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Quote: Original post by MrMark

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.

The point is that even with DRM everyone can download a fully functioning version of the game almost at day one without any drawbacks, noone has managed to make a DRM that actually works thus far, and i don't think anyone ever will for an open platform such as the PC, HL2 (Which was cracked pretty much at day one for singleplayer and LAN) is a multiplayer game where you need to pay to be able to use official servers (no crack in the world can change that, you still can't play using a cracked HL2 on normal servers even after all these years, you need a valid key).

So basically i don't think its wise to spend alot of resources on DRM since the only thing you'll accomplish is pissing of those who actually pay for the software, if its a single player game you've allready lost and anything beyond a simple cd check or verification upon install is a waste of resources, if its multiplayer a simple system with unique serial keys is more than enough since it requires custom servers to beat (While not hard it still prevents pirates from playing with legitimate customers which reduces the value of the pirated copy).

Quote: Original post by SimonForsman

Quote: Original post by MrMark

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.

The point is that even with DRM everyone can download a fully functioning version of the game almost at day one without any drawbacks, noone has managed to make a DRM that actually works thus far, and i don't think anyone ever will for an open platform such as the PC, HL2 (Which was cracked pretty much at day one for singleplayer and LAN) is a multiplayer game where you need to pay to be able to use official servers (no crack in the world can change that, you still can't play using a cracked HL2 on normal servers even after all these years, you need a valid key).

So basically i don't think its wise to spend alot of resources on DRM since the only thing you'll accomplish is pissing of those who actually pay for the software, if its a single player game you've allready lost and anything beyond a simple cd check or verification upon install is a waste of resources, if its multiplayer a simple system with unique serial keys is more than enough since it requires custom servers to beat (While not hard it still prevents pirates from playing with legitimate customers which reduces the value of the pirated copy).

I disagree it is worth spending the resources to look for a solution to piracy. Piracy has all but killed the traditional hardcore PC gaming market. PC's are now just an afterthought, that is if its even worth a company's time to port the game.

I think in the end all PC gaming will be forced to move to a software as a service type deal. Keep a significant portion of the game play logic on the server and run all games a client-server application. Even if you pirate the client you cant play without reverse engineering the entire server - a massive undertaking that would require people to know every possible action/reaction in your game.

Better that, than nothing.

Quote: Original post by MrMark
I disagree it is worth spending the resources to look for a solution to piracy. Piracy has all but killed the traditional hardcore PC gaming market. PC's are now just an afterthought, that is if its even worth a company's time to port the game.

I think in the end all PC gaming will be forced to move to a software as a service type deal. Keep a significant portion of the game play logic on the server and run all games a client-server application. Even if you pirate the client you cant play without reverse engineering the entire server - a massive undertaking that would require people to know every possible action/reaction in your game.

Better that, than nothing.

It is coming to that.

We develop on the PC and maintain a build that runs using D3D. Most of our debugging takes place on the PC version, although the artists use the target platform. We could easily ship a PC edition.

Even though we have a PC version, it is only profitable to ship on X360 and PS3.

Quote: Original post by SimonForsman
Focusing on the pirates is the wrong way to go, it doesn't increase revenue, focusing on your customers however will increase revenue.

It would be very nice if that were true.

Unfortunately, the market has always proven otherwise.

One reason to focus on pirates is that if you can slow down the pirates even for just an extra few days, you can get thousands of additional sales. If you can also deter casual copying just a little bit, you can get thousands of additional sales.

Every publisher knows the games will be cracked. Every publisher knows that paying customers will download cracks to disable the copy protection. That's not the point.

The point is that the market has proven, over and over again, that copy protection results in additional sales at the beginning, and deters casual copying over time.

In order to get the tens of millions of dollars needed to develop and publish a game, we need those sales.

Quote: Original post by frob

Quote: Original post by SimonForsman
Focusing on the pirates is the wrong way to go, it doesn't increase revenue, focusing on your customers however will increase revenue.

It would be very nice if that were true.

Unfortunately, the market has always proven otherwise.

One reason to focus on pirates is that if you can slow down the pirates even for just an extra few days, you can get thousands of additional sales. If you can also deter casual copying just a little bit, you can get thousands of additional sales.

Every publisher knows the games will be cracked. Every publisher knows that paying customers will download cracks to disable the copy protection. That's not the point.

The point is that the market has proven, over and over again, that copy protection results in additional sales at the beginning, and deters casual copying over time.

In order to get the tens of millions of dollars needed to develop and publish a game, we need those sales.

Yes, yes, I know, there's always a reason on why to piss on your customers, because it's more cost effective. Well guess what, it goes both ways. People also have economic issues and expenses, not only the companies. The guy that paid 50 bucks to get a lame ultrathin plastic case with nothing in it but a DVD and went through hell to manage to play it, next time he might even think what is cost effective for HIM. Hm? You can't go around preaching 'do the right thing guys, be nice,buy the game', while at the same time being nothing but a jerk to him. Since you expect him to do the right thing and spend his money on buying the game even though he has the choice not to, then YOU do the right thing and respect him even if that means you lose some sales. If you can't do that, then pack your bags and move permanently to ConsoleLand. Go ahead. Let only those that respect me stay in the game. I won't miss anything. What, I won't get the latest Gears of War tech demo? I get Machinarium. MACHINARIUM. I win.

I blame the internet.

Even casual piracy is increased by simple publishing of knowledge of how to break copy protection.

Heck, you can still violate copyright from your home and it's hard for the copyright owner to enforce that against you. If you steal a game from a shop, you'll be hauled off down to the local station and charged with theft.

Quote: Original post by frob
One reason to focus on pirates is that if you can slow down the pirates even for just an extra few days, you can get thousands of additional sales. If you can also deter casual copying just a little bit, you can get thousands of additional sales.

Every publisher knows the games will be cracked. Every publisher knows that paying customers will download cracks to disable the copy protection. That's not the point.

I'd be happy if major publishers made a policy of patching out their DRM after, say, 6 months of any release.

My very funnest DRM experience was with Dreamfall. Its copy protection thing installed a shell extension (a wtf in itself) that caused explorer to crash every time I right-clicked on a file. It took about an hour to figure out and fix. Now imagine I had been a casual user. My computer would have just been rendered unusable by a legally bought game. How ridiculous is that?

On top of that I had to find a patch for the copy protection to even get the game to start on anything newer than XP.

Didn't Ubisoft try DRM-free games? Prince Of Persia or something? I never heard again how it turned out for them, but apparently the next PoP installment also comes for PC again. It's way to early to actually know, though.

Personally I use steam. And steam, while technically being DRM, does provide a smooth platform that never failed me so far. Other copy protection schemes I have much worse experiences with. I needed to crack EtherlordsII because the hidden DVD driver did not work on WinXP64. I remember very well how SpellforceII killed my DVD driver, causing an actual crash whenever I accessed the DVD drive with any other but the SpellforceII DVD in it. This also lead me to not tolerating any DRM scheme in addition to Steam's. Assassins Creed II? Yes, I'd like to, but not with Steam AND that other bullshit DRM on top. Bioshock II? With another fucking registration somewhere just to save my game? Frankly... get off my lawn.

Quote: Original post by MrMark

Quote: Original post by SimonForsman

Quote: Original post by MrMark

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.

The point is that even with DRM everyone can download a fully functioning version of the game almost at day one without any drawbacks, noone has managed to make a DRM that actually works thus far, and i don't think anyone ever will for an open platform such as the PC, HL2 (Which was cracked pretty much at day one for singleplayer and LAN) is a multiplayer game where you need to pay to be able to use official servers (no crack in the world can change that, you still can't play using a cracked HL2 on normal servers even after all these years, you need a valid key).

So basically i don't think its wise to spend alot of resources on DRM since the only thing you'll accomplish is pissing of those who actually pay for the software, if its a single player game you've allready lost and anything beyond a simple cd check or verification upon install is a waste of resources, if its multiplayer a simple system with unique serial keys is more than enough since it requires custom servers to beat (While not hard it still prevents pirates from playing with legitimate customers which reduces the value of the pirated copy).

I disagree it is worth spending the resources to look for a solution to piracy. Piracy has all but killed the traditional hardcore PC gaming market. PC's are now just an afterthought, that is if its even worth a company's time to port the game.

I think in the end all PC gaming will be forced to move to a software as a service type deal. Keep a significant portion of the game play logic on the server and run all games a client-server application. Even if you pirate the client you cant play without reverse engineering the entire server - a massive undertaking that would require people to know every possible action/reaction in your game.

Better that, than nothing.

It is definitly worth it to look for a solution, but draconian DRM schemes isn't the solution, It has been proven to reduce sales to law abiding customers and there is no indication that it makes the pirates pay for the software.

HP published a good report on the issue a few years ago with the quotes

Quote:
DRM protected content is economically less valuable than unprotected content.

Quote:
The important thing is to maximize the value of your intellectual property, not to protect it for the sake of protection

Quote:
The real problem with piracy is that it takes only a small fraction of users who are capable of dissociating licenses from content to make managed content available to a significant fraction of users in unmanaged form.

I do believe that it is possible to use DRM without significantly lowering the value of your property, ubisoft however failed badly with AC2 (Heck, if you compare the sales they might have gained from pirates not wanting to wait a few days extra for a crack with the cost of the DRM, running the authentication servers and lost sales due to unhappy customers i'm fairly sure that DRM scheme is reducing their profits).

If you take valve on the other hand with steam, a DRM solution that makes it easy for customers to move software between their systems or install on multiple systems, (Heck the only way i can install DRM free software that easily is by using Linux (But then the amount of nicely packaged software to choose from gets fairly limited)), makes it easy for customers to buy software, lets customers chat with eachother when online even while playing games that normally doesn't support it, and thus far hasn't caused me a single problem.

One publisher gets my money, the other doesn't, DRM in itself is not a problem, just make sure it doesn't fuck with the paying customers.