Quote: Original post by frob
Unless and until there is a better solution than the copy protection systems now in use, your complaint is just noise.

As much as I sympathize with fellow game developers, customers have every right to complain. They have a bought a product (or service) that isn't doing what it is supposed to do. If I buy something in a store, and it fails to work, I'll complain and request a replacement or a refund.

Even though everybody knows that software pirating is a big issue for development studios and publishers, legitimate customers shouldn't care about the reasons behind these problems. If it's no longer economically viable to produce a game, we should stop doing it, or deal with the financial consequences. If someone comes up with a scheme that stops the pirates while leaving paying customers unaffected, that would be great, but you can't blame pirates for your own failure to deliver a properly working product.

I can understand the frustration though.

Quote: Original post by frob
If you know of a model that makes everybody pay the game developers for their work, then please share it. Or patent the process and bring it to market on your own, either way.

I don't know, call me crazy, but a good start would be to provide a better service for the paying customer, and make him look better than his pirate friends, and not being the moron of the whole story. Like, for instance, providing a better package when selling the game, including, oh I don't know, maybe a decent printed manual? I won't dare propose of course some completely crazy ideas, 'goodies' like a full-sized map for RPGs or a small tasteful booklet introducing the lore. Or access to online tech support of high quality. Those are just ridiculous. These things can't possibly happen. For the ridiculously cheap price of $59,95, the only thing it's reasonable to expect is a download link. Don't be so needy guys, seriously. It doesn't matter if the 13yrolds of this world won't really use those services, or can't appreciate the goodies. Just throw something shiny in the way, anything, give them a reason to at least contemplate not to google 'NewBigFuckingGame warez'.

Copy protection has failed. Every. Single. Time. It doesn't matter if piracy hurts a game's sales, because there is nothing you can do about it. If you really don't want piracy for the game, simply don't release it for PC. Console only. For the PC, the only question is how many hours after the release of the game, will the protection be broken and released for the masses as a torrent. PC owners have a highly configurable and flexible piece of hardware to which they have nearly unrestricted access to. Consider your protection already broken. If you actually break the hour barrier and start counting on days, you're a freaking tech god who is too good for this planet. Hop over to a spaceship and go educate some alien race, because it only follows you have invented faster than light travel too.

[Edited by - mikeman on March 9, 2010 5:31:38 PM]

To me, for a single-player game, anything that makes playing the single-player campaign depend on anything other than your own computer, is a bridge too far.

If I own a game, I want to play it today, I want to play it in 10 years, I want to play it in Windows, and in Wine in Linux if it works, and preferably without an annoying spinning disk in the drive. And I want to be able to keep backups of savegames myself.

Now the trend of publishing games appears to be that even for the single player campaign you depend on a server computer somewhere. For me that is going to far, and to me it lowers the value of the product too much for considering it worth buying, but that's also partially because I'm not so interested in playing "teh newest game" anymore, I'm still happy with UT and StarCraft 1 and such. And developing small games as well as playing them (on Newgrounds for example) of course. I'm simply not the target audience of the locked-in kind of product many modern PC games have become.

About why this online requirement for single player games is going on, I think, if more money can be made at the cost of customer satisfaction, the money wins.

[Edited by - Lode on March 9, 2010 6:36:57 PM]

I love Steam for that reason. The game is attached to your account, not your computer. Plus the convenience of not having to deal with DRMs and piles of CDs. Works for me anyway.

Quote: Original post by oliii
Plus the convenience of not having to deal with DRMs

Unfortunately some publishers still include their DRM with the Steam release of the game; Bioshock is a good example of this and I believe the backlash caused the addition of the text informing the end user that the game will have 3rd party DRM with it.

And yes, the DRM scheme in use does modulate my desire to buy a game; I figure a game is a luxury and frankly in the grand scheme I can live without or just play the 360 version and avoid all that.

(total side note; it struck me as amusing earlier when I got home from work, powered up my 360, stuck FF13 in and went to do some washing up while the game installed.. *chuckles* full circle or what? [grin])

Quote: Original post by Mithrandir
So the inevitable happened. The honest people who bought Assassins Creed 2 cannot play their game because the authentication servers went down.


Meanwhile, the pirates have been able to play the game with no problem, since it's been cracked since the day it was released.


Dear Publishers: DRM SUCKS. I don't buy your games anymore because of this and their shitty quality anyway. But feel free to keep tilting at those windmills anyway.

Ofcourse there is a huge difference between DRM and DRM, having to authenticate single player games online every single time you want to play is unacceptable, but verifying on installation or when playing online isn't that bad.

Quote: Original post by oliii
I love Steam for that reason. The game is attached to your account, not your computer. Plus the convenience of not having to deal with DRMs and piles of CDs. Works for me anyway.

Technically speaking Steam is a form of DRM aswell, its just that it provides actual benfits for the customer aswell (easy access from any computer, and easy to purchase new software) and the copyprotection schemes never seem to get in the way (I've never had any problems with it atleast)

Tell me about it. Steinberg Cubase won't work on my system (legitimate copy of course) because the installer for their f**k dongle driver doesn't function properly.

The only way you can teach them is to not buy anything that is DRMed or dongled by principle. Not like they care if you buy their product if a million others still do, but it's a start.

Quote: Original post by frob

Quote: Original post by Moe
There have been plenty of 'studies' or at least estimates that try to guess how much money is lost due to piracy. Has anyone ever done a study to see how much money is lost because of retarded DRM systems? How many more customers would have bought these games if they had no DRM? How much did the DRM system cost in the first place? How many developer hours, customer support hours, and quality assurance hours were burned through when adding the DRM?

Yes, publishers do that kind of tests.

Yes, it has happened in the past. Remember World of Goo? It had no copy protection, and telemetry showed well over 90% piracy.

Yes, it is still happening. Remember Mass Effect 2, launching just one month ago? It uses only a CD check at install. You can be certain that they are watching their telemetry, and comparing notes against everything else they own.

But is the piracy frequency really that important ?

Wouldn't it make more sense to look at the number of sales ?

The pirates might be annoying but unless the DRM turns those pirated copies into sales it worthless (While some pirates might buy the game instead if its not available as a torrent on day one i'd guess that most will just either wait until it is broken and released illegally or simply move on to some other game with weaker protection, Focusing on the pirates is the wrong way to go, it doesn't increase revenue, focusing on your customers however will increase revenue).

And more importantly, does a weak protection like a simple CD check really make alot more people pirate it instead of buying it , the pirates aren't the ones who have to crack the copyprotection anyway.

I think basic copyprotection is good since it protects against casual piracy (people giving a copy to a friend etc), but going further just seems pointless since once a crack is out it really doesn't matter how advanced your DRM was anyway.

Quote: Original post by ChaosEngine
That said, the "waaahh, I'm not happy with DRM, so I'm going to pirate it"* argument is even more retarded than the "Hey! let's screw over the guys who actually paid for our game" argument.

But you have to consider the "I bought this game, and now I'm going to apply a crack only to be able to actually use the product I paid for" argument, which is quite valid if you ask me. Requiring an online connection every time you want to play a single player game is absolutely unacceptable. To be honest, if I bought a game with such a protection, I would probably crack it.

Quote: But is the piracy frequency really that important ?

Wouldn't it make more sense to look at the number of sales ?

One affects the other. Tell me this if you can just download a fully functioning version of the game with absolutely no drawbacks why wouldn't you ?

Unless your game is an MMO (which is software as a service btw) there's no way you can offer more value to consumers when you have pirates giving away your stuff for free.

When I was in high school all my friends bought HL2, not because they love Valve and want to support them, but because they couldn't pirate it. Yes steam got cracked down the line, but that's not the point the steam DRM resulted in more sales.