Copy Protection DRM

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wwarnick
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Postby wwarnick » Sat Nov 24, 2007 4:53 am

IV seems an honest company to me. Should they go belly up, I think they'd release a patch that would remove the restrictions. For all we know, they've already made one for Defcon.

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Postby KingAl » Sat Nov 24, 2007 5:57 am

Pox wrote:
Tunips wrote:I'm just waiting for the technological revolution so that everyone leads a life of leisure and all products are free.


Heh... you'll be waiting a while. I think our current commercial society will be around a while longer than a lifetime.


Something tells me he was joking. I think it was the "technological revolution so that everyone leads a life of leisure and all products are free" part.
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Postby martin » Sat Nov 24, 2007 2:18 pm

Montyphy wrote:
Tunips wrote:I'm just waiting for the technological revolution so that everyone leads a life of leisure and all products are free.


Personally, the thought of becoming food for Morlocks isn't very tempting...


heh, that actually made me laugh out loud :lol:
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Postby OrR » Sat Nov 24, 2007 3:20 pm

I hate piracy. It made me buy 30+ games for my Nintendo DS. If I can easily download anything from the net, drop it on my card and try it, that makes me discover every awesome gem I would never have known about otherwise. It's what brought Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents to the west, what made Phoenix Wright popular. It made me buy Strawberry Shortcake and Mr. Slime Jr. which I would never have noticed. It also keeps me from spending money on crap. The problem: Not enough people are as idealistic as I am and actually spend money on stuff they like. How do you punish people for being greedy bastards? That's a difficult one. Nice packaging comes to mind.

Funny thing is I downloaded Bioshock with the intention of buying it if it was good. I haven't even had time to install it, yet! When I eventually get the time it will probably already be in the bargain bin and I'll feel bad for not buying it at the proper price. I felt really bad when I got Beyond Good & Evil and Mafia for 10€ each! :( PC games have to stop becoming cheap so fast.

About replay value: I don't really care too much about that anymore because I don't have enough time to replay games, anyway. However, I'd like to see a game have a price that somewhat relates to how much time I'm going to spend on it. I've regreted quite a few 50€ Wii purchases because the games were pretty nice but short (Bloody Wario Ware!). Why aren't there more games for 20€ or 30€? A four hour single player ego shooter shoudn't be more than that, either. An epic like Lost in Blue or Phoenix Wright justifies the 40€ price but others don't.

Online copy protection might be a good way to protect multiplayer games but it's not that great for singleplayer games. Also I'd like to have a guarantee that the online infrastructure is opened once the game gets abandoned. Does Introversion have any plans about that?
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Postby Anach » Sat Nov 24, 2007 4:39 pm

wwarnick wrote:
Anach wrote:I think game companies are laying far too much blame for lack of sales on the pirates shoulders. When they should be looking more at the quality and features of their games. I want to try a game before spend 50-100 dollars to buy it, for much the same reason i test drive a car before I buy it.

Do all pirates think the same? A portion of the pirating community are cynical and don't have any moral qualms with pirating. They download games to keep rather than as a trial. They don't care about the developers. We've had a few threads that have posted links to cracked IV games, and they weren't saying, "Here's a better demo than IV offers." These same players would've waited the thirteen days to play Bioshock because they don't want to spit out $50. To these people, pirating is as much a principle as an opportunity.

Still others have gotten carried away with piracy. I used to download and burn myself, and I wasn't cynical about it all. I let myself get carried away with the fact that I could have all this expensive stuff for free, and I wasn't "stealing" (in the usual sense, which was enough for me). I stopped because I knew it was wrong. But many don't stop.

I understand that many pirates aren't that way. Others (like yourself) download games to demo them before a purchase. But don't think all pirates are that way.

EDIT: RPS's reply to this blog post.

wwarnick


Many people download anything they find for the sake of downloading. Even games they never actually try, they do it for the P2P community and the sharing and the addiction of free stuff. There will always be those types of people and unlikely they would buy those games anyway, even if they had no option to pirate. I'd imagine people would be a whole lot more selective and a lot of the decisions would rest on the reviews available if there was an uncrackable game. It's definitely debatable whether sales would be better or worse because of that.

I am however biased in regard to your statement, as I dont generally like single player FPS games, and I did play the demo of Bioshock and found it uninteresting for many reasons. I tend to look for games that do have replay value in them. I also end up with games that are well over their initial install size and remain on my drive for years. :P

The majority of my purchased games have a few similar features. Modding communities which continue to add to the game, for years after purchase. Multiplayer, for games that are always different and can be played with friends. Dynamic or large campaigns, for varety. Online content, such as must have additions or features. MMOs, for a little of everything.
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Game Quality

Postby enchanter100 » Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:11 pm

I registered just to add my 2 pennies.. I rarely purchase games anymore due to a few issues I have with the "system". In fact, I don't play many games anymore because of a 16 month old child, job promotion, etc.. I got screwed by a couple of games when they wouldn't work with my computer and there was nothing anyone would do about it. Talk about wasting 50 dollars a game. Then there is game quality. There are a bunch of games that are over hyped and crap. In both these instances, can I take my game back and get a refund the same way I take my tv back if it doesn't work or almost any other object that I don't like? Nope, if you opened that package you can only exchange it for the same product. Well that product is terrible or it doesn't work with my computer (even though I meet all the system requirements). Why should I have to wait for a patch that comes afterward or never comes at all? I would be buying more games if I had a way to return them if they aren't good or they don't work. Don't say play the demo because that is hardly a representation of what the disk version will be like. Companies will even put their own disclaimers in demos stating as such.
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Re: Game Quality

Postby Montyphy » Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:26 pm

enchanter100 wrote:There are a bunch of games that are over hyped and crap. In both these instances, can I take my game back and get a refund the same way I take my tv back if it doesn't work or almost any other object that I don't like? Nope, if you opened that package you can only exchange it for the same product.


But if the TV or other product was crap and overhyped would you be able to take it back on that basis? I think not.
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Re: Game Quality

Postby enchanter100 » Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:37 pm

Montyphy wrote:
enchanter100 wrote:There are a bunch of games that are over hyped and crap. In both these instances, can I take my game back and get a refund the same way I take my tv back if it doesn't work or almost any other object that I don't like? Nope, if you opened that package you can only exchange it for the same product.


But if the TV or other product was crap and overhyped would you be able to take it back on that basis? I think not.


Here in the states you can. Usually there's a time limit but i'm sure if you aren't satisfied with a product for any reason it's refundable.
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Postby Vadi » Sat Nov 24, 2007 8:17 pm

I agree - good DRM protection that does not get into the users way is the best both for the developer and the user. If it does get in the users way, they'll know about it, and hate it. As for those who don't want to pay for it - well, they won't be too upset, and neither should you care about them.
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Postby The GoldFish » Sun Nov 25, 2007 7:33 pm

Well the thing about WoW is, it's predominantly an online game anyway, the whole point of the game is to go online into a world with other people and do WoWee type things. There is no purely single player component to MMORPG games really - if you impliment online CDkey verification stuff with a predominantly single player game and suddenly everything changes.

IIRC, there are quite a few games which ship with a CD key, but let you play single player without ever entering it. However, they get you to create an online account which you attach your key to. I think in general this works better in the mind of the player, but if you forget your login then you've pretty much had it!

The simple fact of the matter is that if people want to beat copy protection then they will, so you might as well focus on the side you can realistically (and acceptably) enforce.

Since Multiwinia is predominantly multiplayer anyway it makes sense to do DEFCON style key enforcement, especially since that infrastructure already basically exists. Subversion, only Chris knows if it will have single and multiplayer components, but I think copy protection can reasonably be different between the two.

The problem is, single player games. That is the question really; how can you possibly protect your single player game from piracy without forcing the player online? If you can't offer a tit for tat relationship (eg GalCiv etc) then it's basically impossible.

If big name developers for cross PC/Console game releases could stop with the catastrophic design, DRM and attitude mistakes they seem to be making, I think dual developed games (or frankly, blatently console ports) would get a lot less stick. I doubt (really hope) IV will not have a problem here.
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Postby Paperflyer » Mon Nov 26, 2007 1:15 pm

Like all of my friends I used to download and play just about any game I could when I was younger. With my first earned money however, I switched to buying more and more games and eventually losing interest in them.

Today, I do not play much any more. This is largely because I do have enough things to do with the university and partly because I think that there are too many games that are just not fun enough to compare against good books (or flight simulators ;) ). Games from Introversion are such rare experiences, though.

In my opinion, Copy Protection or DRM is neccessary since it prevents a small part of them gamers from downloading the game. I can not blame game developers for using it, since I myself have been one of the reasons (I downloaded games illegally).
In an age where pretty much anyone who has a computer also has an internet connection, server-based activation processes are probably the most convenient form of Copy Protection that has been invented.

I think that the problem of piracy is largely a question of money. A Kid saves money to buy his first PC, but oftenly does not calculate the money needed for Software -- starting with the operating system. So It just downloads it. Being a bad pirated copy, it works poorly and the kid gets problems with drivers and other software. Hence, it thinks that games in general are not reliable in terms of stability and therefore not worth the hard-earned money.
Had its parents bought a proper PC with proper software, those problems probably would not have arisen at this extend because the overall experience would have been a lot smoother and less error-prone.

Therefore, I use Linux, where piracy is utterly impossible and software generally is free. And thanks to Introversion (and Laminar Research), I still can game on!

a3g!
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Postby xander » Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:48 pm

Paperflyer wrote:Therefore, I use Linux, where piracy is utterly impossible and software generally is free.

Not to be overly pedantic, but that isn't true. Introversion sells their games for Linux. If you were to get those games off of torrents, without paying IV, that would be pirating their games. It is not really possible to pirate open source software, but not everything that runs on Linux is open source.

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Postby prophile » Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:17 pm

xander wrote:
Paperflyer wrote:Therefore, I use Linux, where piracy is utterly impossible and software generally is free.

Not to be overly pedantic, but that isn't true. Introversion sells their games for Linux. If you were to get those games off of torrents, without paying IV, that would be pirating their games. It is not really possible to pirate open source software, but not everything that runs on Linux is open source.

xander


I sneakily downloaded a cracked version of wget from bittorrent which had no copy protection!
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Postby xander » Mon Nov 26, 2007 5:02 pm

prophile wrote:
xander wrote:
Paperflyer wrote:Therefore, I use Linux, where piracy is utterly impossible and software generally is free.

Not to be overly pedantic, but that isn't true. Introversion sells their games for Linux. If you were to get those games off of torrents, without paying IV, that would be pirating their games. It is not really possible to pirate open source software, but not everything that runs on Linux is open source.

xander


I sneakily downloaded a cracked version of wget from bittorrent which had no copy protection!

NO WAI!

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Postby wwarnick » Mon Nov 26, 2007 5:49 pm

xander wrote:NO WAI!

Not to be overly pedantic, but it's spelled "way", not "wai". And you call yourself a pedant.

wwarnick

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