system in a known state, then your only option if you want GTA IV is to pirate the game.
When SA came out, my PC wasn't capable of running it. It's very frustrating now I have a PC that can run all current games, that the Securom decision has made GTA IV go from "must purchase" to "never purchase".
I let it slide with Spore and really shouldn't have. (Especially given how disappointing that game was.)
From what I gather GTA IV is a LOT less free than GTA SA was. I've heard that stuff like the sky diving etc... Is no longer in it. So really they've stripped it of a lot of stuff that was in the older version. (NOTE: This is only what I've heard from people with the PS3 and X360 versions.) I get what you're saying with the whole sandbox thing, but ironically the sandbox play is the part that DOESN'T cost them a fortune. The actors, the script etc... That's where the money goes.
And I'm not sure I buy 85 million as the budget. 8.5 maybe.
The fact is though the price point alone is going to deter a lot of users. Now they've saddled it with a DRM mechanism that is garnering more and more notoriety, which will result in even less sales.
I think a lot of it is appeasing idiot shareholders. "What are you doing to stop piracy?" they'll say. Rather than say "nothing" they can say lots of cool sounding words and said idiot shareholder gets a warm fuzzy feeling, unaware the schemes are a joke and completely broken.
In fact I wonder if there's any sort of correlation between choosing draconian DRM and the publisher being a publicly held company?
Still, it'd be nice to be able to make tens of thousands of dollars selling something that's broken like Sony do with Securom. What a business! Have people lined up around the block to buy your broken product.
Yes, I realized after I hit submit the error I made, but really, the developers need to stand up to this crap. I mean the suits may have the power, but without the developers, they have nothing to sell.
On the plus side, in the current financial climate, I should thank them for doing this since I've saved well over $100 this year that I would have otherwise spent on software had it not had ridiculous copy protection.
There is no reason for this crap to be on the Steam version. Nadeo bundled Starforce with Trackmania to start with but ultimately removed it.
Treat me like a thief? Then I'll be one. Piracy offering the better alternative again, as Securom will be neutered on the Reloaded (or whoever) release which will probably be out before the game is in all markets.
When are these idiot developers going to get their heads around this? DRM DOES NOT WORK! All it does is force people who value the contents of their PC to not buy their titles.
I wonder where the tipping point is? Because it's going to come soon I think. Where the number of sales LOST due to the DRM becomes an issue.
If you were going to buy GTA IV, and on this news now won't, please post. I mean they've lost my $50.
"Software Piracy: The friendlier, safer alternative."
I apologize profusely for not having played every single Metal Gear game ever.:)
Out of interest, is it a funny? Wasn't Twin Snakes the one that was sort of a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid? I really don't remember now.
HAHAHA! I wish I had mod points as that's great.
Exactly. When a character, in ANY medium, acknowledges the person, whether they be controlling them, merely watching etc... That's breaking the fourth wall. Many games do this. Sonic was one. I've had other games where the character "taps" on the screen.
Just like in movies (first one that springs to mind is Affleck and Damon in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"), if it's done well, it's funny.
I'm just really not sure what the author of this article was trying to get at. It seems like they are grasping at some straws for something to validate some bogus theory they have, missed entirely, and then wrote the article anyway.
If I had mod points I'd mod you purely for the Amiga Power reference. God I miss those guys. Only completely honest games magazine to ever exist. Team 17 once tried to sue them for giving a bad review, their entire argument being "Everyone else liked it".
I don't mind loading screens too much. I remember spending 10-15 minutes loading stuff from tape. I had one game ("Ace" on the Commodore Plus 4) that took 30 minutes to load.
A minor loading delay these days doesn't bother me.
I really don't see the big deal, but then perhaps I don't get as absorbed as some people. I never sit there and when assaulted with a loading screen think "SHIT! I'M PLAYING A GAME!!"
I wonder if it is some guide to how the individual perceives reality, or separates reality from fantasy? Now THAT would have been a much more interesting article than the worthless gibberish linked in the story.
It's all a bunch of pseudo psychobabble anyway. Plenty of games break the fourth wall, but as this poorly written nonsense says there IS no wall. Which is of course nonsense.
Unless the participant is actively acknowledged, that is a fourth wall.
Metal Gear Solid, Snake never looks out of the screen at you and engages you. I can think of plenty of games where the character you play does. Just like there's a fair few movies where a character breaks the fourth wall.
I mean really, what the hell is the point of the article? Writing for the sake of it offering no real insight or cogent, intelligent thought.
The more I think about it, the more I'm amazed that this made it to the front page. Clearly the key is writing an article that appears intelligent but really isn't is the key.
And I've now spent all this time commenting on an utterly worthless and pointless article that serves no purpose other than to give some random guys opinion. An opinion which is utterly ill-informed, ill-conceived, and totally irrelevant to anything.
Ridiculous isn't it. The RIAA are one of the most despised groups in North America now (I want to say the world, but don't know how true that would be), and it's like the software industry looked and thought "WOW! We MUST get a slice of that juicy animosity pie!"
Idiocy.
Whenever I think of hunting, I always think of this speech from Jeremy in "Sports Night".
Being vegetarian has nothing to do with these acrimonious little fucks.
Love the way they don't point out the number of animals they slaughter themselves every year that they "rescue".
I propose an "Eat a Beef Burger for PETA" day here on the Slash.
Pathedic?
Your spelling is derrible.
Steam is also broken as well and stuff that is exclusively on there is pirated.
And I bet dollars to donuts Left 4 Dead will be pirated and on torrent sites in under a week to prove that, once again, while Steam IS a great service (I have about 20 titles I've bought from there myself), it's not the ultimate lockdown many seem to think it is.
Well I played all of 3 levels before I dumped it.
And if I pirate something and like it, I DO buy it.
There are a few of us out there who legitimately do that and don't just claim it.
Did you not read my post? I didn't even know if there WAS a demo. Friend raved over it. Saw it on a torrent site, gave it a go, deleted it.
I "pirated" World of Goo. I downloaded it when a friend raved over it, tried it for five minutes, thought "Is this it?" and deleted it. I wonder what percentage of this "piracy" is actually people just trying the game after hearing about it, since I wouldn't have bothered had someone not raved about it. (I don't even know if there is an official demo available.)
I wouldn't have kept the game even if it had been free.
Far too many companies assume one pirated copy is one lost sale. (Unless you work for Starforce who once claimed one pirated copy was MULTIPLE lost sales.)
My attitude to stuff I've created is so long as you don't pass it off as your own work or make money off it, go nuts and copy it all you want.
I guess a lot of the attitude depends on why you create. Do you do it because you enjoy it? Or for the money? Sure, you can do both, but which is your primary motivator? I think attitudes toward piracy will be influenced by which side of the fence you fall.
Wife thinks this is despicable.
I think it's hilarious.
No, you are playing a REMAKE of a game. NOT the original. Any SWOS fan I know has no interest in that cheap cash-in on a legend. It's the original game we want. Not some watered down remake. (Just like I'd rather see the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre than the remake.)
And as for Vista... Well all I can say is there is a lovely DOSBOX version packed up with multiple configurations, team options etc... You can download for the PC, and gamepads work just fine with it and it's awesome.
And having played both the PC and Amiga versions, except for the opening music, the PC version is easily as good as the Amiga version.
The sort of games I like (sports sims. As in PROPER sims like Out of the Park Baseball) just don't work on a console.
And FPS and RTS only work well with mouse and keyboard, and if you're hooking them to your console to play them... You may as well just buy a PC.
Not to mention the PC is open. I write a game, I can release it, dead easy. I want to release it for a console I have official hoops I have to jump through.
And finally, I can still play Sensible World of Soccer and Cannon Fodder on my PC. (To name but two classics.) Can't do that on the consoles.
World of Goo is on the PC too.
I'll give you the raids, but if killing a boss is something you feel you need to be able to share with someone for some sort of validation as if you've actually achieved something of worth, note or merit...
Saying there's "no reason to play"... Yes, there's no reason to play the thousands of quests designed to be soloed in the game, or simply for the enjoyment of seeing everything you've paid for without paying constantly to do it.
God you hardcore MMORPG'ers are fucking scary!