This isn't that hard to explain. There is profit to be had. They make more money by selling a new game then by releasing free maps for an old one.
Look, companies only understand one thing: sales. Gamers are notoriously bad at speaking with their wallets. They're a hype driven group. Sure, right now people are all pissed off about this. When L4D 2 comes out, those same people will all be lined up on day 1 forking over money for it and caught up in the hype. That pattern gets repeated over and over again.
When gamers as a whole start acting like intelligent customers and less like drug addicts looking for a quick hit, you'll see companies not do this type of quick sequel. In the mean time, there's no consequences for them to do it, so why wouldn't they?
The last time something like this happened, it was everybody wishing Netscape 4 would die. But it kept shambling across the Internet like a zombie for years.
At this point, IE6 will die when the computers still using it get replaced.
No. If a demo goes wrong, it's a big problem. People take that to mean the game is broken too, and move on.
Age of Conan's disaster of a demo (though they called it an open beta, it was really a demo) turned a lot of sales into non sales VERY quickly with its sheer amount of suck. Marketing is going to look at that and very quickly realize that putting out a demo before your day 1 "gotta have it right away" have made their impulse purchases isn't a very good idea.
Of course, then this whole networking shit hit the fan, and it got pushed back more. I'd expect to see it pretty soon now, though. (The Sins of a Solar Empire demo was out a couple of weeks after the game, IIRC.)
Well, Demigod was made by Gas Powered Games. Some of the other games (Supreme Commander) use the same model. Last I checked, that wasn't made in 1992.
As was mentioned too, Gameranger solved a lot of the problems. The game actually worked if you could get into a game, but the lobby/connection stuff was a real mess. They've been pretty open that they screwed it up.
Some of your comments are silly though. "by a company that thought they could palm off responsibility (and cost) on to their players rather than doing their own hosting. "
Warcraft 3 doesn't have Battle.net actually hosting games either. It's pretty common in RTS games (even AAA ones) to have this stuff done some other way, either by P2P or by having the game host act as the server. That's why you see people who can join games but not host them.
"Using this as an excuse to put off demos, etc. is baloney."
Not really. What kind of moron publisher would put out a demo when connectivity isn't working properly? Do you really want people trying the demo and going "hey, it doesn't work!"?
They did, it was the beta test. The trouble is that not everybody was impacted, and the beta group was not a great cross-section of the entire playerbase. Until they got this fixed, I for example couldn't play, at all. A friend of mine in the US with a similar setup wasn't having problems, except when trying to play me. Now I can, and it's pretty fun.
I followed this throughout the process (because I couldn't play), and a number of times they thought they fixed it but the solution didn't work once they scaled it up to lots of players. If you read the full TFA, the issue was actually something buried pretty deep in the networking library they licensed, it wasn't handling large amounts of traffic. (They had to fly in the lead developer of said library to figure that out, though.)
Stardock are not that experienced when it comes to multiplayer games, so this was something of a mess. They probably should have known better. They didn't. That's just how it goes. They're pretty honest about it, at least.
Quality? AoC was up there with Vanguard for absolute worst game at launch, ever.
I mean, DX10 support was listed as a release feature. AFAIK it's STILL not working properly. Load times were pathetic, crashes were frequent, a lot of stuff flat out didn't work, class balance was hillariously pathetic.
Maybe now they're getting to what the game should have been released as, but AoC and "quality" don't belong in the same sentence.
Probably because for a single player focused game, this doesn't work. What do you need to be connected to a subscription server for? Hell, in a single player game, one of the great benefits is that you can play it *while offline*.
The model works great for a game like WoW, because the client side of the game by itself is basically worthless. It doesn't apply to something like Mass Effect.
Re:Play at your friend's house? Sell a game? Nope.
on
Why Bother With DRM?
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you're talking about a LAN party, not all games really require you to buy a copy for everybody. Demigod (most recent example I have) lets you use one copy for everybody on the LAN. It even says you're allowed to do that in the game's manual.
It seems like it's next to impossible to find out what the policy is before actually buying the game, but some games are friendly towards LAN players.:)
The great flaw in this argument is that you miss one case: People who will pirate because it's cheap, but do have the money and would buy it if the free option didn't exist.
Yes, those people exist. Yes, most people will choose "free" over "not free" any day of the week, especially those who don't consider copyright law to be worth the paper it's printed on.
I mean yes, the numbers thrown around by the BSA are complete nonsense. But the number in most cases for lost sales is > $0. If actually effective DRM existed, you'd see it adopted a fair bit.
Re:Play at your friend's house? Sell a game? Nope.
on
Why Bother With DRM?
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· Score: 1
I know with Impulse (and it wouldn't surprise me if Steam does it too, haven't tried though), you can archive a game. You could then put said archive on a DVD or a USB key, and you have a physical thing you can carry around to install from. So your steps would be: 1. Archive game. 2. Go to Friend's house. 3. Unarchive game. 4. Play game.
But yes, if you want physical media, buying that is better then buying an online copy. That seems to be common sense.
Re:DRM for DVD is bad... DRM from network is evil.
on
Why Bother With DRM?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I've got Stardock games on multiple computers right now, all at the current version, quite easily. I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Hell, the EULA explicitly says you can have it on more then one computer at once (two in Demigod's case).
I'd be interested in this, provided it's on a device I can use for other things (like a Kindle, I don't want a newspaper only reader), and it can get the paper wirelessly every morning. If those two things are true, I'd likely transfer my dead tree subscription over to the digital one, which saves the newspaper the cost of printing and delivering a paper to me every day (which are substantial costs).
Of course, right now the Kindle doesn't really work in Canada at all, so that's a pipe dream for me at the moment.
A movie here is $10, per person. That doesn't include the cost of transportation, or the grossly overpriced food/drinks (not that I buy those anymore).
So if you go to 10 movies a year, alone, and walk? Sure. For me, it'd be more like $200, easily. The TV suddenly looks more competitive, since can show a lot more then 10 movies a year.
"Is it so wrong to want to buy a truly DRM-free game? On a DVD (which I can backup), with no passwords/serials to forget/lose?"
The 82% piracy rate on Demigod last week that took down the entire server infrastructure would suggest that yes, there's a problem with that model. It's not terribly good at keeping the companies who make the games in business.
"4) You WILL be using a brand new mode of distribution: one that did not exist for 100 years. if you are shipping DVDs to Gamestop, you used a distribution that was tested over time, perfected over time, clockwork, covered under bank guarantees, etc. Not digital."
Let's see... Gamestop broke the Demigod street date last week. That's when it's even possible to FIND a new PC game there (good luck at the ones near me).
If Gamestop has this retail thing "perfected", its no wonder everybody wants to get away from that model ASAP.
It took until page 4 for TFA to get to the real point:
"that the only reason that this problem exists is that people purchase the gold, items, accounts or services from these [gold selling] companies. If no-one did it they would not be in business. If you purchase an item or service from one of these companies, you are as guilty as those that are 'botting', 'farming' or 'spamming'."
As long as people want to cheat and buy gold, someone else will find a way to sell it. The buyers often don't care that the money comes from hacked accounts or that it has a negative impact on the game. All they care about is getting something without putting in any effort to earn it.
I know that Blizzard's logs are detailed enough to figure out who a gold selling account transferred gold to. Those are the people that they should be targetting. Spending real money on gold isn't all that appealing if you know that a week later you'll have it all taken away and your account suspended for it.
No. If people are buying gold, it means that they want to feel like they won the game without actually doing anything to get there. It's no different then people using cheats in other types of games.
Slashdot Mirror
I know at least 400 VN board members that pleaded with Mythic for a 21+ and over server for DAOC. We were so damn sick of the 10 year olds playing...
The problem is that half the "10 year olds" are actually 30 and just act 10. Age restricted servers don't block stupid.
This isn't that hard to explain. There is profit to be had. They make more money by selling a new game then by releasing free maps for an old one.
Look, companies only understand one thing: sales. Gamers are notoriously bad at speaking with their wallets. They're a hype driven group. Sure, right now people are all pissed off about this. When L4D 2 comes out, those same people will all be lined up on day 1 forking over money for it and caught up in the hype. That pattern gets repeated over and over again.
When gamers as a whole start acting like intelligent customers and less like drug addicts looking for a quick hit, you'll see companies not do this type of quick sequel. In the mean time, there's no consequences for them to do it, so why wouldn't they?
The last time something like this happened, it was everybody wishing Netscape 4 would die. But it kept shambling across the Internet like a zombie for years.
At this point, IE6 will die when the computers still using it get replaced.
Airport food is expensive and usually bad. It's much easier to pack a lunch or just eat when you arrive then it is to pack a WiFi base station.
"Now instead of studying for my exams and working on my final assignments "
It seems to me that if you were really concerned about studying, you'd have done it before downloading Angels & Demons.
No. If a demo goes wrong, it's a big problem. People take that to mean the game is broken too, and move on.
Age of Conan's disaster of a demo (though they called it an open beta, it was really a demo) turned a lot of sales into non sales VERY quickly with its sheer amount of suck. Marketing is going to look at that and very quickly realize that putting out a demo before your day 1 "gotta have it right away" have made their impulse purchases isn't a very good idea.
Of course, then this whole networking shit hit the fan, and it got pushed back more. I'd expect to see it pretty soon now, though. (The Sins of a Solar Empire demo was out a couple of weeks after the game, IIRC.)
Well, Demigod was made by Gas Powered Games. Some of the other games (Supreme Commander) use the same model. Last I checked, that wasn't made in 1992.
As was mentioned too, Gameranger solved a lot of the problems. The game actually worked if you could get into a game, but the lobby/connection stuff was a real mess. They've been pretty open that they screwed it up.
Some of your comments are silly though. "by a company that thought they could palm off responsibility (and cost) on to their players rather than doing their own hosting. "
Warcraft 3 doesn't have Battle.net actually hosting games either. It's pretty common in RTS games (even AAA ones) to have this stuff done some other way, either by P2P or by having the game host act as the server. That's why you see people who can join games but not host them.
"Using this as an excuse to put off demos, etc. is baloney."
Not really. What kind of moron publisher would put out a demo when connectivity isn't working properly? Do you really want people trying the demo and going "hey, it doesn't work!"?
They did, it was the beta test. The trouble is that not everybody was impacted, and the beta group was not a great cross-section of the entire playerbase. Until they got this fixed, I for example couldn't play, at all. A friend of mine in the US with a similar setup wasn't having problems, except when trying to play me. Now I can, and it's pretty fun.
I followed this throughout the process (because I couldn't play), and a number of times they thought they fixed it but the solution didn't work once they scaled it up to lots of players. If you read the full TFA, the issue was actually something buried pretty deep in the networking library they licensed, it wasn't handling large amounts of traffic. (They had to fly in the lead developer of said library to figure that out, though.)
Stardock are not that experienced when it comes to multiplayer games, so this was something of a mess. They probably should have known better. They didn't. That's just how it goes. They're pretty honest about it, at least.
Quality? AoC was up there with Vanguard for absolute worst game at launch, ever.
I mean, DX10 support was listed as a release feature. AFAIK it's STILL not working properly. Load times were pathetic, crashes were frequent, a lot of stuff flat out didn't work, class balance was hillariously pathetic.
Maybe now they're getting to what the game should have been released as, but AoC and "quality" don't belong in the same sentence.
Probably because for a single player focused game, this doesn't work. What do you need to be connected to a subscription server for? Hell, in a single player game, one of the great benefits is that you can play it *while offline*.
The model works great for a game like WoW, because the client side of the game by itself is basically worthless. It doesn't apply to something like Mass Effect.
If you're talking about a LAN party, not all games really require you to buy a copy for everybody. Demigod (most recent example I have) lets you use one copy for everybody on the LAN. It even says you're allowed to do that in the game's manual.
It seems like it's next to impossible to find out what the policy is before actually buying the game, but some games are friendly towards LAN players. :)
The great flaw in this argument is that you miss one case: People who will pirate because it's cheap, but do have the money and would buy it if the free option didn't exist.
Yes, those people exist. Yes, most people will choose "free" over "not free" any day of the week, especially those who don't consider copyright law to be worth the paper it's printed on.
I mean yes, the numbers thrown around by the BSA are complete nonsense. But the number in most cases for lost sales is > $0. If actually effective DRM existed, you'd see it adopted a fair bit.
I know with Impulse (and it wouldn't surprise me if Steam does it too, haven't tried though), you can archive a game. You could then put said archive on a DVD or a USB key, and you have a physical thing you can carry around to install from. So your steps would be:
1. Archive game.
2. Go to Friend's house.
3. Unarchive game.
4. Play game.
But yes, if you want physical media, buying that is better then buying an online copy. That seems to be common sense.
I've got Stardock games on multiple computers right now, all at the current version, quite easily. I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Hell, the EULA explicitly says you can have it on more then one computer at once (two in Demigod's case).
I'd be interested in this, provided it's on a device I can use for other things (like a Kindle, I don't want a newspaper only reader), and it can get the paper wirelessly every morning. If those two things are true, I'd likely transfer my dead tree subscription over to the digital one, which saves the newspaper the cost of printing and delivering a paper to me every day (which are substantial costs).
Of course, right now the Kindle doesn't really work in Canada at all, so that's a pipe dream for me at the moment.
Slashdot seriously needs a "-1, wrong" moderator action.
You don't need Impulse running to play, even on multiplayer.
The retail copy has no DRM. You can take it, copy it, run it, and it works quite happily.
Multiplayer does check for an account. Show me a game where that isn't true these days.
The numbers being quoted are from NPD, which is retail only. Stardock pushes their digital versions a lot more heavily then the retail ones.
Hell, around here *finding* a PC game that isn't WoW or The Sims in a store is an accomplishment in itself.
Nobody will know how it's really selling until they release the digital distribution numbers.
"and also involve micro-transactions"
That's pretty much all I needed to know. Better luck next time.
A movie here is $10, per person. That doesn't include the cost of transportation, or the grossly overpriced food/drinks (not that I buy those anymore).
So if you go to 10 movies a year, alone, and walk? Sure. For me, it'd be more like $200, easily. The TV suddenly looks more competitive, since can show a lot more then 10 movies a year.
"Is it so wrong to want to buy a truly DRM-free game?
On a DVD (which I can backup), with no passwords/serials to forget/lose?"
The 82% piracy rate on Demigod last week that took down the entire server infrastructure would suggest that yes, there's a problem with that model. It's not terribly good at keeping the companies who make the games in business.
"4) You WILL be using a brand new mode of distribution: one that did not exist for 100 years. if you are shipping DVDs to Gamestop, you used a distribution that was tested over time, perfected over time, clockwork, covered under bank guarantees, etc. Not digital."
Let's see... Gamestop broke the Demigod street date last week. That's when it's even possible to FIND a new PC game there (good luck at the ones near me).
If Gamestop has this retail thing "perfected", its no wonder everybody wants to get away from that model ASAP.
But what's the fun of playing without the disasters?
It took until page 4 for TFA to get to the real point:
"that the only reason that this problem exists is that people purchase the gold, items, accounts or services from these [gold selling] companies. If no-one did it they would not be in business. If you purchase an item or service from one of these companies, you are as guilty as those that are 'botting', 'farming' or 'spamming'."
As long as people want to cheat and buy gold, someone else will find a way to sell it. The buyers often don't care that the money comes from hacked accounts or that it has a negative impact on the game. All they care about is getting something without putting in any effort to earn it.
I know that Blizzard's logs are detailed enough to figure out who a gold selling account transferred gold to. Those are the people that they should be targetting. Spending real money on gold isn't all that appealing if you know that a week later you'll have it all taken away and your account suspended for it.
No. If people are buying gold, it means that they want to feel like they won the game without actually doing anything to get there. It's no different then people using cheats in other types of games.